Windows 10 upgrade

[Privates1stClass]

I've been using desktop computers since the days of CP/M (mid 1970's) and 8-inch floppies, so you can consider me a computer geek. Over those years, Microsoft has taken over more and more of my PC, and my options to do what I want, when I want, have disappeared. It will probably only get worse. Pay to play comes to mind.

Before I retired, I wrote software, and still do. Newer versions of Windows don't like me writing my own apps. Do you really want to run that software, they ask. Yes, damnit, I wrote it and I'll suffer the consequences if I break something. I really hate Big Brother(s) looking over my shoulder.

Computers aren't toasters, and they never will be. You need to know just a little bit about what's under the hood. The stuff you put on your computer is you. It's your life, and you should be able to control it. Unfortunately, Windows is taking much of that control away, giving you advertisements, nagware, upgrades at the most inopportune times, and maybe even keeping track of what you browse and what you type (who knows where that data goes?).

About 10 years ago, I installed Linux. The first versions weren't as easy to use as Windows, but I was in control again. Linux has improved, and it's easier to use than ever. I'd say that it's about as easy to install and use as Windows XP. If you can use a mouse and a keyboard, you can run Linux.

At this point, I'm writing this using Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on an old Dell 2400 that's 12 years old. Windows 10 probably wouldn't install on it. Linux doesn't care if I don't have gobs of memory and hard disk space.

I also have Linux Mint 17.3 on three newer computers, and there's an icon in my system tray indicating whether I need an upgrade to any software installed on any of my computers. It's my choice if, or when, to upgrade. I'm fairly sure my upgrades aren't downloading spyware.

Linux will allow you dual boot Windows and Linux, so you can have the best of both worlds, if you wish. Windows doesn't like anything but software it installs, so it doesn't even 'see' or understand my Linux partitions. However, using Linux, I can read files on my Windows partition. If Windows ever fails to boot, I can still make backups of my Windows files using Linux.

My suggestion is to visit Linux Mint's website (Google it), then download a copy to a DVD. You can boot and try Mint using the DVD without affecting your Windows installation.

Should you desire to install Mint, all the software installed on your computer from the DVD is free, and I'm guessing the equivalent Windows software would probably cost you more than $1000. I can read and write Windows Office files with Linux, so why spend all the money at the MS store?

If you stick your toe into the Linux pool, you may not like it, but with a little effort, you can be in control again.

 

[rjordan]

My wife is driving along in her new Winten SS automobile enjoying the new car smell. The Check Engine light comes on. Check engine? Check it for what? She stops, opens the hood and stares blankly at a plastic enclosure that completely obscures the computer controlled, software driven internal combustion engine lurking below. She doesn't see fire or smoke so she's pretty much screwed as far as fixing her $50K car on the side of the road. She's lost control over her own automobile.

I'm smarter. I have a new Lincox Continental. Sleek. Everything I want, nothing I don't. When something goes wrong, I don't get some wimpy Check Engine. I get a meaningful "Warning-bdflush not running" or "Go Away. You don't exist". I stop the car, open the hood and stare at the same 1953 Chevy small block my dad drove for 20 years. There's the carburetor, the distributor with mechanical points, the turbo encabulator. It's all right there. I have total control. Except I'm still not a mechanic. I still don't know what "bdflush" does. Until this moment I didn't know it existed and if I did, I had no idea I should know what it does. No fire and no smoke so I have no hope of fixing this think on the side of the road. I'll have to call the guy at work who talked me into buying this piece of shit and see if he knows anything about turboflush or whatever. He's totally in control of my computer.

rj

 

[Tio_Narratore]

My daughter had installed Windows 10 without a problem, so I tried it. Fucked up half of what I used that wasn't from Microsoft. I uninstalled it, but it permanently screwed up some programs. The worst: WordPerfect is my favourite for writing - it easily formats text just the way an academic wants it. Now, whenever I try to use it, or open a file in it. the whole laptop freezes. I have to try deleting and reinstalling it, but W10 is still lurking somewhere, somehow on my computer.

 

[Handley_Page]

After saying "NO" for weeks after I persuaded a PC (with Win 7) to work, I left it running "folding @ home" for a few days. Went in the other night and guess what? Win 10 is on and running.

It's very like Win 7 in the 'look & feel' department. Not that that, in itself, is much of a recommendation. Why didn't they leave the bloody thing alone ? It took me long enough to get the hang of XP Pro, for gods sake.

I'm waiting ti hear from a pal who can tell me what to turn OFF so less data is sent to Redmond (for "an improved advertising experience"). Until then I have switched off as much as I can.

Come back DOS 6.24, all is forgiven.

