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I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their “evil” days. And their new hardware is legitimately exciting. However, betwee

I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their “evil” days. And their new hardware is legitimately exciting. However, between the telemetry collection in Windows 10, and straight up maddening stuff like ads in the OS, I just see red. The last time I clicked on a start menu my jaw nearly hit the floor due to all the extraneous and very much unwanted junk. Microsoft is clearly doing a lot right in terms of UX, but I lament that it feels like one step forward and two steps back. I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? Do most PC enthusiasts figure out how to disable that stuff or buy professional editions? My experience is limited to occasionally seeing family and friends do things in Windows, so maybe I’m just unaware of what the Windows-using technorati have known all along.

cryptozeus 7y ago
No ads in my work machine
- anonymfus 7y ago
  Did you read the article? It's a currently disabled optional feature in the latest insider build.
  - darkwater 7y ago
    I think it was referring to GGP mention of "junk" in Win10 start menu. AFAIK there are no ads in the Enterprise and Education versions of Win10
    - penagwin 7y ago
      But why ads at all in a $100 operating system?
      - kofejnik 7y ago
        because suckers are going to eat it, what else are they gonna do, install Linux? a somewhat less cynical answer: some division head decided it would look good on their performance review
- intopieces 7y ago
  I think Win10 Pro is exempt for now - someone correct me if I’m wrong.
  - peschkaj 7y ago
    My install seems to have no ads at all (including on the Start Menu) and I am using Win 10 Pro that I installed straight from the Windows download page. Maybe I don't get ads because I'm on the Insiders Slow Ring.
  - JorgeGT 7y ago
    I get candy crush in my Win10 Enterprise, each major upgrade...
    - navjack27 7y ago
      I bet you actually don't and it's just an installer link to the store. Is the entry in remove apps only 16KB?
      - JorgeGT 7y ago
        Maybe, I'll tell you next time it appears in my start menu. In either case it is not the size that bothers me, it's the fact they keep placing gaming icons in the start menu of an enterprise workstation, even after the user deletes them.
screye 7y ago
> ads in the OS, Yeah, I can't wrap my head around why they would do that. Is it really a big enough revenue stream to inconvenience the consumer to such a degree ? ______ Maybe it is because the type of user that uses wordpad is also not concerned with advertisements or user experiences. I mean, for most people a computer is either a Netflix + Internet + Office machine (they live in these apps, so the rest of the OS doesn't really affect them) or a device which runs significantly worse OEM software,(in which case, good UX was a lost cause anyways.)
- dobleboble 7y ago
  With 400,000,000 active Windows 10 users I would imagine that yes, it is quite worthwhile.
- numpad0 7y ago
  Big consumer techs offer experience, not products. The joyous Windows Experience of office work a la Job Simulator.
- gettingsnarky 7y ago
  > Yeah, I can't wrap my head around why they would do that. Investors before customers.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  > I mean, for most people a computer is either a Netflix + Internet + Office machine (they live in these apps, so the rest of the OS doesn't really affect them) or a device which runs significantly worse OEM software,(in which case, good UX was a lost cause anyways.) I really wish tech people would stop with this fantasizing that users don't have good reasons for the choices they make. This is why Linux Desktop has consistently failed for decades: the conception that it is "good enough" for "most non-technical people" because they've imagined some ultra-simplified usecase and then convinced themselves that they've made an appropriate replacement. Absolutely nothing good comes of this mentality.
  - sansnomme 7y ago
Marsymars 7y ago
Agreed that candy crush as default is heinous, but it feels like "telemetry" is kind of brought up as a bogeyman. Clearly, there exist scenarios where device owners have a legitimate need for no (or minimal, considering updates) communication with MS regarding device activity, but that's not generally the case for the average PC user. I want my OS maker to get stack traces from stacks so that they can fix crashes. I want my OS maker to receive actionable data on highly-used features so that they can effectively prioritize what to improve and what can be culled. (And obviously, I want this data to be treated with appropriate security.) edit: To clarify, users should be able to disable telemetry - it's the anti-telemetry rhetoric I find to be overblown - in general what I hear isn't nearly as nuanced as the replies here, it's simply blanket opposition to all telemetry.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I want my OS maker to get stack traces from stacks so that they can fix crashes I want my OS maker to ask for stack traces so they can fix crashes. I do not want this to be a default with no way to opt out. Even crash data is my data, not Microsoft's, and Microsoft should ask my permission each time it happens the way that MacOS does. Then again, that might make people aware of how often programs go sideways on Windows, which is not in Microsoft's interest.
