New to Windows 10: advice for stopping updates, data collection, ads,etc

[chk071]

So what has that to do with W10?
Well, MS does not make any more money by just "improving their services" with the data they collect.
Improving services usually costs more money, not less.
So how do they make money of your data?
Just think about it for a while.

In most cases, "think for a while" means "speculate about things you don't know". As i am a rational thinking person (at least i consider myself one), that kind of "thinking" isn't for me really. What i do know is that Google made a fortune with personalized ads, and Microsoft does the same, they even state that in their EULA's. Everything else is, really, speculation for me, with no facts as base.

BTW, i don't consider the internet, or services in it "free for all". Why would a company give you an email adress for free, let's you use their web search for free, or use their messenger for free? It all comes at a price, and that is using your "personal" (where? in a public place like the internet?) data to personalize your ads in this case. And some, less serious companies, even will sell it to others, to make money with it. I doubt Microsoft will do that though, if they state in their EULA's that they will not. Yes, i know, "blue-eyed", and sheep trust, but, i don't believe things before i see, and face them. I'm neither into conspiracy theories, nor am i into spotting the enemy behind every corner.

[Burillo]

Well, it's obvious that because it didn't happen to you then it couldn't possibly have happened to anyone else. Case closed I guess.

But, wait. You just told me, that, just because it happened to some of your "clients", it has to happen to everyone. You know, if i gathered one thing in my computing time, and the time i spent in forums, and support forums, then it is, that people do all sorts of crazy stuff with their computers, and then blame it all on the OS, and the company which did it.

Can't help but think you'r somehow on a mission, like most of the people in threads like these.

well, there is some merit to that sentiment, unfortunately. whenever software tries to be smart and do things automatically that it should've deferred to the user, there are bound to be false positives, and the consequences of those will be as disastrous as the reach of that particular feature goes. if your feature allows you to automatically uninstall user software, then that's what will happen if the feature misfires. regardless of what i've done to my computing platform, Windows shouldn't attempt to do anything like in the first place. these things don't happen automatically, someone had to write this shit - so it's a conscious choice on Microsoft's part.

this also concerns me because i happen to be a highly advanced user and usually set up my system with all kinds of unusual stuff - dual boot, junction links (shared profile between two booted systems, on a separate drive for easy backup), etc., and so far Windows 7 has treated me well and never tried to fix what wasn't broken. since Windows 10, i'm no longer sure that the next update wouldn't attempt to be mama's little helper and "fix" things i didn't want it to fix and screw up my operating environment big time.

[rifftrax]

But, wait. You just told me, that, just because it happened to some of your "clients", it has to happen to everyone.

Wait, what? Where in the world did I say that?

You know, if i gathered one thing in my computing time, and the time i spent in forums, and support forums, then it is, that people do all sorts of crazy stuff with their computers, and then blame it all on the OS, and the company which did it.

Look every sysadmin I have ever met... In the past half a decade has by-and-large abhorred the decisions Microsoft has been making in regards to Windows as an OS since Win7. This is not some conspiracy. It's a company making shitty decisions on a whole slew of fronts that affect a lot of peoples bottom line. Their licensing schemes are a confusing mess (ever try to figure out proper OEM system builder key usage? Good f**king luck), their OS breaks itself and implements a plethora of "security features" which are often worthless against directed network and physical intrusion (oh, password protected profile? Yeah I'll just pull the drive thank you), and they've built advertising into the lock screen that you can't disable unless you're on enterprise for God's sake:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comme ... ck_screen/

The "crazy stuff" you're referring to is how most businesses actually run by the way.

i.e. IDEs, ERP, PLM, Databases, F&I, Sales, CRM, Dispatch, VOIP, Inventory, Logistics, Automation, and other such services and relatively important things that depend on an OS not doing weird shit all the time.

[chk071]

But, wait. You just told me, that, just because it happened to some of your "clients", it has to happen to everyone.

Wait, what? Where in the world did I say that?

And where in the world did i say that, because it didn't happen to me, it couldn't have happened to anyone? I frankly don't know anyone though, who had the same happened to him, i mean that Windows uninstalled software. FWIW. I know a whole lot of people who completely mess up their computers though. That's for sure. Although installing a security suite, which causes issues with a Windows update wouldn't already qualify for "messing up your computer".

[glokraw]

Usually there are goodly lines at the service counters at Best Buy,
first open day after Christmas..."i dunno. I think it mighta bee hakked'

[Musical Gym]

Revert to 8.1 if you don't like 10. That's what I did.

