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Windows 10 Tip: Turn Off File Explorer Advertising
- flukus 10y agoIs this just enabling the behavior?
- therein 10y agoNo, Microsoft is just starting to enable this by default. That's why you're starting to see these submissions pop up.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoThey're not going to stop, they've done some much like this with Windows 10 and have not once shown a sign of remorse. If it turns your stomach like it does mine, get off of it ASAP.
- flukus 10y agoThat's what I mean, when technical people put up with it by turning it off it's just encouraging the behavior. If it really turns your stomach then get off windows.
- RugnirViking 10y agoTo whom? Mac is possibly the one company that I consider even worse, and bless linux they try so hard but the support by important programs for me just isn't there. The truth is that anti-competitive law in most of the world these days is enforced so spottily and sparsely that companies can get away with all sorts of preposterous things and we just have to take it because they work hard to stay -just- better than everyone else
- flukus 10y agoSo you'll just lay down and keep taking it?
- PleaseHelpMe 10y agoAt somepoint I think windows 10 would be my best desktop ever since the interface is good, hardware compatability is good and the release of things like Linux Subsystem and new Powershell is awesome. But now it left me with great discouragement to use it. Beside the general privacy concern with it for a long time, now it got these ads and more. Common Microsoft, you are better than this.
- ams6110 10y agoI disabled Cortana and a bunch of other stuff in Windows 10. There a number of guides about what to turn off to protect privacy and enhance security.
- babuskov 10y ago> There a number of guides Yeah, that's the problem. You might miss some.
- ceejayoz 10y agoAnd if you don't, they'll just make the permissions more granular and default the new granular options to on. Like Twitter does with their 83 different categories of email notification.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago> There a number of guides about what to turn off to protect privacy and enhance security. Most of those guides degrade security, not enhance it. Some gems I've read[0][1]: Disable Smartscreen, Disable Windows Defender, Disable or Delay Windows Update, Block Time Synchronisation in the Hosts file, Disable Biometric login, Disable driver updates, Disable Secure Boot/TPM Chip, and Disable UAC. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect[2] all over. Most people who "know better" would never write such a guide; or the guide would just tell you to flip a half dozen switches in the official Settings -> Privacy UI and Cortana -> Settings UI, rather than disabling key security features. But longer more detailed looking guides are generally more popular in spite of being completely wrong/bad practice. [0] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html?page=2 http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclai... [1] http://bgr.com/2015/08/05/window-10-privacy-settings-how-to-stop-spying/ http://bgr.com/2015/08/05/window-10-privacy-settings-how-to-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- tedunangst 10y agoMicrosoft is evil, therefore I should change every setting to whatever the opposite of the default is!
- jrcii 10y agoThe spyware built into the OS is unsurprising in the context of moves like this which reveal how truly little respect Microsoft has for its users.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoWhile I still think Windows 10 is essentially the best version of Windows Microsoft has released (I think it in some ways more than Windows 7 and other ways less) moves like ads and the forced updates / restarts just really bring down the quality. I don't understand why they would shoot themselves in the foot so badly.
- morecoffee 10y agoThrashing would be my guess. Somewhere along the line the product vision was lost; the people who had it moved on to other companies. Windows 7 had some flaws, but it was at least trustworthy. Things like forced updates and having to turn off other annoying features makes me doubt the OS as a whole. Microsoft doesn't know how to fix it, so they are doing anything they can. These are their throes.
- Silhouette 10y agoIt was pretty obvious this was the intended direction as soon as Nadella was appointed, and given he's still there, the board presumably still believe in his vision. The numbers don't seem to be so positive so far, though, and the effects of reputational damage particularly among techies and other influencers could take years to fully manifest.
- scholia 10y agoThe share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. Under the previous system, you'd have been using worse code for 3-5 years, then been faced with an expensive and possibly traumatic "big bang" upgrade.