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    That's funny, but they can only ask ONCE if they can always send crash data, not ask again every time the program crashes, which solves that problem.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      I think it's (and should be) up to the operating system, not the vendor. When programs eat themselves on macOS I get the option to send debug information to the programmer each time. Sometimes twice if the program has its own crash reporting mechanism, too (Panic's Coda, for example). Maybe there's an "always remember my selection" checkbox, but I don't remember ever seeing it, except once a year when I install the new version of macOS.
gruez 7y ago
>I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? The closest you have is LTSC. No ads out of the box. Still has telemetry though, although you can turn it down to "security" level. It costs like $300 for a license[1], and they won't sell it to you unless you commit to buying a bunch (although that can be worked around by buying a bunch of cheap CALs). [1] https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-upgrade-license-1-license/5301533?pfm=srh https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-...
mrgreenfur 7y ago
They've gotten a taste of the surveillance revenues and won't look back. When you install Win10 there is a nag screen to make sure you opt-in to all kinds of data collection.
- soupfordummies 7y ago
  It's more than one screen. And the workarounds to not signing into a Microsoft account just to INSTALL the OS are becoming more and more tedious by the month.
Joeri 7y ago
Agreed on the start menu, that's an own goal. The telemetry in my opinion is a non-issue. To my knowledge nothing that's sent is actually harmful, and no harm has been demonstrated since they started gathering telemetry a decade ago. The more interesting point of criticism for me are the in-app ads. Not so sure on what is meaningfully different between ads in wordpad promoting word and ads in macOS and iOS music apps promoting apple music. Or, in the same vein, why it is fair to flame microsoft for integrating onedrive throughout the OS but nobody complains when apple does exactly the same with icloud (to the point where basically you have to really go out of your way not to get sucked into paying for icloud). Why is it ok for apple, but not for microsoft, to do these things?
- anticensor 7y ago
  > nothing that's sent is actually harmful Except for your computer's colour: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields-1903 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level...
soupfordummies 7y ago
Not only the "ads" in the start menu but the fact that they're actually INSTALLED APPLICATIONS that are part of the update packages. Who knows how much bandwidth and time has been wasted at my job alone with folks' computers force-updating with included installations of Candy Crush, Spotify and Disney Kingdoms.
- nyuszika7h 7y ago
  AFAIK these apps are not actually preinstalled, they’re simply shortcuts to the Microsoft Store. But I never got any of those “preinstalled” apps even on Windows 10 Home.
  - close04 7y ago
    I've had Pro installations where I got the shortcuts, and others where I didn't. All on OEM machines that were licensed automatically, all in the same location, and using the ISO from MS's website (maybe not always the same exact ISO so that may be it). I couldn't come up with a solid explanation on where the difference comes from.
jhoechtl 7y ago
You do know that the amount of telemetry you do leave to google is an order of magnitude more sophisticated and subtile than what MS is doing?
- beagle3 7y ago
  But what about whataboutism?
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  I fail to see how that's accurate justification - just because somebody else is doing worse. Blatant whataboutism, really.
opan 7y ago
Windows 10 LTSC is common among some enthusiasts. No candy crush or start menu ads, but it still tries to trick you into using an online account during the install if you make the mistake of connecting to the internet when asked, and you still have to change a bunch of privacy toggles. I don't like or trust it, still, I just put it on my parents' machines since they probably would've resisted switching to GNU/Linux and Windows 7 lost support.
- compuguy 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, how does one legally get a license for Windows 10 LTSC without a enterprise contract?
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    Legally? No way. How do people actually do it? Same as they always have: thepiratebay.org
    - 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
      Got mine on Ebay
  - tkwj 7y ago
    It can be legally acquired through a Visual Studio (formerly MSDN) subscription.
- DavideNL 7y ago
  That + the first thing i run on a new Windows10 install (for sane defaults) is: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script (make sure you make a backup/test it first before applying the scripts default preset, or make your own preset.)
shadow-banned 7y ago
I mean, they're wholesale knocking off Slack, calling it Teams - Slack is dead.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their “evil” days. Embracing open source is just the first step of an old, old strategy of theirs. Maybe I'll be proven wrong on that, but you'd be a fool to forget their past. This the company that brought down IBM. > I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. No real choice, unfortunately. Oh, I'm sure some clueless Linux Desktop evangelist will try to claim otherwise, but the reality is that Windows and Office run the business world. Microsoft put a lot of effort into delivering good products and keeping compatibility with old software, in addition to shady anti-competitive practices, to ensure that. Meanwhile, the Linux Desktop is still a fragmented mess that breaks every few years (at best). I really wish it weren't true, because Windows is a painful experience these days, but Linux Desktop manages to still be worse. > There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? That may be true of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, which can not be purchased individually and is expensive. > Do most PC enthusiasts figure out how to disable that stuff or buy professional editions? There are readily available tools to disable it, like O&O ShutUp 10.
