New concern re 10

Cr00zng · 30 Dec 2015

ICIT2LOL said:

Ok mate I suppose it is only a matter of time before we are forced to use 10 as I said before here and in the 10 forum I am resigned to the fact of it coming to that. I see your point re updates too insomuch that given the inevitability of it all it is a pointless exercise.

Every time I walk away from my computer and come back, I am afraid that there is a new system pop up message asking me to upgrade to windows 10 and promising a Utopian computing environment afterwards. I can't help but be suspicious on why a for profit publicly traded company wants to give away their product with leading market share for free in a worth way.

Now my objection is to how they are doing it and yes I know other companies such as Apple and Google are or have been doing things that I find distasteful for some time now, and I am not one for caving in without speaking my mind.

That's not fair to Apple and for a certain extent to Google...

Yes, Apple also would like to collect diagnostic and usage data data, like MS. The difference is that Apple provides a simple interface to disable it; capture from my MacBook Pro:

The other five privacy settings above "Diagnostics & Usage" control applications access to the system and your data.

I used to believe that Google poses a high risk to privacy and to a certain extent security as well. MS didn't eclipse Google in that sense, MS leapfrogged Google. All of the things that Google had been doing, MS moved them to the W10 and to a certain extent to W7 and 8.x.

The Chrome OS from Google might do the same as W10, I've never used it. In which case, it isn't MS that pioneering OS based monitoring and recording end users' activities...

Cr00zng · 30 Dec 2015

Barman58 said:

You also have to realize that the web is funded by advertising and a lot of these "News Sites" will publish whatever will drive clicks to their site and thus increase advertising revenue

I dunno... At the beginning of the internet, there was no advertisements. Well, at least until the commercialization of the internet had begun in circa 1998...

bigmck · 30 Dec 2015

It seems like this "Forced Win 10" is prime for a lawsuit. Many others here and myself actually purchased a Win 7 disc and paid $100 for it. Now Microsoft is taking away something we paid for. If MS actually puts Win 10 on a Win 7 computer, there will be all kind of lawyers suing MS.

Lady Fitzgerald · 30 Dec 2015

bigmck said:

It seems like this "Forced Win 10" is prime for a lawsuit. Many others here and myself actually purchased a Win 7 disc and paid $100 for it. Now Microsoft is taking away something we paid for. If MS actually puts Win 10 on a Win 7 computer, there will be all kind of lawyers suing MS.

I certainly hope so. I see anything M$py does to take away features from Win 7, or Win 7 itself, to be a breach of contract.

ThrashZone · 30 Dec 2015

Just unchecking the box to search for Optional software should stop the win-10 offers
Unfortunately that also excludes M$ Office products too but that might be the sacrificial lamb

But once these updates turn into Important the above is void M$ crosses the line seems to me anyway :/

But yes my retail win-7 h-premium was 200.us plus 3 other oem/ system builders for about 100.us
I'm not worried about the pro license I did kill upgrading in group policy plus I do know how to look up the updates

I also bought a retail 7 upgrade license not sure what I paid for it though ?

fireberd · 30 Dec 2015

The embroidery machine is not on line. It only has the RS232C connection and limited to only embroidery patterns.

scr · 30 Dec 2015

I don't want W10, I don't like W10 and I don't feel I should be forced to take repeated steps to block MS from invading my system just because they want me to take their free offer for a system OS change.

If MS did this right, which is the way I think they started out, you should be able to "Opt In." Some where along the line MS stepped in to the "mandatory" upgrade idea if they can trick, bully or otherwise force you in to it.

My trust in MS has been completely destroyed. They are denying me the peaceful use of the product that I paid a license fee to use. Why can't it be understood that some people just don't want to change or simply don't like change. Unless there is a good reason for updating other software on my system I don't. If I see a benefit to "me" I do.

