TBH I'm fine with W10 so far. Then again, I had tried the technical previews every now and then, so I knew what to expect.

W8/8.1 was just a complete mess, with W10 it seems like Microsoft is slowly getting an idea what a desktop OS was supposed to be about. Under the hood performance improvements, DX12 with low level GPU access, return of the start menu... these are all good things.

Does it still have some weird schizophrenic Metro'ness showing here and there? Sure, but atleast now you aren't forced to interact with those Metro elements in full screen now. That said, I also installed it on my Linx tablet, and it's actually a better tablet OS than 8/8.1 aswell.

The privacy/data snooping stuff is the only thing that really bothers me about W10. All of that should be opt-out, and off by default. To get rid of some of it, this Reddit post is pretty helpful, as well as this blog post.

Since I have no intention to use Windows anywhere I thought I'd stay out of the stream mostly worthless babble that floods the web every time new version of Windows is released. However after I looked over some of the statements in EULA and some of the default settings related to "privacy" I can't help but wonder if this is some sort of elaborate joke. I realize that a good portion of it is hyped up a lot but I still find it concerning that people apparently have no problems agreeing to some of the terms mentioned in the EULA

- I get that Cortana needs to gather some information about the user's habits to work efficiently, but why is this an opt-out setting? I suppose that Cortana should also be covered by a separate EULA.

- Backups of the BitLocker recovery key to OneDrive. Come on, really? Besides my natural distrust to an encryption scheme that even supports something like a "recovery key", can one possibly do anything more stupid that upload a decryption key to a cloud storage?

- The paramount of all the "we don't give two shits about your privacy" gems has got to be this:

Quote :

We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services.

This whole paragraph can basically translate to anything because the phrasing is so vague. I always thought that my computer was supposed to do what I tell it to, not the other way around.

All of the above plus the fact that one has to jump through all sorts of hoops to tune at least some of the snooping services down is a huge letdown for me.

Never mind that in some cases, you can't disable it unless you have an enterprise version of Windows.

Having just setup a home version of 10 for a client, both on setup, and then on the security tab, most of this can be turned off. The solution is to only create a local account on install, not a linked M$ account and to clean up the install after creating it.

If you don't like M$, then install a version of Linux. Seriously, that will sort your issues there.

The problem is that many people just want Windoze, and that's fine, I'll clean up the default crap and they are happy.

Everything is public domain these dayz, you (nearly) all post your liffs on Farcebook and/or Twatter.
Why the privacy issues then ?

If you have no concerns about giving the NSA access to all your data, then why complain about 10 ?
And if you do have an issue with that, your clearly a CMTS who needs to be spied on for 'National Security' reasons.

If you want to communicate without sharing, my clients use "secular consequent of the ability of a soul specially empowered by God to reach, by magical means, from earth to Heaven" .......

My account is a local account, and there are some things that I couldn't disable.

I don't care that much about Windows as I just use it to play certain games like AC anymore. The linux versions of DOTA, CSGO and others have become good enough that Linux can be my "default" OS on machines where OS X isn't available.

What couldn't be turned off, out of interest ?
I know that Pro lets u turn almost everything off and I thought I'd got most/all of it in Home.

Anyone who isn't into sharing run's Linux and I'm only personally running a Windoze install for gaming cus I'm lazy......

And a separate 7 box as a media box to do TV, On Demand, Lightbox, Movies, etc........

Then there is my separate testing/work System(s) , but that's on a dedicated PC running them as Virtual systems so I really don't care about my privacy there.

(And my partners Farcebook, Peeinterest, emale, photo, odd letter etc laptop, but she would be useless at running a revolution so I'm not too concerned there.)

You are responsible for your own privacy, as I told people when I was running training courses, don't post private stuff online. And if you want to run a revolution, a basic form of code is probably a good idea.
I.E. "The cat is very grey, brothers and sisters" is a better choice to post online than "The Revolution is tonight" !!!!!!

And, FYI. Don't Farcebook with all your mates......
That one really is a no brainer.
And location services on your phone, and, and, and.....

Why worry about the security with 10 if you don't care about any of those.
Either care about your security and privacy and run another OS or STFU about 10 and simply don't bother about the security issues.

And Mac OS is private, secure and doesn't share iCloud with the NSA, that's great to know.

I've got a low mileage bridge for sale, one careful owner. PM for details, but be in quick before it gets on the open market. Just for you a special price...

I don't know why anyone tries to converse with you. It's consistently an essay of irrelevant, uninformed bullshit.

Sorry,

Quote from Racer X NZ :

What couldn't be turned off, out of interest ?
I know that Pro lets u turn almost everything off and I thought I'd got most/all of it in Home.

I'll let you focus on my question to you !

I installed it on my laptop last night.

It's better than Windows 8 - but that's not hard.

Not for me, thanks.

EDIT - I'm sure there are a whole boatload of kernel improvements over 7 / 8, but the UI leaves me cold. I hate the inconsistency between the fact each "bit" has a settings section, but then control panel seems to contain most of it anyway and works better. And that theres a whole bunch of crap you can't (easily) turn off.