- chx 7y ago
  > Windows is a painful experience these days, but Linux Desktop manages to still be worse. I often ranted about this: after running Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017 (and a few years before that in dual boot and since 1993 on servers) I switched to Windows + WSL in early 2018 and I am OK with it. I use an eGPU. Now, of course, Linux does not even support changing the video card under X Windows. And I am not so sure about supporting hotplugging an nVidia card either. And when I was running Linux I ran into problems with enterprise wifi and VPN all the time and my multifunction devices and bluetooth. https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ rings painfully true. Linux is a great server operating system with a desktop badly cobbled on top.
  - Miraste 7y ago
    I have a Linux laptop and an eGPU. I dual boot Windows when I need to use it. I didn't even try to get it to work on Linux because that's a good way to lose a week and gain nothing. Switching between dedicated GPUs and integrated ones is still barely functional after heavy tweaking, and laptops have been doing that for I don't even know how long. That xkcd is extra painful because there are still, 11 years later, zero Linux browsers that support hardware-accelerated (i.e. smooth) video playback.
darepublic 7y ago
yea windows 10 really flys in the face of all their rebranding. The windows experience is enough to stick with mac for the time being.
marmaduke 7y ago
The enterprise version lets admin disable all the crap, but it's really frustrating to buy pro version and still see that stuff.
onceUponADime 7y ago
Im sure, there will be a nice little soundbook added, that allows everyone concerned to press alot of buttons and push a lot of levers, to not change a thing, but feel acomplished and back in control.
viraptor 7y ago
> I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. They don't. It's not a ultra-premium edition that disables it. The extra apps installation is easy to turn off via registry and can be applied to new users. In better controlled corps, your apps whitelist will not allow you to run extras anyway. The ads are either not a present: if it's a corp, everyone has office, not wordpad. In a completely controlled environment, the network won't allow you to connect back either. I've set up a win10 pro laptop very recently and getting rid of the extra apps, disabling promotions, and most of ads takes maybe 30min. I'm not saying I'm ok with them, or that everyone can easily fix it - but if you have any kind of experience with windows, you can do it.
- jdsully 7y ago
  I could maybe understand this for the home edition but people pay extra for Pro. The whole point is to not spend 30+ minutes removing crap. Also those registry fixes frequently get reverted by updates. It’s happened to me multiple times. Even if you succeed your greeted with a start menu that looks half broken.
hinkley 7y ago
Microsoft put the hounds in charge of the hen-house, but they only removed a few of the foxes. Every time the 'do better' people are busy looking at something else, stuff like this will slip through.
Silhouette 7y ago
I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? More-or-less. The large organisation editions of Windows 10 (Enterprise and Education) are basically a different product to the others, with most of the unpalatable junk able to be disabled. But you can only legally get them through the organisation-level licensing schemes, with all the extra cost and hassle that brings. The really surprising thing to me is that the Pro edition -- the one that historically was aimed at power users and smaller businesses -- is basically dumped in with Home now, with little of that same flexibility even though these users probably have much the same concerns about controlling updates, telemetry, ads, etc. So for some of us working in small businesses, Windows 10 remains a no-go area regardless of any attempts by Microsoft to promote it and demote anything else. It appears to be impossible to retain proper control of your system and the data on it, which leads to all kinds of concerns about reliability, security, statutory and contractual data protection obligations, etc. Presumably this is why various government regulators within the EU are already going after Microsoft on the basis that it's essentially impossible to be GDPR compliant if your organisation is using such an OS.
davidy123 7y ago
The vast majority of desktop users would be fine doing all their work (word processing, spreadsheets, email, browsing) in a browser. Thus a full operating system like Windows really isn't required. It's surprising more organizations haven't switched to this approach, it saves on costs and overhead.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > It's surprising more organizations haven't switched to this approach, it saves on costs and overhead. The user experience with web-based versions of these things is substantially worse, though. I don't know, but perhaps that's why there isn't greater adoption.
