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Microsoft No Longer Allows Admins To Block Windows Store Access In Windows 10 Pro (zdnet.com)
If you're an administrator, you will no longer be able to block Windows 10 Pro users on your watch from accessing the Windows Store. Mary Jo Foley reports for ZDNet: Up until a month ago, admins could use Group Policy to shut off employees' access to Windows Store if they were running Windows 10 Pro. Controlling this access is a requirement for some businesses. But last month, Microsoft changed that option, claiming that Store access was required for all versions of Windows 10 except Enterprise and Education "by design." Admins still can use AppLocker or Group Policy to block access to the Windows Store if their employees (or students) are running Enterprise or Education.
This company SUCKS.
You don't own your computer. redmond does.
Microsoft, can you please stop f**king up? You had one job.
This time, I can actually believe it.
There is a reason now to switch.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why are they continuing to aggressively push invasive, paternalistic, and generally super-assholey "features" that make me never want to go back to a Microsoft OS?
Nothing posted to
There's probably technical reasons for this but I am sure they also don't mind the ability to get greater visibility of the store and additional revenue.
...who the customer is.
Cheers, Glen
Forced "upgrades", removing features after the fact, spyware you can't disable.
Please Microsoft, keep pissing off users and administrators. Soon since everything will be "in the cloud" and all apps will be web based we won't have a reason to use your shitty OS anymore.
Candy Crush Pro Business
I'm not your normal /. "#$%! Microsoft" kinda guy. I've been an MS guy my whole life, only dabbling in other OSs briefly.
Often you see people (here) chanting about #@$%^ Microsoft or "are you surprised" or any other snarky remark, I traditionally dismiss these as the extreme tinfoil people who would hate whatever they do, regardless.
That being said, Microsofts moves with Windows 10 have gone from "hmm ok that's questionable, but I can see past it" and "this looks desperate, it's kinda shitty, but oh well" and "well that's definitely dumb, but I'm sure some great nerd will hack up an awesome all-in-one little 'fixit' tool for Windows 10 to take out all the crap"
It's now at a point where it's outright sounding BAD. Like proper, bad. The things they keep doing are worse and worse, more and more intrusive. I thought the pushy installer was rough but ok, once it's on, they aren't going to abuse it too much, they are getting their data, from most people who aren't clever enough to turn stuff off.
Nope! It's getting SO bad, I'm really thinking of sticking with 7 as long as humanly possible. Maybe I really will end up a Mac guy after all, or something?
Super unimpressed at this point.
i just block the outgoing connection with my firewall.
Sorry but it's a royal PITA to have to contend with Candy Crush, XBox and misc stupid shit in Win10 on a corporate environment. Still fucking hate 10.. >:(
If you're an administrator, you will no longer be able to block Windows 10 Pro users on your watch from accessing the Windows Store.
Works just fine with some firewall rules on the core router in the office.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What competent windows administrator hasn't already blocked the telemetry, live tile, and play store IP addresses at the corporate firewall already?
This is a dick move for sure by microsoft (not that apple didn't do this years ago), but seriously folks... Maybe for certain elements you use the domain policy to disable features and whatnot, but blocking access to other computers is EXACTLY why we have firewalls.
I'm not a very good windows admin, just a programmer for a small consulting company. And the very FIRST thing we did after installing a test Windows 10 box on a isolated test network is determine all the IP addresses to block, and which ones to not block to let update and search still work.
I've been using Windows 7 for a long time and i haven't seen much of a compelling reason to upgrade to 10.
Most of the worst bits of windows 10 telemetry etc have been backported to 7 so unless you are spending more than normal amount of time inspecting updates there's no advantage to 7 on that front.
Better and simpler IMO to update to 10 and just install one of the telemetry blockers.
Ok... as for compelling reasons to upgrade..
.
DirectX 11.3 / 12.0 -- whether that's compelling is up to you.
