Windows 10 Free Upgrade Deadline Approaching

I actually find this much faster and convenient than clicking around all over the old start menu.

 

I have the Control panel pinned to the taskbar, just to annoy you all.

 

Meh ... if you really wanted to annoy us all.
You would also pin Settings to the taskbar

 

Yeah that's exactly what I thought too and why I don't even bother with third party apps to change the start menu. People who see me on my computer are just like... "how the heck did you do all that so fast?!?"

 

Though I wish they bring back the old quick search criteria of windows 8.

It was really nice to search for an application from a list of application / a setting from list of settings / a file from a list of file with the keyboard shortcut.
Wish they bring it back.

Instead of All, Settings, Files in Windows 8.1 or All including Internet and Store Apps in Windows 10.
Having to touch the mouse feels strange

 

At least you both can go back to Windows 7 Pro, Windows 10 Pro is gimp locked with free advertising in 5 days...

Starting Aug. 2, admins will not be able to keep Microsoft from pushing the likes of Candy Crush Soda Saga onto Win10 Pro PCs on their networks because certain Group Policies will be deactivated
http://www.infoworld.com/article/31...d-advertising-creeps-into-windows-10-pro.html

"If you were wondering whether Microsoft could inflict even more damage to Windows' reputation, the answer is yes."

Probably the worst time to upgrade to Windows 10, given how the hope's and dream's of controlling your PC against MS's wishes is at an end August 2nd.



"From Aug. 2 onward, you're going to get tiles for any apps Microsoft wants to push, whether you want them or not, unless you're running Win10 Enterprise or Education. If you're connected to a domain, even your admin can't turn them off."

 

Personally, at home I have less issues with Win 10 than I have with Win 7, but how the heck can corporations use Win 10 with all of the back door spying and advertising and lack of controls? I mean our work machines are so locked down you can't do anything to harm them. And they would never let any automated logging, spyware or adverts slip through.

Are companies going to have to choose between using an old MS OS that isn't supported or moving to Linux? We are becoming more and more secure at my workplace, not less secure and more open to pass information out as the direction that MS seems to be going in.

I would happily move to Linux if it ever became as easy as Windows to install and setup and ran ALL of my software and games as good or better.

 

Yeah he won't ever go back despite the machine being built for Haswell (I built him an upgrade from his cheap i3 using my old 4770k and a new asrock Z97 mobo) allowing him to do so but I'm waiting for the Anniversary update to hit so I can opt out of Insider builds on my desktop without having to nuke the whole thing. I don't particularly mind W10 but the Insider builds force you to set "working hours" in an 8 hour block that outside of that it will automatically restart to install updates.

They've also got forced driver updates again. Every build I have to roll the nvidia drivers back to 365.19...

I'm considering just breaking my RAID and putting Mint 18 on one SSD and 10 on the other though because I'm really getting tired of this mess. 7 is just too much of a hassle, I never cared for 8.1, and Linux is just quite limited when it comes to gaming.

 

Meh - all you mouse noobs. I just use + X and then P to get to Control Panel. Or the first combination, and then A for an elevated CMD, U twice to shut down, U and then R to restart, M for Device Manager, K for Disk Management and F to uninstall stuff.

This is one of the few super-useful things that MS has included with Windows 8 onwards - the superuser menu at the bottom left.

 

I use keyboard shortcuts too sometimes, it just depends on if I'm on my laptop or my desktop. Last night I did a full Windows install without a mouse because I was too lazy to get up and put a new AA in my mouse

 

I can relate to that. When I was filling out my SAT form, I did the entire thing with a keyboard, even navigating through.

 

I've always been primarily keyboard oriented as its much more efficient than a mouse plus there's all my experience in DOS and terminals and such where the mouse didn't really come into play.

 

This does not surprise me one bit. I just new it would run longer since they are way behind on the number of copies they are trying to get on computers.

 

and so desperate if I may add.