  - davidy123 7y ago
    I don't think it's substantially worse, and I'm a pretty heavy user of applications. It would be worth measuring impact on productivity compared to gains in maintenance and overhead reduction.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Fair enough, that's a subjective assessment. They tend to be substantially worse for me. The very best of them aren't substantially worse, but they are still worse. My complaints about them are the the UX tends to be unpleasant.
dirkg 7y ago
The telemetry collection in Windows 10 has been reduced a lot. And MS are transparent about it and give you lots of control and switches in Settings/group policy to turn it off, unlike everyone else. Many other corps collect much more invasive telemetry and users have no clue - e.g Netflix is basically a data collection service with a side effect of video streaming. Same for FB, Google ads cookies etc, every retailer etc etc. But singling out MS has always been popular.
- vetinari 7y ago
  The difference is, that Neflix/Google/Facebook had their services with telemetry since start. If you didn't agree to their terms, you simply didn't start using their services. They don't even have network effects like Windows has. Microsoft, on the other hand, added telemetry to already widely-used product, not giving the existing users any choice. Is it any wonder that Microsoft is being singled out? They deserve to be singled out.
3xblah 7y ago
"I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their "evil" days." What appears to be "turning over a new leaf" may actually be nothing more than adapting to changing conditions. Of course they were not the ones who set those changes in motion, other than perhaps through evolutionary pressure. What Microsoft has done in more recent times has been largely driven by what other companies were doing -- making money from selling advertising, collecting vast quantities of data about users, etc. Not to mention using open source software internally, publishing source code and giving away software, often as a means to collect more data. That is why, e.g., there are ads in WorpdPad and telemetry is on by default.
Causality1 7y ago
I had a windows tablet sit collecting dust for months because every day when it ran an update it installed a broken sensor driver that borked screen rotation. Eventually I gave up and installed a third party Windows Update blocker. I can't be the only person sick of my computer telling me I'm a fucking idiot who's only good for shelling out cash to keep advertisements out of my file explorer.
Aeolun 7y ago
> I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? Why would you think that? My enterprise loves MS. Literally everything is being moved to MS. Chat, documents, internal websites (sharepoint), all hosted by MS under their office 365 umbrella. It’s maddening. I cannot imagine the security folks being bothered by some ads in windows or some extra telemetry. If MS can read that data they know everything already.
HenryBemis 7y ago
I have been using Windows Firewall Control (WFC)(https://www.binisoft.org/wfc.php https://www.binisoft.org/wfc.php) for some years now. I have the same laptop since 2015, it runs Win8.1, and WFC is always running in alert/block mode. If you remember ZoneAlarm from 20y ago, imagine something like that. WFC hooks on the Windows firewall but has a super-enhanced UI. I usually leave only Firefox, Outlook, and Windows Updates passing through, and my Outlook only to the mail server (no need to download all the crappy stuff that people link on their emails). I could also never understand why explorer.exe (or wordpad.exe, or WinZip or solitaire, or majority of apps on a PC.. need to tell anyone on the internet what I am doing with my PC. In the same spirit, I always suggest it to friends who ask me to help them setup a new W10 machine. I block almost everything that moves and this solves any ad problem and telemetry that W10 is running.
rch 7y ago
> turning over a new leaf I think you can always count on smart companies to optimize for return on assets, including their brand. Microsoft had some weakness on that front, but they've put significant, sincere, and welcome effort into building brand value with the engineering crowd over the last decade. Nonetheless, it's entirely reasonable to expect them to make use of opportunities to leverage their assets to build their business as well. If you have the means, compile from source. And if not, then perhaps enlist the services of someone who does (directly or indirectly).
ericdykstra 7y ago
All the extraneous ads, tracking, etc in Windows 10 has made it so I have never bothered upgrading from 7. It seems like it would be a huge pain to go through and disable or blocking everything, and even then how confident could I be that I didn't miss something?
megablast 7y ago
> Microsoft is clearly doing a lot right in terms of UX, but I lament that it feels like one step forward and two steps back. I disagree, they should have stuck with XP and just made incremental improvements like Apple have done with OS X. But no, every few years they have to change everything. On a few people want that, most people what the OS to get out of the way.
lonelappde 7y ago
> Microsoft is clearly doing a lot right in terms of UX Such as? Win 7 is generally retarded as peak Windows UX, and its main feature was undoing junk from Vista/XP before it got rejunked in 8. Windows 8.1/10 main improvement was in undoing part of 8.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > Win 7 is generally retarded as... I presume that was a typo, but it's beautiful!

