Windows 10: What You Need to Know

[STEED]

Just spent 2 odd hours going though a total of 41 updates the most I have seen so far.

19 OK
08 Not needed on my PC
14 Win10 plumbing

Since October I now keep a log book of each months updates keeping eye on what to allow what is alright but I don't need it and those ones I do not want at all.

I bet MS will release a bucket full from next month on.

[Skybird]

OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Skybird

OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.

And that is an amazing retreat from Microsoft. Originally, in an effort to force sales of Windows 8, Microsoft quietly quit selling OEM and end user copies of Win 7 in January of 2014. For six months you could not buy a new computer with Windows 7. You could only buy Windows 7 from dealers who had stock left over.

On the side, a grey market of OEM Windows 7 developed and you could buy OEM Win 7 Pro 64 for about $60 if you knew where to look. They were entirely legitimate and I bought three copies for people who bought a Win 8 computer and hated it. I was able to upgrade them to a real operating system.

Then, because computer sellers' sales tanked completely, Microsoft caved to the pressure and started selling Windows 7 again during the second half of 2014. That has continued.

Now with the announcement of cessation of Windows 7 OEM sales in October 2016, Microsoft has caved yet again to the truth that Windows 7 is the last real operating system that Microsoft has for sale.

[HW3]

New version of the GWX Control Panel out 12/29/2015, see here http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

Description:
"This is a free tool that can remove and disable the 'Get Windows 10' notification area icon on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Recent versions can also disable 'Upgrade to Windows 10' behavior in the Windows Update control panel and do much more."

Just thought I would post this for those who are interested.

[aanker]

Originally Posted by STEED

Just spent 2 odd hours going though a total of 41 updates the most I have seen so far.

19 OK
08 Not needed on my PC
14 Win10 plumbing

Since October I now keep a log book of each months updates keeping eye on what to allow what is alright but I don't need it and those ones I do not want at all.

I had 18 and spent a couple hours too - the only one I hid (again) was that 6th release of the pesky nagware 'update'.

I installed these:

KB3119142 C++ Update - Optional
KB3106614 Silverlight Security Update (although I may uninstall Silverlight)
KB3099862 .NET x64
KB3108371 Security Issue Update
KB3108381 Security Issue Update
KB3108669 Security Issue Update
KB3108670 Security Issue Update
KB3109094 Security Issue Update
KB3109103 Security Issue Update

I did not install these:

KB3104002 Internet Explorer 11 x64 - I don't use IE
KB3035583 <<- - - - is back - hide it.
KB3083324 Server
KB3112148 Time Zone Outlook Issues for Korea or someplace - lol
- which I don't need, furthermore I read this patch may screw up Outlook on some computers.

I still use Office 2003 although they don't support 2003 any more, but MS offered five Office 2007 updates for Office 2003 that I did install.

Originally Posted by Skybird

OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.

Good news, Thanks.

Originally Posted by HW3

New version of the GWX Control Panel out 12/29/2015, see here http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/
......
Just thought I would post this for those who are interested.

Thank you.... and Thank you too RR for all of your help in this Topic : )

[STEED]

Originally Posted by aanker

I had 18 and spent a couple hours too - the only one I hid (again) was that 6th release of the pesky nagware 'update'.

I installed these:

KB3119142 C++ Update - Optional
KB3106614 Silverlight Security Update (although I may uninstall Silverlight)
KB3099862 .NET x64
KB3108371 Security Issue Update
KB3108381 Security Issue Update
KB3108669 Security Issue Update
KB3108670 Security Issue Update
KB3109094 Security Issue Update
KB3109103 Security Issue Update

I did not install these:

KB3104002 Internet Explorer 11 x64 - I don't use IE
KB3035583 <<- - - - is back - hide it.
KB3083324 Server
KB3112148 Time Zone Outlook Issues for Korea or someplace - lol
- which I don't need, furthermore I read this patch may screw up Outlook on some computers.

I still use Office 2003 although they don't support 2003 any more, but MS offered five Office 2007 updates for Office 2003 that I did install.

Good news, Thanks.

Thank you.... and Thank you too RR for all of your help in this Topic : )

KB3035583 and some others came back on the list after hiding them! Good job I keep a note book to jot down the info. Same here with me I only use MS Office 2003 and some time in Oct/Nov they offered me updates for Office 2007 and 2010...Nah I passed up on them.

[Buddahaid]

So after some time using Win 10, I'm finding it's not so much that they've hidden user controls, but that they've changed how to access them. Granted, I don't play with the registries, but disabling startup items, removing junk programs every vendor wants to bundle, er burden, you with, etc., really pretty much everything I ever did using Xp and Win 7 is still available.

[Skybird]

Very recommendable read.

LINK - Microsoft walks a thin line

The author does not hide his highly sceptical attitude, but nevertheless does a very good in trying to stay objective and fair.

