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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems Upgrades IT

Windows 10 Now a 'Recommended Update' For Windows 7 and 8.1 Users (betanews.com) 581

Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft has been accused of pushing Windows 10 rather aggressively, and the company's latest move is going to do nothing to silence these accusations. For Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, Windows 10 just became a 'recommended update' in Windows Update.

This is a change from the previous categorization of the upgrade as an 'optional update' and it means that there is renewed potential for unwanted installations. After the launch of Windows 10, there were numerous reports of not only the automatic download of OS installation files, but also unrequested upgrades. The changed status of the update means that, on some machines, the installation of Windows 10 could start automatically.

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Windows 10 Now a 'Recommended Update' For Windows 7 and 8.1 Users

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    to upgrade? Our MSP says never. They say we have to buy all new licenses since there is no upgrade available.

  • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:14AM (#51419047)
    Microsoft is sick and tired of customers resisting their latest shiny upgrade, and downright pissed off when they resist successfully, as with Vista and 8. So they are going all-in on establishing the capability to push any and all code/UI they want, for any purpose they want (DRM/adware/spyware/forced account login/whatever), to your machine at any time. If the current Windows 10 updates are this evil, imagine what they'll be like when users have no alternative.
    • by Pentium100 ( 1240090 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:47AM (#51419163)

      All the more reason to turn off automatic updates if you have Windows 7 or 8. The good thing of that is that when Microsoft stops releasing new updates for these versions, nobody will care.

      • by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:54AM (#51419189)
        And after all they work of training users to keep systems patched, Microsoft goes out and makes patches a bad thing. Nice move!
        • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @06:05AM (#51419997)

          I just turned off windows updates on my win8.1 netbook. Sure, it might get rooted by random internet script-kiddies, but that's still better than a 100% chance of immediately getting rooted by Microsoft's own script-kiddies.

          Windows Update is simply no longer trustworthy.

          • I just turned off windows updates on my win8.1 netbook. Sure, it might get rooted by random internet script-kiddies, but that's still better than a 100% chance of immediately getting rooted by Microsoft's own script-kiddies.

            Windows Update is simply no longer trustworthy.

            Dude. GWX control panel. Go google it or just put in security updates only? That way you won't get 0wned.

            Turning off Windows Update is a terrible practice

      • by NixieBunny ( 859050 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @01:42AM (#51419337) Homepage
        I had to turn off auto updates on my work computer, as the university doesn't yet support 10 officially. That Windows 10 recommender update is really tenacious! Fire is just about necessary to beat it down.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          Why complain? Its THEIR OS!

          • Because it's MY MACHINE, perhaps?

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @09:07AM (#51420453)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If the current Windows 10 updates are this evil, imagine what they'll be like when users have no alternative.

      You mean like the growing user base of Mac, Linux and *BSD? And Android... They are going to push a lot of people away. And even if it is only 15% that will change the landscape in ways they can not imagine.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Skylinux ( 942824 )

        You mean like the growing user base of Mac

        Have you actually tried using a Mac productively?
        Unfortunately, it is the standard company computer where I work. The user experience is horrible if you are used to a responsive system and one that does not get in your way every fucking time.
        I installed Windows 10 on the retina Mac Book Pro and things have been better but the keyboard is garbage since the Fn key is on the very outside. Great trackpad, though!

        Had a meeting with my boss recently and told him that I will start looking for a new job unless I ge

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @05:57AM (#51419983) Homepage Journal

      If the current Windows 10 updates are this evil, imagine what they'll be like when users have no alternative.

      No need to imagine, just look at iOS. Updates are pushed quite forcefully on users, and within a few months more than 90% will upgrade. New "features" include more ways to give Apple money, extra DRM, closing any holes that let you take control of your device. And after a few years, the updates slow your system down so much you are either forced to run an old, unsupported and insecure version or buy new hardware.

    • by GNious ( 953874 )

      If you buy a computer with a given OS, and it upgrades to a later OS before the warranty expires, take it back to the store and tell them to fix it :)

  • Number, please? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What's the KB code number so I can hide it?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:16AM (#51419055)

    Whipslash arrived and fired you immediately. Farewell and thanks for all the stories and dupes over the years.

  • by Trachman ( 3499895 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:17AM (#51419065) Journal

    Rather than fiddling with keys and password recoveries, we have just installed Linux Mint.

    No complains or further questions. People use computer for browsing mostly.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Rather than fiddling with keys and password recoveries, we have just installed Linux Mint.

      No complains or further questions. People use computer for browsing mostly.

      I'm finding Mint with Cinnamon to be quite good! I'm re-discovering Linux only because Microsoft has chosen to be a complete asshole to me. This story is just another middle finger from them.

    • Guess your family member doesn't play games. Gaming is the only reason I HAVE a windows computer.