I will do everything to protect my system from MS as I do from any other malware or virus including black listing Microsoft entirely if necessary. Does this put me in realm of crazy? Maybe, but it's what "I" want.

sgage · 30 Dec 2015

bigmck said:

It seems like this "Forced Win 10" is prime for a lawsuit. Many others here and myself actually purchased a Win 7 disc and paid $100 for it. Now Microsoft is taking away something we paid for. If MS actually puts Win 10 on a Win 7 computer, there will be all kind of lawyers suing MS.

As obnoxious as this Win10 business is (and I find it extremely obnoxious and disappointing), nobody is taking anything away from you. Just don't say yes to the install, if somehow the bits got downloaded. It is entirely possible to get rid of all the Win10 upgrade stuff, and stay rid of it going forward. Should we have to be eternally vigilant? NO, and I resent that. But I am going to run Win7 on this computer until the hardware croaks. After that, probably Linux. NOT Win10.

I'm a MS customer since Before DOS - I used MSBASIC combined with Assembly Language back in the CP/M days. Now after 35 years, they've lost me. Too bad, because they finally hit the sweet spot with Win7.

Oh well.

Alejandro85 · 30 Dec 2015

ICIT2LOL said:

Ok mate I suppose it is only a matter of time before we are forced to use 10 as I said before here and in the 10 forum I am resigned to the fact of it coming to that. I see your point re updates too insomuch that given the inevitability of it all it is a pointless exercise.

There is NO way MS can ever force you into downgrading to Win10, even though they're very aggressive about it and many attacks have been launched from Windows Update. The fundamental thing to understand is that MS (or anyone else, for the matter) have no control over your computer, there is no magical button they touch and the whole world becomes infected with Win10. They rely on the backdoors they install to "phone home" and get instructions, but ultimate it's software running on our computers what put Win10 all over the place.

There is an excellent article related to this security issue: Ten Immutable Laws Of Security (ironically enough, from MS). Of particular importance here are the first two "laws":

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not solely your computer anymore.
Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore.

The thing is, a bad guy must install something on your computer to take over it, and MS already did that. Since many months ago Windows Update has been used to infect users with the GWX malware. Without it, MS has NO WAY to touch anything in your computer, unless the user does a blunder and somehow installs anything dangerous.
Keep GWX at bay and Win10 will never knock your door. Fundamentally, that means avoiding "Win10-related" updates like the plague, or if you've already been hit, deleting, blocking, or otherwise preventing its execution will minimize any risks of finding your computer taken over. After all, we have Windows Firewall, AppLocker, Software Restriction Policies, File system permissions built-in, and loads of external security tools to protect from it, plus a reasonable amount of information about how the infection behaves. Tame GWX and Win10 is history, plain and simple.
(of course, here I'm assuming it's the only malware MS deployed without consent, assumption that can easily be wrong)

bigmck said:

It seems like this "Forced Win 10" is prime for a lawsuit. Many others here and myself actually purchased a Win 7 disc and paid $100 for it. Now Microsoft is taking away something we paid for. If MS actually puts Win 10 on a Win 7 computer, there will be all kind of lawyers suing MS.

I'm surprised it hasn't happen yet. It could be easily seen as a take over of a private computer, privacy breach, broken contract and many more. Lawyers are very cunning when wording the licenses, however, plus that nobody reads them, plus judges always tend to favor the one with the most money.
It's also an utterly unethical move in any light, betraying your entire userbase, infecting the computers for advertising and data stealing. But I know, ethics and capitalism are the extreme opposites

fhutt · 30 Dec 2015

I agree mostly with what has been said.
I also go back to Dos, MSBasic and even CP/M. Then tried Windows 1, 2 and 3 and found them unusable and stayed with Dos. Then came Windows 3.1. I switched and upgraded right up to win 7. Win 7 had a problem for me. It had the classic theme but the menus were different until I found Classic Shell.
So I've used the classic environment for about 20 years now.

I upgraded to win 10 as a free upgrade from one of my win 7 machines to try it out. 3 days later I downgraded back to win 7.

If I am forced to upgrade to win 10, I thought I might as well check out other options. I looked into Linux. Unfortunately, I could not find (all) drivers even for one of my 4 machines and of course my printer and scanner. I will probably switch to the Mac.