 

[Edward Teach]

Why is it that Windows continually crashes and shit, no matter how careful you are when using it, but your phone runs hundreds of apps and never fails?

Edward the Curious

 

[lovecraft68]

Why is it that Windows continually crashes and shit, no matter how careful you are when using it, but your phone runs hundreds of apps and never fails?

Edward the Curious

Because microsoft didn't build your phone

 

[lovecraft68]

I upgraded my laptop from Win 8.1 to Win 10 last month. The upgrade will be free for a few more months before you have to pay for it.

That's the only reason I upgraded my laptop.

If you don't like it, you can revert back to your old OS within a month. Being an ex-Win 8.1 user, I deleted my previous OS. Win 10 is much better than that drivel. I haven't had issues with it. In fact, it's pretty cool.

I think you try it out before making your judgement. I had a bad experience with the update last year, so it took me this long to get over the fear of losing my laptop to a defective update patch.

My issue is not how it runs, my issue is what Handsnthedark posted they own you and will own your intellectual property, windows 10 is the latest and greatest in big brother.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Ever since I bought the new laptop - last Sept - there have been pop-ups offering the free upgrade to Windows 10. It's free,so what's the catch? blah-blah...

My question is@ Has anyone here experienced the upgrade? If so, are there glitches, etc? Is it used by Big Brother to track my porn usage?

What's the deal?

I'm quite happy to plod along in steam-mode using the ancient 8, but this persistent - almost insistent - campaign to take up the offer is pissing me off.

I've been recommending Windows 10 to everyone struggling with Windows 8. It's a MUCH nicer and familiar environment. MS just tried to do too much with Win 8 IMHO. Win10 is a nice change.

I've upgrade about a dozen computers without issue. I'm not a fan of Microsoft Edge, the replacement to Internet Explorer, but good ol' IE will still be on your system after you upgrade. As for movie watching, I've been using VLC for years, so any changes into Microsoft's player is irrelevant to me.

You CAN lock in your free upgrade, though it's a bit of clunky system. First, you have to accept the upgrade. After it's installed, you have to revert back to your old system. Clunky, but it puts your system into Microsoft's database of approved upgraded machines for a future upgrade.

If security is your concern, here's a pretty article from Lifehacker: How to Configure Windows 10 to Protect Your Privacy

If you're not interested in upgrading, the support company my company uses is recommending the program "Never10." Here's a link for that and other ways to avoid the upgrade: How to Stop Automatic Upgrades to Windows 10

My advice? Upgrade, the NSA is already watching everything we do either way.

 

[jomar]

It's been fine for me, but I am curious what it's watching after reading this thread.

 

[TxRad]

It's been fine for me, but I am curious what it's watching after reading this thread.

Pretty much everything you do and type and everywhere you go.

 

[lovecraft68]

Pretty much everything you do and type and everywhere you go.

So right now its staring at a dirty old man with a bad hat?

 

[TxRad]

So right now its staring at a dirty old man with a bad hat?

Are you talking about you or me? It's not me cause i ain't running 10.

By the way, that hat is older than you are.

 

[lovecraft68]

Are you talking about you or me? It's not me cause i ain't running 10.

By the way, that hat is older than you are.

I'm not running it either, nor will I.

And...I'm not surprised.

 

[Sammael Bard]

Also, I wanted to add one more thing since we're on the issue of privacy.

It isn't just Microsoft that collects your data. Every website, social network and free email services sift through your stuff for advertisement purpose. You name it - Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Gmail, iOS. They sell these info to the ad companies to money off it.

Speaking for myself, I haven't got much to hide anyway. It doesn't matter if someone is sifting through my porno folder to see what I like (all they'll see is Stoya's ass and bullshit stories and articles). But if any of you are interested in stopping big bro from going through your data, you'll find this article very enlightening:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2489212,00.asp

I primarily use my laptop for writing stuff, gaming, browsing the Internet and storing data. A Linux can give me two of these, but it doesn't support gaming or Microsoft Office, both of which are core to my laptop/pc experience. The day Linux supports these two functions, I'll dump win 10.

My advice? Upgrade, the NSA is already watching everything we do either way.

Bingo.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

It isn't just Microsoft that collects your data.

I'm wondering whether the long-range objective is to force you to buy special editions of all the software that you use, because the old versions will not be compatible with "updated" versions of the OS, and you have no ability to tweak Windows 10.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Why is it that Windows continually crashes and shit, no matter how careful you are when using it, but your phone runs hundreds of apps and never fails?

Edward the Curious

Apple owns the hardware and the software. The designed the phone, they designed the software, and they tested them together. A lot. They don't allow untested software on their phones. Most importantly: they don't dare screw up. They demand top dollar for their phones and so it better work, because one glitch and people will move to other phone suppliers. In droves. So they CAN make sure it all works, and they DO make sure it all works. And the iPhone succeeds, because quality always does.

