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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

#341

Post by DKnoll3 »

josefresco wrote: post #79

Since we're all sharing stories of family tech support - I recently had to give my sister's Toshiba laptop an overhaul, upgraded to Windows 10. That's it... no drama, no problems -sorry. Didn't XP teach us all a lesson about locked in/legacy software and it's danger to the security and stability of modern computing? Why is it okay that my iOS and Android devices essentially require an update several times a year but…

>Why is it okay that my iOS and Android devices essentially require an update several times a year but not my PC OS?

Who said it was?

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

#342

Post by DKnoll3 »

yuhong wrote: post #266
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.

I think some MS EULAs has class action waivers AFAIK.

If the EULA is nullified (MS didn't hold up their end of the bargain/terms), that won't matter.

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

#343

Post by DKnoll3 »

ck2 wrote: post #311

GWX Control Panel http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/ Disables virtually all possibilities of auto-upgrades.

So does using an OS that respects the user's right to choose, and doesn't rely on trickery to change users to a more commercially friendly platform.

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

#344

Post by blakeyrat »

15charlimit wrote: post #68
Someone1234 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ino…

End users and tech people always knee-jerk about anything that changes, whether it's a positive change or not.

The Ribbon interface they introduced in Office back in 2007 was a huge improvement over the mess of dialogs, toolbars and menus they had before by every metric. People still bitch about it, almost a decade later. The people who bitch about it benefit as much as everybody else from the increased usability, but that doesn't stop the bitching.

And it's not just Microsoft. People bitched at Firefox when they moved the menu into the tabs. People bitched at Chrome when it removed "http" from the URL bar (I just noticed it seems to have come back at some point), people bitch about everything all the time. Not because they genuinely didn't like it, or because it makes their life more difficult, but because they simply hate change.

The only way to keep these people happy is to change nothing, ever. Is that really what you want? It's not what I want.

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

#345

Post by blakeyrat »

curt15 wrote: post #123
Someone1234 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>but I also agree that we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7" How does Apple avoid "XP situations" without shoving system updates down users' throats? New versions of iOS typically achieve >80% adoption rates.

Everything Microsoft's doing with Windows 10 is already following Apple's example. Requiring an online account to log into the OS, offering free OS updates with extreme nagging. Integrating an ad-supported software store into the OS. That's all stuff Apple had done way before Microsoft.

People just don't bitch about Apple because Apple is "cool" and Microsoft is "lame". I guess.

And Apple's raking-in of massive amounts of $$$ shows that it's exactly what people want. So it should be absolutely no surprise that Microsoft's following their lead.

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

#346

Post by cortic »

majewsky wrote: post #285
marssaxman wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: it's none of their business what people choose to do with their computers. It's not their ecosystem.

I disagree. Outdated and thus soon malware-ridden systems are a threat to all systems connected directly or indirectly to them, so users are obliged either to keep their systems clean and up-to-date. Either themselves or through experts, or through automated servicing. Much like how cars must be serviced in regular intervals if they are to be operated on shared infrastructure (roads).

There is a difference between regular mandated services and waking up one morning to find they have replaced my much loved (and customized) Mercedes with a bloody Skoda.

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

#347

Post by TeMPOraL »

noxToken wrote: post #225
freehunter wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "We will install updates at 3:30am". I'd really like to see you try. My laptop will be in my bag in the hotel room at 3:30am. Hilton will be really happy with you burning the building down when you remotely switch on my Thinkpad with no ventilation.

I have never had a Windows laptop boot up for scheduled updates. In that event, it always waitied for the next manual boot.

I experience that constantly on any laptop I use because I pretty much never turn them off - they go to sleep mode when not used. Every now and then I find the laptop running with a clean desktop after logging in - because it decided to reboot and install updates somewhen during the night.

I've been an enemy of automated updates ever since, many years ago, I went to the kitchen to boil the water for a tea, and there suddenly I heard the PC speaker beeping - oh, Windows decided to count down from "5 minutes" and reboot.

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

#348

Post by blakeyrat »

dragonwriter wrote: post #119
snuxoll wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" ch…

> This is why the Windows 10 installer does a compatibility check before performing the upgrade. Which would be nice, if it worked 100%. But it doesn't, so that's a problem for non-technical users. In fact, the Win10 upgrade on my Win 8.1 laptop "helpfully" rolled-back the touchpad driver from the latest driver designed for Win 8.1 -- which works fine with Win 10 -- to the original Win 8 driver, which doesn't functio…

Well if it doesn't work 100% of the time, they shouldn't bother to try at all. Let's just curl up in the basement and cry instead.

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

#349

Post by TeMPOraL »

WorldMaker wrote: post #140
Bartweiss wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest aggravation with Windows is the pattern of unapproved restarts. Sure, there's usually a setting to disable it, and a popup to delay it, but it's not really enough. The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs. It really only takes one ill-timed restart to damn an OS forever, especially when the restart is chased by lengthy (and impossible to declin…

The interesting thing here is that Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 all improved the Windows Update restart timing logic and made it more transparent. (There's a section that states "A restart is planned, Windows has determined the most likely idle time to try the restart is 3:43am" now, for instance.) In this case it's Windows 7's Restart logic that is old/bad (and long has been), not Windows 10, but Windows 10 of course is ge…

Oh, frak their idea of "idle time". I went to settings to change it, I honestly wanted to give it a reasonable time window when I'm not likely to use the machine. Guess what? The "busy time" is limited to 8 hours. Because no one ever uses a computer for more than 8 hours a day? Well, but I do. Frak that.

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

#350

Post by 794CD01 »

whyoh wrote: post #276
794CD01 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn it off via group policy if you have windows enterprise. If you just want to complain that the cheaper version doesn't have the feature you want, and you don't want to pay the higher price for the version that does have it, that's your right, but I don't have much sympathy for that.

>You can turn it off via group policy if you have windows enterprise. No, you can't. You can only set it to a lower level. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con...

You can disable utcsvc and prevent it from being re-enabled. Since doing so also disables Windows updates (which is why you shouldn't do it) you can also be sure that future updates will not re-enable it.
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