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Microsoft Attempts To Clarify the Windows 10 For Everyone Rumor
Ammalgam writes: Over the weekend, Microsoft caused a web explosion by seeming to imply that they were going to relax their licensing rules and offer Windows 10 for free to everyone. This caused an uproar of controversy online that Microsoft had to address. The company issued a statement in an attempt to clarify the Windows 10 licensing situation. The language is still a little confusing so on Windows10update.com, Onuora Amobi tries to simplify the language and sort out the distinction between users on the Windows Insider Program and non Windows Insiders.
What still isn't clear is how much of the spying built in to the Insider Preview will remain. You can turn some of it off, but some of it like the app install reporting and file open reporting you can't disable. After launch day will those features remain? If so, suddenly this "free" copy of Windows is a lot less attractive.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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If i got this straight, microsoft will push the OS upgrade through windows update, and after the installation will check for a valid 7/8/8.1 licence key and activate Win10 with that. So, if i need to do a vanilla installation of Win10, will i be able to download the iso and use my valid 7/8/8.1 licence key without any problems? Or is it a one way path where you need to do a vanilla of 7/8/8.1 and then do an OS upgrade through winupdate?
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
The whole point of the Insider Preview is to have people test alpha/beta releases that are under active development. Having extensive telemetry and reporting makes perfect sense in that context and Microsoft has been very clear from the beginning that they were collecting such data.
After Windows 10 is released, the delopment of Windows 10 will continue and new development builds will be available to insider members. The insider program doesn't stop once Windows 10 is released.
If you don't like the data collection, don't run the Insider releases and instead upgrade to the retail release from a Windows 7 or Windows 8 install after the Windows 10 release date.
I decided to install the Insider Preview on my laptop, as a means to evaluate Windows 10 before the final version touches my desktop, and so far I'm liking it.
I, on the other hand, did the same and detest it.
The "returned Start Menu" is a joke, and seems more an insult to everyone who wanted a Start Menu than an honest attempt to meet their needs. You can't rearrange the items on the menu; it's all alphabetical. The text in "All Apps" section is huge and absurdly widely-spaced, making even a short list of apps go on forever. Even if you remove all the live tiles, the menu still takes up a huge amount of space. Its absolutely useless as a Start Menu. Sure, there are third-party alternatives like ClassicStart, but most people aren't going to be using those utilities and I'm going to have to support them.
Then there's the fact that you search your files without the query being sent up to the Microsoft mothership. Searching for sensitive material you wisely stored locally? Microsoft is going to know about it. There are settings in the group policy editor to disable this, but - at least in the most recent preview - they don't actually work. Home versions of the OS don't ship with GPEdit either.
Windows10 is still pretty pushy with getting you into its online ecosystem too, although I will admit it is toned down (ever so slightly) from Windows 8.1. It's slightly easier to notice that you can make a local account without using hotmail, for instance. But from its prominent app-store, to its OnDrive cloud storage, to its mail client that doesn't support POP3, Windows10 requires you to use Microsoft online services to make use of any of its newer features.
Metro, of course, continues to be an abomination, made all the worse by the fact it still remains only half-heartedly integrated into the system. Dig one or two menus deep into the control panel (sorry, its called "Settings" now) and you'll be facing an old-style WindowsXP interface. The shift is jarring and likely confusing to many newer users, and more experienced users will dislike how all the superficial settings have been shuffled about and renamed for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, no third-party app can fix this.
Then there are the niggling minor loss of features. I'm not talking the removal of significant apps - like Media Center - but just little features of the OS that used to be available in older versions of Windows that have been inexplicably removed in Windows10. The ability to uninstall most of the default apps (try removing the XBox app or OneNote; you can't) that come with Windows, for instance. Or control over whether or not to install updates, as another. Individually, these are annoyances but combined they are a headache.
The back-end of Windows 10 seems reliable enough; it has the fast pseudo-start (really, just booting from hibernation since Windows hasn't do a clean shutdown since Windows8) that people like, and seems reliable enough (for Windows). But it doesn't bring anything interesting to the table, still has all the stuff I dislike about Windows 8/8.1 and adds a bunch of unwanted restrictions on top of that. I honestly would recommend Windows 8 over Windows 10 at this point (although if you had the option, take 8.1 or - preferably - Windows 7 if you can). At least with those your computer is still yours to do with as you like, and not as Microsoft thinks you might want to use it.
Windows 10 is free, now you just have to pay for downloadable content.
If Microsoft had communicated more clearly, this discussion wouldn't be necessary. Microsoft is extremely badly managed.
I have a licensed copy of Windows 7. Will I retain all the rights and accesses I have with this copy when upgrading to the Windows 10 license?
It is a very simple question. You may choose to answer "yes" or "no". No buts, no ifs, no legalese bullshit. There are two legit answers to this question and no others are accepted as valid input.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can't rearrange the items on the menu; it's all alphabetical.
You can still pin items, in the tile area. They can be rearranged not only vertically (like in Windows 7) but also horizontally now.
The text in "All Apps" section is huge and absurdly widely-spaced, making even a short list of apps go on forever.
If you click on the headers (0-9, A, B, C, etc.) it will zoom out to show the full list of headers, and clicking on one can take you straight to that section.
Even if you remove all the live tiles, the menu still takes up a huge amount of space.
Incorrect. If you remove all live tiles, you can collapse the Start menu to a much smaller space than the Windows 7 Start menu. Or make it any size all the way up to full screen. Your choice.
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