I have mixed feelings about Windows 10. The underlying OS seems stable and runs well, but I absolutely cannot stand the UI. It seems to have been designed by several different teams of people with absolutely no communication between them whatsoever. It’s bloated and overcomplicated, and there is very little consistency across the UI. They have gone away from icons and pictograms (which were originally designed to make the OS easier to navigate) in favor of walls of text. The new “settings” interface is vastly inferior to the legacy Control Panel, and they still include both which complicates things further for non-savvy users.
I used to use the search function in Windows 7 exactly how you describe. It was very easy to press the Windows key, start typing the first few letters of a application’s name and press enter. When I do the same in Windows 10, I get DLLs and other random associated crap and end up having to scroll to find what I’m actually looking for.
I won’t even get into the data collection ingrained in Windows 10.
When it first came out and they were trying to force people’s PCs to update, I resisted for quite a while. I somehow managed to avoid a situation where I’d wake up and find my PC magically updated itself to Windows 10. When I finally “upgraded” from Windows 7 I used tolerated it for about year. Then I bought a Mac.
Oh, it’ll still do that if you let it. Time after time, its “upgrade” to 10 completely killed wifi. As in didn’t exist. Know what a laptop is without wifi? A brick with a keyboard.
Oh, I tried all the usual tricks, saying you’re on a metered account, killing the upgrade dæmon from its autostart, all that, still no joy.
I killed the .exe associated with it, and it kept growing back like a weed. Created a 0-byte file and renamed it to the .exe, stomping on it, same dealy. Found that it created a ‘Windows10upgrade’ directory and dumped its new-version files in there, so I deleted everything inside, and made the dir readonly. You guessed it, it grabbed all those files anew to the exclusion of all else, pegging cpu/disk activity ’til it was done.
Finally was able to stop it by creating a file (not dir) by the same name, and it must’ve gotten confused enough to not get around it.
I needed to use a vpn for work, so gave it to the boffins at work to do whatever to it, and they must’ve just wiped then installed a clean from-dvd version of 10 on it or something, who knows. All I know is I pulled all my stuff off the laptop and was prepared to burn it in a sacrificial fire to exorcise its demons, so didn’t care what they did with it.
Let’s take the naive and innocent perspective….
User has a valid copy of Win 7, activated. In trepidation up grades to Win 10 since MS has been sending out endless dire warning nags about the dangers and death of Win7. Behold! after the update is done they find the new OS is activated. They didn’t do anything to actually MAKE that happen, have no idea how it did happen.
So……that’s their fault then?
MS absolutely can shut that down if they want to. They simply have not. The OS is no longer the MS ‘cash cow’. They need users/eyes on the new OS, and like any big business will do what is necessary to get the customers.
For huge volume licensing agreements they probably take a different tack.
I was reluctant to switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (W10) a few years ago, even though W10 was free back then. Happily, I have not experienced any issues with W10.
What I am waiting for, is a great deal on Windows Office 365.
I’ve resigned myself to spying. Just going to the store or anyplace, you are on camera. MS, Goggle, Russians, whoever. Unless you live off the grid , wait, Google Earth still has got you. What it is.
Did a search on [the most secure browser]. Turned up Tor Browser. Works so well it’s almost useless, clearly showing that pretty much everyone out there is gathering data on you. There are number of options available along with VPN.
I would suggest a fresh install be done when you have 2 days off or something. I did a fresh install of Win 10 and I was awake all morning till 6AM the next day. Turns out they’ll always be some kinda driver conflicts. Everything was grooving right along and then no Bluetooth speaker not working, or old printer drivers not supported…etc.
Also I would do a complete fresh install when going to 10 from Win 7. I mean like wipe everything clean and start new, fresh and funky!
The operating system spying on me, and the browser and the other software spying on me, and websites spying on me is not because "They" want to know what I think about spiritually important things, nor because they want to know anything about my struggle to survive unscathed when walking on the surface of this earth, nor because they want to know about my desire to attain Gods' Kingdom as soon as my tasks on this earth are completed.
Their spying is solely to gather information about me solely for marketing/advertising purposes, so the information about what I possibly like to spend money on can be sold for money.
Hello! Welcome to your device. What do you want to spend money on right now?
Hello! Welcome to our website. What do you want to spend money on right now?
Hello! Welcome to your operating system. What do you want to spend money on right now?
Hello! Welcome to your browser. What do you want to spend money on right now?
You won't tell us? Ok, we will track you and figure it out for ourselves and sell the information to many others.
You can move your OEM license to another computer, you just need to connect it with your MS account.
“Select the Start button, then select Settings > Update & Security and then select Activation . The activation status message will tell you if your account is linked.
Activation status
Windows is activated with a digital license - This means that your Microsoft account is not linked to your digital license. Follow instructions for Add an account.
Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account - This means that your Microsoft account is already linked to your digital license. No further action is required. You are ready to use the activation troubleshooter.”
I also recommend cookie auto-delete for privacy. If you indulge in the bad habit of staying logged in to sites all the time, you won’t like it, but you should use it, anyway.
And for those times when some website only works on a blink-based browser, Brave seems very good with privacy. But use Firefox, because blink monoculture is bad for all of us.
People only freak out about surveillance because “the public space” has been abolished. HUMINT has been replaced by SIGINT - SSDD: same “ish”, different decade.
Nobody is analyzing your personal behavior unless you’re truly an outlier and a potential threat to someone with the influence to do something about it. The real danger is opinion manipulation of a wide swath of the population based on aggregate data collection. Intense surveillance isn’t even needed for that anymore now that sufficient data has been collected.