[pekbro]

I dunno, I've been using win 10 on a cheap laptop for about a month now.
I really don't see much of a problem with it. I fail to see why people think
its really all that different from win 7 or 8 in the first place.

They've added and changed some stuff in their typical and inexplicably
moronic fashion. So what? The core OS is just a small amount of new shit piled atop
the vast amounts of same old shit.

If you don't want auto updates, set your internet connection to metered. It wont
download shit. If you don't want it to track you, don't log into your Microsoft account.
If you don't like the lock screen, disable it. I did that in like the first 5 mins.
Go through your services, many of them are useless, disable them.

Never talk to Cortana... Eventually she will go away and behave like the reasonable
search engine she actually is.

Anyway, the technical gap between win 10 and its predecessors is really quite small.
That's just how it goes when your dealing with 60 or 70 million lines of code.

IMO, allot of the disdain for win 10 is pretty groundless, and based more on misinformation
and a hatred for Microsoft itself, rather than the OS.


-Cheers

[Dominus]

I dunno, I've been using win 10 on a cheap laptop for about a month now.
I really don't see much of a problem with it. I fail to see why people think
its really all that different from win 7 or 8 in the first place.

They've added and changed some stuff in their typical and inexplicably
moronic fashion. So what? The core OS is just a small amount of new shit piled atop
the vast amounts of same old shit.

So why not run 7 instead?

If you don't want auto updates, set your internet connection to metered. It wont
download shit. If you don't want it to track you, don't log into your Microsoft account.
If you don't like the lock screen, disable it. I did that in like the first 5 mins.
Go through your services, many of them are useless, disable them.

Never talk to Cortana... Eventually she will go away and behave like the reasonable
search engine she actually is.

Anyway, the technical gap between win 10 and its predecessors is really quite small.
That's just how it goes when your dealing with 60 or 70 million lines of code.

Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Take all that new code... and turn it off.

IMO, allot of the disdain for win 10 is pretty groundless, and based more on misinformation
and a hatred for Microsoft itself, rather than the OS.

As someone that has been running Microsoft operating systems since MS DOS 4.01.. utter nonsense. (I upgraded to 5 and then 6, then 95, 98, skipped ME, XP, skipped Vista, then 7.) There's plenty of reasons not to install 10, and I have yet to see a single reason to install it. Once software/hardware requires it, then perhaps I'd upgrade and then go through all the trouble of disabling all the extra crap. Until then, I'll stick with my ancient install of 7 that's been cloned over the course of a few systems and tweaked each time I've upgraded my computer... it boots quickly and runs rock solid, without any instances of me wondering what the computer is doing when I'm not watching.

[chk071]

Until then, I'll stick with my ancient install of 7 that's been cloned over the course of a few systems and tweaked each time I've upgraded my computer... it boots quickly and runs rock solid

You haven't seen Windows 10 running yet, have you?

without any instances of me wondering what the computer is doing when I'm not watching.

What does that mean even? Windows, any version, does a lot of stuff in the background, which would probably "make you wonder what it's doing when you're not watching". Anyway, totally your decision of course. I just find it interesting what reasons people make up, to justify sticking to old Windows versions. Well, i'll see you in 2020, when the official support for Windows 7 ends. But then, maybe you don't have your DAW on the net, then you can go on using it. Don't expect current software to go on supporting a deprecated OS though.

[Dominus]

You haven't seen Windows 10 running yet, have you?

I have. Not impressed enough to justify the switch.

What does that mean even? Windows, any version, does a lot of stuff in the background, which would probably "make you wonder what it's doing when you're not watching". Anyway, totally your decision of course. I just find it interesting what reasons people make up, to justify sticking to old Windows versions. Well, i'll see you in 2020, when the official support for Windows 7 ends. But then, maybe you don't have your DAW on the net, then you can go on using it. Don't expect current software to go on supporting a deprecated OS though.

First off, no one here has made up any reasons. You're acting like people are inventing excuses. No one has. A lot of us have extensive experience (I worked in the computer industry for 20 years, both as an IT pro and self employed) with computers and operating systems and have found *no* reason to upgrade to 10, but plenty of reasons not to. (Hell, I stuck with 98 for a while until Gigastudio became XP compatible.)

Also, you do understand what "official support" means, right? It will keep working, and at that point (3+ years away) we'll see if Microsoft decides to extend it or not, or if there's a reason to upgrade at all. There's still plenty of people "taking chances" with XP.

