nearly decision time: Windows 10 or Windows 7?

[mikefamig]

The part that always gets me about Windows upgrades is that an OS like Win 7 has had every module upgraded probably a dozen times so why is a new version number needed?
 
Anybody actually use the new half-baked Win 10 browser? I used it for about 4 or 5 conned trials and then went looking for a way to lock it out. and declare it to virus status. as fast as I could.  If I was forced into using that mystic PoS  I would have reinstalled Win 7 or XP and bought a faster processor.

 
Windows 10 has many new features that I think would confuse people if they were just thrown at them in an automatic windows update and deserves to be distinguished from an update. It's interesting that Microsoft has been giving Win10 away for free but  for the most part new versions are released to make money. Maybe they decided to give it away based on their failure with Vista and Windows 8.

 

[mikefamig]

I upgraded to Win10 a couple of days ago and like it so far. I like that it is similar enough to win7 so that you can do things as you are used to doing as you learn the new features of win10. I turned off cloud and Cortana and a couple of privacy settings but anyone who uses a computer that is networked is kidding himself if he thinks that what he does on the computer is a secret. With our phones, cars and computers we have given up a lot of info about ourselves.

 

[wuench]

Yeah that is my conclusion too.  I took sniffer traces of the MS communication on Win10 in the hopes of blocking it with firewall settings.   What I found was my computer was already broadcasting constantly to all kinds of stuff, Google, Dropbox, and a lot of stuff I didn't take the time to identify.   I came to the conclusion that unless I wanted to setup a true proxy server, there was no way I was going to catch it all and maintain it.
 
I did shut off Cortana, automatic updates, etc and blocked a couple of bing subnets for grins.

 

[mikefamig]

It has also occurred to me that Microsoft has so much tracking going on in win10 that they are getting paid on the other end from marketing people for the tracking info.
 
Mike.

 

[drvnbysound]

Here's a guide I followed when I setup our newest W10 laptop: http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-secure-windows-10-the-paranoids-guide/

 

[pete_c]

Here stripped down enterprise W10 to only what I needed to run Homeseer 3 touch on my Jogglers.
 
It is very chatty kathy even with the tweaks mentioned above.  It makes for a nice tablet interface and includes all of the bells and whistles.
 

 
The pop ups keep coming on the W7 boxes.  Last week a little news article from the UK showed how it changed a bit when you hit the right top side X on the pop up; it proceeded to update the PC from W7 to W10. 
 
That and it appears that maybe Microsoft is abandoning its Windows smart phone efforts from a little news brief last week.
 
(Or they just sloughed off all of the Lumina folks in a cost savings measure).
 
I am writing the above as too there are major efforts going on to get the OS in to enterprise environments with the same pop ups coming up (even with efforts to block this on the firewalls).  

 

[LarrylLix]

Out of three Win 10 conversions two have gone back to Win 7 now.
 
The desktop works fabulous with Win 10 except the lower right hand desktop advertising has now started and the income from Win 10 is now rearing it's ugly head.
 
Interesting how you reinstall Win 7 from the original DVD and it runs three to four times as fast as the patched up version they ground to a halt just before the Win 10 push came.
 
I love the upgrades now. Almost ever one is now  always a "security risk" and "highest importance". I believe it's the only way they can convince people to install their latest hook to convince you to spend more money. Funny how a 2.5 GHz single core processor takes forever to load a webpage after all the 4,283,462  "security risks" have been patched, but once rebuilt, it works like it did when new, and suddenly you don't need a new OS or a new computer to keep up.
 
Who is going to protect us from the "security risk" called Microscam?
 
OK so I have an eight core AMD 3.? GHz CPU on my desktop so that 5 of the cores can sleep at 0% for the rest of my life.

 

[pete_c]

Yes; here keep an outer defense of sorts using PFSense. (which is working hard these days),
 
DNS/NTP only comes from the firewall.  Inside utilize just Firefox these days (with ADP/Ghostery), Malwarebytes and a light AV. (3rd party stuff).
 
The push though from Microsoft related to W10 to the enterprise migration from W7 to W10 will happen and will by default change the enterprise Microsoft desktop.  Resistance is futile.
 
It really isn't any different that the other tablet / smartphone OS's.  There just has been more efforts to surgically take it apart as it is/was most common desktop OS in the world today.
 
I have a list of IP addresses if you want to block this stuff (think that it is getting up there now ~ 100 plus?).  Here deleted services programs which kept installing themselves and now it is looking like it is working.  Wierd cuz local administrative rights were not as good as super administrative rights coming from the cloud.  Way too much stuff for a simple touch screen configuration and a bit time consuming.  Went from using the WinLite script to a customized application/script which does a nice job of cleansing the OS.
 
That and using that whole UEFI boot with the licensing embedded in the EFI is a real PITA to play with.  Just one change to the firmware can toast your boot up to WIndows.  Making changing or tweaking the firmware EFI Bios stuff is restricted a bit (on purpose I guess).  For the above mentioned tabletop started with a new naked custom configured X86 BIOS of old removing the EFI bios of new that I couldn't see.

 

[NeverDie]

Who is going to protect us from the "security risk" called Microscam?

 
Nobody.  

 

[pete_c]

Really it is all to provide you a nice pleasant customer interface and being done for the good of the many including you.
 
I am currently fine with lite Ubuntu desktop base and a VB a la carte on demand WXX taking only what I need from it for now.