Microsoft silently preparing your PC for Win 10

[Layback Bear]

Towards the end of the year it will be interesting to see what the millions of desktop users that fell for the free upgrade will say. My guess would be that we will get a lot of requests on how to get back to W7. The W8.1 users may have less problems.

 

[eatup]

Towards the end of the year it will be interesting to see what the millions of desktop users that fell for the free upgrade will say. My guess would be that we will get a lot of requests on how to get back to W7. The W8.1 users may have less problems.

Actually, there will be lots of geeks who will install WX into a vhd file, native boot that every once in a blue moon just to see how windows is evolving, and add fictitious data to the OS usage stats to make MSFT very happy...

In the end, I'd rather be the one with the free WX license after that one year is up than without. Having to put up with an extra vhd file to contain the "freeware" won't bother me at all, nor my current setup, which has XP not 7 as the default OS in a multi boot scenario...

 

[whs]

You are talking about a rather sophisticated setup. Explain that to mom and pap across the street. LOL.

 

[eatup]

You are talking about a rather sophisticated setup. Explain that to mom and pap across the street. LOL.

That's the part that's commonly misunderstood. The geek's way is to cmd a few diskpart commands. It only takes a few cmd commands to set up that native booting WX vhd file folks! The other way is thru disk management's GUI, which ironically I find rather complicated...

There's like a lot of money to be potentially made to teach average folks to set up WX native booting alongside their current W7/W8.1 setup within that free 1 yr upgrade period. VHD native booting isn't rocket science, which is why it's so teachable to average folks who just want to leave their current system alone while still having access to the latest tech in WX...

 

[whs]

I think you have never seen simple users. I see over 800 of them all the time in the local computer club (which is really more of a social club). If you use a right click in class they complain that it is too advanced and when you move an icon on the club systems from the left to the right, they are discombobulated.

I invite you to teach those folks cmd commands - no chance. They want to read their mail or skype with their grandkids. That's about their use of the PC. I was trying to get many of them to make regular images - in a 4 hour class. 90% don't do it.

 

[RoasterMen]

I don't do either, my computer is full of non sense crap that I could even schedule a re-installation without creating a backup.

 

[eatup]

I think you have never seen simple users. I see over 800 of them all the time in the local computer club (which is really more of a social club). If you use a right click in class they complain that it is too advanced and when you move an icon on the club systems from the left to the right, they are discombobulated.

I invite you to teach those folks cmd commands - no chance. They want to read their mail or skype with their grandkids. That's about their use of the PC. I was trying to get many of them to make regular images - in a 4 hour class. 90% don't do it.

Well, I certainly envy those folks. Their needs are fully met with a simple $100 Android tablet with zero maintenance involved. For other "PC" demographics, VHD native booting WX is the way to go to obtain a free license while still keeping our current setups intact...

 

[whs]

True, but many of them are widows who inherited the PC from their husband. Until last year we were still teaching "Learning the PC with XP". Some of them I had to show how to move the mouse - literally moving their hand. We try to help, but it is not easy. But these folks are great at grill night.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea personally I don't see how you can use an Upgrade and keep an existing install in tact and separated ?
You might need to make a tutorial eatup

 

[Jesse Williams]

I can relate to the elderly people and their computers. For example, my grandmother is still on Windows XP. She has an active antivirus subscription to keep her safe though. But, she only uses it to check her emails, check Facebook, and her banking. She says she will not upgrade until her computer quits, and it's still going strong to this day. It's a Dell. I'm not old enough to know XP, but I am learning when I help her with hers. I started out on Vista (Nothing but trouble from the get go), then to 7 (excellent), then to 8.1 (good OS...I liked it, but a lot of people didn't).

 

[Iforgot]

True, but many of them are widows who inherited the PC from their husband. Until last year we were still teaching "Learning the PC with XP". Some of them I had to show how to move the mouse - literally moving their hand. We try to help, but it is not easy. But these folks are great at grill night.