Not to mention, we're at an interesting time for making music. There's no real leaps in technology in front of us for the foreseeable future. It's all incremental. We saw the jump from x86 to x64, that was one of the real reasons to upgrade operating systems. I don't see hosts and plugins *requiring* new operating systems for years to come.

[egbert]

Steinberg will require recent OS versions and even recent Service Packs to even install new Cubendo versions. I have had to install new stuff to a vanilla Win7 install to get another new DAW version to install.

Reaper is pretty open to older OSs but the other players tend to want to keep the support burden down so they only support newer stuff and EOL OS versions like XP don't get a look in.

Look - I hate all this crap too - Win 7 will do me fine thanks very much but in reality I am worried that I will be forced to update the OS in the life of any new machines I build due to the forward march of Win OS versions.

[chk071]

You haven't seen Windows 10 running yet, have you?

I have. Not impressed enough to justify the switch.

What does that mean even? Windows, any version, does a lot of stuff in the background, which would probably "make you wonder what it's doing when you're not watching". Anyway, totally your decision of course. I just find it interesting what reasons people make up, to justify sticking to old Windows versions. Well, i'll see you in 2020, when the official support for Windows 7 ends. But then, maybe you don't have your DAW on the net, then you can go on using it. Don't expect current software to go on supporting a deprecated OS though.

First off, no one here has made up any reasons. You're acting like people are inventing excuses. No one has. A lot of us have extensive experience (I worked in the computer industry for 20 years, both as an IT pro and self employed) with computers and operating systems and have found *no* reason to upgrade to 10, but plenty of reasons not to. (Hell, I stuck with 98 for a while until Gigastudio became XP compatible.)

Also, you do understand what "official support" means, right? It will keep working, and at that point (3+ years away) we'll see if Microsoft decides to extend it or not, or if there's a reason to upgrade at all. There's still plenty of people "taking chances" with XP.

Not to mention, we're at an interesting time for making music. There's no real leaps in technology in front of us for the foreseeable future. It's all incremental. We saw the jump from x86 to x64, that was one of the real reasons to upgrade operating systems. I don't see hosts and plugins *requiring* new operating systems for years to come.

Again, if companies feel ike Windows 7 is deprecated, they won't support it anymore. "Feel like" meaning that they'll just wait for a OS not being widely used anymore, or supported with updates. Multi OS support means multi work, something you'd surely want to avoid as a company. New Cubase only supports MacOS 10.11, for example,and no support for Win Vista EVEN THOUGH it's still officially supported by Microsoft.

Anyway, everyone's gotta know. Just pointing out why it is in my eyes definitely a good "investment" to go with a modern OS the sooner the better.

[rifftrax]

If you don't want auto updates, set your internet connection to metered. It wont
download shit.

This only works for Wifi connections.

If you don't want it to track you, don't log into your Microsoft account.

Bullshit
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly ... -tracking/

If you don't like the lock screen, disable it. I did that in like the first 5 mins.

Most businesses have a pretty strict GPO enforced auto-lock policy.

Go through your services, many of them are useless, disable them.

You think a normal user is going to be able to wade through the myriad of dependencies for a typical service and be able to make calculated decisions on what to stop? Seriously you think that?

Never talk to Cortana... Eventually she will go away and behave like the reasonable
search engine she actually is.

This easy tweak is only 7 discreet steps away
http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/stop- ... nniversary

Anyway, the technical gap between win 10 and its predecessors is really quite small.
That's just how it goes when your dealing with 60 or 70 million lines of code.

This is not about "technicality". It's 100% about UI/UX, which Win10 has thrown to the f**king wind. I just dropped a system off to an 70 year old disabled woman who liked Vista better than Windows 10 because the GUI didn't look like a force-perspective 3D DOS game with just as shitty graphics and didn't beat the ultra-minimal UI horse deader than dead.

Yes, the NT Kernel can basically be interacted with in virtually the same way since Win7 but who the hell besides the vanishingly small percentage of users who do competent scripting are going to open up powershell and gitbash to get things to work when that's the only option left besides decompiling core executables (good luck)?

IMO, allot of the disdain for win 10 is pretty groundless, and based more on misinformation
and a hatred for Microsoft itself, rather than the OS.

Yes, me and the 10 thousand other sysadmins at various large companies grappling with the requirement of using an enterprise license just to get a system to conform to ... you know "business standards". i.e. the kind of thing an IT project or deployment manager might reasonably call "bullshit".

[rifftrax]

-duplicate somehow-

[rifftrax]

-duplicate somehow-