I use Windows 10 Pro. I paid extra for it so I can do extra stuff that I require. I also use the laptop with Win10 for my Astronomy cameras and presentations. Every other month an update comes out that fucks with my VPN software, fucks with my USB to Serial drivers, fucks with the speeds of my god damned USB ports(!!!) and the creator content pack added a shit ton of "apps" that all try to grab internet connections against my will opening up security holes. Most of these I cannot disable or remove. (BTW shitheads, on a desktop these bits of code that run are called programs. Apps run on mobile devices and yes that matters.)
I'm 99.99999999% done with Microsoft. All of it. We are going to move to LibreOffice at work once I get the final proposals nailed down and we are going to send them a donation. I'm so fed up with the Exchange and Office365 (Not to mention Outlook Online and its fucking bullshit) that I am making the case to spend 20K in training to replace all of it. the only thing holding me back is my end user community.
I do not want a social media app in my fucking operating system. In fact, you shitheels, I do not want ANY FUCKING PROGRAM AT ALL THAT CONNECTS TO THE FUCKING INTERNET installed without my express permission and understanding! Not the Netflix app. Not the fucking Twitter shit. Not Facebook. And I want to murder Onedrive but you even took that away from us. If I am going to pay on average $200 more than a normie for your fucking operating system's Pro and Enterprise versions you and your marketing fuckwits should know by now that I probably have a reason for doing so; don't treat me like a grandma on her old fucking Gateway cow-print beige box.
My desktop that I game on is running Win8.1 I refuse to upgrade further, and will go full LInux once 8.1 is no longer supported. If I could roll my laptop back to Win7? I'd do it in a fucking minute (driver issues and system board support does not exist for pre Win10 OS's) I don't think anyone at MS talks to people who use computers any more. I do not want to convert my borderline super computer INTO A FUCKING IPAD YOU SHITS. The start menu abortion needed me to buy extra software to fix your fucking UI "upgrade" assholes.
Microsoft has me so pissed off right now I am considering Apple hardware. Fuck you Microsoft.
Apple is kind of heading in the same direction, now that there's an app store (and OS X certainly phones home at least some). My bigger complaint with them, though, is that their hardware is still really overpriced, and they're hostile to upgrading (even when they don't solder the RAM in place, it's still a huge PITA to get to).
I'm planning on buying a new machine in April, and I'm on the fence about whether it'll run Linux or Windows 10. The only reason I'm remotely considering the latter is gaming compatibility. And if I do go Windows 10, I'm installing Steam, Firefox, and nothing else, and will use my Linux laptop for anything involving actual information.
It is definitely good, and I always check it out when I'm game-shopping. The main games that are prompting the upgrade, though, are Doom and Subnautica, neither of which have Linux versions. I know people have gotten Doom to run on Wine, but it's hardly the same thing.
Plus VR support on Linux is virtually (heh) non-existent right now.
I'm in this same camp, except I'm not in the market for a new machine and will keep my mid-2012 MacBook Pro running as long as I can. That's the last with user replaceable parts. I upped the RAM already and have been lazy about a solid state drive. But it's an easy swap.
I still debate a MacBook as my next laptop, but as always I can't really justify the price. That and by all accounts the bar thing on the new ones is terrible.
I bought a first-gen MBP in 2007 for law school, and I loved it. We didn't need Word back then, either: all exams had to be printed out on our own (so I just used Pages), and my one big third-year writing assignment I wrote in LaTeX and submitted as a PDF. I used Pages and OmniGraffle for note-taking and Adium for IM. It was great. (Helped that I was able to double the RAM for like $20 a year after I bought it, too.)
At that time (2007-2009) there were only a handful of Mac users. I saw the woman who runs the helpdesk (for whom I worked while I was in school) a couple weeks ago, and she told me that they're now easily 50-50. The computer lab has iMacs with Windows VMs, but people boot into macOS more than half the time. Academia seems to be really embracing Apple. The legal profession still revolves around Word, but I wonder how much longer that'll be the case (really it's only necessary now for trading stuff between lawyers; all filing is done either electronically or printed.) Cloud services are posing a bit of a problem from an ethical standpoint, which is why I never used any Google service for anything when I was in private practice.