- Silhouette 10y agoThe share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Yes, but the balance of where the money is coming from seems to have been shifting, at least going by the public briefings. As I read them, it's not that Windows 10 has been successful: only 400 million people is quite a poor performance given everything 10 should have had going for it, and market share seems to have flattened dramatically since the end of the giveaway period. It's just that other parts of Microsoft are currently doing well enough to make up for it. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. When you start with as many problems as Windows 10 had, it would be hard not to! Still, I'm not convinced the things that originally put off the people who haven't upgraded already have really changed much at all. Potential deal-breakers like forced updates/reboots, privacy/telemetry concerns, driver/hardware problems, and ads all still seem to be there. Edge and Cortana are still mostly gimmicks. It still doesn't have as much support for playing media as previous versions.
- Neliquat 10y agoThat you need to do this, is frankly disturbing. Maybe I am a linux hermit, but you guys really abide this shit? I can't fathom a tech savvy person giving this kind of software a pass anymore. I know, lock in, standards, etc. But damn.
- paulddraper 10y agoLook how much we use the web nowadays. Our shit-abiding tolerance is higher than you might think.
- flukus 10y agoI've been going the other way lately, back to much faster desktop apps for everything.
- tracker1 10y agoThen there's the desktopified apps (spotify, slack, even VS Code), which work surprisingly well. Of course when React Native desktop environments stabilize, that may become a much more preferred target.
- flukus 10y agoI avoid electron apps like the plague too. Reactive native I'm more open minded about, but I'll reserve judgment until I see how well the obey things like themeing.
- tracker1 10y agoI don't mind the electron apps... also, am mostly okay seeing material-ui like designs in applications even when non-native... React Native should be native to the environment, though uncertain as to how theme friendly, I haven't played with it... for my needs Cordova and Electron have been good enough so far. But I can see how they wouldn't be the preference.
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- bajsejohannes 10y agoIt's baffling how many ad spaces they have in this paid for operating system. By default, there's not only this, but also "notifications" that are ads and lock screen ads. I would understand it if it was free, but my employer probably paid $100 or more for it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- muraiki 10y agoI'm so frustrated with Microsoft. I want to like them -- I'm using (and loving) C# and Visual Studio, I've used Visual Studio Code with Go and Typescript, I'm using whatever they call their cloud version control system, and I'm really enjoying these things... but then they pull moves like this and make me question as to whether I really want to invest my skills and money in their tech. Say what you will about Google's data mining, but I think that putting ads right in the OS is in a whole other league. And as many of us geeks know, this is inevitably going to lead to calls from friends and family trying to figure out what the heck this thing popping up is, and if it's a virus. "Nope, it's just Microsoft." I feel bad for the MS employees who are making awesome products but then have to deal with all the ridiculous fallout of Windows 10 decisions. Sorry for the rant, but these actions are honestly making me think about discontinuing my use and support of Microsoft's products, and I hope that someone somewhere is listening to us geeks.
- licked 10y agoYou can't just say you love Microsoft, except for this part though. Putting malware and spyware into their paid products after the fact is part of the cash machine that keeps the more attractive products afloat.
- sqeaky 10y agoI switched away from ms some time ago. I almost left Ubuntu because of the one Amazon link that comes in the default install. Operating systems are abundant nowadays. Something has to be really good to not switch away from based purely on its own merit. The real problem is compatibility with applications. I bet the real thing holding most to a single OS is that availability of their applications on a given OS.
- muraiki 10y agoYeah, I had been using Ubuntu as my main OS until I got a new job at a place that is mostly Windows. There are a few applications that I need to use for work that simply aren't available on Linux (or even OSX). Work encouraged me to use MS tech, although I do most of my work in R. But I had had a good experience with VS Code and TypeScript, so I tried out C# for things that I normally would have done in Python. I guess that I could always boot to Linux and run a Windows VM...
- nightski 10y agoSo reading TFA, it's simply ads for OneDrive/Office 365 (MS File Sync Products Only). Not general 3rd party ads like it makes it sounds. I still don't like the change but it's not nearly as bad as full blown ads.
