What do "we" think about upgrading to Win10?

[ReadyMan]

I REALLY like win7....have it on my main machine, and win 8.1 on my surface pro2 tablet.
Was thinking of upgrading the tablet to start with and holding off for a year on my desktop.
Is there a limit on the free upgrade? and is the upgrade a poor idea (like when upgrading from xp to win7)?

[Krom]

Free upgrade is only available for 1 year, after that you have to buy it.

Definitely upgrade the surface pro 2 first and see how you like it because 10 is still more like 8.x than it is like 7, but it is definitely an improvement over 8.x all the same and especially for devices like a surface pro.

[SirWinner]

Upgraded to Windows 10 on my Laptop and Desktop PCs.

For the most part it seems to work well EXCEPT my Windows Desktop PC that had Windows 8.1 used to connect to my Lumia Cell Phone via USB... Now with Windows 10 with NO major changes, Windows 10 on the SAME PC no longer sees my Lumia Cell Phone.

Great job Microsoft... DOH!

>:(

[Foil]

All my Win10 machines see my Lumia 1020.

(The interface is very different, there's no more "Windows Phone app for Desktop" like Win 7/8, but it works fine.)

[TigerRaptor]

I went back to Windows 8 since Windows 10 is buggy has hell right now. If it wasn't for Classic Shell I wouldn't be using Windows 8 either.

However some good did come out it. After hearing about the privacy issues I came across this great little tool called DoNotSpy10.
http://pxc-coding.com/portfolio/donotspy10/

Other tools to disable Microsoft spying.
https://bgr.com/2015/08/14/windows-10-s ... acy-tools/

[Sirius]

You know, the funny thing is, for all the hoopla about spying lately people seem to have overlooked that telemetry has been in Windows since at least version 7. If anyone remembers the twisted justification given in the engineering blog about removing the start menu in Windows 8 - one of the data points they cited was how often people actually go in there, and how many items they pinned to the taskbar - how did they know that? Telemetry.

And I would not at all be surprised if OS X uses telemetry as well. Android/Chrome OS definitely do (and gather a lot more data besides). Somehow that never seemed to be a big deal...?

All that said, users should still have the right to opt out of all forms of data collection if they want (even if it is anonymized), and it should actually work... someone has some investigation to do there, because reports are the switches in Windows 10 do not totally work.

[Pumo]

I totally agree with Sirius.
There's much noise made about something that is implemented on most operating systems (and several apps) and is running as I'm typing this, and TBH, on these days of heavy use of Internet, Social Networks and Mobile devices, is it really that much of an issue?

Total privacy is an illusion (and almost a delusion) nowadays, IMVHO.

[Sirius]

Whether that's a good thing, I'm not so sure... but it's hard to stop. All the convenience stuff like iCloud and Google Docs and settings/data migrating from device to device... that's impossible to build without keeping lots of data about your users, and yet people demand and expect it these days.

The reason that's concerning is... the rash of data breaches we've had lately. And yet the train keeps rolling - it sounds as though that Ashley Madison site has become more popular following all the news coverage. That kind of thing just makes my head spin.

[Pumo]

I can't say it's good, that's for sure, but it's something I have totally accepted since years ago just because whether I like it or not, the lack of privacy is a part of our modern technological society.

So unless I want to be stuck using 90's computers (and trust me, I DON'T want to return to that AT ALL), I'm fine by accepting the price of using new technology.

-

And now getting back to the main topic, I've been using Windows 10 and taking aside the nVidia driver issues I had and a few crashes of the start menu from time to time, I do like the interface changes made to Windows 10!
And maybe it's illusory, but I truly feel it a bit faster overall than Windows 7 and even Windows 8.1, although boot times are a bit on the slow side, taking aside that I don't have ultra-fast boot enabled as I'm not using UEFI mode.

But I'm happy with the OS in general.

Although I do have a small concern:
I got through the upgrade route to get the free activation, but didn't make a clean Windows 10 install after the activation, so I'm using it totally as an upgrade.

However, I upgraded over a totally clean install of Windows 7 SP1, with no extra programs or fluff added, just basic drivers and couple of updates (very few).
Would I benefit from a totally clean install of Windows 10, or I'm fine with my upgrade over my clean Win7 install?

(I got most of my programs already installed on Windows 10, so I wouldn't want to start again if there's no real benefit)

[Krom]

I'm only contemplating a clean install because the Windows 7 install I was using before was ~3-4 years old by then and had been through a whole motherboard/cpu/ram upgrade cycle in addition to hundreds of application installs/uninstalls. (The result of an otherwise good habit of mine, if an application which I only need to use once doesn't have a portable mode, I will install it, use it for the thing I wanted, and then immediately uninstall it because doing so takes seconds at most on an SSD. Problem being most uninstallers still leave stuff behind, even if most of the time it is limited to an empty folder or two with some configuration files and odds are some registry settings. It is unreasonable to track them all down and clean them out completely, so it builds up over the years and turns into clutter in the various user / appdata / program files and registry areas which makes them harder for me to navigate through when I need to dig for something within.)