And as he said: at the core of the issue, it is about trust, and whether you think Microsoft has deserved to be trusted any longer, or has nullified any reason for being trusted. My answer was, and still is, and will remain to be: No, it does not deserve to be trusted.

I tend to agree with what a reader named Frank posted in the comments on this blog entry: LINK

Originally Posted by reader named Frank

Excellent and fair article Woody regarding Win 10 data collection. I guess one takeaway would be “when the product is free, you are the product”. I do not want to get into all the back and forth details about what MS is doing or not doing; however, I personally do not view it as being benign as the very design construct of Win 10 is intrusive. I find comparisons to Google snooping of online searches not very compelling as it is more naturally “bounded” by the manner in which I employ their search engine. In the case of Win 10 it is the entire OS and hence covers the user’s entire computing environment. Although I generally approve of regulatory action as an absolute last resort, I do see early parallels to the way we got the Federal Communications and Federal Wire Fraud Acts. In the early days of telephone, eavesdropping on party and private lines was quite common, This occurred for a variety of reasons ranging from personal nosiness to commercial espionage. Once it became apparent that virtually everyone needed a telephone to conduct the requirements of daily living, a new regulatory doctrine was set forth, namely, the telephone company owned the phone and the communication line but they had no legal interest in the communications transmitted. Hence, communications could no longer be eavesdropped without someone obtaining a court order from a judge having jurisdiction. The Federal Wire Fraud Act worked in tandem to prohibit any “artifice or device to deprive a party to the honest use of communication services”. Now we are in the relatively brave new world of the internet where it is increasingly difficult to conduct one’s affairs without a computer with an OS and an ISP. This is rapidly becoming the new telephone and increasingly we are seeing the types of unregulated behaviors by commercial parties that led to a recognized need to legally circumscribe what is kosher and what is not. I fear we are drifting toward some type of regulatory umbrella if this crap continues because after all the internet is at its core just another venue for two way communication and providing an OS should not confer on the provider an unlimited privilege to intercept and store such communication.

I hate regulation, and since I am also hostile to the idea and concept of modern states, it gives me even more troubles. But the need to install limits on what companies like MS can do without being called to order, should be obvious by now. Since states themselves are heavily engaged in and interested in constant surveillance of all and everybody, I doubt they are the instance that can be trusted to set up such regulation without violating it heavily themselves. No matter what, I think the most realistic scenario thus will be that we will sink deeper and deeper into the surveillance state, and that our young ones will be educated and trained to find nothing suspicious about it. And people arguing against it one day will be seen as suspicious and as a danger to the public like having no debts and no credit cards already today raises your suspectability of being a terrorist and can automatically put you on a terror suspect list (we learned about that mechanism that after 9/11).

Advise? Say No. Do not use all the latest tech stuff. Use alternatives, and if no alternatives are available, say No to using it at all.

Life without all this was possible until just a few years ago. Its no essential stuff. Not at all. All it takes is determination to not accept tempting "compromises" that get YOU sold, and the readiness of confronting offices and services that will be irritated if you do not play by the common rules of embracing all surveillance technology whole-heartly and "voluntarily". You will run into conflicts if you do not play by these rules in full. Have the nobleness and grandeur to fight them.

Else you may one day wake up in a state where resisting them will bring you into prison. Or will cost you your life. States are the coldest of all monsters - all states, without a single exception.

[STEED]

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01...grade_blocker/

[Skybird]

The basic problem remaisn, Steed. You need to trust MS to not alter the registry settings themselves so to allow them to install their stuff. And they already have demonstrated that they altered repeatedly computer settings set by the user, to re-enable the system to receive the GWX stuff. And I already have reported that they use not just the officially documented communication ports and services to transport their GWX stuff.

Why basing on their good will to now play by the rules (why asusming that suddenly they will do that...???), and giving up the sovereignty of yours to control the system by your own demands and conditions? Don'T trust them, leave the control where it belongs: with you.

Also, the installing of W10 tracking elements into W7 and W8 environments does not get stopped and hindered by that article's tip. And that is part of the problem, isn't it: that some of the critical software profiling and surveilling the user, that originally had been designed for W10 once, now is additionally reverse-injected into W7 and W8 installations as well.

And that is what the bulk of the discussion about W10 is about, isn't it.

[Von Schenk]

I have to say that I prefer Win 10 over 8, and not just because of the start screen fiasco. I think Microsoft realized they had made a mistake by trying to compete with Android as touch screen tablets looked like they were going to take over the laptop market. I think that cooler heads prevailed and they negative comments and feedback must have been way greater than they thought it would be. If you look back at Microsoft's history they have got it wrong bigtime on a number of things, did anyone read Bill Gates book 'The Road Ahead'?. In it he says that he doesn't think that the internet is going to be very big or important in the future!!!!.