- hiisukun 10y agoFrom the article: Ad-like notifications for OneDrive do appear in File Explorer in the Anniversary Update, but people running the Creators Update are now seeing actual advertising. This points out that there appears to be a transition from "Microsoft product ads" to "full blown ads". Quite worrying. I only use Windows in a VM, but still find it to be a very useful O/S for some things. I know that one could make the argument that clicking the "chrome" button and seeing ads (ie. the internet) vs clicking the "files" button and seeing ads are not that different. But to me, they are worlds apart.
- Neliquat 10y agoI read, skimming, that microsoft was transitioning to "Full blown ads" and came up a vowel off. Thanks for that, intentional or not.
- woolly 10y agoCan you point to some specific parts of the article that made it sound like it was general 3rd party ads, because I couldn't see any?
- notfed 10y agoAlso see: Set-Privacy.ps1: PowerShell script to batch-change privacy settings in Windows 10 https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy
- bitmapbrother 10y agoI could forgive them if this was a free OS, but embedding ads into an OS you paid for is despicable.
- makecheck 10y agoThe problem I think is the same one that ISPs face: some products really should be “boring” but companies hate that. Just like ISPs hate being dumb pipes that do a good job and stay out of your way, Microsoft just can’t resist being in your face when it really has no business doing so. The ideal OS, much like the ideal ISP, stays the hell out of the way and does an excellent, efficient job, doing only what you need it to do.
- tracker1 10y agoBut what you need it to do, may not be what I need it to do... and even then, there's features I may find superfluous that you find essential.
- makecheck 10y agoI’m not putting an upper limit on how many things an OS can do; it can have hundreds or thousands of features that are still largely invisible (excellent file systems, secure networking, massive APIs to help developers create apps supporting a wide variety of standards, etc.). You would never convince me however that a user is “asking” Microsoft to pop up crap in their face when trying to browse the hard drive. There is no one “asking” to have their laptop automatically rebooted and reimaged with an entirely new system that has a brand new and unfamiliar UI that breaks not just one but several of the applications needed on a daily basis. A lot of the changes to Windows lately have been actively user-hostile and it’s even more egregious that these things are present in paid versions of the system.
- lucaspiller 10y agoI wonder how much of this is due to being a public company. Shareholders want to see their investment go up, so companies need to keep doing things like this to increase their value and revenues.
- acdha 10y agoI think this is most of the problem: Wall Street thinks tech companies have constantly increasing share price and the executives are keenly aware of that. At some point sanity will set in as more people understand that the industry has matured and it'll be more acceptable to deliver stable results but bubble thinking will drive a lot of bad decisions until then.
- hackuser 10y agoThere must be a solution for corporate IT that doesn't involve endless settings. Does the Enterprise edition (or whatever it's called now) exclude these features?
- megablast 10y agoNo, this happens on the Enterprise edition as well.
- AlexeyBrin 10y agoNot if you are using Enterprise LTSB.
- AlexeyBrin 10y agoYou are looking for Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB edition.
- ouid 10y agowas it not simply obvious that this was going to happen? free pseudoforced upgrades to a new platform can have exactly one agenda driving it.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoFor people who are outraged by this I recommend you buy the Windows Signature Edition OS.
- ReverseCold 10y ago"Paying to get rid of ads? Preposterous! I want my free Windows. Windows has always been free and no ads, why did it change?!?!" - HN
- Spivak 10y agoGo to a store, pay for a Win 10 license, step through the installation like a typical user would ignoring anything that says "advanced settings", and see how pushy MS is with ads for their services.
- ReverseCold 10y agoWas talking about pro licenses, I haven't seen any ads anyone is talking about and I've never run any "WINDOWS 10 AD DISABLER" software.
- martinml 10y agoThis seems to be in all editions of Windows 10, even the Enterprise ones.
- ouid 10y agoWhy does it otherwise seem to be the consensus that windows 10 is a "good thing" in the comments on this thread?
- r00fus 10y agoStockholm syndrome and lock-in.
- Mithaldu 10y agoBecause from a technical view regarding performance, safety, ease-of-use and general amenities it is the best Windows so far.
