If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

"I've put together a kill script"

please publish!!!!!

Set up Windows Update to only automatically install recommended updates and leave out the optional ones. Also tell it not to install Microsoft updates in the same way as recommended updates.

It appears bad publicity has deterred them from putting Windows 10 stuff in recommended updates, at least lately. They might change their mind again.

"I feel like I'm going to be condemned to fight this fucking war for the rest of my damned life. At least once 2020 rolls around they'll have to choose between Windows 10 or Linux Mint. When that happens anyone who goes with Windows 10 won't have me looking after their computers from that point on."

I feel for you. Ever since the W8 madness, I've made very clear to the population I currently support (family, friends etc ..., some of them 70 years old, who have yet to discover we can actually launch stuff on W7 by other means than double-click on the desktop), that if they buy a new laptop, they should get a Mac, and any Windows version above 7, I don't touch, like ever.

Why are you removing the offer and not just upgrading them to Windows 10? Its much faster and truely better than 8.1.

"I feel like I'm going to be condemned to fight this fucking war for the rest of my damned life"...

Stop getting stressed. Your friends and relatives chose Windows, you didn't. Let them take responsibility for their choices, it'll make them stronger and better people in the end.

Re: Optional?

"The rest are on the sidelines watching with no serious plans to upgrade from whatever"

Yes, that's me. Mostly I'm waiting to see if there's a way to definitively and permanently control what data is being sent and what indications there will be of subscription payments to use Win 10.x / 11 etc.

Otherwise Linux Mint is moving from VM to hard drive

Re: Optional?

The implication is true early adopters will grab W10 within a couple of months of its release.

Yep, I certainly did. I had an estate rebuild to do at home anyway so figured now was as good a time as later. Its certainly better than 8, though seems to largely be 7 with a tweaked GUI from my limited daily use. I'm ok with it - just watch those privacy settings.

The rest are on the sidelines watching with no serious plans to upgrade from whatever.

In the case of several friends & family, what they're doing on the sidelines is waiting for me to have time to upgrade them.

I'm a developer by trade. However, one of the things I have to make time for in the vanishingly small slice of the day that I could call my own (job, commute, kids), is to act as unpaid hardware/software support for friends & family. Bottom line is that it's just easier for me if they're all on the same OS, so Win 10 it is.

Re: Optional?

"the fact there is no killer "app" on W10 to make upgrading worth it."

There is - Direct-X 12.

Re: Optional?

"It's pretty difficult; if you don't want it, then don't push the upgrade button and wait a really long time. Therefore not that strange an assumption, and extremely disingenuous to suggest otherwise."

You sincerely assert that everyone studies and analyses the function of every "update" their computer offers them and makes a balanced, informed decision on whether or not to permit its persistent "upgrade" urgings? Even though they'll have been *told* by their *trusted* *experts* how *important* it is to *promptly* apply *updates*. That's a strange assumption and it's extremely disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

Re: Are Win7 users not upgrading because of Win8/10's tiles?

"You're perfectly right that all MS needed to do was offer a choice, even if it defaults to tiles"

Completely agree but the reason MS claim to not add options for these sorts of things is it increases complexity for users; they're put off by large lists of things they don't understand (hence the ribbon, eugh, which is supposed to be task/context-sensitive and hide the stuff you don't need to use *now*) and if someone needs to provide support they can be sure all the buttons etc are in the same place on everyone's machine if there is only one style of Start menu.

As another commentard noted, Windows is not exclusively developed for IT professionals, unfortunately. It's lowest-common-denominator thinking.

Re: Are Win7 users not upgrading because of Win8/10's tiles?

Oddly ms seem to have mostly given up on phones and tablets, so I don't know why they are still trying.

A couple of reasons. The first is that Microsoft never, ever listen to customers, and never see the world from the customer's perspective. So although there's no real market pull for Windows phones, they think that if they keep on, eventually world + dog will cave in and buy them. I don't agree, but as a customer of Microsoft they're hardly going to credit my opinion.

The second reason is that (notwithstanding the huge writedowns on the failed Nokia phones acquisition), they'd have further writedowns on all of the investments in phone software and IP. That wouldn't land well with investors, nor would the immediate realisation that Microsoft is handcuffed to the desktop. Without a cloud offer, nothing to pitch for in IoT, no mobile presence, nothing in ad-serving and tracking (remember the huge and failed AQuantive acquisition?) where are they going? It'd kill their share price, and the value of the obscenely overpaid executives share options.

And even in desktop and related areas, they've done nothing to add real user value - other than a series of f***ed up UI changes, Microsoft haven't written much new code for years, so all the crap bits of Server, Office and Windows are still there. They wasted their money and time buying Minecraft, in a doomed bid to get down and groovy with the kids. And meanwhile people like AWS own the cloud, Google own ad-serving, Google and Apple divide the phone market between them, and the IoT will be exploited by somebody not called Microsoft.

As an investment case, Microsoft only has value to a patent troll, but for the execs to extract their pound of flesh they need to avoid the world realising that, and that's why they are still trying with phones.

Re: Windows 10 on floppy…

I remember installing slakware linux in the mid-90's using floppies that a friend of mine had done for me (my work didn't have a reliable internet connection and his did).

I think about 6 floppies failed and had to be redone. Given that 'redone' meant giving it (serial install remember!) to him and getting him to re-write it and pass it back to me (2 day turnaround) it took a while!

And then I did an rm -rf * in the wrong place and had to do it all again.

Re: People don't like being forced into something

"Windows of old was the slightly annoying but attentive waiter in a restaurant."

Really?

I seem to recall that, at the time, we all felt Windows was the antisocial halfwit proprietor, who pissed in the soup, swore at customers and tended to either spit at them or ignore them when they asked him to do anything, but we had no choice but to put up with him because he owned all the restaurants in town. Well, aside from the weird restaurant with the penguin logo that you could only get into through a secret tunnel over an assault course, and once you were in all the other clientele sneered at you. And the Apple cult, who grew their own food that tasted dreadful, but got away with it by telling the devoted that they shouldn't like other food anyway.

Thinking about it, computing pre-2003 was basically horrible.