8 ms·

Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO. - Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence o

Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO. - Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence of "do not upgrade") - IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy) - breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX) - while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.") - erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?") - is very difficult to revert - phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.) Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel. (To be fair, pre-installed Windows 10 is usable, better than Vista even - but breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason is a big no-no)

TeMPOraL 10y ago
I generally agree, but I wouldn't necessarily call Win10 a downgrade - it's definitely better than 8 (I would think twice about upgrading 7 as having Win7 means that you likely have a pretty old hardware). I honestly don't understand what's going on. This looks like one of the most idiotic thing an IT company has ever done, and Microsoft doesn't care. They don't even try to explain it. And they fucked up big time - rarely any kind of scandal from the computing world reaches the general public, but this one did. I've been asked by random people for advice on whether or not to upgrade; people seem to know Win10 is "evil" and are annoyed by nagging.
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  Better than 8? Maybe. Worse than 7 on the same hardware? Absolutely, emphatically, YES. I.e. downgrade, QED. "Win7 means you have pretty old hardware" - well, let me see here. I'm typing this on a top-of-the-line 2016 ultrabook, with Windows 7. Exactly because this is a work tool (like "for people to do some productive work on"), enterprise tends to prefer boooooring older OS over colorful cloudcloudcloud spyware. IMNSHO, this is just a bunch of schmucks with KPIs based on new WinX installs. "Screw the userbase over? No problem, as long as we meet our bonus targets." This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years: nah, underneath it's still the same MS we used to know, just with a new paint job.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years That I agree with, and it's mind-boggling why they're doing this. As you said, it basically wiped out all the goodwill MS was building over the last few years.
  - rincebrain 10y ago
    I don't think it's the same "evil" Microsoft at work here - they got burned really badly by WinXP's "never upgrade" long tail (and the fact that people tended to just disable or infinitely defer Windows updates, so you also had a huge base of machines with targets painted on them), and are swinging the pendulum HARD the other way to do everything in their power to prevent that. It's probably not going to work out for them, given the number of issues people still seem to have about 10 even after using it for extended intervals, but I think it's fear of another XP, not malice or anti-competitive practice, that's driving this.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      Is it the same no-evil care for customer who pushes them to serve ads in the OS? I am sure they only serve ads "to improve the customer's experience"...
      - rincebrain 10y ago
        No, AFAICS that part is some combination of trying to mitigate the total cost of {free OS, no-upgrade cost}, and wanting some of the fun information companies like Google get from their more invasive telemetry.
        cm2187 10y ago
        I understand but that makes Windows 10 pretty toxic. I think people would be less bothered (or less people would be bothered) if they were upgrading their users to an awesome OS. In my opinion they are upgrading their users to a piece of shit OS designed to monetize their users. That to me is an "evil" behavior.
- m_fayer 10y ago
  Better than 8? Possibly, except that Windows update in Win10 is out of control - nagging, forcing reboots, quietly resetting itself to more liberal settings if you ever try to restrict it, and pegging your CPU the second you go idle for more than 15 seconds. I need a Windows VM for Visual Studio and have both a Win8 and a Win10 one sitting around. While the Win8 one does look silly compared to Win10, it also manages not to antagonize me on a regular basis.
- ido 10y ago
  Win 7 became available starting at late 2009 and was popular well after 8 came out, I would suspect most computers that sold with it preinstalled would have no problem running 10. Does 10 even have higher system requirements than 7?
  - Piskvorrr 10y ago
    Requirements don't enter into it - and even the requirements from Win7 to Win10 didn't rise that much. I could live with slightly hungrier but better OS. Emphasis on "better".
  - Already__Taken 10y ago
