Hardware & Technical Windows 10 still viable?

[znôrt]

I think there are still things it collects even if you opt out at startup.

yeah, sure! i meant just the other nuisances, all those extra services. if you don't even install them chances are you won't be bothered with 'improvements' of them. can't be more specific, don't remember. but for sure my w10 updates regularly but doesn't annoy me with any of that crap.

It's funny how things change and how quickly data collection becomes normalised.

yes.

I guess open source encryption and security applications and appliances are getting more and more relevant. Nope, you just can't trust anything much these days.

open source software won't help much running on obscure hardware. of course it's still better than running obscure software! and opensource is after all not only about utility, but about openess and sharing knowledge, about inclusive global progress, which is good anyway. but no, you can't trust any device these days. your only bet is to go unnoticed, be uninteresting. be the ball, z! or you can choose to live in the woods. for a while. i'm considering that option too [haha]

but there is a bright side and it's that it's just evolution. even if we don't like this, we need to adapt because it is inevitable. most of us still live in an era where free will governs our human conscience, a timeless identity, a soul if you want. but that's over. mostly because science just shows that that's bollocs, that we have no clue who we are, that there is really no holy, atemporal "me", that we are just a complex set of algorithms and that other algorithms can know us far better than we think we do. so we will augment ourselves with these algorithms, this will improve our health, extend our life and improve our "experience". but privacy is out of the window, has no place, and after some resistence eventually nobody will even miss it. but not only privacy. the whole view about what it means to be human is about to radically change, and that impacts everything, from consumer behavior to human rights passing through philosophy, economy and politics. and of course morals.

of course this brings more and new dangers. it's actually terryfying. but so have been all fundamental changes. we happen to be living in the brink to a new era.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I have not used Windows 10 yet.

Although it has been a long time since I installed it on a SSD which is stored in a drawer of the dresser

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Viable? Best Windows so far, nuff said. Been using it for 2 years with zero problems.

This. My only regret is not upgrading on day 1.

Mind you I'm a pretty casual user. My PC is only used for games and writing in Libre Office.

 

[ZeroAi]

I'm asking after a bit of time, with all the complaints of troubles with win 10 updates, is everyone still happy having an operating system in perpetual beta? I do have it on both gaming machines on d drive but all games and programs still run win 7 on my main drive and most likely will long after MS stops supporting it. Curious George here.

So I use Windows 10 and 7 daily for work, an Windows 10 exclusively for gaming.

Note: I have several PCs, as well as several Virtual Machines.

While there is much I like about Windows 7, there's a lot of Windows 10 features I wish it had.

As far as if Windows 10 should be avoided... Why?

I've used every Windows OS since 3.0 and they all have their pros and cons, but all work.

I am helping a few people out with their PC's, who do use W10.
I hate W10 for its demented, convoluted internal organization and insulting way it treats me as an advanced user.

Really? Dude that's every version of Windows since Win95 and WinNT 4.0. Ugh. I wish they had an Expert switch so I could bypass all those wizards.

But even worse is OFFICE! Man, I think they are trying to turn it into Google Docs, and make all the superusers mad!

Windows 10 pushed me to Linux. I have not looked back since. Thanks to MS for that shove

Serious, nobody, and I mean nobody, goes from Windows to Linux unless they were not already a Linux fan.

While I'm all about choice and competition, and don't like monopolies, it's just not possible to use Linux in most mainstream technical occupations.

It would be like inventing your own language and then trying to convince everyone to give up English (or the language they already know.) Not gonna happen any time soon (if ever)

 

[Morbad]

I just tried to put Windows 10 for Education on my HTPC to take advantage of the new builds that have been released that Server 2016 doesn't have GUI's for.

Got about four hours into the twelve hours or so it takes to turn off all of Windows 10's trash manually and had enough. It's literally three times as long to setup as the server OSes or Windows 7 and at least an order of magnitude more time intensive than a modern Linux distro.

Wiped the drive and put Server 2016 1607 back on.

 

[Dural]

open source software won't help much running on obscure hardware. of course it's still better than running obscure software! and opensource is after all not only about utility, but about openess and sharing knowledge, about inclusive global progress, which is good anyway. but no, you can't trust any device these days. your only bet is to go unnoticed, be uninteresting. be the ball, z! or you can choose to live in the woods. for a while. i'm considering that option too [haha]

but there is a bright side and it's that it's just evolution. even if we don't like this, we need to adapt because it is inevitable. most of us still live in an era where free will governs our human conscience, a timeless identity, a soul if you want. but that's over. mostly because science just shows that that's bollocs, that we have no clue who we are, that there is really no holy, atemporal "me", that we are just a complex set of algorithms and that other algorithms can know us far better than we think we do. so we will augment ourselves with these algorithms, this will improve our health, extend our life and improve our "experience". but privacy is out of the window, has no place, and after some resistence eventually nobody will even miss it. but not only privacy. the whole view about what it means to be human is about to radically change, and that impacts everything, from consumer behavior to human rights passing through philosophy, economy and politics. and of course morals.

of course this brings more and new dangers. it's actually terryfying. but so have been all fundamental changes. we happen to be living in the brink to a new era.