HyperV -- and better virtualization support in general
Multimonitor -- better than 7, better than 7 with 3rd party addons IMO
Sleep / Wake / Reboot -- markedly better/faster than 7
Task Manager -- much improved over what's in 7
Antivirus -- built in good enough to run without more
SystemTray -- much better system tray/notifications setup
Security -- More OS hardening features
Smaller footprint -- smaller on disk, smaller in memory
There's a bunch of features (built in) and addons (like classic shell) you can use to make 10 look more like 7; but IMO sticking with the look of 7 vs 10 really just amounts to "resisting changes" for the sake of "resisting changes". I know people who jumped through hoops to make XP look like 98, then to make 7 look like XP etc... I don't think its productive or worth the effort, and you do miss out on some of the actual improvements by being close minded to the idea that maybe just may the windows 7 really might not be the pinnacle of user interfaces. (Not that windows 10 is... but it took little effort to adjust to it)
As a user of several windows versions 3.1 onward, Mac os7 thru X, and several linux desktops I can say that windows 10 desktop has some flaws (the confusing mix of old control panels and new "settings" to set things is probably the worst; and the a bunch of the defaults are idiotic; -- the default start menu tiles for example; I unpinned all of them; or the default file viewers for a few things being useless "modern apps" but that is all easily and quickly tamed. )
Is 10 a big upgrade from 7? No. But it is an upgrade, and it doesn't cost anything but some time and effort.
According to TFS, they removed the feature from Windows Pro only, not Enterprise. Home users don't care about group policy and enterprise users are already using Enterrpise; this move is to get small / medium businesses to move to the more expensive Enterprise version as well.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Or "Windows Pro" does in fact mean that in reality, it wasn't thought for professional users to begin with.
15 years ago, I just did "urpmi k3b", "apt-get install k3b" (or brasero) and that was that... No dependency hell, no problems, it just worked.
So what you're saying is... Our base comparison for Windows should be something older than 15 years, like Windows ME.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
No, millions of small business just buy computers with Windows Professional installed and join them to a small domain. Only big companies pay again for the Enterprise edition. Those small business are being f...ed removing this policy.
Yep, and too bad. That's what they get for making themselves reliant on Microsoft. Hopefully MS will make life even more miserable for these SMBs soon with more policies like this. I really enjoy seeing MS screw over their customers, and their customers continue to bend over for them. It's amusing, in a dark way.
The edition naming still has a point---Professional is the lowest version that can join a domain. Pretty much every organization steps up to Professional when it outgrows the "mom and pop" market.
Many mid-sized organizations do not go up to Enterprise.
If you have a thousands of employees, it's almost certainly worth it---but it doesn't start looking attractive unless you have a large IT footprint, above-average security requirements, or both.
This move forces businesses with security requirements to pay for Enterprise. I know for a fact that security requirements in the finance and defense industries will prohibit the Windows Store on most of their computers. I suspect HIPAA will force companies in healthcare to deploy Enterprise as well.
Now Professional is setup as the basic small-business version of Windows, and Enterprise will be necessary for most medium and large businesses. Microsoft will probably push this trend even further. They tweaked the features and licensing of their Server products when 2012 launched.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Right, and OEMs are not allowed to sell machines with Windows 10 Enterprise. So companies have to license enterprise at it's full retail price, which is about 500 dollars a unit. This puts Enterprise outside the price range for most small/medium businesses.
Microsoft is essentially doubling down on an already dangerous precident: You either buy Microsoft's ridiculously inflated prices for the Enterprise version, or you allow Microsoft to dictate how you deploy and manage your computers. First with the telemetry, and now with the app store.
What's the quote? "I have altered our agreement. Pray I do not alter it any further."
As a sysadmin, the computers under my care are MY responsibility. That means *I* control what happens to them, and I will not be forced to almost double our upgrade costs just to satisfy Satya Nadella's "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" freak fetish.
We've experimented with a couple of machines running Windows 10, but at this point it's become painfully clear that I will never upgrade our machines to Windows 10 because Microsoft has has demonstrated that despite all their hand wavy "I got better!" bullshit, they're still just as monopolistic and ruthless as ever.
Not a 'non-issue'. Large companies with assurance licencing may have enterprise.... but all the small companies with 10-200 employees order PCs with an OEM windows PRO lic on it.