cryptozeus 7y ago

No ads in my work machine

anonymfus 7y ago
Did you read the article? It's a currently disabled optional feature in the latest insider build.
- darkwater 7y ago
  I think it was referring to GGP mention of "junk" in Win10 start menu. AFAIK there are no ads in the Enterprise and Education versions of Win10
  - penagwin 7y ago
    But why ads at all in a $100 operating system?
    - kofejnik 7y ago
      because suckers are going to eat it, what else are they gonna do, install Linux? a somewhat less cynical answer: some division head decided it would look good on their performance review
intopieces 7y ago
I think Win10 Pro is exempt for now - someone correct me if I’m wrong.
- peschkaj 7y ago
  My install seems to have no ads at all (including on the Start Menu) and I am using Win 10 Pro that I installed straight from the Windows download page. Maybe I don't get ads because I'm on the Insiders Slow Ring.
- JorgeGT 7y ago
  I get candy crush in my Win10 Enterprise, each major upgrade...
  - navjack27 7y ago
    I bet you actually don't and it's just an installer link to the store. Is the entry in remove apps only 16KB?
    - JorgeGT 7y ago
      Maybe, I'll tell you next time it appears in my start menu. In either case it is not the size that bothers me, it's the fact they keep placing gaming icons in the start menu of an enterprise workstation, even after the user deletes them.

screye 7y ago

> ads in the OS, Yeah, I can't wrap my head around why they would do that. Is it really a big enough revenue stream to inconvenience the consumer to such a degree ? ______ Maybe it is because the type of user that uses wordpad is also not concerned with advertisements or user experiences. I mean, for most people a computer is either a Netflix + Internet + Office machine (they live in these apps, so the rest of the OS doesn't really affect them) or a device which runs significantly worse OEM software,(in which case, good UX was a lost cause anyways.)

dobleboble 7y ago
With 400,000,000 active Windows 10 users I would imagine that yes, it is quite worthwhile.
numpad0 7y ago
Big consumer techs offer experience, not products. The joyous Windows Experience of office work a la Job Simulator.
gettingsnarky 7y ago
> Yeah, I can't wrap my head around why they would do that. Investors before customers.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I mean, for most people a computer is either a Netflix + Internet + Office machine (they live in these apps, so the rest of the OS doesn't really affect them) or a device which runs significantly worse OEM software,(in which case, good UX was a lost cause anyways.) I really wish tech people would stop with this fantasizing that users don't have good reasons for the choices they make. This is why Linux Desktop has consistently failed for decades: the conception that it is "good enough" for "most non-technical people" because they've imagined some ultra-simplified usecase and then convinced themselves that they've made an appropriate replacement. Absolutely nothing good comes of this mentality.
- sansnomme 7y ago

Marsymars 7y ago

Agreed that candy crush as default is heinous, but it feels like "telemetry" is kind of brought up as a bogeyman. Clearly, there exist scenarios where device owners have a legitimate need for no (or minimal, considering updates) communication with MS regarding device activity, but that's not generally the case for the average PC user. I want my OS maker to get stack traces from stacks so that they can fix crashes. I want my OS maker to receive actionable data on highly-used features so that they can effectively prioritize what to improve and what can be culled. (And obviously, I want this data to be treated with appropriate security.) edit: To clarify, users should be able to disable telemetry - it's the anti-telemetry rhetoric I find to be overblown - in general what I hear isn't nearly as nuanced as the replies here, it's simply blanket opposition to all telemetry.

reaperducer 7y ago
I want my OS maker to get stack traces from stacks so that they can fix crashes I want my OS maker to ask for stack traces so they can fix crashes. I do not want this to be a default with no way to opt out. Even crash data is my data, not Microsoft's, and Microsoft should ask my permission each time it happens the way that MacOS does. Then again, that might make people aware of how often programs go sideways on Windows, which is not in Microsoft's interest.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  That's funny, but they can only ask ONCE if they can always send crash data, not ask again every time the program crashes, which solves that problem.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    I think it's (and should be) up to the operating system, not the vendor. When programs eat themselves on macOS I get the option to send debug information to the programmer each time. Sometimes twice if the program has its own crash reporting mechanism, too (Panic's Coda, for example). Maybe there's an "always remember my selection" checkbox, but I don't remember ever seeing it, except once a year when I install the new version of macOS.

