The old is not necessarily outdated and the new is not necessarily better.

The OS I'm most productive in is actually XP so thats what I use the most (no I don't have any viruses/trojans). With XP I know that all tools required for my work like MCU programmers, various toolchains, simulator software, CAD etc. are already set up, configured and works as intended.

For gaming I use Win 7 since there are some sims like DCS that needs 64-bit (and soon DX 11) but it will probably be a long time before we see DCS support DX12 so why update just because MS want's you to - personally I stick with what I got until I have something to gain by upgrading.



As you will notice it's the other way around



I tihnk there are several reasons but I'm guessing the ones below are among them...

1. They absolutely don't wan't Windows 7 to be the new XP!

2. They are starting to see Linux as a real threat also on desktops down the line and escpecially if SteamOS is a success. DX is what saved MS ass but things may change.

3. They try to catch up/mimic with Apple's success with their appstore and so on...

Of course all of the above IMHO.

/KC

Well, as I've said in this thread, I've always taken a fairly laid-back view of the whole thing. Upgrading is a fact of life - Micro$oft and the others must continue to put something out that we need to pay for (I'll leave "better and better" to your own views... ), or they'll go out of business. And when you jump, you can be cautious (as I am) and wait for the early adopters to find all the bugs, or you can forge ahead and see what happens.

But now we see issues with the Windows 10 update policy and EULA popping up. And thank God SOMEBODY reads those things - for all I know, I could have signed over my house, my wife, my kids & even the family dog by clicking "I agree" - how many of you have ever read even one of them all the way through?

So being forced to take the automatic updates is one thing - and it's a bad one, in my opinion - but allowing them to search your drive for "pirated" software or unauthorized hardware AND disable them - I don't wear tin foil hats, but I think we've crossed a line here. To say nothing of the rest of the privacy concerns being raised.

The argument to reduced privacy and ever-more-draconican security and invasions of privacy is "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what's to fear?" Very true, but I still don't allow you to watch me in the shower (ok, guaranteed no one would want to, but still...). And I don't have any pirated stuff on my system. But daaaang, I simply do not like the looks of this. I am uncomfortable now with the amount of data that is being collected on my browsing; now my operating system is a built-in data mining machine. This is the very antithesis of what personal computing started out to be.

I mention it here because we are beholden to Windows as it allows us to fly the best WWI simulator in the world.

HumanDrone:
Sounds like you found some of the "gifts" that the Greeks (Micro$oft) are bringing in the "free" Win 10.

Lord, it's getting so I half expect to find laxative ads in the browser when I come back from the bathroom!

As you note, there is a reason it's "free".

I must say that as a long time user of Micro$soft stuff - I have never never paid for any of it from Dos 3.0 upwards. I am running W7 on this machine and XP on a VM. Office 2003 free version etc. I don't want to pay Bill Gates and his merry men any money at all and never will.

Well, Jim, you may want to tread lightly around Windows 10, then! Check out some of the links I posted (No tinfoil hat sites, either).

I'm glad I came back to this thread. It was actually D/Ling W10. Yep, cancel that reservation. I'm good thanks

Well, I hope I'm not being too alarmist. But this creeping data-mining, watching your location, watching you purchases, watching your searches, seeing your contacts, the constant urging to store your data in "the cloud" (and we're aviators - we know how unsubstantial clouds are!) - seriously, though, one cannot help but have your thoughts pulled in Orwellian directions. Or from the Bible - no one may buy or sell unless they have the mark of the beast, a symbol of submission to the powers that be (putting it mildly).

And what do we do if we really don't want this to happen? I understand you can limit, but not eliminate the data mining in 10, and you cannot stop the updates, even if it bricks your device; and if it thinks you've pirated something, or a device isn't legit (what does that even mean?) it disables it and what recourse do you have? I mean, to be sure, they've NEVER made a mistake in their algorithms...

Micro$oft isn't only player in this game, Google lives on it - and if you start using Tor people are sure it's for "pr0n" - or worse. The dark web is a hideous stain on humanity's record.

All I want is for my machine to work and run WOFF. But am I going to be running Win7 10 years from now? How do we stop this upgrade train and the "frog in hot water" privacy encroachment?

I knew as soon as I saw the Registry in Windows 95 that we were headed this way. So now what?

Micro "Big Brother" Soft,has unleashed its Dogs of War,threats are more and more serious from other OSs,so first thing first,a "free" OS release (Apple does this from a long time),second secret software probes aimed direct at your machine's heart (another well known MS practice) but this time more stronger than ever,third the always futile chase to catch Apple's standards,and trying to make 10 "smart and Tablet" oriented (just like Yosemite did).
It's a movie already seen,for decades,what MS cannot reach with quality products and top performances,it will be obtained with bribing,stealing,copying cloning and overriding laws and infringin' policies,a lobbist way of gaining market shares.I remember when Netscape was "the browser",and MS incapsulated IE into its OS,and many more similar acts,that costed them many law court appearances,all over the world and billion dollars fines,but they don't care,they will try to crush any opponent with whatever tool they can field.