    They only just moved them up. 10 I've found runs better on older hardware than 7, it's was the same story for 8.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I don't know about the requirements; I did upgrade from 7 to 8 (while also replacing a hard drive) and then to 10 (because I wanted Bash for Windows). It works very well, but my computer is a desktop, and I did pay a bit for it back then. Meanwhile, a lot of computers had Win7 preinstalled, and I wouldn't call most of them powerful. Hence the caution - OEMs don't give a shit, they'll happily sell a laptop that can barely lift its own OS[0][1], so if you upgrade that kind of equipment you risk basically bricking it. [0] - Just recently I've been "fixing" such one laptop for a friend of my mother - it was barely strong enough to lift its own Windows installation. I made it much more useful by just replacing the RAM die with a one I pried off a broken laptop that serves as an "organ donor". Hell, I found getting moar RAM to be a quick solution for most of the lower-end laptops that get "too slow". [1] - this happens for mobile too (as I experienced first-hand), so my rule of thumb is that in terms of computers and smartphones, buying cheap is worse than not buying at all
  - kmch 10y ago
    They just increased them. You now need 2GB for the 32-bit version of Win10, iirc. That's the only change, though.
- ghgfhgfhn 10y ago
  If China did this what would you think the reasons would be? Of course it would be to spy on their citizens, to exert social control. What makes us think the US is so different after the stuff that's gone down in recent years? I genuinely consider it a possibility that this is linked to the panic over terrorism and that governments now have access to the data being hoovered up on practically everyone by Microsoft. Of course I have no evidence. So the best that can be said objectively is that we cannot know either way, but still my gut is sending me warning messages.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > "Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary" (also read https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ )
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Everyone does this. Try sending an image of child sexual abuse through your gmail account and see what happens. Google even tells you they do it for rights enforcement: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ > For legal reasons > We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to: > * meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request. > * enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations. > * detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues. > * protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.
      - vetinari 10y ago
        How is that even in the same league? Google can disclose, what you send to their servers. Microsoft can disclose, what you keep on your own machine.
lars 10y ago
More than that, what it installs fits any classical description of malware. Windows 10 comes with an OS wide key logger, that logs what you write in any application, and sends it to Microsoft. (This usually evokes disbelief. If you think I'm wrong, please consider what you would do if it turned out I was right. Then, if you're on Windows 10, lookup your "speech, inking & typing" settings. This is where they ask permission to do this. It is turned on by default.)
- teacup50 10y ago
  No joke: "We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions." http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-typing-privacy-faq http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-...
  - quickben 10y ago
    Typed character recognition... Unbelievable
    - voidz 10y ago
      Makes you wonder if they are really saying profiling in obfuscated terms.
  - vmateixeira 10y ago
    I wonder how does this hold against intellectual property rights... Can they own all the software I may produce on their OS? It sure seems like they can have an easy access to the source code..
    - dhimes 10y ago
      I'm sure the TOS has you relieve them of liability and hold them harmless for any use they may make of the software that you wrote.
  - 10y ago
wodenokoto 10y ago
> Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence of "do not upgrade") Just like on iOS! I can just now, or later for my pending upgrade. It pops up everyday.
- Jyaif 10y ago
  This drives me completely insane as well. Note that I would have no problem updating my iphone if it didn't force me to install the latest Xcode to keep developing on it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
serge2k 10y ago
> breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason Obvious reason is they want people to upgrade. Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS even when the upgrade is free. edit: 7 year old OS.
- MawNicker 10y ago
  The rest of the world (not us) just wants a user interface that's consistent. People need the use of their computers nowadays. They build their lives on top of them. Sweeping that out from under people without asking is NOT ok. Many people rely on old/custom software that could have easily been rendered useless in the transition. This was not an acceptable response to users refusing to upgrade. They should be allowed to do that... They bought the old version. Who cares if the new version is free.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Make people WANT to upgrade You know, being faster and cleaner, added features, reverting what they borked up with 8. What they managed to achieve is a public disgust when someone mentions "windows updates" (in case Windows wasn't mocked enough already). Good job MS.
