Even In Remotest Africa, Windows 10 Nagware Ruins Your Day (theregister.co.uk)

Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: When you're stuck in the middle of the Central African Republic (CAR) trying to protect the wildlife from armed poachers and the Lord's Resistance Army, then life's pretty tough. And now Microsoft has made it tougher with Windows 10 upgrades. The Chinko Project manages roughly 17,600 square kilometres (6,795 square miles) of rainforest and savannah in the east of the CAR, near the border with South Sudan. Money is tight, and so is internet bandwidth. So the staff was more than a little displeased when one of the donated laptops the team uses began upgrading to Windows 10 automatically, pulling in gigabytes of data over a radio link. And it's not just bandwidth bills they have to worry about. "If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.This is not a one-off case. We're reading about similar incidents everyday. Automatic updates, accidental automatic update, and the humongous data that these updates eat are ruining user experience for many. These are real issues. It's been roughly a year since Windows 10 has been officially available to consumers, and Microsoft is yet to address the issue.

Comments

Boot to the head

[Lord_Rion]

We keep hearing about this... it's clear that Microsoft doesn't care. I don't understand why people are so shocked by that concept.

Re:Boot to the head

[whoever57]

it's clear that Microsoft doesn't care.

It's not that Microsoft doesn't care. Microsoft cares. The software is working as designed. Microsoft would be upset if the software did not work in this fashion.

Did you mean that Microsoft cares about its users? When has Microsoft ever done that?

Metered connection

[Utopia]

Set the connection as a metered connection. Windows Update will not pull updates over the connection.

Re:Metered connection

[bmo]

Windows Update should not pull any data unless /explicitly told to/.

For /all/ types of connections.

Your message is "blame the user, always."

Ever watch a "normal user" (not anyone here commenting at slashdot) deal with a PC? Demanding that the user figure out whether or not to manually set the upgrade to "metered connection" is beyond the pale.

GWX is malware attached to a user-hostile OS and society-hostile corporation.

--
BMO

Re:Metered connection

[kyrsjo]

In the original reddit thread, someone mentioned that this was not available if the connection is seen by the OS as a normal Ethernet connection, and that most satellite connections presents them like this.

multiple levels of stupid

[bzipitidoo]

The pushy upgrade was a stupid idea for more than one reason, and this was well known before Microsoft did it. There's the old saw "don't fix it if it ain't broke". Some hardware would quit working. The upgrades were most cavalierly programmed to happen without regard to the customer's needs, able to take a computer out of service for hours, and that could be just when the owner had scheduled some important work. And of course for those with limited, expensive bandwidth, it's damned rude of Microsoft to pig out on such a precious resource without asking. That's stooping to the level of online advertisers, who deserve to be blocked because they just can't lay off the obnoxious loud, flashing animated video advertising that eats gobs of bandwidth and CPU time. Not that Microsoft was ever much above that level.

Speaking from my experience as a system administrator, doing a major upgrade on production systems for the heck of it was a major no-no. We only upgraded if we had to, for some crucial new functionality, and we'd spend at least a week preparing for it with tests on identical equipment if available, dry runs, and the like. We'd document how long it was going to take, and if too long we might set up a temporary system. We were not going to risk taking down the website of our company. Uptime is critically important. Stunts like this pushy, opt out upgrade assure that Windows will stay permanently banned from the server room.

That Microsoft apparently can't grasp any of this or just doesn't care shows, again, how stupid their leadership is. Meh, they've been unbelievably stupid for 15 years now. Getting in bed with the MAFIAA of all people, and deferring to those idiots on technical matters around DRM, wow, just wow. MS doesn't deserve to be regarded as a tech company, not while they're willing to defer to tech morons on the areas they're supposed to be the experts on.