I was thinking that the usual peer review of open source code might be beneficial, especially when you have companies like Cisco as one example producing kit where the NSA are "able" to backdoor their appliances. The thing about compromised equipment is it also needs to be stealthy, there is no point having access to or having a device transmit or alter data if it's really obvious it's happening because people won't use them. Having at least an open source layer or other open source components in the systems should provide more transparency in terms of operations.

Evolution is basically competition and adaptation for the best chance of survival, society is adapting and evolving so fast but that's driven by a minority although it benefits many (currently at some cost). I do wonder how far and how fast it can go before it's at odds with the majority or if people are so malleable that there won't ever be an ebb back from all this data collection and analysis. We do certainly live in interesting times. I think you might be doing a disservice to people to suggest that we'll totally lose ourselves to this but you do make some very strong points. We are all going to be very connected at all sorts of levels and we'll be losing some of our individuality in the process or maybe realise that we are all less individual that we thought. Privacy and individuality absolutely do have a place though but there are forces at work whose aim it is to gain power and control and privacy if one of their obstacles to their ends. Maybe this is just evolution and how the competition drive in the individuals pushing their agenda is manifested. Anyway, like you say, don't be a target

OK, that's all my thinking done for the day.

So yeah, Windows 10, it's OK if you like that kind of thing

 

[Patrick_68000]

While there is much I like about Windows 7, there's a lot of Windows 10 features I wish it had.

As Windows XP in its time (and beyond), I am very attached to Windows 7

 

[ZeroAi]

As Windows XP in its time (and beyond), I am very attached to Windows 7

I'm a huge Windows XP fan but I struggle to use it now - just so limiting - it's amazing how much you can get use to little improvements over time!

 

[znôrt]

I was thinking that the usual peer review of open source code might be beneficial, especially when you have companies like Cisco as one example producing kit where the NSA are "able" to backdoor their appliances. The thing about compromised equipment is it also needs to be stealthy, there is no point having access to or having a device transmit or alter data if it's really obvious it's happening because people won't use them. Having at least an open source layer or other open source components in the systems should provide more transparency in terms of operations.

peer review is indeed beneficial and i'd even say of utmost importance, it's the best we can currently have but it isn't a silver bullet either. remember the ssl heartbleed, a vulnerability that had been sitting there in plain view for a couple of years undermining the security of a widely used open source ssl library. still, the fact that this was open source at least allowed public scrutiny, and to know when exactly it was introduced and what impact it may have had, crucial knowledge we would be oblivious to if this was some company's proprietary and secret code. but it shows that peer review has to be highly motivated and seriously considered to be effective. just thinking 'if there's something fishy some of the thousands of experts around the world must have seen it and would have said so' is not good enough. and to review or audit software you just need a laptop, knowledge and some time; hardware, specially nanoelectronics, is a wholy different game.

I think you might be doing a disservice to people to suggest that we'll totally lose ourselves to this but you do make some very strong points.

i've become more cynical. i'm actually still a 'linux freak', and i've been very vocal about these issues for the most part of my life, but have become to see it more and more like a lost battle. so you are actually right, and i can't deny this hurts me a bit. for example, i'm now the not-so-proud owner of a credit card and use it daily without a second thought. i refused for decades because where i bought my marmalade, drugs or books, at what times of the day and in what quantities was nobody's business but mine. but it's not really about me and my dirty (?) little secrets: what concerns me is that this knowledge is available to a few about whole populations, and not only not shared to advance our collective knowledge but to the sole discretion of profit or control seeking organizations. i saw the birth of the internet and its astonishing possibilities (some of which happily materialized) only to see it taken over by a horde of marketeers and mind-controllers. and then ... facebook happened. so there was a point where i had to admit that if this is where the world really wants to go, then so be it. of course it feels wrong, but i really do not see how to avoid it in the long run.

that said, i'm not buying into every crap either. yes, i have a credit card. and a mobile phone. i even turn my location service on on occasion. and i have a windows pc exclusively to play games. but that's pretty much all.

So yeah, Windows 10, it's OK if you like that kind of thing

to be clear, imo closed software should ideally be just considered unacceptable and outlawed at the very least in any public, security or health related matter. it makes me cringe that most public offices around the world, from town halls to census data centers, are run by a corporation. i just expect more of that to come.