Anyway, these days the only reason I even still use a laptop is for posting nonsense online while watching YouTube or Netflix on a second monitor during my work-from-home days. Once I get a new gaming desktop, I'm installing Linux on my old one and putting it in the home office for that purpose, and will be using my laptop for e-mail, hubski-ing, and the like downstairs. (New desktop is going to be gaming only.)
Ever notice how patents are more forgiving of their own kids shit? Same thing happens when someone custom builds a Linux machine.
Ouch. Makes sense that wouldn't happen if it's worked from the start
Registry hacks work.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent]
DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures=dword:00000001
I've got Win10 Home and I haven't seen that shit since Day 1.
I'd love to run Linux. I'm not because there's no
- spreadsheets
- word processors
- photo editors
- audio editors
- video editors
- CAD
I'm not running a System76 because I need to build double the computer because I gotta run Windows in a VM in order to accomplish anything and that's an utterly untenable situation.
Want to know the fucking hilarious thing? I have to do that reg hack monthly. Updates roll out, go into the registry, change the string, repeat. I'm not the only one, from what I am seeing online. Not sure why some of us have so much trouble with this while some people click that damn thing once and then never have an issue.
The change to the way the USB to serial works has fucked with a ton of people and there is no logical reason why they would do this. All my telescopes and cameras broke and had to do some black magic wankery to get them all sort-of working again.
Linux always seems like it is two-three years away from having everything I want. I use it for work, I use it for home, and I'd love to use it for my daily PC. ASCOM demands Windows, so to do astronomy stuff I am stuck with Windows for a while.
It depends a lot on hardware, I think. My custom-built Pro Tools rig? Blew it all away, computer went "huh" and I never saw it again. Lenovo tablet? Three years after Superfish? Purged all the bloatware and the thing wouldn't wake from hibernate.
Same with the USB-to-serial. Serial, as a protocol, does fuckall. Serial, as a framework for proprietary extensibility, is incredibly versatile. But that means that nearly everything it does is a proprietary hack. Back when I used to have to do it all the time we knew there were three USB-serial devices that our techs had to carry because every device worked better or worse (or not at all) with each.
Keyspan, by the way. Fucker hasn't changed in 15 years.
Just like serial.
Doesn't part of the whole concept of location locking, like region locks on DVDs, have to do partly because of controlling prices (for example, a DVD might cost $2 in Thailand and Vietnam but $15 in the US) and also because different companies have different distribution rights for different regions?
Higher revenue for advertising. Location-based allows for regional targeting and regional targeting is everything.
If you want to know why Facebook is worth so much, it's because it allows advertisers to seek out women from 18 to 20 within a 2-mile radius that have liked content related to flowers in the past 3 weeks.
I don't really understand anything about peoples gripes with windows 10.
Search Customer Experience, turn it off.
You are done.
I haven't had anything unwanted installed on my system after I clamped down all the privacy and other miscellaneous other bullshit settings.
I probably took an hour to make sure my computer was cruft free, sounds like it was worth it.
I keep hearing conflicting things on this. It's been all over the 'net that the Anniversary Update removed this (see, e.g. here), but I do then see some users saying it's still possible.
I'm hoping to get a new gaming PC in April, and I'm super on the fence about whether I want to buy Windows 10 at all. My current desktop is still running 7, but given MS's refusal to support modern hardware with anything pre-10, I'm kind of stuck.
I have a few guesses about why I can shut it down and others can't.
First off I spent the extra $10 for Pro.
Second, I tore out everything I possible could and shut off every available option that wasn't necessary for general purpose computing.
I think if you don't close every chink in the armor than you can't disable certain annoying functions.
My wife wanted to watch the Olympics with her friends Hulu TV login on my PC. To do this I needed to turn on Microsoft location services. I couldn't turn it on, the toggle they have for it was unable to be activated. I have some other setting turned off or I uninstalled some other bullshit that it was dependent on. Some of these services have other dependencies that if left on make you unable to disable or enable other services. I didn't build my rig to watch location dependent TV and I don't really care that it won't work.
I suspect that you might not be able to turn off Customer Services if you leave shit like Cortana on.
The only complaint I have with Win 10 is that the screen dimming controls are shit if you aren't on a laptop, otherwise I can't think of anything about it that is especially annoying.
Reminds me of my experiences with Win, those were the days :)