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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

#61

Post by ximeng »

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…

Bought Surface Pro a while back. Happy. Charger broke one week after warranty expiry. Keyboard broke a little later. So only way to reboot is hard reset which takes about 15 seconds of holding power button and volume up button, twice, and doesn't always work first time. Pretty unhappy but just about workable.

With Windows 10 latest version I was unable to disable a particular update which fails every time. So Windows will reboot regularly, including waking from sleep to do so, and fail to install, leading to 30 seconds plus reboot time at best to get it to wake up. For a tablet.

Since bought a new laptop and installed Linux on it as my main operating system for the first time (dual booting) and am pretty happy so far. Updates no longer reboot the computer for the most part. Missing a few features (especially hibernate), but most things work as well or better than Windows so far.

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

#62

Post by dagw »

ak217 wrote: post #40
dgritsko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "screwed-up interface"? After using 10 (upgraded from 7) for the last few months, I can only say that the interface is better. Any changes that I've noticed have been improvements, so I'm genuinely curious as to what you're referring to.

In my experience, Windows 10 is a poor upgrade from Windows 7 on laptops and desktops. The interface is a buggy, half-hearted attempt to roll back the trainwreck that is Windows 8 to something resembling 7, except 7 still works better since it doesn't have to deal with all the Metro (tablet/touch interface) bits. For now I'm keeping Windows 7 with manual updates - while loathing the fact that I have to use Windows at…

except 7 still works better since it doesn't have to deal with all the Metro (tablet/touch interface) bits.

Honestly, What metro bits? If been using Windows 10 on my desktop since release and there are no metro bits that show up in my day to day use my computer. The only bits that where there in Windows 10 where the tiles in start menu, but they where easy to remove. Personally I consider Windows 10 a clear improvement over Windows 7 in just about every aspect.

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

#63

Post by jrs235 »

I visited my parents last weekend. My dad says his laptop automatically updated to Windows 10 a month ago and since then he was unable to use the internet (so basically the machine). He was PO'ed. He was tricked into installing it because Microsoft changed the behavior of the upgrade prompt. You can choose "Upgrade now" or "Not now, upgrade later". "Not now, upgrade later" use to behave like and mean "Ask me again later" Microsoft changed it to mean and behave like "Yes. Upgrade me, just not now... force it later". My mother was and has been able to avoid the forced upgrade by always clicking the "X" to close the prompt window and avoiding the dark pattern behavior.

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

#65

Post by rocky1138 »

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…

It's a "Good Thing" when it's done using open source software, not necessarily when it's done by a closed-source company with different priorities than your own.

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

#66

Post by spriggan3 »

wnevets wrote: post #18

Think of all of the wasted effort and money because microsoft didn't force people off of IE6 quick enough.

> Think of all of the wasted effort and money because microsoft didn't force people off of IE6 quick enough.

You can't tell the difference between upgrading a single app and and an entire OS ?

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

#67

Post by snuxoll »

creshal wrote: post #60
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…

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.

This is why the Windows 10 installer does a compatibility check before performing the upgrade. My friend was trying to upgrade to Windows 10 last week but it kept denying him saying his "display is not compatible". I logged into his machine and saw he had an old GoToMyPC monitor driver installed that was causing him grief, uninstalled it and away the upgrade went.

It's not perfect by any means, and "compatibility" checks often never will be, but I think it does a good enough job to prevent breaking a working system that isn't ready for the upgrade yet.

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

#68

Post by 15charlimit »

Someone1234 wrote: post #54
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…

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…

> we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7

If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines inoperable.

Windows 7 will become the next XP, and Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves.

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

#69

Post by ksk »

colechristensen wrote: post #22
soggypretzels wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose they mean taking Apple's "We know what is good for you better than you do" approach. While Apple currently does not force OS upgrades, they do make a lot of decisions for their users without giving their users an opt-out or a way to roll back. This idea top-down, walled garden is pretty central to contemporary Apple.

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.

They decided for me that my updated iphone 4s should never be able to be restored to factory condition and I would be forced to suffer terrible performance and battery life.

They decided for me that all my apps should auto-update. This incentivizes application developers putting their users on a constant upgrade treadmill (similar to apple). I guess there is so much amazing "Innovation" happening in every update that they decided that users absolutely must want every single update. This has caused developers to never consider a software feature-set as released or finished and free of bugs. They have taken this horrible mindset that only existed on the web and brought it to native apps.

Then there is the heavy handed approach of forcing you to update your entire OS just to run a developer IDE. Something previously _unheard_ of and frankly embarrassing from an engineering point of view.

Well folks, that's all the time we have for this segment today, tune in tomorrow for more.. :)

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

#70

Post by wnevets »

spriggan3 wrote: post #66
wnevets wrote: post #18

Think of all of the wasted effort and money because microsoft didn't force people off of IE6 quick enough.

> Think of all of the wasted effort and money because microsoft didn't force people off of IE6 quick enough. You can't tell the difference between upgrading a single app and and an entire OS ?

When it comes to IE is there much difference?IE versions are tied directly to OS versions.
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