gruez 7y ago

>I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? The closest you have is LTSC. No ads out of the box. Still has telemetry though, although you can turn it down to "security" level. It costs like $300 for a license[1], and they won't sell it to you unless you commit to buying a bunch (although that can be worked around by buying a bunch of cheap CALs). [1] https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-upgrade-license-1-license/5301533?pfm=srh https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-...

mrgreenfur 7y ago

They've gotten a taste of the surveillance revenues and won't look back. When you install Win10 there is a nag screen to make sure you opt-in to all kinds of data collection.

soupfordummies 7y ago
It's more than one screen. And the workarounds to not signing into a Microsoft account just to INSTALL the OS are becoming more and more tedious by the month.

Joeri 7y ago

Agreed on the start menu, that's an own goal. The telemetry in my opinion is a non-issue. To my knowledge nothing that's sent is actually harmful, and no harm has been demonstrated since they started gathering telemetry a decade ago. The more interesting point of criticism for me are the in-app ads. Not so sure on what is meaningfully different between ads in wordpad promoting word and ads in macOS and iOS music apps promoting apple music. Or, in the same vein, why it is fair to flame microsoft for integrating onedrive throughout the OS but nobody complains when apple does exactly the same with icloud (to the point where basically you have to really go out of your way not to get sucked into paying for icloud). Why is it ok for apple, but not for microsoft, to do these things?

anticensor 7y ago
> nothing that's sent is actually harmful Except for your computer's colour: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields-1903 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level...

soupfordummies 7y ago

Not only the "ads" in the start menu but the fact that they're actually INSTALLED APPLICATIONS that are part of the update packages. Who knows how much bandwidth and time has been wasted at my job alone with folks' computers force-updating with included installations of Candy Crush, Spotify and Disney Kingdoms.

nyuszika7h 7y ago
AFAIK these apps are not actually preinstalled, they’re simply shortcuts to the Microsoft Store. But I never got any of those “preinstalled” apps even on Windows 10 Home.
- close04 7y ago
  I've had Pro installations where I got the shortcuts, and others where I didn't. All on OEM machines that were licensed automatically, all in the same location, and using the ISO from MS's website (maybe not always the same exact ISO so that may be it). I couldn't come up with a solid explanation on where the difference comes from.

jhoechtl 7y ago

You do know that the amount of telemetry you do leave to google is an order of magnitude more sophisticated and subtile than what MS is doing?

beagle3 7y ago
But what about whataboutism?
_underfl0w_ 7y ago
I fail to see how that's accurate justification - just because somebody else is doing worse. Blatant whataboutism, really.

opan 7y ago

Windows 10 LTSC is common among some enthusiasts. No candy crush or start menu ads, but it still tries to trick you into using an online account during the install if you make the mistake of connecting to the internet when asked, and you still have to change a bunch of privacy toggles. I don't like or trust it, still, I just put it on my parents' machines since they probably would've resisted switching to GNU/Linux and Windows 7 lost support.

compuguy 7y ago
Out of curiosity, how does one legally get a license for Windows 10 LTSC without a enterprise contract?
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  Legally? No way. How do people actually do it? Same as they always have: thepiratebay.org
  - 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
    Got mine on Ebay
- tkwj 7y ago
  It can be legally acquired through a Visual Studio (formerly MSDN) subscription.
DavideNL 7y ago
That + the first thing i run on a new Windows10 install (for sane defaults) is: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script (make sure you make a backup/test it first before applying the scripts default preset, or make your own preset.)

shadow-banned 7y ago

I mean, they're wholesale knocking off Slack, calling it Teams - Slack is dead.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their “evil” days. Embracing open source is just the first step of an old, old strategy of theirs. Maybe I'll be proven wrong on that, but you'd be a fool to forget their past. This the company that brought down IBM. > I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. No real choice, unfortunately. Oh, I'm sure some clueless Linux Desktop evangelist will try to claim otherwise, but the reality is that Windows and Office run the business world. Microsoft put a lot of effort into delivering good products and keeping compatibility with old software, in addition to shady anti-competitive practices, to ensure that. Meanwhile, the Linux Desktop is still a fragmented mess that breaks every few years (at best). I really wish it weren't true, because Windows is a painful experience these days, but Linux Desktop manages to still be worse. > There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? That may be true of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, which can not be purchased individually and is expensive. > Do most PC enthusiasts figure out how to disable that stuff or buy professional editions? There are readily available tools to disable it, like O&O ShutUp 10.

