Windows 10

[toad]

So I turned on laptop and I get the message major upgrade, don't worry all your files will be saved......Not. So now I'm reorganizing and repopulating my book marks from my old Internet Explorer files. Edge stands for the way it cuts up your files when they upgrade it.

[arctictom]

Its fucking awfull stay away , get windows 7 pro , windows 8 and 10 suck.

[Weetabix]

I found a utility (h/t Every Blade of Grass) that removes all the Windows 10 nagging and spyware from a Windows 7 or Windows 8 installation.

Using GWX Control Panel to Permanently Remove the "Get Windows 10" Icon

It seems to work pretty well.

[Langenator]

I noticed that ever since my computer started bugging me to get Win10, there are no more system updates when I shut down.

I find this story to be quite disturbing. http://boingboing.net/2015/12/29/window ... -your.html

[g-man]

I had my install log me in under a temporary profile. My fucking profile got corrupted. NEVER, in all the years I've used every other OS under the sun, has my fucking login broken. That said, a system restore fixed that in short order. I have since upgraded the machine to a 512GB SSD, and after turning off all the 'nanny alerts', Win10 is working pretty well thus far. Given the login nonsense, I'll be sure I've got a weekly restore point, and that my backup scheme is wired tight again. Interestingly, some of my astrophotography software has to be run as an admin (which it didn't under 7) to even initialize, but whatevs.

[Johnnyreb]

Now I can't find it but earlier this evening some 5 hours back, I wandered through a story about Windows 10 and how it spies on you. It makes me glad I still refuse to let it upgrade, esp. since on several occasions the damned thing has tried to upgrade me without asking permission.

The article said that all that privacy option stuff, where you can tell Win10 whether or not you want to share that data with Microsoft? Some 3 pages of options that you can turn off? Well the article claimed that with a clean install and ALL of that turned off, with the computer left running for I think it was 30 hours, Windows 10 still contacted literally dozens of Microsoft IP addresses thousands of times. Because when it told you all that stuff was turned off, Microsoft was lying. That's one hell of a back door.

[JimTX]

Here's the Digital Citizen link, which will walk you through disabling the Win 10 prompt, both now and forever.

Be sure to do the 2nd process described therein to benefit from the "forever" though.

http://tinyurl.com/guyy85w



Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX

[toad]

Lordy I'm feeling old. I was pricing a "reconditioned" laptop that came loaded with Windows Professional XP and a whopping 160 G hard drive. It's about 9 years old. The continued bloat of Microsoft and the constant war against malware has gotten ridiculous.
I can remember the first computer that I could do word processing on was a Microsoft with a 20 meg drive and a dot matrix printer.

[Rich Jordan]

Steve Gibson (of Apple Light Pen and Spinrite fame) has a utility to help prevent inadvertent/unwanted impregnation of windows 7 and 8 PCs with windows 10.

Here

[Odahi]

It's been my contention for a number of years that anyone who believes in a digital "right to privacy" is borderline delusional. As in, "Someone in this house did several searches on 'Chloroform' over the past three months." So, I'm careful what I say and do online. That said, I have a netbook I purchased ~5 years ago. It has a 10" screen, an Atom 1.6 GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and a 250-GB hard drive. It came loaded with Win 7 "Starter" Edition. I was SO ready to [strike]throw it out[/strike] donate it, but I want a small-footprint "something" for my bench. I figured what the hell. It took several hours (no surprise) to do the upgrade, but all went smoothly. It seems a bit faster, actually, and I am able to open my PDF schematics with no sweat. It will be connected to a 24" monitor that I mounted to the bench. I don't need fast, I need small and reliable. I think I have that. If not, no great loss. I only paid $200 or so for it, 5 years ago. I can always donate it later, or scrap it and use the hard drive in an external enclosure, or something. So far, it's much better than the jolt that I felt when I went from 7 to 8, although time will tell. At least that little netbook will no longer languish in a drawer, and it will have a chance at a useful life.