- dingaling 10y ago
  > Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS Why? They can just end support for old versions per their EULAs and shut-off access to the update servers. Canonical doesn't care if I'm still using 8.04, they have no responsibility or liability for old releases. Why would MS be any different? There's a deeper reason for this upgrade push but I don't know what it is.
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  Yeah, yeah. IF that upgrade was onto something that works like the existing setup, and especially IF it gave ME a choice when to upgrade, no problemo. See, I may have had reasons for holding onto W7, and they weren't "let's spite the Redmond people". Opening up shop in the morning and finding that none of your equipment works anymore, despite having been perfectly fine yesterday is EEEEEEXACTLY the reason people are refusing to upgrade (because no drivers for WinX, because fuck you that's why, Where Do You Want To Go Today - Windows X Or Windows Ten?). Replacing Microsoft's frustration of "the adoption charts are not high enough" with my frustration of "okay, companywide downtime while IT repaves from backups and scrambles to block the now-rogue vendor" works for them (externalizing costs, hooray!). In the shortest of short terms only, alas - the trust we had in the OS is gone, this could happen again (e.g. at any time in the future MS could decide that their old OS cannibalizes the sales of their Windows Up To 11, or whatever). NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. (Technically, "we want you to upgrade because we want you to upgrade" is a bit of circular reasoning)
unlinker 10y ago
What the fuck is "IMSHNO"? Not even Google can answer. Is it so difficult to write what acronyms mean instead of acting like a super cool geek?
- bulatb 10y ago
  "In My Not So Humble Opinion." They switched some letters around.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Not the parent but it's just a typo for IMNSHO, surprised Google didn't get that with only a single adjacent letter swap error.
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  Ah, I apologize for having confused you. Mistyped "IMNSHO", which stands for "In My Not So Humble Opinion". (Originally, I had used "IMHO", but then have realized that my opinion is anything but humble.)
ryanlol 10y ago
>Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO. This is a particularly shitty meme, can we just stop with it? >IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy) This is how windows updates have always worked, no? >breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX) >while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.") These do not malware make. >erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?") Try to decide which. Erasing and hiding are two completely different things. And again, this does not make it malware as I doubt they're intentionally deleting anyones files. >is very difficult to revert Significantly easier than any previous windows version. If you don't want it, why would you install it? You can just decline the install when the installer starts. >phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.) Yes and so did every windows version before it. Significant parts of the new telemetry have also been backported. Oh, and malware writers certainly don't claim that. >Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel. No.
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  Shitty meme for a shitty forced upgrade, very fitting. Where do you want to go today? Eh never mind, we get to decide that. No, that's explicitly not how MS updates worked: up to now, they were updates to existing OS, not automatic reinstall. If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto. Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both). I don't give a flying fork if that was intentional, it should not have happened, full stop. In other words, FU, astroturfer. Take your piece of crap and shove it. (Yes, your wonderful Windows Nein has given us about a man-year of unplanned maintenance so far, so you see how happy I'm about it)
  - ryanl0l 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I generally agree, but I wouldn't necessarily call Win10 a downgrade - it's definitely better than 8 (I would think twice about upgrading 7 as having Win7 means that you likely have a pretty old hardware). I honestly don't understand what's going on. This looks like one of the most idiotic thing an IT company has ever done, and Microsoft doesn't care. They don't even try to explain it. And they fucked up big time - rarely any kind of scandal from the computing world reaches the general public, but this one did. I've been asked by random people for advice on whether or not to upgrade; people seem to know Win10 is "evil" and are annoyed by nagging.

