Windows 10 upgrade notification

[RobDickinson]

Free upgrade expires 29th July?

Still I havnt seen a reason for me to upgrade from 8.1 and a lot of downsides.

[MissChief]

Still happily using W7 here. It forced an upgrade on me once before which royally borked my machine necessitating a complete format and reinstall back on W7. I'd rather not do it at all TBH, even if it means not getting a copy free and having to buy it at a later date.

[RobDickinson]

I think for me it will be gaming and dx12 that finally do it, but thats not going to be a requirement for quite some time. I'm happy with 8.1, 10 doesnt seem to really do anything new but brings a lot of monitoring and issues.

[glazbagun]

Yeah I too feel that MS are just pushing this on me agressively so they can sell more data. I like my W7 machine. It's ran W7 since new, I have it set up just the way I like, running what I want the way I want it and I don't see any reason to change it.

If I need a new laptop and need to change OS, I'll take a look at what's out there on the market rather than buying the latest Windows machine which is something I thought I'd never say.

I also like having one of the relics from those innocent days when you bought and owned a copy of your software before all of this Freemium or funded by selling your data came along. I just don't like the business model.

[deckster]

RobDickinson said:

Free upgrade expires 29th July?

Still I havnt seen a reason for me to upgrade from 8.1 and a lot of downsides.

Lots of benefits in stability, performance, and of course ongoing support - and very, very few downsides. As ever, you only hear from the relatively small number of people who have had issues. The many millions who have upgraded without any problem at all tend to keep quiet.

Not that I'm in any way downplaying the fact that some people have experienced problems, but they are very much a vocal minority and not representative of the experience of most people. Personally, I have upgraded five machines (three personally built, one Lenovo laptop, one Toshiba laptop) and had zero issues with any of them.

[FunkyNige]

I upgraded from W7 to 10 a while back, no issues. Now I want to upgrade my motherboard/CPU but it seems as my W7 is an OEM copy instead of a retail copy I can't have a new motherboard?
Anyone know a (legal) way around this?

[MarkRSi]

I'm mostly a happy W10 user, couple of machines still using 8 as 10 doesn't work with certain bits of older hardware.

I can understand they don't want a situation like Windows XP but they can turn around this time and state users had plenty opportunity to upgrade from 7/8 to 10 for free.

Still Microsoft seem a bit too desperate to upgrade everyone, I reckon someone in Microsoft is bricking it as they're not going to meet some install count target...

[jhfozzy]

RobDickinson said:

Free upgrade expires 29th July?

Still I havnt seen a reason for me to upgrade from 8.1 and a lot of downsides.

I still have a few PCs on 7 and 8 that I upgraded but had driver issues. Luckily I cloned the drives beforehand so didn't have to rollback, just plug the old drive back in.

At least the PCs have been upgraded so if they solve the driver issues in the future I can still install for free.

I would recommend doing the upgrade just to make sure you can install Windows 10 in the future, just backup / clone the drive first.

[8bit]

Cobnapint said:

Surely this is 'clean' tricks. Win 10 is an improvement to anybody with a brain.

Apart from the serious privacy concessions it requires, you mean?

[Cobnapint]

8bit said:

Cobnapint said:

Surely this is 'clean' tricks. Win 10 is an improvement to anybody with a brain.

Apart from the serious privacy concessions it requires, you mean?

What, like where it asks for your bank, credit card, birth, national insurance and employment details. And has the ability to record everything you say, video everything you do and call you to account on it at a moment's notice - not!

You can untick all the data collection in Windows 10, it's free, it works, and will be supported until you are no longer able to operate your keyboard. What's to lose...?

[zippy3x]

8bit said:

Apart from the serious privacy concessions it requires, you mean?

We've had these sorts of comments for a year now. I've yet to see any evidence that Windows 10 collects anything more than the anonymised analytics and crash dumps collected by every other OS and website (apart from the Cortana notebook, which can be turned off).

Genuine question, do you have any links to back up your statements?

[8bit]

Even if you do disable all the options at your disposal (and the vast, vast majority of victims won't because the implications are not made clear to them) then the EULA still basically states that they can log, record and gather all sorts of things, including keystrokes. Up to you if you think that's acceptable or not, I certainly don't. You're trusting that everything that collects anything is an option.

Since you ask:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-10-...

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2...

http://betanews.com/2016/01/08/if-youre-fine-with-...

Just shout if you'd like more

[Cobnapint]

But they aren't 'required' serious concessions are they.

You can turn them off.

[8bit]

Cobnapint said:

But they aren't 'required' serious concessions are they.

You can turn them off.

Again, you're making the assumption that *everything* that collects and sends data back to Microsoft is controlled by those options. They're not, there's a service you have to disable too. Whether they're required or not, in the vast majority of installations they'll go untouched because most users know no better.

And the EULA is required, to reject it would require you not to use the OS at all.

Your point was that Windows 10 was an improvement, mine was that with respect to privacy it very much isn't.

[stemll]

dmsims said:

AW111 said:

Except that the upgrade process breaks a lot of software - it reloads drivers, which can mess with com port assignments; it mis-recognises connected serial devices as mice, which makes the computer unusable until you unplug them and reconfigure the port; it can report a different hard disk id, which causes software to de-license itself...

Those are all things I have seen on customers' computers.

and trashes default programs, memory leaks in IE, "wonky" Wifi drivers, printers screwed

It loused up my graphics drivers after about a month so the PC crashed every 20 minutes. Reinstalled Win 8.1 and it's not crashed once since. It seemed OK as an OS but there is no way it's going anywhere near existing hardware as an upgrade. Guess I'll end up with it in the house when the Mrs needs a new laptop

[anonymous-user]

I am worried that if if I don't upgrade every machine I see that I will be shot dead by pro Europeans for voting brexit

[Getragdogleg]

I don't want it, my win 7 laptop works fine and I cant be arsed with faffing about sorting it out when the install goes tits up.

What is the simplest way to keep it off my machine ? there are lots of Google suggestions but I need a solution that has been tried and works.

[stemll]

Getragdogleg said:

I don't want it, my win 7 laptop works fine and I cant be arsed with faffing about sorting it out when the install goes tits up.

What is the simplest way to keep it off my machine ? there are lots of Google suggestions but I need a solution that has been tried and works.

GWX Control Panel

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

[Digger]

If you go for the free download now and then decide to switch back to 7 (in my case) can you then reinstall 10 for free after the July 29th deadline?

Also is it easy to, once downloaded, to locate the Win 10 installation files on your drive?

[RobDickinson]

deckster said:

Lots of benefits in stability, performance, and of course ongoing support - and very, very few downsides. As ever, you only hear from the relatively small number of people who have had issues. The many millions who have upgraded without any problem at all tend to keep quiet.

Stability - windows 8.1 ( and 7 and XP actually) have been perfectly stable for me. This is not a benefit.

Performance - really? According to this test win 10 is faster, by a little, almost as often as windows 8 is faster...
In the things tested I do most - booting up, photoshop, gaming, windows 10 would be a disadvantage performance wise overall.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1042-windows-10-vs-...

Ongoing support - not an issue until 2023, so why rush...

The advantages - edge (I wont use) Cortana (not available in NZ), DX12 (not a real need).

Disadvantages - risk of upgrade, trashing of defaults and settings, apps. wholesale data raping you cant disable on home editions ( and what you can disable gets re enabled often). Loss of control on updates and changes.

Against all of that is the absolutely stty way microsoft has handled the whole upgrade process. Whoever decided on the GWX program needs to be sacked.