- Aoyagi 10y ago>ease-of-use and general amenities Yea, nah. Splitting settings into various interconnected places with completely different UIs is anything but easy to use. Flat design has nothing to do with ease of use either. Not being able to disable updates might make it easier to use for the average user, certainly does not make the life of power users easier. It is the best OS deep under the hood, but that's where it ends.
- Mithaldu 10y ago> Not being able to disable updates certainly does not make the life of power users easier. Quite honestly, if you truly believe that as a power user you cannot completely disable upgrades in Windows 10, then you are not the type of power user who should be playing with such settings. It may sound cruel to the individual but opposed to the spectre of millions of Windows bot net units i consider it a net kindness to the rest of humanity. As for the settings, in win10 you don't even need to remember where they are. You can just type into the start menu what you need for all the commonly accessed things, or right click the start menu to get all the classic stuff you're used to.
- Aoyagi 10y agoYes, I believe there are scenarios where completely disabling updates is desirable. But more importantly, I believe in having a choice which updates to install while not disabling the updates altogether. >As for the settings, in win10 you don't even need to remember where they are. That's what you call ease of use? Having to remember what every single setting is called? Brilliant.
- inertial 10y agoIs there a tool / script to "fix" Windows 10 related privacy issues. I want to create a new user on my laptop but I dread going through tonnes of obscure settings to make Windows 10 usable.
- ssorc 10y agohttps://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1
- thr0waway1239 10y agoWith all the tech giants now engaged in a veritable race to the bottom, it is a good time to point out that people who work at these places seriously reconsider opening their mouths (or typing the words their brain thinks) when there are arguments around ethical practices in business. Somehow I am reminded of this essay by PG: "The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living." (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.)" http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html Have you noticed how close to telemarketing the entire Windows 10 upgrade process was, especially to Windows 7 customers who were very happy with their OS?
- api 10y agoThis is absolutely unforgivable IMHO. They seen determined to keep themselves out of the high end of the market.
- scholia 10y agoOn the contrary, they appear to be doing better than ever at the high end of the market.
- api 10y agoI suppose I meant high end of the consumer market. I assume this stuff is off in "enterprise" Windows.
- Neliquat 10y agoApparently it is also in enterprise, with a possible exception of the long term support release.
- api 10y agoIt really surprises me. Personally if I see ads in an OS I think of malware and bloatware infested low-end junk. It conveys a strong impression of inferior quality and user-hostility. I know I will not pay money for anything that's going to turn around and "monetize" me in this way. It's only forgivable for free products, for obvious reasons.
- scholia 10y agoSurface Pro range, Surface Book and Surface Studio are at the high end of the consumer market. They're all impressive (and expensive). Couple that with a backlash against Apple over the non-pro MacBook Pro, and its failure to update most other Macs. Then stir in articles like these: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up http://char.gd/microsoft/why-i-left-mac-for-windows/ http://char.gd/microsoft/why-i-left-mac-for-windows/ Why I’m Leaving Apple for Microsoft: Switching as a Photographer https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple-microsoft-switching-photographer/ https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple-microsoft-... and famously: Apple has lost the functional high ground https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou... I don't want to overstate the case, but there's obviously been a shift over the past three or four years....
- hota_mazi 10y ago"Show sync provider notifications"... Talk about obfuscating the preference so nobody can tell this is actually connected to advertising. Disappointed in you, Microsoft. And I say this as someone who's been really enjoying Windows 10 and Microsoft's recent opening to the world at large.
- DanBC 10y ago> How can you tell this is an ad? The dollar sign is one clue. It'll be interesting to see if this is compatible with UK regulation of advertising, which says that any adverts must be clearly identified as ads.
- zvrba 10y agoHaven't they learned anything from Sun's/Oracle's bundling of Ask toolbar with Java?