Quote from Jakg :

I installed it on my laptop last night.

It's better than Windows 8 - but that's not hard.

Not for me, thanks.

EDIT - I'm sure there are a whole boatload of kernel improvements over 7 / 8, but the UI leaves me cold. I hate the inconsistency between the fact each "bit" has a settings section, but then control panel seems to contain most of it anyway and works better. And that theres a whole bunch of crap you can't (easily) turn off.

What do you mean. The UI is perfectly consistent.

Haters gonna hate. Change will always have those who resist it, but in the end they all come around.

It's not about hating, it's about "Do you really need M$ to provide your OS ?"

Actually, "No, no you don't."

Win 10 is proving to be the mess that my experience with all the early builds suggested it would be. It really is pointless, 7 is far better as a desktop OS. 10 is invasive, it makes Buzzfeed look like informed journalism. Read this,

Win 10 is a joke, and I service and support this O$ for money............

I'm sticking with 7, then going Linux. I'm onselling Linux and recomending it to most users.
All my users who require privacy are using Linux....

Fine, if you want 10 then I'll sell you the upgrade. If you buy 10, then I'll sell you several fix's for your desktop and start menu.

TBH, M$ are making themselves irrelivant, 10 is not needed to run a PC, a number of other OS's are easier to use for most users, and most other OS's do not give all your info to the NSA.......

"In the default state on our machine there are 18 tiles. We haven’t moved any. We haven’t modified anything. This is the Start Menu we saw (and, with very minor variation) millions of other people will see.

Of those 18 tiles 10 of them are advertisements and/or otherwise monetized. If you count the fact that the OneNote tile prompts you to buy an Office 365 license then 11 out of the 18 tiles are not links to useful system functions or apps but some form of promotion.

Further, of those 18 tiles five of them, by default, are news (and in most cases that term should be applied lightly). You know what we don’t want? We don’t want a Start Menu that tells us “7 Tips for Handling Hot Summer Hikes”, what’s going on with oil futures, what the current state of the hearing of (insert the name of the most recent domestic terrorist here) is, or how things are going in the NFL. We don’t want burger recipes, tips on clearing brain fog, or suggestions for crap we should buy in the Xbox Live store. When did the Start Menu become a BuzzFeed ad?

Further, when we use the search box in the Start Menu we want to search our stuff. Not stuff out there on the web. Not stuff Microsoft wants us to buy from their store. Or, to summarize it succinctly, Lady Gaga should only appear in the Start Menu if you put her there.

Everyone was horrified and offended by how Microsoft took the Start Menu away in Windows 8 and replaced it with a horrible tile interface that looked like a bunch of advertising execs crapped all over it. The crass takeover of valuable screen real estate with blinking ads urging us to buy lackluster games from the Windows Store sat well with absolutely no one when Microsoft rolled it out three years ago. The fact that they stuck with the whole Internet-vomiting-into-your-Start-Menu theme despite the negative response it got in Windows 8 either means they’re greedy and want a slice of the advertising pie or they’re in such desperate need for a slice of that pie they’ve resorted to this."

Well, after about a week of "testing" Win 10, I vote not to Widnows 10.

It's still very much unfinished. The immediate problem I had was that it couldn't "see" my DVD drive. Two days a go the whole Start Menu disapeared along with the Edge and all the features. Tried to find a solution, but none of the suggestions worked. So I can't even revert to Win 7 right now, unless I format the disc and do a clean install.

So, no - don't do Win 10 yet! It wants to be a grown up, tries to act like one, but it's actually at its early teens bound to inevitably make more mistakes.

This is hopefully a review of Start menus, I hope....
http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2399

BUT, there is still the whole privacy issue with 10 that has really got up my nose (Polite response)

IMHO, Run 7 if you have it, none of the improvements in 8 / 8.1 / 10 / wotever are worth the crap involved with the upgrade to these M$ OS's..

If you want an awesome OS that works, try Zorin. Before that however, read this (below) and if you can't do this for yourself, talk to a local tech who cares about their users.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2107641/3-easy-linux-alternatives-for-windows-xp-refugees-who-dont-want-a-new-pc.html

In NZ, PM me
(Or if you have lots of money and want the best, just PM I do worldwide support)

When it comes to PC, I only use it for basic things, therefore I will get back to Win 7 as soon as find time to erase Win 10 and do a clean install (unless I find solution to go back to Win 7 from Win 10, which looks unlikely).

Quote from sermilan :

(unless I find solution to go back to Win 7 from Win 10, which looks unlikely).

Go to PC settings, update & recovery, then go to recovery and you should see an option to revert to win 7 (if you have upgraded within 1 month, otherwise this option might not be available to you) (I dunno about you, but I have made backups)

Quote from rosewood2 :

Go to PC settings, update & recovery...