chx 7y ago
> Windows is a painful experience these days, but Linux Desktop manages to still be worse. I often ranted about this: after running Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017 (and a few years before that in dual boot and since 1993 on servers) I switched to Windows + WSL in early 2018 and I am OK with it. I use an eGPU. Now, of course, Linux does not even support changing the video card under X Windows. And I am not so sure about supporting hotplugging an nVidia card either. And when I was running Linux I ran into problems with enterprise wifi and VPN all the time and my multifunction devices and bluetooth. https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ rings painfully true. Linux is a great server operating system with a desktop badly cobbled on top.
- Miraste 7y ago
  I have a Linux laptop and an eGPU. I dual boot Windows when I need to use it. I didn't even try to get it to work on Linux because that's a good way to lose a week and gain nothing. Switching between dedicated GPUs and integrated ones is still barely functional after heavy tweaking, and laptops have been doing that for I don't even know how long. That xkcd is extra painful because there are still, 11 years later, zero Linux browsers that support hardware-accelerated (i.e. smooth) video playback.

darepublic 7y ago

yea windows 10 really flys in the face of all their rebranding. The windows experience is enough to stick with mac for the time being.

marmaduke 7y ago

The enterprise version lets admin disable all the crap, but it's really frustrating to buy pro version and still see that stuff.

onceUponADime 7y ago

Im sure, there will be a nice little soundbook added, that allows everyone concerned to press alot of buttons and push a lot of levers, to not change a thing, but feel acomplished and back in control.

viraptor 7y ago

> I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. They don't. It's not a ultra-premium edition that disables it. The extra apps installation is easy to turn off via registry and can be applied to new users. In better controlled corps, your apps whitelist will not allow you to run extras anyway. The ads are either not a present: if it's a corp, everyone has office, not wordpad. In a completely controlled environment, the network won't allow you to connect back either. I've set up a win10 pro laptop very recently and getting rid of the extra apps, disabling promotions, and most of ads takes maybe 30min. I'm not saying I'm ok with them, or that everyone can easily fix it - but if you have any kind of experience with windows, you can do it.

jdsully 7y ago
I could maybe understand this for the home edition but people pay extra for Pro. The whole point is to not spend 30+ minutes removing crap. Also those registry fixes frequently get reverted by updates. It’s happened to me multiple times. Even if you succeed your greeted with a start menu that looks half broken.

hinkley 7y ago

Microsoft put the hounds in charge of the hen-house, but they only removed a few of the foxes. Every time the 'do better' people are busy looking at something else, stuff like this will slip through.

Silhouette 7y ago

I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? More-or-less. The large organisation editions of Windows 10 (Enterprise and Education) are basically a different product to the others, with most of the unpalatable junk able to be disabled. But you can only legally get them through the organisation-level licensing schemes, with all the extra cost and hassle that brings. The really surprising thing to me is that the Pro edition -- the one that historically was aimed at power users and smaller businesses -- is basically dumped in with Home now, with little of that same flexibility even though these users probably have much the same concerns about controlling updates, telemetry, ads, etc. So for some of us working in small businesses, Windows 10 remains a no-go area regardless of any attempts by Microsoft to promote it and demote anything else. It appears to be impossible to retain proper control of your system and the data on it, which leads to all kinds of concerns about reliability, security, statutory and contractual data protection obligations, etc. Presumably this is why various government regulators within the EU are already going after Microsoft on the basis that it's essentially impossible to be GDPR compliant if your organisation is using such an OS.

davidy123 7y ago

The vast majority of desktop users would be fine doing all their work (word processing, spreadsheets, email, browsing) in a browser. Thus a full operating system like Windows really isn't required. It's surprising more organizations haven't switched to this approach, it saves on costs and overhead.

