I Want to Keep Windows 7 Forever

RolandJS said:

Well, wellcams, cameras built into laptops can be purposely "adjusted" -- a loss of privacy if that happens.

school district activated laptop cameras - Google Search

Anyway, if one is going to be concerned or worried about privacy loss or spyware (and other things) due to Windows Prime, one might as well cover the lens too.

And, yes, I too am one of those who will continue using Windows 7 for some time.

I probably would, if I had one. The ironic thing is that the laptop I happened to run Win10 on was clearly built to include a webcam, but actually doesn't (you can see the indent where the cam would be, but there's just more plastic there). Got it on Lenovo's website, some weird deal of a machine they were probably trying to get rid of. Not complaining though, the rest of the hardware is fairly good and I have a USB webcam to plug in if needed (and OS issues aside, it's been running pretty well for a laptop from 2016).

Mostly what I was taking issue with was introducing the webcam thing, somewhat jokingly unless I'm mistaken, into a discussion that (at least the last couple pages, since I joined this thread) up until that point was focusing on issues unrelated to that at all - as if the webcam was the extent of Win10 privacy concerns.

To be fair, there are definitely some people out there who think slapping a sticker over one's webcam is a cure for all privacy ills. But I'm going to assume on good faith that such people aren't posting in this thread.

Best take I've read on the subject in weeks. Many thanks for this ES:

EmeraldShard said:

Wow, "tinfoil hat?" Haven't heard that one before.

All kidding aside, it's a credit to this forum in general that it took me two weeks to come across the same kind of dismissive trolling that any other outlet seems to provide the moment "Win7" escapes your keyboard these days. Around here I've gotten actual answers. Probably wouldn't have been able to get my new 7Pro desktop running otherwise.

But for the record: I gave Win10 the college try. For a good three years and counting, now. My current laptop came with 7 on it and since my desktop at the time had 7, I figured I'd go ahead with the upgrade just for versatility reasons. Since then I've had to laboriously go through the registry and group policy to turn off (most of) the telemetry, fight the update system several times to prevent auto-rebooting before turning them off completely because it refused to listen, run O&OShutup10 whose changes frequently get reverted, learn that 10 ignores any instructions in the hosts file to avoid connecting to its severs necessitating that you block them on the router level (which is pointless since, y'know, this is a laptop and it has to go on other networks sometimes), and put up with the terrible "app" form replacements to Windows accessories (e.g. Calculator, Paint) and large parts of Control Panel because apparently a stripped-down mobile interface is what we all want for our desktop machines. And for all that, the number of actual benefits gained over 7 as far as I'm concerned remains a big fat zero (unless you're going to argue that whatever post-EOS security updates MS releases for 10 are more important to security than, say, common sense, in which case I don't know what to tell you).

You'll note that none of the above can be blamed on hardware quirkiness for a machine that wasn't designed for 10. If I were including that, I might blame 10 for the fact I've had to remove the laptop's optical drive completely from device manager lest the machine crash within a minute of detecting it. I've been saying for the last year or two that the moment the laptop gets bricked for any software-based reason, I'm restoring its factory image and never going back to 10. Hasn't happened yet, but maybe 2020 will be the year.

As hubgod alluded to, no OS is perfect and every new Windows has made some missteps. 7 is no exception IMO. But in every Windows OS upgrade since the 3.1 days, I've found each new OS to be either good or, at worst, a mixed bag (except for 8, but let's not talk about 8). I specifically consider 10 a downgrade because it actually requires more tweaking than 7 to make it workable, and because for all its faults, it brings practically nothing new to the table for anyone who couldn't care less about MS' attempts to create a multi-platform quasi-mobile ecosystem and just wants a functional desktop machine. Obviously, at some point it will become completely impractical to find suitable hardware or software for 7, but only due to the well-established march of time (read: planned obsolescence) rather than any good reason.

So I wonder: am I a tinfoil hat because after three years I made an informed decision to stick with 7? Or because I even bothered to try turning 10's crap off?

RolandJS said:

"...secretly [hearing and] recording you..." Naw, that's what Google Home, Alexa, Siri are for :)
Anyway, I mentioned webcams and microphones because such are also part and parcel of Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Fair enough, on its face at least.


Honestly though, with the way all of the above companies as well as MS have been behaving for the last half-decade (generously speaking), is it any wonder people are donning the tinfoil hats? I'm not saying that I've read specific evidence of MS doing that. I am saying that if a story drops tomorrow that that is the case, I will not be remotely surprised.

RolandJS said:

"...secretly [hearing and] recording you..." Naw, that's what Google Home, Alexa, Siri are for :)
Anyway, I mentioned webcams and microphones because such are also part and parcel of Windows 7 and Windows 10.

I love hearing the paranoid rant about Alexa's etc yet are quite happy to carry a phone around in their pockets that has the potential to spy just as much as an Alexa and also has GPS tracking

Kari said:

Really, geeks, it's time to throw those tinfoil hats away.

Kari said:

they do not have a department to follow you and pick the photos in which you make yourself ridiculous to their staff cafeteria walls for their staff to have a good laugh. They will not contact your ex if / when you call her a bitch in a private Skype conversation.

Kari said:

My advice: consult a shrink, check your medication. You are not important enough for Microsoft to have any interest in you.

Serious question here: do you actually think that making fun of people is going to cause them to have epiphanies which make them embrace Win10? Especially since I, the one who replied to you last time, went out of my way to specifically clarify having given Win10 more than three years to win me over? Or is all of the above for your personal amusement alone?

I'd be happy to have a respectful discussion with you about my or anyone else's reasons for not wishing to upgrade their personal machines to 10 (which include reasons well beyond the scope of "spying," even if we treat "spying" by your limited and deliberately caricatured definition). But for that to happen, I have to be able to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't just trolling, and you're not exactly making that easy at the moment.

z3r010 said:

I love hearing the paranoid rant about Alexa's etc yet are quite happy to carry a phone around in their pockets that has the potential to spy just as much as an Alexa and also has GPS tracking

I can't speak for anyone else, but I wouldn't assume any given person is "quite happy" about the state of mobile devices these days. But given that a certain amount of data has always been available to your phone carrier long before smartphones even came along, it feels reasonable to me to say that phones were never a private platform. Therefore, I'm "quite happy" to simply relegate anything I consider sensitive to a device without such issues, which is where a Win7 or Linux machine comes in.

Functionally speaking, this just means I don't keep much in the way of documents or personal data on the phone or any associated account. It's just as well, since I basically treat the device as just "a dumb phone with a decent web browser" anyway.

RoWin7 said:

Half of my programs are 32bit from Win XP. They're not ones that are unsafe in an older version, but they probably won't run on 10.

I have plenty of 32-bit programs from Win95 days that run fine in W10, though some need compatibility mode to be set. W10 has an XP compatibilty mode so you should be fine.

Nor will my printer or webcam...

There you might have problems if the printer is so old that there are no drivers available beyond XP. W8 drivers should work.