Can't go to PC settings, it's on the start menu.
Windows update doesn't work in Control Panel, I can only get to "Backup and restore your files", but I can't restore it because there is no recorded point to restore to.... so there you go. Formating disc and a clean Win 7 install is what is waving to me and saying "hallo"

Any ideas why I can't download Win10? http://1drv.ms/1MQhWXS It keeps spinning those dots.

Quote from Jesse Kyytinen :

Any ideas why I can't download Win10? http://1drv.ms/1MQhWXS It keeps spinning those dots.

Install it with this tool : https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/software-download/windows10

One good reason to go with W10... low-level GPU performance gains.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/85385-dx12-unreal-engine-4-elemental-demo-download-available/

That demo ran something like low 40 FPS for me on W7, now it's silk smooth 60 FPS with v-sync, 80-100 FPS when unlimited. Mind boggling difference.

Can't wait for games to start make use of DX12 performance.

Quote from nacim :

Quote from Jesse Kyytinen :

Any ideas why I can't download Win10? http://1drv.ms/1MQhWXS It keeps spinning those dots.

Install it with this tool : https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/software-download/windows10

Getting error code when it should be 100%.

Weird, three solutions : wait for an update to the update software, do a clean install, do your researches on the error code.

Have been playing around with Win 10 in VirtualBox for about a week now, and don't like it, especially the metro buttons in the Start menu, and the privacy issues.

At the same time, I've also been playing around with Linux Mint in VirtualBox using downloaded iso. Problem with that is that it has been laggy, freezes constantly, and keyboard (and especially) mouse are both unresponsive.

To really test Linux, thought I'd install as dual-boot with my current Win7 Pro, but having problems.

I've burned the working Linux Mint iso onto DVD, and it loads fine on booting up pc. But when I try the 'Install Linux Mint' from the desktop, it freezes after only a couple of steps...


Eventually, after few minutes, all clears and small command window opens up with error message about 'failed to idle channel', some numbers and something about 'nouveau'. Then computer hangs, and I have to reboot.

However, if I reboot, Windows finds disk errors and goes thru disk checks, and has to fix a number of errors.

Tried this 4 times now, all repeating same issues. Don't want to try it again in case disk errors muck up my windows installation or data.

According to what I've read, I should just be able to boot, run and install fairly easy, with Linux sorting the installation, disk partitioning (was going to set 100Gb aside on my 2Tb disk), and dual-boot.

Assuming no problems with the iso or the burning of it to dvd, any ideas what's going wrong, or what I'm doing wrong?

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Win 10 is proving to be the mess that my experience with all the early builds suggested it would be. It really is pointless, 7 is far better as a desktop OS. 10 is invasive, it makes Buzzfeed look like informed journalism. Read this,

Fine, if you want 10 then I'll sell you the upgrade. If you buy 10, then I'll sell you several fix's for your desktop and start menu.

TBH, M$ are making themselves irrelivant, 10 is not needed to run a PC, a number of other OS's are easier to use for most users, and most other OS's do not give all your info to the NSA.......

Take off the tin foil hat. You say you were involved with Windows 10 during the technical preview but I can tell by the way you write that you're full of shit and didn't touch the OS until MAYBE pre-RTM. You support a free operating system with your money? Who's the idiot here? I hate to break it to you, captain, but it's 2015 now. If you so much as connect to the internet, your data is out there. Whether or not you trade your ease of use for something that pretends to hide your data so that you can feel at least slightly righteous about the software your hunk of electrified metal uses is up to you.

How long has it been since operating systems came with, *gasp*, pre-installed advertisements? Do you remember RealPlayer? No? Maybe you remember opening up Windows Media Player's pre-installed list of online radio stations back in the 9x days? Anybody with a solid grasp on computer science realizes that disclosure of data is an inevitability. It's almost like when you install an operating system, you should personalize it and not rely on the default layout like some brainwashed Apple aficionado. The whole purpose and mantra of Windows has been customization. If you want to use what shows up the first time you press the power switch and never delve into the settings, you should have bought an Apple.

Anyway, I hear if you type "M$" three times in a row, Bill Gates pops out like Candyman and kicks you in the balls.

Christ, that whole post and most of the ones above on this page read like the forums I used to go on back in the anti-trust lawsuit days. Put your glasses back on, Grandpa Stallman

The concept of an USAian telling me to forget about private information is pretty much the issue I have with the latest versions of Windows.

Not every company wishes the US to steal their business information,odd that, and whilst your opinion is interesting it is strange that you resort to threats and abuse to convince us how right you are.

Then again, given your claimed age, I'll just put it down to youthful stupidity and ignorance.
Have a happy day

Many people choose not to plaster their life all over farcebook and on other social media groups. Many people also limit the amount of personal information that the release online for very good reason. While, for many of the youth, vomiting all info online is all they know, many older people are aware of the issues that can create.

You should have to choose to share all your info, not have to dig around settings in the hope of turning it off.

This is a good article generally explaining the settings and how to change them, the issue is that they are on by default.