Microsoft doesn't (realistically speaking) design computers. They try to make their stuff run on every combination of hardware out there, and so they can't test all the combinations. That's risky. Then they let other companies install software under Windows - drivers, at the very least, but also many apps. More badly tested combinations, more risk. And most importantly, for a couple decades they had no competition. You could buy a computer running Windows, or you could try one of those weird niche Apple Mac things... which early on weren't so great. Or you could try Linux, hahaha, now there's someone's homebrew science experiment that will never see the light of common use... yeah, you were stuck with Microsoft, and if it crashed a lot, well too bad. Alternatives were expensive or very difficult to learn.

Fast forward to today. Macs are respectable, easy to use and stable. Linux, powered by vast armies of software engineers who loathed the crap that Microsoft sold and swore they could do better for free... in the end, did better for free. And so Microsoft is under huge threat from Linux and Apple and a vast population that grew up with Blue Screens of Death and viruses by the truckload.

Is Microsoft software becoming more stable? Yeah, finally. More virus proof? Sadly, no, they have never learned to get their heads out of their asses when it comes to secure design, which is something of a shock because secure design happens to be fairly easy. Did they take price competition from a free world of Linux seriously? No, they tried to get Linux banned from the marketplace and created barriers to Linux's adoption, instead of fixing their own outrageous pricing problems.

So now it's crunch time at Microsoft, and they've finally bowed to price pressure and will give you the OS for free. (Just the OS... I don't think Microsoft Word is going to be cheap any time soon). But since they have shareholders and things, and no profitable second business like iPhones to keep them rich... they need another way to haul in bucks. So they're going to use *your* data to generate income. And sooner or later, they'll *rent* you access to your data, and get a nice steady revenue stream that way.

I don't feel sorry for Microsoft. They sold very overpriced, unstable crap for years, lied about interfaces, exposed people to risk of data loss and theft, and used very dirty marketing to get away with it. Now they get to pay for their sins. Boo hoo.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

My advice? Upgrade, the NSA is already watching everything we do either way.

No. That's idiotic advice. I'm not a fan of how the NSA does their business, but the reality is they don't watch everything we do. Their hands really are tied in a lot of areas. That's NOT true of companies like Google and Microsoft, who have the right to do anything *you agree to let them do*, aka EULA rape, in the name of good old capitalism. People giving your kind of advice are the ones ensuring the death of privacy.

Before Windows 10, if you didn't want something public, you didn't put it on the internet. Problem solved.

After Windows 10, anything you type is now in someone else's hands. (Same with Google's ChromeOS - everything you do there is available to Google.) Privacy was an option before. It's not now. That's a fundamental change, and one that should not be written off.

 

[rjordan]

Why is it that Windows continually crashes and shit, no matter how careful you are when using it, but your phone runs hundreds of apps and never fails?

Edward the Curious

Could be a personal problem...

I haven't had the so-called blue screen of death since Win 95, and then only once. So I disagree that Windows continually crashes and shit. Win XP was stable. Win 7 was very stable. Win 8.1 had issues, but was stable. Win 10 is very stable. So it's time to stop listening to the "Windoze" idiots who really don't speak from recent (last two decades) experience.

Also Windows runs on equipment not under control of Microsoft. As Hands points out, Apple has control of the hardware and the software, even the software they don't write. Microsoft doesn't. Peripherals are made all over the world. Drivers for those peripherals come from god knows where. Many are never updated after initial release. As Microsoft updates its products, there is likely no update forthcoming for a lot of the no-name peripheral drivers.

Not apologizing for Microsoft. Overall I have no chronic problems with Microsoft products. I have never called Microsoft for help. I have occasionally called other software developers for help with their own products. The fix was always something they had done, not a shortcoming of the operating system.

Anyway, I'm not really trying to convince anyone. I was in the motorcycle industry for nearly 40 years. I wrote about them, repaired them, consulted on aftermarket modifications, raced them, ate and slept them. So the popularity and fan fanaticism for Harley Davidson's two wheeled farm implements has always been a total mystery to me.

They excel for hauling around a 300 pound rider with a 400 pound wife at low speed so there's that. But by every other measure of motorcycle performance, they are laughable. There's no accounting for taste in mates, motorcycles or operating systems.

rj

 

[AlwaysHungry]

So the popularity and fan fanaticism for Harley Davidson's two wheeled farm implements has always been a total mystery to me.

They excel for hauling around a 300 pound rider with a 400 pound wife at low speed so there's that. But by every other measure of motorcycle performance, they are laughable.