Piskvorrr 10y ago
Better than 8? Maybe. Worse than 7 on the same hardware? Absolutely, emphatically, YES. I.e. downgrade, QED. "Win7 means you have pretty old hardware" - well, let me see here. I'm typing this on a top-of-the-line 2016 ultrabook, with Windows 7. Exactly because this is a work tool (like "for people to do some productive work on"), enterprise tends to prefer boooooring older OS over colorful cloudcloudcloud spyware. IMNSHO, this is just a bunch of schmucks with KPIs based on new WinX installs. "Screw the userbase over? No problem, as long as we meet our bonus targets." This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years: nah, underneath it's still the same MS we used to know, just with a new paint job.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years That I agree with, and it's mind-boggling why they're doing this. As you said, it basically wiped out all the goodwill MS was building over the last few years.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  I don't think it's the same "evil" Microsoft at work here - they got burned really badly by WinXP's "never upgrade" long tail (and the fact that people tended to just disable or infinitely defer Windows updates, so you also had a huge base of machines with targets painted on them), and are swinging the pendulum HARD the other way to do everything in their power to prevent that. It's probably not going to work out for them, given the number of issues people still seem to have about 10 even after using it for extended intervals, but I think it's fear of another XP, not malice or anti-competitive practice, that's driving this.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    Is it the same no-evil care for customer who pushes them to serve ads in the OS? I am sure they only serve ads "to improve the customer's experience"...
    - rincebrain 10y ago
      No, AFAICS that part is some combination of trying to mitigate the total cost of {free OS, no-upgrade cost}, and wanting some of the fun information companies like Google get from their more invasive telemetry.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        I understand but that makes Windows 10 pretty toxic. I think people would be less bothered (or less people would be bothered) if they were upgrading their users to an awesome OS. In my opinion they are upgrading their users to a piece of shit OS designed to monetize their users. That to me is an "evil" behavior.
m_fayer 10y ago
Better than 8? Possibly, except that Windows update in Win10 is out of control - nagging, forcing reboots, quietly resetting itself to more liberal settings if you ever try to restrict it, and pegging your CPU the second you go idle for more than 15 seconds. I need a Windows VM for Visual Studio and have both a Win8 and a Win10 one sitting around. While the Win8 one does look silly compared to Win10, it also manages not to antagonize me on a regular basis.
ido 10y ago
Win 7 became available starting at late 2009 and was popular well after 8 came out, I would suspect most computers that sold with it preinstalled would have no problem running 10. Does 10 even have higher system requirements than 7?
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  Requirements don't enter into it - and even the requirements from Win7 to Win10 didn't rise that much. I could live with slightly hungrier but better OS. Emphasis on "better".
- Already__Taken 10y ago
  They only just moved them up. 10 I've found runs better on older hardware than 7, it's was the same story for 8.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I don't know about the requirements; I did upgrade from 7 to 8 (while also replacing a hard drive) and then to 10 (because I wanted Bash for Windows). It works very well, but my computer is a desktop, and I did pay a bit for it back then. Meanwhile, a lot of computers had Win7 preinstalled, and I wouldn't call most of them powerful. Hence the caution - OEMs don't give a shit, they'll happily sell a laptop that can barely lift its own OS[0][1], so if you upgrade that kind of equipment you risk basically bricking it. [0] - Just recently I've been "fixing" such one laptop for a friend of my mother - it was barely strong enough to lift its own Windows installation. I made it much more useful by just replacing the RAM die with a one I pried off a broken laptop that serves as an "organ donor". Hell, I found getting moar RAM to be a quick solution for most of the lower-end laptops that get "too slow". [1] - this happens for mobile too (as I experienced first-hand), so my rule of thumb is that in terms of computers and smartphones, buying cheap is worse than not buying at all
- kmch 10y ago
  They just increased them. You now need 2GB for the 32-bit version of Win10, iirc. That's the only change, though.
ghgfhgfhn 10y ago
If China did this what would you think the reasons would be? Of course it would be to spy on their citizens, to exert social control. What makes us think the US is so different after the stuff that's gone down in recent years? I genuinely consider it a possibility that this is linked to the panic over terrorism and that governments now have access to the data being hoovered up on practically everyone by Microsoft. Of course I have no evidence. So the best that can be said objectively is that we cannot know either way, but still my gut is sending me warning messages.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > "Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary" (also read https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ )
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Everyone does this. Try sending an image of child sexual abuse through your gmail account and see what happens. Google even tells you they do it for rights enforcement: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ > For legal reasons > We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to: > * meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request. > * enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations. > * detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues. > * protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      How is that even in the same league? Google can disclose, what you send to their servers. Microsoft can disclose, what you keep on your own machine.

