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Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

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Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#51

Post by dangerlibrary »

gbrown wrote: post #24
Guest98123 wrote: post #19

A few days ago I was visiting family, and my Mom was online Skyping relatives on her Windows 7 PC. She comes running into the other room and says her PC just restarted while she was talking, and now it says something about configuring Windows 10, even though she was always careful to opt-out of the constant requests to upgrade. So, we had to wait for it to install the OS, then decline the terms of service, then wait…

I wonder if stories like this are why Skype is so completely broken on Linux. If it worked, far more people would be comfortable switching.

I'm friends with a dev I respect that recently took a job on the Skype team. Skype is completely broken everywhere, because the code is a nightmare and people are scared to make changes - any change will break something. Linux is probably just low priority on a very long list of things that are terrible/broken about Skype.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#52

Post by dmfdmf »

pkaye wrote: post #37
dmfdmf wrote: post #16

I'm not a fan of class action law suits but if there ever was a case it should be applied this is it.

With a class action lawsuit, the lawyers will get millions while the rest of us will get a coupon for a free upgrade to windows as settlement.

Precisely why I am generally not a supporter of class action lawsuits

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#53

Post by pavel_lishin »

themartorana wrote: post #42
Guest98123 wrote: post #19

A few days ago I was visiting family, and my Mom was online Skyping relatives on her Windows 7 PC. She comes running into the other room and says her PC just restarted while she was talking, and now it says something about configuring Windows 10, even though she was always careful to opt-out of the constant requests to upgrade. So, we had to wait for it to install the OS, then decline the terms of service, then wait…

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

Those technically illiterate users are going to have trouble with Windows 10. My stepfather is in his 70s, and I had to help him set up the weather app - and it took me about ten minutes how to figure out how to set a default location!

10 is different enough from 7 that they're going to have to learn a lot of new habits - and while that's just the nature of modern life, some people are going to suffer significantly more than others.

I believe there must be a better way of getting the less-literate people to consensually upgrade to Windows 10, without forcing it on them.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#54

Post by Someone1234 »

themartorana wrote: post #42
Guest98123 wrote: post #19

A few days ago I was visiting family, and my Mom was online Skyping relatives on her Windows 7 PC. She comes running into the other room and says her PC just restarted while she was talking, and now it says something about configuring Windows 10, even though she was always careful to opt-out of the constant requests to upgrade. So, we had to wait for it to install the OS, then decline the terms of service, then wait…

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

I'm sympathetic both ways on this one.

I think Microsoft went "too far" but I also agree that we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7. Effectively having 20%+ of the market on a super old OS holding back the industry and less secure.

Microsoft claim they're planning to avoid this in the future by no longer releasing named new OS's, and instead just update Windows 10 for "free" forever. Basically the same as Apple's current model with MacOS.

I guess how you fall on this topic is answered by the question: "Do the ends justify the means?"

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#55

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #27
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

The idea of "let's put a popup on everyone's computer telling them they can download the next version of Windows for free" simply reeks of malware shit. Even worse is when they decided to force it on everyone else who doesn't automatically click "OK" on every dialog box they see.

I kinda understand the mindset. In IT, we learn that pretty much everyone will be clueless on how to do something unless you make it nearly impossible for them to not. So when Microsoft's top support question was "how to I upgrade to Windows 10", it doesn't seem out of far field for them to think "how do we make it nearly impossible for them to fail". There's no doubt Microsoft screwed this up for a number of reasons…

Automatic, non-consensual updates would be fine, if the laptop were designed for it. Case in point, my Chromebook gets updates all the time, and the little arrow in the corner usually indicates I've got something and that I should restart. I have never, ever had a bad update across any of my Chromebooks. It is done in an elegant, non-intrusive way.

The problem here is that in Microsoft's push to get Windows 10 onto as many machines as it can, they seem to have greatly underestimated the number of computers whose age or hardware renders them partially or completely borked by updating to Windows 10. And they seem generally unrepentant to the fact that they've strong-armed people into downloading an update that destroys their computer.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#57

Post by stepanhruda »

apostacy wrote: post #31
colechristensen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? Give examples. Apple makes design choices that are very opinionated on how you should use software and internals are hard to see, but they don't make decisions for you.

Example: Apple held my iPad 2 hostage until I stopped using iOS 8. I forgot my unlock pin (because I lent my iPad to someone else) and there is no way to factory reset it without also updating the OS. So now Flux no longer works, and there is no way to adjust the gamma on this device, which means I no longer like reading on it before bed. And there are plenty of other regressions in iOS 9 as well. And they forced me…

iOS 9.3 has Night Shift, which allows you to adjust display color temperature

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#58

Post by wvenable »

givinguflac wrote: post #49
themartorana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

Support it if you want, but you seriously think it's OK for the PC to restart in the middle of a call? What if the user is doing something mission critical; it's acceptable to just wait an hour (or more likely several) to get back to work because "MS knows best"?? There is nothing to stop it from just doing it all over again either. I will never use Windows again because of this behavior.

I just did the Windows 10 upgrade on my laptop and at no point could I start the upgrade without explicitly clicking a button. In addition, the process starts by immediately rebooting (after downloading via Windows update and asking you to start it).

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#59

Post by Someone1234 »

Filligree wrote: post #33

I had about three GB free on my root partition. Windows 10 was automatically installed. Well, partially. You can probably guess what happened; if this had happened to anyone else in the family, their computer would have been effectively bricked. I used to spend most of my time in Linux anyway, but now I'm justifiably scared of booting Windows.

Windows 10 won't attempt to install unless it has enough space to complete, and they look for 16 GB.

So what I suspect actually occurred is that your hypervisor was set up to misreport how much space as available to Windows, so Windows 10 tried to install on the space it thought it had, only to hit the wall on the "real" filesystem below.

It is unlikely this ever would have occurred to anyone else in your family, unless they're running Windows in a hypervisor that misreports space.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#60

Post by creshal »

themartorana wrote: post #42
Guest98123 wrote: post #19

A few days ago I was visiting family, and my Mom was online Skyping relatives on her Windows 7 PC. She comes running into the other room and says her PC just restarted while she was talking, and now it says something about configuring Windows 10, even though she was always careful to opt-out of the constant requests to upgrade. So, we had to wait for it to install the OS, then decline the terms of service, then wait…

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

And yet Windows 7 is supposed to keep getting security updates until 2020. Computer illiterate users are the last group you should upgrade to a new system in an automated manner, because they are the most helpless if drivers/applications break from it.
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