[Sirius]

If you're upgrading over a clean install of Windows 7, the benefits of another clean install versus an upgrade are probably marginal. Windows 7 to Windows 8 did manage to screw something up for me that prevented hyperlinks in store apps from working, but I haven't yet heard of or run into similar defects in Windows 10. It was a bit of a nightmare getting the upgrade installation to work at all (thanks to Hyper-V apparently), but once it was done... it's been mostly OK.

...I have noticed that trying to play songs via Cortana's voice recognition doesn't work for me, but I'm not sure whether that has anything to do with the upgrade or is just Groove Music failing at life again.

[Jeff250]

Whether that's a good thing, I'm not so sure... but it's hard to stop. All the convenience stuff like iCloud and Google Docs and settings/data migrating from device to device... that's impossible to build without keeping lots of data about your users, and yet people demand and expect it these days.

To implement device sync, you just need to keep the data that I have configured to sync. It's not impossible to do device sync without recording lots of other data about me. And if I don't enable any cloud features, they shouldn't be keeping any data about me, since it's entirely unnecessary. And if I use a cloud feature for a while and later opt out, I should have the option to delete the data they kept that I no longer need them to keep. (Disclaimer: I have no idea whether or to what extent Windows deviates from this.)

[Foil]

All the convenience stuff like iCloud and Google Docs and settings/data migrating from device to device... that's impossible to build without keeping lots of data about your users, and yet people demand and expect it these days.

To implement device sync, you just need to keep the data that I have configured to sync. It's not impossible to do device sync without recording lots of other data about me.

I'm thinking that by "build", Sirius is referring to building the architecture to support cloud services, not the services themselves. In order to properly do things like balancing loads and bandwidth, there's some level of data that has to be tracked and maintained (e.g. the distribution of locations/times/etc. of sync activity).

I don't think that necessarily justifies the level of data being collected by companies like Google/Apple/MS, but I think I understand what Sirius is getting at. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

[Sirius]

I was mostly just thinking of the data itself - e.g. if you use GMail, just the bare minimum data Google has to keep - your e-mail - already reveals quite a lot about you.

But yes, there is often a lot more to it, which results in more data being collected than the bare minimum. A few examples I know of:

Telemetry, as I referred to above. In this case, software will report basic details about how it's being used or performance data - any good implementation will anonymize this since the individual identity of the user shouldn't be relevant information. This is commonly used to prioritize work in new features, bug fixes, performance improvements etc - it helps get a sense of how much these things would get used and whether users are really going to care. (It probably shouldn't be the only source of information you use to guide these decisions, though, because it doesn't tell you everything.)

Tracing. It's relatively common practice when running an on-line service to keep logs of what happened while a user was using it; these can be used to investigate and diagnose problems if the user reports it (and potentially to alert the development team to problems ahead of time so the user doesn't have to report it, because there's no guarantee they will unless they get really angry). These sorts of logs can be very sensitive, especially if not designed carefully, and access to them should generally be restricted to legitimate uses only; furthermore they should really only be kept for a very limited time period. I'm not sure the US actually has any regulations on this though.

Advertising profiles. I don't have much exposure to these but I do know they're not particularly popular. A lot of companies (Facebook, Amazon, search engines, in particular) will collect information about what you did on their site to attempt to figure out what your interests are and filter advertisements to match. Typically they're not going to have an individual person peek into your data though - it's all done by machines.

Account information/access data. Services collect these for various reasons - obviously it has to uniquely identify you so it presents you with the right information, but a lot of services will track where and when you're logging in from so they can alert you of suspicious patterns that look like they might indicate ID theft or some other fraudulent activity. Services that need to bill you will usually also hold your credit card information on file (we hope securely).

I'm also going to make a separate category for Cortana (and other services like it). It does a lot of "smart" stuff, but the way it does that is by peeking at a lot of different data sources - your e-mail, calendar, contacts, location, interests - and drawing inferences based on that ("It's 21 minutes to home via route 225" - it uses your location to notice you're not at home, your directions preferences on the map service to know you usually take the bus, maybe the time of day and the usual times you're not at home to figure out you might be heading home shortly, and current traffic/transit data to determine the optimal route and the time it will take).
If a human told you that via a text message it'd be pretty creepy. I'm not going to blame people for finding it creepy when a machine does the same thing.

There are probably a bunch of other things I haven't thought of. But a lot of the above is fairly necessary, or nearly so; it makes it much harder to build a service that is actually reliable if you don't collect logs and telemetry. The advertising and virtual assistant stuff I can imagine many people can do without though.

[Tunnelcat]

How's Windows 10 doing so far for everyone using it here?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10 ... YHFb1d24ec

[Krom]

I have only had a couple issues, one of the related to the third party file manager I use (Explorer++) and OneDrive which forced me to use the undocumented uninstall of OneDrive to get E++ working properly. The other one was one of my hard drives started failing and I had to replace it, but can't exactly blame that on windows.