One thing you can do is run a VPN (Virtual Private Network?). Most you have to pay for but I am running a free one so that any spy will think I am somewhere in Amsterdam. I also use Startpage as a search engine - actually it uses Google but again will tell Google that I am somewhere in Holland. And they (the Startpage people) do not give out any data about what you searched for etc.

My current IP address is 95.211.nnn.nnn

Well Jim a VPN it's not as secure as you might think ;-) Advanced evilware can eat VPNs at breakfast,even sailing the Net through Proxy anonymous servers does not help much,there is a new breed of viruses wich resides into the machine's firmware,and you can't do pretty nothing ,so far,to get rid of them,even swapping the hard disk with a fresh unformatted one,does not help.If someone wants to infect you,they will do it.most of the times it's done for DOS attacks,using other people machines,without their knowledge....innocent vessels of evil attacks :-)

More Win 10 "gifts": M$ has no plans to tell what is in the Win 10 patches

I'm done. Win10 officially sucks in my book. It's slow, keeps crashing my games,.loaded with a ton of monitoring apps...oh yeah...apps...I own a PC, I don't need it acting like a tablet.

I reverted back, if it fails, I'll just re-image it to stock Win7.

Good boy....

I suppose it will get even worse than that

Coun't on it!

/KC

Whew. Glad I listened to my gut and missed that bus!

In case I am misunderstood, yes, some day I too will use Win 10, but not today.

First, I will let Win 10 mature so there are not as many system crashes and second, a lot of these current Win 10 annoyances are either eliminated or work-arounds discovered or created.

I discovered a long, long time ago that games, OS's and hardware are all interlinked. An as a result, when any one of them is not in sync, it creates a lot of problems playing the games. This is why I keep old PC's to play old games, unless some one has figured out how to get the game to play on newer OS's and hardware.

I will (at this point) just keep my current PC's exactly as they are since everything plays perfectly fine, and Win 10 will be on the PC's I purchase in the future since everything will be designed to use Win 10 then.

After all, there is no business in the world that will give anything away "free" unless they get something in return that is worth more to them (in the long run) than the product they gave away "free" right now. This is why my old statement of "beware of Greeks bearing gifts" because the Trojans sure did not like their "free" gift once they found out what it really cost them.

If you read a number of article around the web, you can see the number of reasons that M$ is giving away Win 10 free right now, and it is not for "charity" either, it is because they figure what they are getting in return is worth more to them that the "free" Win 10 OS's they are "giving" away for the next year to all those people willing to swallow it for them "hook, line, and sinker".

Well, like Cavaliere57, I've watched M$ over the years, and yes - my beef with them was killing a beautiful word processor, WordPerfect, with a far inferior product - Micro$oft <ahem> "Word", which purports to be a word processor. They didn't do it fair & square, they just undercut the thing in the market, taking a loss until they'd destroyed the competition. Now don't get me wrong, WordPerfect is still out there (lawyers use it, mostly) and it still beats the ever-loving snot out of "Word," but it just can't gain back its market share against the behemoth. And in case I haven't made myself clear, "Word" is to WordPerfect as 3-day old, sun-bloated, fly-ridden road kill is to a gourmet banquet at the Waldorf Astoria - I hate "Word" with the burning fire of a thousand suns, I have no words bad enough for it.

There is a story, too, and it may be apocryphal, that a certain company had a great program for Windows (I wish I could track this down better), and Bill Gates mentioned in an interview or something that Windows would soon have said capability. So the company's stock tanked. and the fellows who'd taken all the risk saw all their hard work, all their equity, all their future, go out the window - and M$ just walked in and bought them, at bargain basement prices. It'd be like he walked in and took your retirement savings and gave you 10 cents on the dollar. Again, it may be an urban legend, but that's basically what he did with WordPerfect, minus the buyout. All the value hard work, the value, and the jobs at that company were eviscerated as he gave away a greatly inferior, but "good enough" product.

But more to the subject, what Panama Red said in red above is correct, as well as his remark about interlinking of OS's & hardware. And some of what they have in the agreement may be innocuous enough, or for good reason. But every good thing has a bad side. We can go for a beautiful flight in my Sopwith Pup, or I can send a fellow plummeting to a horrifying firey death with it.

And yes, unless a new Bill Gates comes along very quickly, we'll all be on Windows 10 sooner or later, unless we can figure out a Linux port of WOFF somehow. Suppose I try to stay on W7 forever. Sooner or later my hardware is going to fail; if I really work at it I can swap into a new system, but it will be extremely difficult to stay with W7 forever, even following Panama Red's approach, & keeping the thing off the 'net.

The only other choice is raising a stink, call your Congressman or news station or whatever. But I think people are exhausted by all the crises constantly being thrown at them - as long as the stupid thing works, they're too tired to care. You folks in Europe seem to have more success that way, though, you fought off Google. But so far, there is very little pushback.

Here's a link about turning off the data gathering in Windows 10.

Interesting comments follow.