      • With Valve porting more and more games to Linux, this excuse holds less and less water as time goes by. If it's DOS games you're worried about playing, set FreeDOS up in a VM and be done with it.
        • IGN's games of the year, 2015:

          The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
          Bloodborne
          Fallout 4
          Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
          Ori and the Blind Forest
          Pillars of Eternity
          Rise of the Tomb Raider
          Super Mario Maker
          Tales From the Borderlands

          Number of them available on Linux: 1 (Pillars of Eternity)

          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            Among your list, Bloodborne and Super Mario Maker are not available for Windows either. To play all games on the list requires a PlayStation 4 console, a Wii U console, and a Windows PC.

      • by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:36AM (#51419465)

        Unfortunately I'm still in this boat as well. Linux Mint is my primary OS but I still keep a dual boot of windows for games. As it stands about 1/3 of my steam library is linux compatible.

  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:17AM (#51419067)
    MSoft only has our best interest. Sheez. So sensitive.
  • by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:23AM (#51419075)
    Let me just say, "don't".

    Never mind the spyware. I had Win8.1 for 18 months before I "upgraded" to Win10. Since the upgrade I've had:
    1) ctl + left mouse to move a window. Release the wrong button first and the window goes full screen instead.
    2) Random mouse locations when clicking left button. Ex: in a web browser hit the back button, it goes full screen. In a web browser click a bookmark group, it minimizes. etc etc etc
    3) Close laptop, go to bed. Get up in the morning, laptop has installed updates and rebooted, wants your permission to continue.
    4) Default app behaviours change suddenly. Just this morning I opened a pdf on my hard drive and Edge opened it,, not the pdf file viewer I've used for the last few years.
    5) Uptime seems to be a week. If it's not updating then when you open your laptop it just doesn't respond.

    I bought this laptop November 2013, it came with Win 8.0 and I immediately upgraded to 8.1. Had no issues. Mistakenly "upgraded" to Win10 last summer, all the above issues have plagued me since. If I had to do it all over again I would, in order, stay 8.1 (I'm a gamer, need Windows), go Linux, go Mac, go Win10.
  • Critical (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NicoNet ( 466227 ) <CNicodemusSD@NicoNet2k.com> on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:25AM (#51419081) Homepage Journal

    Next it will be a critical update.

  • I recommend ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by CanadianRealist ( 1258974 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:25AM (#51419083)

    Here's my recommendation to Microsoft, go fuck yourself.

    You want to fuck up my Windows 7 machine? You want to fuck me with your ads and spying on me? See my recommendation above.

  • by rcase5 ( 3781471 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:27AM (#51419087)

    I've made it my business to never do what Microsoft recommends. That has served me well over the years.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    who misread the title saying Windows 7 and 8.1 were recommended updates for Windows 10.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:37AM (#51419137)

    Windows Revenue is down 50% because of the mobile revolution. Then there are technologies like Citrix that are challenging Microsoft's dominance in corporate America.

    The new business model is obvious; monetize non-business customers by trapping them in a windows through a walled garden while selling their personal information to the highest bidder while protecting the corporate deployment base.

    Microsoft thinks all their customers are mom and dad surfing e-mail on their home pc's when in reality they just killed tens of thousands of small businesses, small pc shops, SOHO offices and so forth running windows PC's with legacy code. This is the knucklehead moment where they behead themselves and the market realizes just how dangerous Microsoft really is. They are going to tick off a lot of people and impress nobody if they pull this off successfully; given the state of the market and computers in general I doubt they are going to get out of this unscathed.

  • Another FU for M$ (Score:5, Informative)

    by n0w0rries ( 832057 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:49AM (#51419173)

    They don't consider how this crap works in a slow internet environment. I'm on boat in Mexico. Internet is slow when you can get it at all. I don't have the bandwidth for your ads and your spyware. I need weather data! Ever try and use outlook on slow internet? it spends most of it's time [not responding]!

    I had a situation where my long range wifi usb port pulled out. So I figured I'd just change my mac address on my notebook to the one that died so I can keep using the internet service I paid for... but NOOOOO they block me from doing that.

    What happened to when a computer used to be a tool? Now it's a spyware machine I'm supposed to pay for?!

  • by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @12:51AM (#51419181) Homepage

    Just in case you're looking for another reason not to switch.

    I put this conversation up as a discussion topic here on /. - http://answers.microsoft.com/e... [microsoft.com]

    Com port management has never been great in Windows and in Win 10, if you are doing device development work or working with different devices which allocate com ports, you may find yourself running out of them and/or applications no longer working because the allocated port number is higher than the range the application handles.

    Very disappointing non-response by Microsoft and their employees.

  • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt.nerdflat@com> on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @01:19AM (#51419273) Journal

    During the leadup to the release of Windows 10 at the end of July of last year, I remember that they were repeatedly stating that it would only be free to current Windows users for the first year after its initial public release (July 29, 2015).

    Given MS's actions since with regards to Windows 10 and how they are pushing the upgrade that people have to explicitly opt out of, I believe it is quite apparent that they were only saying that to try and encourage people to adopt it early, and never had any intent to charge for it at all.