JohnFen 7y ago
> It's surprising more organizations haven't switched to this approach, it saves on costs and overhead. The user experience with web-based versions of these things is substantially worse, though. I don't know, but perhaps that's why there isn't greater adoption.
- davidy123 7y ago
  I don't think it's substantially worse, and I'm a pretty heavy user of applications. It would be worth measuring impact on productivity compared to gains in maintenance and overhead reduction.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Fair enough, that's a subjective assessment. They tend to be substantially worse for me. The very best of them aren't substantially worse, but they are still worse. My complaints about them are the the UX tends to be unpleasant.

dirkg 7y ago

The telemetry collection in Windows 10 has been reduced a lot. And MS are transparent about it and give you lots of control and switches in Settings/group policy to turn it off, unlike everyone else. Many other corps collect much more invasive telemetry and users have no clue - e.g Netflix is basically a data collection service with a side effect of video streaming. Same for FB, Google ads cookies etc, every retailer etc etc. But singling out MS has always been popular.

vetinari 7y ago
The difference is, that Neflix/Google/Facebook had their services with telemetry since start. If you didn't agree to their terms, you simply didn't start using their services. They don't even have network effects like Windows has. Microsoft, on the other hand, added telemetry to already widely-used product, not giving the existing users any choice. Is it any wonder that Microsoft is being singled out? They deserve to be singled out.

3xblah 7y ago

"I want to like the Microsoft that appears to be turning over a new leaf from their "evil" days." What appears to be "turning over a new leaf" may actually be nothing more than adapting to changing conditions. Of course they were not the ones who set those changes in motion, other than perhaps through evolutionary pressure. What Microsoft has done in more recent times has been largely driven by what other companies were doing -- making money from selling advertising, collecting vast quantities of data about users, etc. Not to mention using open source software internally, publishing source code and giving away software, often as a means to collect more data. That is why, e.g., there are ads in WorpdPad and telemetry is on by default.

Causality1 7y ago

I had a windows tablet sit collecting dust for months because every day when it ran an update it installed a broken sensor driver that borked screen rotation. Eventually I gave up and installed a third party Windows Update blocker. I can't be the only person sick of my computer telling me I'm a fucking idiot who's only good for shelling out cash to keep advertisements out of my file explorer.

Aeolun 7y ago

> I can’t imagine that corporations would allow Microsoft to market to their end-users. There must be some ultra-premium edition of Windows 10 that one can buy, where telemetry and ads are fully disabled? Why would you think that? My enterprise loves MS. Literally everything is being moved to MS. Chat, documents, internal websites (sharepoint), all hosted by MS under their office 365 umbrella. It’s maddening. I cannot imagine the security folks being bothered by some ads in windows or some extra telemetry. If MS can read that data they know everything already.

HenryBemis 7y ago

I have been using Windows Firewall Control (WFC)(https://www.binisoft.org/wfc.php https://www.binisoft.org/wfc.php) for some years now. I have the same laptop since 2015, it runs Win8.1, and WFC is always running in alert/block mode. If you remember ZoneAlarm from 20y ago, imagine something like that. WFC hooks on the Windows firewall but has a super-enhanced UI. I usually leave only Firefox, Outlook, and Windows Updates passing through, and my Outlook only to the mail server (no need to download all the crappy stuff that people link on their emails). I could also never understand why explorer.exe (or wordpad.exe, or WinZip or solitaire, or majority of apps on a PC.. need to tell anyone on the internet what I am doing with my PC. In the same spirit, I always suggest it to friends who ask me to help them setup a new W10 machine. I block almost everything that moves and this solves any ad problem and telemetry that W10 is running.

rch 7y ago

> turning over a new leaf I think you can always count on smart companies to optimize for return on assets, including their brand. Microsoft had some weakness on that front, but they've put significant, sincere, and welcome effort into building brand value with the engineering crowd over the last decade. Nonetheless, it's entirely reasonable to expect them to make use of opportunities to leverage their assets to build their business as well. If you have the means, compile from source. And if not, then perhaps enlist the services of someone who does (directly or indirectly).

ericdykstra 7y ago

All the extraneous ads, tracking, etc in Windows 10 has made it so I have never bothered upgrading from 7. It seems like it would be a huge pain to go through and disable or blocking everything, and even then how confident could I be that I didn't miss something?

megablast 7y ago

> Microsoft is clearly doing a lot right in terms of UX, but I lament that it feels like one step forward and two steps back. I disagree, they should have stuck with XP and just made incremental improvements like Apple have done with OS X. But no, every few years they have to change everything. On a few people want that, most people what the OS to get out of the way.

lonelappde 7y ago

> Microsoft is clearly doing a lot right in terms of UX Such as? Win 7 is generally retarded as peak Windows UX, and its main feature was undoing junk from Vista/XP before it got rejunked in 8. Windows 8.1/10 main improvement was in undoing part of 8.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> Win 7 is generally retarded as... I presume that was a typo, but it's beautiful!