 

It's so true. They are so desperate to increase the numbers it so funny and on another note 2016 computers sales are down 11% . Wonder if it has anything to do with W10 .

 

That is number 1, and number 2 is the lack of any mind blowing specced laptops. Personally, nothing interests me at the moment. When I go to the retail stores here to look at laptops, I feel that time has stopped and we are nowhere better than we were 2 years ago.

 

Time to celebrate, the blitz has ended and all my os's alive and undamaged !
Thanks to this forum for providing great info and support.

 

Once you tune 10 to your needs... microsoft throws new build with wiped controls you previously used to tune. Yes, it's disaster but we still call it Evolution of an OS and you will use it - says microsoft =)

 

Yes! Thanks to GWX control panel, and Simplix!

 

This seems to have worked for me in my attempts to block the driver updates. I do not remember where I got this from, so I cannot provide credit.

On Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise editions only, you can use the Local Group Policy Editor to disable updates entirely. Some users report that this is the only setting that worked for them. The advantage of this method is that you can also disable updates for selected devices only.

First, you need to collect the device IDs for hardware you don’t want Windows to manage for you. This could be your graphics or sound card ID.

Right-click the Start button and select Device Manager. Double-click the respective device, switch to the Details tab, and select Hardware Ids from the drop-down menu under Property. Using one of the values in the next step should be sufficient.



Now we’ll head into the Local Group Policy Editor to exclude these devices from Windows Update.

Press Windows key + R, enter gpedit.msc, and hit Enter. In your Local Group Policy Editor, head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Installation > Device Installation Restrictions. Here, double-click on the setting Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs.



Enable the Setting, click the Show… button, then for each device, enter its Value, and finally OK all your changes.



Alternatively, if you would like to disable all driver updates, you can also Enable the setting to Prevent installation of devices not described by other policy settings. However, we recommend only blocking updates for selected drivers, as described above.

 

It's finally over! (we hope...)



Also, a good article:

Microsoft Foolish to End Free Windows 10 Upgrade Program

 

Yes a very good article. A lot of good points that we know but many W10 users don't have a clue.

"no one is going to pay $119 to upgrade to Windows 10 today, if they weren't willing to do it for free in the past."

"Microsoft also benefits a great deal from all the data it collects from Windows 10 users. Though the data is anonymized, the company can use it to spot trends and even to serve you targeted ads. There's no doubt that this data is worth money.

In fact, it's pretty clear that every Windows 10 user has incredible value to Microsoft. Somewhere in the Redmond halls of power, there's probably a secret spreadsheet where the marketing department has figured out exactly how much one Windows 10 user is worth on average."

 

Ugh that's so much work. Microsoft will just break it again anyway.

 

This is the big with me. I think it's just to soon to upgrade. Just when you have it YOU WAY they bring out another update to screw you up and it's back to square one. I am going to give it a year and see where MS is going with it.I have a spare caddy and 240 SSD W7 32 bit ready to drop in my laptop. 30 second job.

 

The Anniversary update on the 2nd is going to be make or break for me. If Microsoft forces too much crap down my throat I'm dumping PC gaming and going to Linux and consoles. I don't like 8.1, 7 just takes hours and hours to install and update, and I'm just tired of Microsoft. They've been adding their telemetry backdoors and crap into 7 and 8.1 and just generally destroying the PC experience. Between nVidia drivers and Microsoft I'm about done.

 

Surprise-surprise, but I'd like to move to Linux too, despite defending 10 and all. And can even forgive the absence of interface tricks - because Linux allows to run higher-than-native resolution with acceptable quality, switching between native and upscale flawlessly. There are still a few professional programs that I need cross-platform replacements for, though. And then, there's PIA setting everything up. (=

 