- captainmuon 10y agoI'm a bit conflicted about this. I don't want ads in my OS either. But I don't think this occasion is such a big problem. Microsoft offers a paid OneDrive plan, and they have to let people know how to subscribe. The UI of OneDrive happens to be File Explorer. Granted, I would prefer the banner to be shown only in the OneDrive "Folder" and not in Quick Access. I find other things much more annoying: - I really like the random lockscreen pictures. But sometimes, I get ads for Xbox Games or movies from the Windows Store. It seems inappropriate at work, and people think I'm a fan of game XY although I've never heard about it before. - On one PC, I get the infamous "Try edge, it is 20% faster than Firefox" every time I start Firefox. I assume (strongly hope) that this is a glitch... - A OneDrive ad that really annoys me is a popup window, telling me to login to OneDrive (and possibly purchase something, IDK). It opens at startup, and at random times when using office. I think when an application tries to open a file that doesn't exist on a network drive triggers it also (!?). I can deactivate it, but it comes back after some time. I have no need for OneDrive (as I already use Dropbox and Nextcloud). It's fine that you offer it to me once, but please let me opt out and never be bothered again. ---- On the positive side, maybe this means that there will be finally a proper common integration of sync providers? Every service places their icons in different places. Dropbox, Nextcloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, CERNBox (proprietary service at work). It would be really funny, because then this would mean the linked tip is another one of those frequently repeated tips that actually make you experience worse (as you can't see when a future Dropbox is trying to tell you there was a sync failure...).
- Girlang 10y agoWhat's annoying for me--and I'm a Microsoft fan-girl--is that I already pay for OneDrive! So seeing an ad for something I've already bought is double strange. Overall, I like Windows 10.
- yaegers 10y agoMy Win7 Ultimate installation is looking better and better. At least three more years of peace of mind while being entertained by stories like this. One can only imagine the state of this mess in three years. Let's not forget that win10 is basically just one year old. And they already have it in such a ridiculous state.
- porker 10y agoWhere's the Apple marketing campaign saying "We don't insert ads into your computer"? Steve, can you hear me from beyond the grave?
- MikusR 10y agohttp://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153379/how-do-you-turn-off-the-try-the-new-safari-notification http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153379/how-do-you-t...
- intoverflow2 10y agoTheir daily iCloud up sell dialogues are pretty much the same thing.
- skc 10y agoSomewhat ironic, as I was reading that article a huge AWS ad suddenly popped up on the site obscuring my view.
- Traubenfuchs 10y agoA small price to pay for an operating system that perfectly works out of the box and is free as in "there is a little watermark at the bottom of my screen".
- dualogy 10y agoIs that actually the case? (Didn't know as I upgraded my older non-Linux laptop from W7 to W10 and it re-activated automatically.) It won't cripple the OS after say 90 days other than a watermark, eg for long-lived VMs? Would be cool for web designers just occasionally checking Edge rendering in a VM once in a blue moon with otherwise zero interest in the OS..
- Aoyagi 10y agoIt's not free on any level. It doesn't work perfectly.
- ionised 10y agoExcept neither of those is/was true. Windows 10 has had its share of issues, usually resulting from updates breaking things. It's also not free. That was a limited time deal for owners of previous versions of Windows. Most future users will pay for it, either as a Retail copy or as an increased price for whatever Windows-based sysytem they might buy in the future.
- kortex 10y agoWindows 10 is not free, neither as in beer or libre. Sure, they gave it away for a little bit, but by that logic, drugs are free, because the guy down the street gave me some free baggies because 'he likes me'!
- yAnonymous 10y agoAre there any good alternatives to Windows Explorer? Preferably with tab support. Making the ancient file explorer that already has a shitty usability even worse is almost like asking us to stop using it.
