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Windows 7 and 8.1 Are Gaining More New Users Than Windows 10 (digitaltrends.com)
New submitter TroII writes: After Microsoft ended its year-long "free" Windows 10 offer, new installations have slowed predictably. But in an unexpected turn, October saw more new installs of both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 than of Windows 10. Compared to September's numbers, market share increased only 0.06% for Windows 10, while new installations of Windows 7 and 8.1 were an order of magnitude higher at 0.68%. According to tracking firm NetMarketShare, Windows 7 is still by far the most popular version of the OS, installed on more than twice as many computers as Microsoft's latest offering.
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You know what's funny? That there will almost certainly be someone who is willing and able to develop a tool to get rid of it. Maybe for a price, but people are willing and able to pay that price for their privacy.
MS could have had that money. And far more easily than whoever will develop that anti-spy tool.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Clearly, Microsoft isn't really interested in satisfying their desktop users. Instead, they're desperately trying to get into the 'customer as a product' business model, because they sense, (probably correctly), that they're doomed if they don't. That's why they did what they did with Win10 - they want a captive user base whose data they can control and exploit. Bing has been pretty much a failure, and their foray into the mobile market has been a total disaster. They're losing a lot of server business to *nix. They see the likes of Google and Facebook dominating the Web. They see leveraging their desktop presence as the only possible path to the kind of success that others are enjoying, because they no longer posses the imagination to strike out in a truly new direction, and because they're iron-bound by the artery-hardened internal bureaucracy that all big corporations eventually succumb to. Windows 10 was the desperate plan of a dinosaur in its death throes.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'm quite fond of the feature where the OS doesn't decide to reboot at arbitrary times without asking permission after installing an update I didn't approve.
The most important "feature" is the UI. And the UI of Windows 8 and 10 is a horrendous clusterfuck of bad design. There are a couple of third party programs that fix some of the problems, but why bother? Why not just use the version that is good right out the box and isn't constantly trying to fuck you.
Well, I strongly prefer an UI like in Windows 7 and want to be in full control of updates. The last point is the most important, because various Windows 7 updates in the past would have destroyed my installation if I hadn't checked before (not) installing them. I'm especially worried about "accidental" problems with dual boot systems, which happened two times in the past.
Apart from that, yes, of course, an OS is good if you don't need to know or care what it is actually doing. It should mainly provide a link to the library programmer and the application programmer, not to the end user. If Windows 10 didn't force updates and had the ordinary look and feel you'd expect from a desktop OS, or allow me to configure it in that way, then I'd be happy using it. A good OS should give you the same desktop experience all the time, with only minimal changes where they make sense, not force you to learn new ways of performing the same tasks every 3-4 years.
The problem is that once a sufficiently large number of people use such a tool, Microsoft will circumvent it, and they have the leverage. They'll just encrypt information vital to the working of the OS (e.g. updates, activation data) together with telemetry.
As much as I hate to say it, this is an issue that requires a juridical, not a technical solution.
Yes, the telemetry features are not a great move, but just disable all of that crap and you're all set.
Just because you think you've disabled it does not mean you've actually disabled it. Microsoft has the sole discretion to completely ignore you, sneak its spyware in through other vectors, or automatically re-enable its spyware at any time it damn well pleases.
Look at the Microsoft shills: so desperate to derail the topic, and so lacking in their ability to actually do so, that this is their chosen strategy. Priceless!
Just because you think you've disabled it does not mean you've actually disabled it. Microsoft has the sole discretion to completely ignore you, sneak its spyware in through other vectors, or automatically re-enable its spyware at any time it damn well pleases.
I had several delayed updates on Windows 10 that re-enabled auto updates and re-enabled every one of their spyware settings. And broken things like webcams, audio devices, and ethernet devices. Computer works one day, then the next its pooched. I even got an infinite reboot feature one time.
And a day with Wireshark will show us that W10 appears to ignore the telemetry settings.
I have this weird requirement for my computers. Whatever else they do, they are required to work reliably. Windows 10 fails miserably in that regard. Windows 8 is administrative whack-a-mole. Windows 7? It works.
I have one Windows 10 setup that works. It is a network that isn't connected to the internet - airgapped by maybe 5 miles. No updates.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Well, Linux did just hit a recent high of 2%.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
According to Microsoft, you job is not to use your computer for work, instead your job is to look at the advertisements so that Microsoft makes more money.