[Rockin Robbins]

The important quote in the article Skybird references above:

Back in September, Windows honcho Terry Myerson posted a blog that says:

From the very beginning, we designed Windows 10 with two straightforward privacy principles in mind:

• Windows 10 collects information so the product will work better for you.
• You are in control with the ability to determine what information is collected.

Experiments conducted immediately after that post showed that Windows 10 was collecting data even with the myriad privacy settings turned off, and sending it to bing.com. What data? We don't know. Microsoft encrypts everything prior to sending it to its servers, and it has yet to give a full accounting.

Note how Woody doesn't ask you to believe him. Woody always supports every position with a link and gives you the means to check it out yourself. The Windows apologists never support their statements with evidence. They demand that you believe them on their own authority, whatever they say about how responsible, truthful and straightforward Microsoft is. The truth can withstand scrutiny, because scrutiny reinforces truth. Falsehood avoids the light because the light would reveal the bankruptcy of their position.

But I am curious about one thing, Skybird. You said

Else you may one day wake up in a state where resisting them will bring you into prison. Or will cost you your life. States are the coldest of all monsters - all states, without a single exception.

That sounds very American. At least it sounds like America used to be before the ascendancy of the left. Folks, Skybird lives in a country with the highest cultural, social, artistic, accomplishments. German culture is the pinacle of Western Civilization. But people in Germany DID wake up in a state (their own!) where resisting "reasonable requirements" of the state brought many to prison and death.

The very fact that it happened in Germany is absolute proof that none of us are free from that possibility. We may think we live in a moral and honest society, and we may even be there for the time being. But Germany proves that is not a permanent state of affairs.

Without warning, or with warning that we ignore, our governments, our corporations, our labor unions, or any combination of them can go to the dark side and we are only as safe as how strongly we protected our privacy during the "good times."

Skybird has a unique perspective because of where he lives. But we are all vulnerable to such a malfunction of human decency, no matter where we live or what kind of government we live under. Ignore him at your peril.

And remember, trust must be earned, not given out by default. Microsoft, by its nefarious actions of late, changing privacy settings, renaming surveillance "services," reissuing Get Windows 10 (GWX) nagware six separate times, collecting information after all settings they make available are turned off, a lack of transparency about exactly what information is collected and how it is used, has actually earned our MISTRUST. The articles already referenced, here, here and here support each and every contention I make here. It's time to be on your guard and protect your sovereignty over your private property.

[Rockin Robbins]

Deck the Halls with Poison Ivy

[Skybird]

Your view of Germany, the contemporary Germany, sounds quite idealised, Robbins. It isn'T that culturally enobled over here anymore. It all slides, and is in steep decline. One could even say: its a mess.

I remind of some of the mechanism to project power and influence that Philip K. Dick described in many of his novels. I do not mean the robots stuff and drugs and alien stuff, but the structures of the future state he described the US to have turned into. These mechanism work via media, brainwashing, psychologic control, and somethign that reminds a lot of collectivism and mind police as we have seen in Stalinist and socialist regimes in the past, as well as voluntary self-control of the masses today - that we call "political correctness" nowadays.

If anything, then I think Germany/Germans should see it in the way you said I would, because of German history and European history, yes. But it is very much unwelcomed to do so, and easily gets you turned into a social pariah, a witch that get chased through the media. Germany is only a shadow of what you described it to be. Maybe not easy to see from the outside.

Well, the political threads are in GT forum, aren't they.

Just saying.

One can allow a private company the immense potential power that private informaiton about yourself inevitably means, and hope and trust them to not abuse them. Yes, one can do that. The question is how reasonable that is to do, and what speaks for them not abusing their position - when it is truth in what they say: that "business is war".

I think it is clever not to depend on their good will and promises (which they already have broken so many times), but to prevent them in the first from gaining a position where they could plan such abuse. The idea behind it is the same why you lock the housedoor behind you when leaving. You could trust that nobody will get in and steal your things if you leave it wide open, yes you can, and call that your optimistic nature or friendly personality that sends smiles into the world to make it a better place.

But is that sensible...?

There is a German proverb: Vertrauen ist gut. Kontrolle ist besser. Translates into: Trust is kind. Control is better.

Don't trust Microsoft. The product they sell - is YOU. And who knows to what degree the US government is behind it. MS software running on systems in all world, last but not least means: MS has a foot in the door, they know their baby, they know their OS, believe it. And the NSA has a step in the door of MS. MS must obey American legislation.

Add one and one together.

My W7 installation still is tight and sealed and gets no updates and contacts to MS servers at all (as far as I could figure it out). And it will stay that way, without any plan or intention to change that. Trust in MS is as dead as "dead" can mean.

[Aktungbby]

Von Schenk! And what a debate brawl to 1st post-surface in..afer a three year silent run!!: 'twixt RockinRobbins AND Skybird!