- leoreeves 10y agoClover is pretty good. http://ejie.me http://ejie.me
- sherincall 10y agoI wholeheartedly recommend Total Commander[0]. Been using it for 20 years, literally the best program I've ever used. The only one I miss since switching to Linux, the copies don't come close. [0]: http://ghisler.com/index.htm http://ghisler.com/index.htm
- erikbye 10y agoUnreal Commander. https://x-diesel.com/ https://x-diesel.com/
- sutoor 10y agoXYplorer: https://www.xyplorer.com/ https://www.xyplorer.com/
- japaget 10y agoBeyond Compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/ http://www.scootersoftware.com/)
- duncan_bayne 10y agoI don't understand why anyone is surprised by this. When I think of Microsoft, I think of the Halloween Documents: http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ I've not seen anything to suggest they've fundamentally changed since then. The Microsoft that wrote the following in 2002: "Messages that criticize OSS, Linux, & the GPL are NOT effective. Messaging that discusses possible Linux patent violations, pings the OSS development process for lacking accountability, attempts to call out the 'viral' aspect of the GPL, and the like are only marginally effective in driving unfavorable opinions around OSS, Linux, and the GPL, and in some cases backfire. On the other hand ‘positive’ OSS, Linux, and GPL messages are very effective - both across geographies and audiences." ... is still with us today, and their current strategy is merely a reflection of their assessment of their marketing. The 'nice' Microsoft you see today is a PR exercise based on their discoveries, 15 years ago, about the (in)effectiveness of FUD tactics against open source software.
- intoverflow2 10y agoAs a Mac user I don't really see how this is any different from when you fill up the paltry iCloud Drive space on OS X and it shows a message every time you boot where both options of the dialog box take you to the iCloud pref pane to buy more storage. It's sucky but definitely not just an MS thing.
- speg 10y agoFTA: > (Ad-like notifications for OneDrive do appear in File Explorer in the Anniversary Update, but people running the Creators Update are now seeing actual advertising)
- malikNF 10y agoSorry if this comes across as rude, but you really have no idea what you are talking about if you actually think Ubuntu and Linux are one thing and that it's nitpicking when someone says Linux is not Ubuntu. Again let me point you to distrowatch. http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity Almost all the distributions here are Linux based distribution. The goals of the people running these projects are really diverse. Invite you to try a few of these distros and I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised. (get something like https://www.virtualbox.org/ https://www.virtualbox.org/ and if you have any free time you could try a few of these distros) p.s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFNiMV27VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFNiMV27VY (What Is Linux? | The Linux Gamer [~4 mins])
- Waterluvian 10y agoI'm so lost as to why you think I'm suggesting it's one thing... Ubuntu is one example of a Linux distribution. It's an example of a Linux distribution with advertising. Which is the point I'm making re: OP's message about "you people" when saying that this is a uniquely windows issue. Look to Ubuntu to see how this can exist in the Linux community. Ubuntu is part of the Linux community.
- dang 10y agoI'm glad that you don't mean to be rude, but this breaks the HN guidelines against calling names in arguments. Applying the technique recommended there, this: you really have no idea what you are talking about if you actually think X ... can be shortened to this: not X We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13837605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13837605 and marked it off-topic.
- xelxebar 10y agoNow I'm imagining the horror of CLI tools that spit out ads to stderr every few invocations: $ git clone git.kernel.org/linux.git ***** TRY SUBVERSION ENTERPRISE FOR $49.99/MO ****
- pweissbrod 10y agoOh hell no. Does any know an alternative version of windows 10 costing extra $$ for which is guaranteed without "telemetry" "forced updates" and other hostility? 3rd party add-ons to disable this behavior are just temporary hacks. If there isnt a 'windows-10-guaranteed-isolated-edition' kicking around windows 7 will be the last microsoft OS I ever install on bare metal.
- dagw 10y agoWindows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Support Branch) should be that.
- Aoyagi 10y ago>3rd party add-ons to disable this behavior are just temporary hacks. And I understand that disabling these amazing features in control panel (or that new nonsense) also tend to be temporary - until some update randomly turns those features back on.
- SippinLean 10y ago>an alternative version of windows 10...without "telemetry"...windows 7 will be the last microsoft OS I ever install on bare metal You know all the telemetry was backported to 7 and 8 right? You can remove it but that would fall under "3rd party add-ons to disable this behavior" and thus would not satisfy your needs.
