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Windows 10 Will Soon Let You Opt-Out of Automatic Driver Updates (pcworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the oppressive-regimes dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Microsoft is giving users some more control over Windows 10 updates, with a new beta build of its operating system released Monday. The build allows folks with the Windows 10 Professional, Education, and Enterprise versions to defer new updates for up to 35 days. In addition, the company will allow those users to decide whether or not they want to include driver updates when they want to update Windows. It's a move that helps respond to one of the key criticisms of Windows 10: that Microsoft's regime of forced, cumulative updates has caused problems for users with some configurations. This way, users can steer clear of updates they don't want to install yet and dodge problematic driver updates. The newly-minted update changes are just one part of the improvements added to Windows 10 with the build released Monday. Microsoft is also working on making the initial Windows 10 setup more accessible using Cortana. The company's virtual assistant can ask users questions at setup -- when they speak languages that it can understand -- and use those answers to configure devices. A small number of beta users will also begin to see a battery life experiment pop up on their devices. Microsoft is also giving users an easier way to connect to a virtual private network. Once Windows 10 has a user's VPN settings loaded, it's possible to activate the connection with the tap of a button without opening up VPN settings.

12 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. I Already Opted Out by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I already opted out of ALL updates in Windows 10 by opting out of Windows 10!

  2. About letting us choose everything? by ls671 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about letting us choose everything we want to update?

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    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:About letting us choose everything? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What about letting users opt-out of ALL of the spying and "telemetry"? And how about letting users opt-out of having all of their privacy settings reset to what Micro$haft wants with every update? What about letting users opt-out of having Non-M$ software replaced with inferior M$ software? Or letting them opt-out of M$ just deleting their paid for non-M$ software, claiming its a threat?

      I have opted-out of using M$ operating systems and software...totally. Free at last! Free at last!

    2. Re:About letting us choose everything? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Windows 10 has been nothing but issues, failed updates, lost work, and totally ludicrous privacy settings from the start. Whatever their excuse is, it's a bad one. Whatever your apology for it is, it's a shit one.

  3. Consoles with keyboards by jxander · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When will MS just up and admit that they aren't in the business of desktop computer software anymore?

    Windows 10 is just an XBox with a keyboard and mouse. You have the same amount of control over the OS (basically none) and they're used for the same purpose (playing games and watching TV)

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    This signature is false.
  4. The sign that you are a software slave: by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The software doesn't allow you to do what you want.

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  5. Sorry, but this is not enough by guacamole · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nearly every home computer is running Windows 10 Home. So this means that most of non-education non-enterprise users still don't have the ability to turn off the automatic forced updates, and reboots. Jebuz, Microsoft, why can it be so hard to the way it used to be in Windows 8?

    1. Re:Sorry, but this is not enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One half way decent competitor could easily kill them in less than a decade with this continued unpopular OS design choices.

      Except that nobody really wants to compete. The Linux community cannot seem to be bothered with desktop user GUI concerns and all of the support headaches that come with them. They're too busy building the ultimate server appliances from the command line. Apple is basically the iPhone company these days and despite Tim Cooks protestations, it's clear that they have been neglecting the MacOS and desktop computing market. So that leaves Microsoft as the only major tech power that's still interested in building, maintaining and expanding a desktop, laptop and tablet user OS product to run on generic hardware in Windows 10. Despite that the fact that building and maintaining an OS is a boring business, it's actually quite a complex and expensive undertaking with many devils in many details and since consumers won't fork over much if anything just to purchase an OS, it's a thankless business to boot where margins are small and tens of millions of sales are necessary just to break even, let alone turn a profit. Under these circumstances it's hard to imagine a new competitor coming out of nowhere to challenge the entrenched Microsoft Windows fortress that still occupies an overwhelming majority of the desktop PC market which is currently on a long term glide path into niche status anyway. Eventually, only software developers and other professionals with serious computing needs will use desktop PC style workstations.

  6. Microsoft Should Shove Auto Updates Up Ther Ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Microsoft should shove all auto updates up their ass.

    Why?

    They have no problem shoving them up everyone else's ass.

  7. "Improvements" by ewhac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The newly-minted update changes are just one part of the improvements added to Windows 10 with the build released Monday.

    Nice Newspeak(TM) spin there.

    It's not an improvement. It's a fix, to a facility they broke in Windows 10 -- namely, the ability to control the update system.

    And if we're being perfectly honest here, it's not even a fix. It's a workaround to a facility that never fscking worked in the first place , i.e. installing device drivers through Windows Update. Never. Worked.

    And deploying this workaround serves as tacit admission by Microsoft that they they haven't the remotest clue how to fix it. Even after locking out those terribly pesky, annoying users and arrogating all administrative control to themselves with Windows 10, it STILL. DOESN'T. WORK.

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    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  8. TELEMETRY == No, Thanks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given the forced telemetry, Windows 10 doesn't even exist for me.

    And forced driver updates is so absurd!

    Forced anything is wrong!

    The privacy cost of telemetry greatly outweighs the savings in QA. The stability cost of forced driver updates greatly outweighs the benefits of making all Windows installations synchronized (making the PC a predictable target, like a console/phone).

    It is so sad that people at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Unity, Apple, etc., can accept the immorality of some of their data collection efforts. And it's especially sad when the justification basically amounts to, "everybody else is doing it".

    When a user uses a service which explicitly requires the user to volunteer information essential to use the service (e.g., user enters search terms in to a search engine), there is transparency. But beacons on every web page, and browser fingerprinting, and ultrasonic sounds from web page to microphone, and sending every keystroke in an address bar or every spoken word to Microsoft/Google/Apple/Canonical/Amazon/LG/Samsung/Sony is very wrong.

  9. Re:Use Windows 10 LTSB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/
    Did you know thereâ(TM)s a version of Windows 10 that doesnâ(TM)t get big feature updates, and doesnâ(TM)t even have the Windows Store or Microsoft Edge browser? Itâ(TM)s called Windows 10 LTSB, short for Long Term Servicing Branch.

    Did you know there are other editions of Windows that give the exact same feature list you provided?
    It's called Windows 7, or XP, or 2000.

    And you know what those also have in common with Windows 10 LTSB?
    You can't fucking buy any of them!

    I included your linked article in the above quote, purely to copy/paste from your own helpfully provided article:

    Unfortunately, thereâ(TM)s no legitimate way for the average Windows user to get it. Thatâ(TM)s no surpriseâ"Microsoft doesnâ(TM)t even want businesses using Windows 10 LTSB for most of their PCs

    Even the enterprising company I work for is a couple hundred employees shy of the 1000 minimum employee requirement to qualify for enterprise licensing.

    Not to mention the $2k/month fees and the $200/user account charges that come with enterprise licencing even if you qualify.

    But have fun with the yearly audits by Microsoft lawyers that threaten to sue you for buying licenses and then using your software exactly as the licence dictates!

    (From a different company I worked for before, I have a scanned letter from a court where Microsoft tried to sue us for having 12 users authorized on a SQL server that had 40 user CALs with receipts from their own "Open Licencing" store, and another letter a month later dropping the lawsuit. They did the exact same thing two years later. It cost us an additional $60k in legal fees each of those years for following the law!)

    Enterprise licencing can and does cost you over a million dollars a year for the smallest of networks and user bases possible once you include the yearly legal fees.