 

[Morbad]

I'm a huge Windows XP fan but I struggle to use it now - just so limiting - it's amazing how much you can get use to little improvements over time!

What exactly do you find limiting?

 

[Dural]

peer review is indeed beneficial and i'd even say of utmost importance, it's the best we can currently have but it isn't a silver bullet either. remember the ssl heartbleed, a vulnerability that had been sitting there in plain view for a couple of years undermining the security of a widely used open source ssl library. still, the fact that this was open source at least allowed public scrutiny, and to know when exactly it was introduced and what impact it may have had, crucial knowledge we would be oblivious to if this was some company's proprietary and secret code. but it shows that peer review has to be highly motivated and seriously considered to be effective. just thinking 'if there's something fishy some of the thousands of experts around the world must have seen it and would have said so' is not good enough. and to review or audit software you just need a laptop, knowledge and some time; hardware, specially nanoelectronics, is a wholy different game.



i've become more cynical. i'm actually still a 'linux freak', and i've been very vocal about these issues for the most part of my life, but have become to see it more and more like a lost battle. so you are actually right, and i can't deny this hurts me a bit. for example, i'm now the not-so-proud owner of a credit card and use it daily without a second thought. i refused for decades because where i bought my marmalade, drugs or books, at what times of the day and in what quantities was nobody's business but mine. but it's not really about me and my dirty (?) little secrets: what concerns me is that this knowledge is available to a few about whole populations, and not only not shared to advance our collective knowledge but to the sole discretion of profit or control seeking organizations. i saw the birth of the internet and its astonishing possibilities (some of which happily materialized) only to see it taken over by a horde of marketeers and mind-controllers. and then ... facebook happened. so there was a point where i had to admit that if this is where the world really wants to go, then so be it. of course it feels wrong, but i really do not see how to avoid it in the long run.

that said, i'm not buying into every crap either. yes, i have a credit card. and a mobile phone. i even turn my location service on on occasion. and i have a windows pc exclusively to play games. but that's pretty much all.



to be clear, imo closed software should ideally be just considered unacceptable and outlawed at the very least in any public, security or health related matter. it makes me cringe that most public offices around the world, from town halls to census data centers, are run by a corporation. i just expect more of that to come.

Certainly, peer review doesn’t mean the process is immune from errors and also doesn’t guarantee the quality of the work either. Yes, I do remember Heartbleed very well. What open source should guarantee is it’s much less likely for nefarious functions to be introduced. It’s also much more difficult for an entity to coerce a collective of individuals to introduce malicious functions as because they aren’t bound to an organisation which can have pressure in whatever form applied to it. If anyone thinks the NSA backdooring Cisco appliances example is tin foil hat theories, just pop it into Google, it is what they have been doing.

I do appreciate where you’re coming from regarding personal information and your activities not being anyone else’s business.

Privacy is an interesting one. I think a lot of people just don’t care these days because they don’t directly see the negative results from surrendering personal information, maybe they find it creepy that their phone will show them an advert for something which they have looked at on their PC but what do they do? Probably nothing or maybe install an ad blocker which is only ignoring what’s happening but for a lot of people, out of sight, out of mind I suppose. If people do care about privacy what can they do? It means opting out of using a lot of things which make life very convenient. No Facebook, Google or other social media for a start. No mobile phone, no internet at all really unless you can totally disconnect yourself from your online activities which is almost impossible. Probably no credit cards or bank accounts (Don’t worry, lots of people eat marmalade, it’s not a dirty habit) You can’t expect the governments to do anything about it as they are hoovering up and analysing every scrap of data they can get their hands on and can ask any entity holding information on an individual to provide that information having followed due process to obtain it. They even go so far as to withhold information about serious vulnerabilities (eternal blue etc) presumably so they can use them themselves. I get why they do it too, if I was responsible for a set of systems used by people whose safety was my responsibility, I’d want to know exactly what information was on them too if there was any chance doing so might mean protecting someone. The government is not in an enviable position. I don’t believe they are always acting in the best interests of the individual though.

So where does all this information collection lead to? Well, discrimination and absolute control eventually if you look at somewhere like China. If taken to the extreme, we’ll end up with a functionally equivalent communist regime where people are assigned their functions in society based on analysis and probabilities. That may well benefit the few at the top who might get an additional few percent of citizen output but would be miserable and restrictive for the vast majority. Or, we might see a push back against data collection and analysis and for governments to introduce some kind of legislation making it illegal to either collect, share or in any way act on any information not specifically provided by the individual. Let’s see

 

[Zak Gordon]

....i saw the birth of the internet and its astonishing possibilities (some of which happily materialized) only to see it taken over by a horde of marketeers and mind-controllers. and then ... facebook happened. so there was a point where i had to admit that if this is where the world really wants to go, then so be it. of course it feels wrong, but i really do not see how to avoid it in the long run.