- sutoor 10y agoIs it installed from a patch/update (which can be avoided) or by some other means?
- SippinLean 10y agoYes, updates. If you memorize all the KB123456 numbers associated with telemetry you can block them or uninstall them; however again you can mitigate them in 10 as well.
- Esau 10y agoThat fact that you would need to turn off advertising, inside of the operating system itself, is disgusting.
- laxentasken 10y agoI get somewhat similar "ads advising me to use onedrive just to be able to access my files everywhere. Running win10 enterprise. How about that...
- wodencafe 10y agoWhen I dared to question publicly Micro$oft's motives in releasing and open sourcing .net core, I was downvoted and swarmed by the community, who are probably just grateful for a little good will from a long time enemy. But I am convinced this good will was a ruse, a charade, to excuse their questionable business practices at the the expense of the consumer. Advertising directly inside the O.S. is a good example. And we, who reaped the benefits of this goodwill, are more likely to turn the other cheek when they are out of line - especially if (god forbid) our product relies on Windows. "Oh, that's just Micro$oft being Micro$oft again." "But what about all the good things they've done lately?"
- Neliquat 10y agoIts not the 90's, drop the $. Its implied already anyway, and beyond being redundant and unflattering, it makes you appear immature. I think many agree in spirit with your post otherwise.
- jug 10y agoThe cultural rift in MS between their recent OSS efforts and ads in their own OS is astounding. Why are they trying to acknowledge the use cases for other operating systems and reduce the appeal for their own?
- hackeradam17 10y agoThanks for sharing this. I'm getting beyond fed up with Microsoft's crap, but unfortunately it's either them or Apple (which isn't much better) for a number of the tools I need access to. If only Linux could get competitive in the video editing space :(
- nkrisc 10y agoTo me this is as dumb as my kitchen table having ads laminated on it. Windows is the table on which I do my work. I don't want to see it or notice it, I just want it to support me and my stuff and be a damn good table.
- masklinn 10y agoThe one that gets my goat right now is the Office spam in the notification bar.
- tmsldd 10y agoWindows is a lost case. Sadly, seems like MS walks backwards... Win10<=Win8<Win7<WinXP...
- ape4 10y agoOh so that's why Windows 10 was "free"
- criley2 10y agoQuick question: how isn't this just more monopoly abuse a la Internet Explorer? They have a monopoly sized market share of desktop computers, which they are using to unfairly boost their Dropbox competitor. This seems very similar to the very behavior that earned them an anti-trust smackdown. Then again, I don't blame them, with the current administration you could probably murder children and not face any real push back from the DoJ.
- DrTung 10y agoThere's also a huge, ever increasing, technical debt that's dragging down the quality of Windows. For example, switching from Windows\System to Windows\System32 for Chicago made 100% sense, but how did we end up with 32-bit software stashed in \Windows\SysWOW64 and 64-bit software in \Windows\System32? It's like that movie The Day After Tomorrow where they discuss how big a part of US they have to abandon, a few releases back Linux tossed out a lot of 90's assembler code, such purging has never occurred in Windows source tree.
- prophesi 10y agoIf you don't use OneDrive, I also recommend just straight up uninstalling it from your PC so that it doesn't randomly boot up while you're using Explorer.
- wdr1 10y agoI've been really frustrated with my MacbookPro of late & was considering switching to Windows. Pretty sure I'm going to stay with OS X for now.
- jakekovoor 10y agoWhat's the point of us paying $119 from our hard earned cash for Windows 10, when Microsoft is starting to make the Windows 10 more like an advertising trap... Think about it, When you buy a product, and you’re presented with ads about other products that the company is offering. Rather than them providing your money’s worth of value, you’ll get the feeling that they’re making money out of you rather than fulfilling their promise. It's just shady business, Microsoft... Here's a great writeup that I found with 5 simple steps to turn the damn File Explorer ads off on Windows 10. I hope it might prove to be useful for you guys :) http://saintlad.com/turn-off-file-explorer-ads/ http://saintlad.com/turn-off-file-explorer-ads/