    • by Scorch_Mechanic ( 1879132 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:35AM (#51419459) Journal

      At this point I expect that the supposed cutoff date will roll around, and then one of two things will happen:

      1) They start charging whatever they're charging for it. But it won't stop being a "Recommended" update for 7 and 8.1. Meaning of course that some loser will turn updates back on or boot up a laptop that spent seven months without a battery, get updated, and suddenly find their copy of Windows 10 isn't licensed and they have a thirty day countdown. Pay up, sucker.

      2) Nothing happens. It remains free. Eventually Microsoft will get around to yanking the updates, but probably not before something like option one happens. Credits to carrots the nagware will stick around though, just different. And no way are the telemetry updates getting removed.

      Look deep into your heart. Which one do you think is gonna happen?

  • by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @01:59AM (#51419379)
    From TFA:

    ...we are committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10.

    In other words they're making it as difficult as possible to avoid upgrading.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:04AM (#51419391)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by safetyinnumbers ( 1770570 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:14AM (#51419409)
    "How to manage Windows 10 notification and upgrade options:" https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]
  • by shanen ( 462549 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @03:08AM (#51419531) Homepage Journal

    I've been posing (and pondering) this question ever since I was convinced that Microsoft was not charging money for the upgrade to Windows 10:

    Why?

    One of the major business model innovations underlying Microsoft's "success" is ignoring the end user. Microsoft has increasingly focused on selling to the makers and the end users are basically forced to go along. Yeah, Apple survived (after a near death experience), but I'm still doubtful that the most creative accountants can show profits from the OS side of their business model. Linux remains a niche player for lack of any good business models, but MS got fat from the manufacturers.

    Now Microsoft suddenly bites the hands that have been feeding it? Actually, more like gnawing off the arms at the elbows. The makers are in a commodity business of the nastiest, lowest-profits sort, and many of them can't afford to skip the new-box sales for a year or so, just because so many older machines suddenly become like-new again.

    MS has plenty of cash in the bank. "Honey badger don't care" which makers survive. There will be at least a couple of makers around to sell new computers, and Microsoft will just pick up where it left off. However, it has also become pretty clear they are trying to muscle in on part of Apple's business model, and maybe the google's, as well.

    Evidently all the makers can say is "That hurts."

  • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @05:06AM (#51419869)

    I was just dealing with the fallout from Microsoft's upgrade push today. My mother upgraded from 7 to 10 and 10 would no longer support the 1600 x 900 her shitty HP monitor wanted to do. If I hadnt come along she would have been stuck on an extremely low rez setting (which is all Wondows 10 would support on her monitor) for god only knows how long because there was no driver update for her crappy on board video card to solve the problem.

    Was that specifically Miscrosofts fault? No.

    Should they have been pushing an OS upgrade like they were on people with old crappy hardware? the answer is also no.

    I put her back on system 7 and everything works fine now.

  • by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @05:18AM (#51419907)

    I'm going to get a new gaming PC sometime next year, and probably I'd "have to" run Windows 10 on it.

    Luckily, I can still get Windows Server 2016 from Dreamspark.

    Looks like it will have all the features of Windows 10 with bits that allow you to turn OFF all the nastinesses.You can just install Audio and DirectX support and play. I know of friends who have done this with Windows Server 2012, so it should be ok.

    As a bonus, I can have a domain controller in my home, so that if wife ever needs to have Windows 10 in her computer, we can just have it join the domain and remain in our control, not Microsoft's.

  • I've had a couple of family members bring me their laptops with Windows 10 issues. While I'm for people learning about their own computers and taking decisive actions, but the current Windows 10 upgrade push is irresponsible. From Microsoft's perspective things are looking great if this works. More people will be on the later versions of Windows. Great for them.

    But this push is advertised to EVERYONE, regardless of hardware age. So that older Toshiba laptop gets an upgrade courtesy of grandma pushing yes to the Windows 10 prompt. Everything installs correctly until a week down the track when there's obviously something wrong with the NVidia drivers, or the bluetooth stack. Head off to the Toshiba support site to grab drivers and only 8.1 is supported with NO intention of providing anything later. And they aggressively version check in the setup, so a very manual installation is required. Same goes for HP.

    While I think it's great getting everyone on a level playing field. I think they really should make sure that the hardware is supported by the vendors before recommending the upgrade.

    • But this push is advertised to EVERYONE, regardless of hardware age.

      Yes. That means that this upcoming garage sale season there will be assloads of PCs which have been auto-upgraded to Win10 and which no longer work correctly available for sale, cheap! Because most Windows users just buy a new PC when theirs goes tits up. It's so expensive to have them maintained that a new box is cheaper, if you buy budget.

  • by Chas ( 5144 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @11:07AM (#51421023) Homepage Journal

    Seriously, the Win10 upgrade crap has reached the point where it's effectively malware.

    AV/Anti-Malware providers need to start killing it on an automated basis.

    And a lawsuit needs to be brought against Microsoft for infecting their users computers with it.

One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis

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