Windows didn't even complain when I unplugged the failing drive while the system was running in order to protect the data while I waited for the replacement to arrive.

[TigerRaptor]

At first I couldn't get Wise Disk Cleaner to load. SUMo (Software Updates Monitor) was unresponsive sometimes. Google Chrome was a bit sluggish, Firefox was fine. I did installed Windows 10 again on another hard drive. So far everything is work as it should. The only issue I'm still seeing is SecureAPlus A/V and Comodo Firewall don't work well together in Windows 10. No issues what so ever in Windows 8.0

[Sirius]

Mostly OK but the shell did once stop working due to, I suspect, one of the background services getting stuck and locking it up. Used to see that kind of thing all the time in development - I guess at least it's maybe once a fortnight now and not every time I log in.

[Sirius]

More news on this, haven't fact-checked this just as a disclaimer:
http://betanews.com/2015/10/30/microsof ... g-a-bully/

If you're using Win7/8/8.1 and prefer to stay there, check your update settings as appropriate.

Don't really agree with this update change... it doesn't make sense for the customer's interest if you install a new OS without explicitly asking them. Hopefully someone changes their mind...

[Top Gun]

This is the sort of ★■◆● that makes me perfectly happy to stay with 7 indefinitely.

[Tunnelcat]

If you CAN. Mwaaaahaaaaaa!

[ReadyMan]

I have Windows 10 on my surface pro 4 tablet and its pretty good.
Not as good as Windows 7.

Buuuuuuut, it has this feature of automatically updating windows whenever it feels like it.
You cant set a time for it to update, you cant tell it no, dont update.
You're stuck with it updating right in the middle of meetings, etc, at the most inconvenient times if
you are connected to the net.

The one thing that you can do, is tell it that you are on a data quota, in which case it will not update...but this
is annoying to get to, and not easy to remember.

I'd like to update my home/gaming system to windows 10, but this is a deal breaker for me....cant have it
updating while I'm playing online.....ugh!

[Krom]

You can control the time for automatic updates to check for and install updates.
open up group policy editor ( run: gpedit.msc )
computer configuration > administrative templates > windows components > windows update
select "configure automatic updates"
select "enabled"
select option "4 - Auto download and schedule the install"
schedule the day (or daily if you want)
schedule the time

[ReadyMan]

Got it!
Thanks Krom!
That makes things a bit different...wondering if I should upgrade my home system....

So what do you think? Is Windows 10 a better choice for gaming/desktops than Win7?

[Krom]

Right now I'd say there is no difference between the two. But in a year or two as DX12 gaming titles start to hit the market, windows 10 will gain the advantage since it is required for DX12 support.

[ReadyMan]

You're right. It's inevitable. Cant hold onto Win7 like I did with XP
I do like most of the visual setup of win10.
I've got my request for the upgrade in the queue.

any recommendations for the upgrade (was planning on letting it upgrade instead of doing a clean install),
or things to do after the upgrade?

RM

[Krom]

You can skip the queue if you want, just go to the microsoft site, search for the "media creation tool", download it or just punch upgrade from there. Or if you want to do a clean install, you can do that via the MCT also by creating a install DVD (most reliable) or USB stick (depends on how well your computer supports booting from usb). If you upgrade it will not need to ask you for a product key, if you do the clean install though, you will need a valid windows 7 or 8.x product key of a matching sku or you will be stuck with the 30 day trial mode.

Either option works with the latest build, so it depends entirely on what you want to do. The upgrade works quite well though, it will preserve either all, or the overwhelming majority of your installed programs and settings, and will of course keep all your data files as well. If on the other hand you have accumulated a bunch of clutter, it is as good of an opportunity as any for a clean install, but it will take a lot more time since you will have to manually backup everything you do want to keep.

[Top Gun]

I'm kind of in a similar boat of not being sure what to do re: 10. I literally just finally upgraded to 7 when I built my new rig this past summer, and I've had no real complaints with it thus far, so I'm loath to jump straight ahead into yet another OS that's less than a year old. (Plus all of the back-end privacy stuff is not what I would call good juju.) On the other hand I know that MS will be holding DX12 hostage for it, and the deadline to upgrade for free is approaching in several months, so who knows at this point.

[TigerRaptor]

I'm kind of surprised that Windows 10 remains stable after I removed Egde, Cortana, Skype and disabling other annoyances with O&O ShutUP10.

[CDN_Merlin]

I just upgraded and install Win 10. It's not Win 7 but it's not that bad. I used Classic Shell to being back the menu style like Win 7. I've turned off Cortana and anything else I don't like. The only issue I have now is that the Windows Explorer window is flat and boring. I preferred the Win 7 style.

[TigerRaptor]

This is as close I could get it in Windows 10.

[Sirius]

Last time I checked (although that was Windows 8), WindowBlinds had a re-theme of the windows that did look pretty close to Windows 7. Wouldn't be surprised if they've released a Win10 version by now. I decided to avoid it for Win8 because they messed up the legibility of the edge UI, but since that's been dropped in 10, it might not be an issue anymore...