Not specifically aimed at you, but the general wider mass of eyes, but really all it takes is to not take part. If you don't use something there is no financial incentive. It is the ONLY method of power we have in a consumer led society. Just don't take part. If everybody stopped using facebook there would be no facebook etc. It's the only defence we have left and all it is is a 'choice'.

I 'choose' to not use Windows 10, facebook, Steam, smart phones (i-anything etc), contact-less credit cards; all manner of things i don't agree with and i have very sound reasons for that. Once there is more awareness in the public domain more people can make the better choices for all this kind of stuff. For those of us already understanding the problem, we can simply make the 'choice', spread this awareness and more will go "oh, god yeah that sucks", and we can slowly drag the power back. It's beatable.

 

[znôrt]

Let’s see

It's beatable.

thank you. way to go, you are truly encouraging, guys. but ... i can't help but be me. look how we treat other fellow humans, not to mention other species. we 'the general public' are being offered irresistible junk and so busy discussing idiocies that we don't even notice how we are being stripped of the rights our grandparents died for. we in the first world are so entitled, so utterly dumb, that we fully deserve whatever comes, and i'm not even sad about it

 

[Zeeman]

Windows 10 pushed me to Linux. I have not looked back since. Thanks to MS for that shove

Oddly, Win 10 pushed me to OSX (Sadly, no home automation gear is sold that uses Linux for the programming software). But I got absolutely sick of being forced to do updates at random time sof the day when I absolutley need to pick up my laptop and got ot he next job.

I did, of course, and up disabling auto updates completely, so my Win 10 has not been updated since just before creators...

Z...

 

[Chris Simon]

Oddly, Win 10 pushed me to OSX (Sadly, no home automation gear is sold that uses Linux for the programming software). But I got absolutely sick of being forced to do updates at random time sof the day when I absolutley need to pick up my laptop and got ot he next job.

I did, of course, and up disabling auto updates completely, so my Win 10 has not been updated since just before creators...

Z...

That's sad, because Creators update brought quite a few changes that help gaming. And the updates now about bi-monthly so hardly something you'd consider a problem.

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

It's an absolute HORROR.
I have on both my machines running still Win7 and will keep them. On my laptop for the work i had previously Win7 and it was a running machine. Now the IT-people have updated it to Win10 some time ago.....and suddenly it needs already half an hour to start!!! Wi dows does everything what it wants, when it wants. A screen saying "i'm shutting down in lesser than 1 minute" and kills every unsaved work you've done so far, programs running sooooooo sllloooooowwwww thaaaat eeeveeeeeenn simply Outlook takes ages to start.

Than of course all the trash that eats away every bit of the expensive SSD as main drive and you just CAN'T get really rid of it. Than the most bad is....on my laptop for work i'm no admin so i can do even less than nothing against it.

One good thing has Win10: i spent half of my day at work with doing nothing because the laptop is not working or not fast enough

 

[Space Dandy]

Still quite happy with windows 7 and will keep using it for the foreseeable future.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Still quite happy with windows 7 and will keep using it for the foreseeable future.

Yes same thing for me

 

[Asp Explorer]

It's an absolute HORROR.

To be fair - that's probably down to a misconfiguration issue. Many enterprises stuff totally atrocious builds out - and if you ever get SEP involved - it's not going to make one bit of difference what hardware it's running on.

 

[Zeeman]

That's sad, because Creators update brought quite a few changes that help gaming. And the updates now about bi-monthly so hardly something you'd consider a problem.

Creater's created more problems than solutions for the first few months.

And honestly, I'm so happy to be avoiding random reboots and have some control back over my OS. even OSX gives you the option to postpone updates until you're good and ready.

For my laptop for work the updates actually cost me money. I run my own business, and when I am done, I need to go "right now" to my next job.

The folk at M$ don't understand that some of us don't work 9-5 (wow, only 8 hour days?), and that some days I start at 5am, others I finish at 3am, so setting a schedule is pointless (not that it works, because I had an update auto start on me in the middle of scheduled work time - which is what pushed me over the edge to disable it altogether).

Anyway, I'm much happier now. I'll update again at some stage, when I have time to do the update, then disable auto updates again, then delete all the essentials M$ insists we need. You know, Candy Crush, Minecraft, and all the other rubbish that appears to be essential for a "Pro" paid for OS...

Z...