The problem with Linux is that distributives indeed have some absence of interface tricks flaws which could be fixed but aren't "because Linux isn't Windows".
For example comparing with Linux Mint:
- in Windows when you open same kind of windows multiple times (be that explorer or same program) every next one is situated little bit lower and right. While Mint opens those exactly onto another so you have to do extra mouse clicks to move windows and makes you uncomfortable too.
- No zoom increments. Windows lets zoom in 25/50/100/200% while Mint lets only 100%. Also not sure how to put zoom shortcuts to the task panel.
- very low volume. Mint lets you increase volume to 150% using 5 mouse clicks but in that case if you try change volume it goes back to 100% max again. This is real LAME flaw.
That's just a short list which bothers me in Mint itself but there are many same lame flaws in programs for linux. Perhaps other distributives don't have this but I bet they will have other flaws. Nothing is like Windows 7 except Windows 7.

 

I completely fail to understand the love for 7. Is there any area where it is better vs 8.1 with classic shell?

 

Microsoft gutted some things from it, the network manager interface is rather bad in Windows 8 & 8.1, somewhat better in 10. There are a lot of little things like that that were easily accessible in Windows 7, that became hard to access in later versions, including some UI customization options like border width, etc. Honestly, with classic shell or something similar, Windows 8 isn't that different to the average joe user, but to power users, there are a fair amount of options that are either missing or require registry edits which you didn't have to do with Windows 7.

I don't mind 8 or 10 personally, but sometimes, there are things I found were easier to get done with 7.

 

Virtual Keyboard is one of those:
- not transparent;
- doesn't let to use Full-Mode unless using tablet (WHY?) or regedit hack;
- can't be opened via side-shortcut;
- isn't resizeable or detacheable.
That's just one area where I like to use my computer being in a chair using wireless mouse only. To watch movies and do other entertainment stuff which doesn't need me to type too much. Trust me, there are many many other areas.
In a short way: customize-ability. You loose more and more from 7 to 10.

 

@tijo @James D thank you for explaining. For me, speed of executing routine tasks was always more important; hence slow boot and lack of power user menu and other keyboard shortcuts make 7 feel extremely outdated, at least for me.

Modern keyboard is detachable, and can be opened (and closed) using taskbar icon - but you can still use old on-screen keyboard which is fully resizeable and can be made transparent (until you start typing); you can pin it to taskbar, too.

 

Yet it has too much buttons for me taking useful space and is black, not transparent. Ideal one is from Windows 7 for me. Anyway, I tried W8 very long time ago and don't want to "fix what isn't broken". I better use 3rd party tools for Windows 7 and I DO use those to customize what I need. There are many advantages like Pause copy operations I would like to have but I don't want to sacrifice anything for that.

Oh boy! Even microsoft doesn't respect those who want win10! They STILL can upgrade to Win10 for Free! Just go HERE and you will be able to download executable which will upgrade your OS to Win10! You can do it if you are a customer who use assistive technologies and here is a fun fact... installer doesn't check if you actually have that assistive tech connected =) I suppose ms believes that if somebody still wants to upgrade to 10 if he didn't for a year then he probably really one of those who needs assistive tech.

 

Yep it was posted a few days ago. Myself I think its funny. Just another gimmick that M$ came up with instead of just extending the last free offer.

 

MS be like:

 

Several years ago I tried switching to console gaming. Sold my desktop and bought a PS3. But the quality and power of a good desktop rig just beats the poop out of current-gen consoles (I'm currently using a PS4 as my console), and I ended up caving and building a new gaming rig. That and quite a few games I really like are either only available on the PC or are MUCH better on the PC.

Maybe the next generation of consoles will be powerful enough to really tear me away from PC gaming, but currently, despite all the flaws and bugs and crashes, playing a game with a SSD, overclocked Intel i5, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a GTX 1070 and viewing it on a 25" 1440p UltraSharp display...the PS4 just feels like crap.

 

The console experience is definitely a bit of a compromise and in some cases totally not worthwhile as a compromise but you can't beat the ease and convenience. Although to be honest since the AU my Xbox One is actually unstable now at times. Not unexpected but very annoying.

And yes I'm a bit of a hypocrite since I am planning on a 1070 or 1080 Ti myself.