lars 10y ago

More than that, what it installs fits any classical description of malware. Windows 10 comes with an OS wide key logger, that logs what you write in any application, and sends it to Microsoft. (This usually evokes disbelief. If you think I'm wrong, please consider what you would do if it turned out I was right. Then, if you're on Windows 10, lookup your "speech, inking & typing" settings. This is where they ask permission to do this. It is turned on by default.)

teacup50 10y ago
No joke: "We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions." http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-typing-privacy-faq http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-...
- quickben 10y ago
  Typed character recognition... Unbelievable
  - voidz 10y ago
    Makes you wonder if they are really saying profiling in obfuscated terms.
- vmateixeira 10y ago
  I wonder how does this hold against intellectual property rights... Can they own all the software I may produce on their OS? It sure seems like they can have an easy access to the source code..
  - dhimes 10y ago
    I'm sure the TOS has you relieve them of liability and hold them harmless for any use they may make of the software that you wrote.
- 10y ago

wodenokoto 10y ago

> Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence of "do not upgrade") Just like on iOS! I can just now, or later for my pending upgrade. It pops up everyday.

Jyaif 10y ago
This drives me completely insane as well. Note that I would have no problem updating my iphone if it didn't force me to install the latest Xcode to keep developing on it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

serge2k 10y ago

> breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason Obvious reason is they want people to upgrade. Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS even when the upgrade is free. edit: 7 year old OS.

MawNicker 10y ago
The rest of the world (not us) just wants a user interface that's consistent. People need the use of their computers nowadays. They build their lives on top of them. Sweeping that out from under people without asking is NOT ok. Many people rely on old/custom software that could have easily been rendered useless in the transition. This was not an acceptable response to users refusing to upgrade. They should be allowed to do that... They bought the old version. Who cares if the new version is free.
tdkl 10y ago
Make people WANT to upgrade You know, being faster and cleaner, added features, reverting what they borked up with 8. What they managed to achieve is a public disgust when someone mentions "windows updates" (in case Windows wasn't mocked enough already). Good job MS.
dingaling 10y ago
> Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS Why? They can just end support for old versions per their EULAs and shut-off access to the update servers. Canonical doesn't care if I'm still using 8.04, they have no responsibility or liability for old releases. Why would MS be any different? There's a deeper reason for this upgrade push but I don't know what it is.
Piskvorrr 10y ago
Yeah, yeah. IF that upgrade was onto something that works like the existing setup, and especially IF it gave ME a choice when to upgrade, no problemo. See, I may have had reasons for holding onto W7, and they weren't "let's spite the Redmond people". Opening up shop in the morning and finding that none of your equipment works anymore, despite having been perfectly fine yesterday is EEEEEEXACTLY the reason people are refusing to upgrade (because no drivers for WinX, because fuck you that's why, Where Do You Want To Go Today - Windows X Or Windows Ten?). Replacing Microsoft's frustration of "the adoption charts are not high enough" with my frustration of "okay, companywide downtime while IT repaves from backups and scrambles to block the now-rogue vendor" works for them (externalizing costs, hooray!). In the shortest of short terms only, alas - the trust we had in the OS is gone, this could happen again (e.g. at any time in the future MS could decide that their old OS cannibalizes the sales of their Windows Up To 11, or whatever). NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. (Technically, "we want you to upgrade because we want you to upgrade" is a bit of circular reasoning)

unlinker 10y ago

What the fuck is "IMSHNO"? Not even Google can answer. Is it so difficult to write what acronyms mean instead of acting like a super cool geek?

bulatb 10y ago
"In My Not So Humble Opinion." They switched some letters around.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
Not the parent but it's just a typo for IMNSHO, surprised Google didn't get that with only a single adjacent letter swap error.
Piskvorrr 10y ago
Ah, I apologize for having confused you. Mistyped "IMNSHO", which stands for "In My Not So Humble Opinion". (Originally, I had used "IMHO", but then have realized that my opinion is anything but humble.)

ryanlol 10y ago

>Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO. This is a particularly shitty meme, can we just stop with it? >IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy) This is how windows updates have always worked, no? >breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX) >while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.") These do not malware make. >erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?") Try to decide which. Erasing and hiding are two completely different things. And again, this does not make it malware as I doubt they're intentionally deleting anyones files. >is very difficult to revert Significantly easier than any previous windows version. If you don't want it, why would you install it? You can just decline the install when the installer starts. >phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.) Yes and so did every windows version before it. Significant parts of the new telemetry have also been backported. Oh, and malware writers certainly don't claim that. >Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel. No.

Piskvorrr 10y ago
Shitty meme for a shitty forced upgrade, very fitting. Where do you want to go today? Eh never mind, we get to decide that. No, that's explicitly not how MS updates worked: up to now, they were updates to existing OS, not automatic reinstall. If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto. Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both). I don't give a flying fork if that was intentional, it should not have happened, full stop. In other words, FU, astroturfer. Take your piece of crap and shove it. (Yes, your wonderful Windows Nein has given us about a man-year of unplanned maintenance so far, so you see how happy I'm about it)
- ryanl0l 10y ago