I feel that I ought to point out here that they are much louder than the competition, and that has got to count for something.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

i know you're lurking. so here, have one of these:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IFEp6yCERxY/UJqlxxH2FRI/AAAAAAAAD9Q/kPhrIohB3Cw/s1600/cry-baby.jpg

 

[Zeb_Carter]

No. That's idiotic advice. I'm not a fan of how the NSA does their business, but the reality is they don't watch everything we do. Their hands really are tied in a lot of areas. That's NOT true of companies like Google and Microsoft, who have the right to do anything *you agree to let them do*, aka EULA rape, in the name of good old capitalism. People giving your kind of advice are the ones ensuring the death of privacy.

Before Windows 10, if you didn't want something public, you didn't put it on the internet. Problem solved.

After Windows 10, anything you type is now in someone else's hands. (Same with Google's ChromeOS - everything you do there is available to Google.) Privacy was an option before. It's not now. That's a fundamental change, and one that should not be written off.

There is no privacy on the internet, unless you work real hard at it and that's just a pain in the ass. First you have to have started a long time ago, back in the 80's. Then, beginning there, you never, ever put any personal information on the your computer or on the web. If you haven't done that, you might as well upgrade to Win10.

 

[Handley_Page]

Owing to some real strange technical problems, Samsung have said
"DO NOT INSTALL WINDOWS 10"
AT LEAST, NOT YET

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Could be a personal problem...

I haven't had the so-called blue screen of death since Win 95, and then only once. So I disagree that Windows continually crashes and shit. Win XP was stable. Win 7 was very stable. Win 8.1 had issues, but was stable. Win 10 is very stable. So it's time to stop listening to the "Windoze" idiots who really don't speak from recent (last two decades) experience.

Heh. Depends on what you do with it. If you run a browser and a word processor all day, Windows can be very stable, even back to the 3.1 days. But I develop software, I have an interest in security, and I've seen windows screw up left and right for decades. There's no end in sight - if there was, you wouldn't be updating windows monthly. And it's not always a blue screen of death that's the problem. Windows is happy to break things with incompatible changes and they enjoy making deliberately incompatible changes if they can hurt a competitor that way. End users don't often see these games, but software engineers do. There's a reason Linux has had such vast support from volunteers - it's people who have had enough bullshit and want to use something that doesn't laugh at backwards compatibility, standards or stability. It's all the people who found out that Windows is and always has been wide open to viruses; all the people who got tired of megabytes of new and poorly tested code being installed MONTHLY on their systems, breaking stuff that's worked fine for years.

A friend of mine, an expert on computer security, has a saying about Microsoft: "How many times do they have to hurt you before you admit you're a masochist?"

A Windows 7 update recently screwed up an openGL app I wrote, on a machine that exists more or less to run that application. It was my own damn fault; I forgot to turn off updates. Rolling back the update didn't solve the breakage, and there's nothing I can do in my code to get around the problem. They simply raped some usages of openGL, probably because they hate openGL and don't care what happens to people using it. I have no recourse. I'm going to get to port the code to Linux, where openGL is going to be correctly supported forever. But it's the final time Microsoft is going to flip me off. Existing machines are locked down against Windows update; new machines will be all Linux all the time.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

No. That's idiotic advice. I'm not a fan of how the NSA does their business, but the reality is they don't watch everything we do. Their hands really are tied in a lot of areas. That's NOT true of companies like Google and Microsoft, who have the right to do anything *you agree to let them do*, aka EULA rape, in the name of good old capitalism. People giving your kind of advice are the ones ensuring the death of privacy.

Before Windows 10, if you didn't want something public, you didn't put it on the internet. Problem solved.

After Windows 10, anything you type is now in someone else's hands. (Same with Google's ChromeOS - everything you do there is available to Google.) Privacy was an option before. It's not now. That's a fundamental change, and one that should not be written off.

Wow, Hands, that felt harsh. (For the record, I meant the NSA crack as a joke.) I would agree with much of what you've said, though I wouldn't single out Windows 10 as being the biggest culprit. We give up more of our privacy using cell phones. Before that, credit cards. Amazon's Echo is absolutely frightening to me.

Big business (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc) don't care if we're using their products for immoral or even illegal activities. They care how much money we give them, how they can get more of it, and if we won't give them more, how they can sell our information to another business.

IF you're going to be part of the digital age, you're going to leave behind footprints. Some of that you can control through privacy settings. Some of that you can only control by unplugging. Otherwise, enjoying a more personalized experience requires feeding the machine data, including personal details. Still, you're not a person to these corporations, you're an algorithm, just another faceless data point with money in your pocket.

 

[jomar]

Pretty much everything you do and type and everywhere you go.

Uh oh.