I had one a few months ago...
"what's a mouse"

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

True, but many of them are widows who inherited the PC from their husband. Until last year we were still teaching "Learning the PC with XP". Some of them I had to show how to move the mouse - literally moving their hand. We try to help, but it is not easy. But these folks are great at grill night.

I had one a few months ago...
"what's a mouse"

That reminds me when my former employer first made PCs available to the rank and file in our department (up to then, all we had had were main frame dumb terminals and my only other computer experience was on my Commodore C64c). We were sent in groups to a training class; I was in the first group. I was lost from the very beginning since I had no clue how to use a mouse. It turned out that neither did most of the class. When the instructor demanded to know why we were in that class, one of us responded that our bosses sent us there and to ask them. We all had to start somewhere.

 

[Bertison]

When I wuz a Noob!

Lady, that reminds me of my first encounter with a computer. After an industrial injury in a former career as a workshop foreman, I became disabled. I retrained via a College for Disabled and entered a 13 month course in Business and Administration. I was given a workstation and had no clue how to begin, so I spent the first 2 weeks just familiarising myself with this strange machine, under instruction from a severely-disabled resident Tutor who worked from a specially-designed wheelchair. I am the kind of guy who goes at a problem head on, so I also enrolled at a local Technical college for Saturday IT classes.

I changed horses after a couple of weeks and qualified as an Accountant in 11 months. I worked for a time at that profession, still carrying on with the Saturday courses, but my heart was not in the Accounting business, although I was promoted within the Motor Sales Group where I worked, after discovering and exposing a large Fraud case in one chain of 3 garages. When I eventually obtained IT qualifications, I took another position in Local Government. I left that as my condition deteriorated, took a small pay off and set up as a printer of business stationery, brochure packs for entertainers and Prospectus packs for independent schools. That was my last career before retirement.

From the age of 52, after having been employed in purely technical/manual engineering work, I found myself confronting computers and using them to work. It was a totally foreign working environment to me and I clearly recall the complete bafflement of those first weeks, until I realised that computers are tools, just as the contents of my old toolboxes had been. Being surrounded by some severely disabled young people, all with great senses of humour at the College, helped.

I am long retired now from full time work, but I still build and maintain PC's for family and friends and I still enjoy doing that. I have just bought my first Android device (a Hudl2) and am having fun syncing it to my desktop and my wife's laptop, and making it do several things it was not designed to do. Learning is not just for the young!

 

[RoasterMen]

It really is not just for the young. These companies are trying to make it easier for everyone to use the computers, tablets, any electrical devices. Problem is, some of us gets difficulties in getting used to a new thing (OS for example)

 

[groze]

Just hope Microsoft doesn't blow it with subscription based operating system. I am not going to pay a monthly subscription fee ever for an operating system. That would also hurt the U.S. FCC plans to provide low income high speed internet service. The fcc is still working on how to do that.

 

[Boozad]

Just hope Microsoft doesn't blow it with subscription based operating system.

I don't see how they could blow it unless the pricing structure doesn't make sense. I said myself not too long ago that I wouldn't go to a subscription based OS, but if it worked out at the right price I really don't see the problem.

It's all speculation anyway, nothing to get your pants in a twist about. Yet.

 

[jamis]

I wonder what the demise of Windows Media Center for W10 will do to those "non-geek" users?

 

[carwiz]

I wonder what the demise of Windows Media Center for W10 will do to those "non-geek" users?

It's going to keep us from upgrading to W10.

I guess MS thinks everyone will watch TV off their 4G connected notepad.

I might reconsider if they replaced it with a full fledged BD player.

 

[Layback Bear]

Of course I'm speculating but I'm thinking the more things they leave out of Windows 10 the less time it will take to upgrade from Windows 7 downloading from the internet.
It already takes for ever to get the download from updated version to updated version of Windows 10. If it takes a long time for a 100,000 or so of us testers what time will it take if a billion or so start downloading.

 

[Brds7t7]

Another update which looks like garbage:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3022345

2 words I don't like "Diagnostics" and "Tracking".

And at 28mb? No thanks!!