Microsoft sort of fooled folks into thinking they'd have their free upgrade to Win10 on July 29th. It supposedly would gradually download over time and then activate the upgrade on July 29. I have a laptop with Win8.1 which is absolutely HORRIBLE. I didn't get the upgrade on the 29th and didn't even have the package stored on the drive (it's a hidden file named C:\$windows.~BT).

Since I use the laptop at work, I refrained from wiping it and installing Linux. It's not hard to use, but it freaks others out. I patiently waited until the 29th for my upgrade. As I said above, it didn't happen. I decided last night to force the upgrade. The file was over 6 gigs in size so it took a while considering Microsoft's servers are hammered. The upgrade process was fairly painless and about as long as a clean install of Win7 with a handful of reboots. You may want to a manual upgrade because there's a lot of snooping "features" that many of you will want to disable.

The moment finally arrived and I fired up Win10. I can safely say that it's a million times better than Win8.1. However, dog crap is better than 8.1 so that by itself doesn't mean much. Let's just say that win 8.1 sucks like Dracula and Win10 is more like that annoying mosquito that buzzes your ear after you go to bed. If I can tweak those annoyances out of it, it will be at least as good as Win7.

There is supposedly a major update coming in October, major enough that some are saying it may be called 10.1. That makes me wonder what's wrong with it that I haven't run into yet.



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I love sanding.

That'll be the upgrade where Microsoft says, nevermind, we're going to charge a yearly subscription fee after all.

I've advised all of my clients running Windows 7 (99.5% of them) to not install Win 10. After I see it running out in the wild for half a year or so and they get most of the bugs worked out, then we'll look into it.

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Scott D. Hansen
Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe - Your One Stop BAR Shoppe!
Ye Olde Rocket Plans - OOP Rocket Plans From 38 Companies!
Ye Olde Rocket Forum
WOOSH NAR Section #558

Microsoft finally came out and said in semi-plain English that they would not charge for Win10 and they would maintain it for free. I agree if you are running Win7 to wait. Win7 is probably the best OS they've ever released (Some argue WinXP). If you are running 8 or 8.1 and hate everything about it, run as fast as you can to Win10!!!

“We announced that a free upgrade for Windows 10 will be made available to customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 who upgrade in the first year after launch. This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost.” Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Operating Systems.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonk...t-happens-next/

They will make their money on the stuff that goes with it and from all the data they will mine from you if you don't turn off all those handy "features" that report back to them.

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I love sanding.

If you find a site that lists all the things to turn off in Win 10 that snoops on you, please add a link to this post.

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Scott D. Hansen
Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe - Your One Stop BAR Shoppe!
Ye Olde Rocket Plans - OOP Rocket Plans From 38 Companies!
Ye Olde Rocket Forum
WOOSH NAR Section #558

Windows releases remind me of Star Trek movies -- every other movie was reasonably good, with stinkers in between...

Who remembers Windows Millennium (WinME)? AKA "Windows From H...".

Or Windows Vista?

Windows 8 = Windows Hate, Windows 8.1 = Windows Hate.1

As much as I thought Vista was bad, compared to 8 it wasn't that bad. It just wasn't that good, either. Which is sad, because it was really WinXP under the hood. Same with Win8 - it was primarily the Win7 code base hidden under the worst GUI one could imagine.

Even though I had to give up a few useful apps, I've never regretted the switch to Linux a few years ago. No more worms, viruses, or trojan horses to have to constantly fight against. No more anti-virus programs to have to run. While it's not a prefect environment, I don't think I've had as many problems in Linux as I had under Windows. I'm running Mint 17.2 with the MATE GUI, and it's as comfortable as you'd ever want in a desktop or laptop. Very clean and familiar in layout.

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Craig McGraw

BARCLONE Rocketry -- http://barclone.rocketshoppe.com
BARCLONE Blogsite -- http://barclone.wordpress.com
BARCLONE Forum -- BARCLONE Forum

BARs helping BARs

SAM 0044
AMA 352635

Haven't seen anything yet. I did the manual install instead of choosing "Express Settings". I pretty much turned off everything that was offered.

If you installed it with Express Settings, all of that stuff is enabled by default. Go to Settings - Privacy. You'll find 12 or 13 screens of stuff to scrutinize. Scroll through it all and turn off everything that you don't like.

Turn off Cortana search assistant, or at least maim it to the point of becoming a simple file searcher. Cortana is one of the main features of 10, so it's up to you if you want it.

The Microsoft Account that's so convenient with their Windows Store and One Drive (cloud storage), accumulates data also. You can remove that account and log in to Windows with a local user account. If you still have other computers using the Microsoft Account, you'd need to do the same with them too. Syncing can be done other ways, so it's a choice between convenience and privacy.

One that bothers me most you can't even turn off in settings. You have to go to an "opt out" website. Makes me think they don't want you to find it.
https://choice.microsoft.com/en-gb/opt-out

Use something other than Microsoft's imbedded mail and Edge browser. I'd rather Mozilla intercept my data than Microsoft or Google so I use Firefox and Thunderbird instead of Edge or Chrome.


Edit: Just found a site that mentions most of the stuff I've done and has some explanations.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...ivacy-settings/

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I love sanding.

Absolutely! If not for others in my family using the laptop and my use of it at work, It would be flying high with Linux now. I have an older laptop running Xbuntu, but it doesn't get used much any more.

My desktop, where I do 96.369% of my non-work computing is currently running Ubuntu. I have VirtualBox set up where I play with other OS's like Mint, Fedora, etc. to see what I'm missing with other distros. I used to have WinXP set up in VirtualBox because it was easier to fool with than Wine for those few programs that were Windows only. However, as the years have gone by, the need for those programs has passed.

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I love sanding.

I just put our old WinXP desktop out of service. It still runs, so if I discover there is something I did not put on our 1TB standalone drive, I can go retrieve it out of the storage closet. Our current PC is a Win7 laptop from a few years back. It seems pretty stable, and performs well enough.

With everything I've heard about 8, and possibly now 10, I think I'll finally make the move to a Mac in a few years when a new machine is looking like a necessity. Since the only application I really use, beyond most user's typical requirements for a browser, word processor, and spreadsheet, is SketchUp, I think the transition would be pretty easy. And since my wife and I have iPhones and an iPad, it won't be completely alien to us -- in theory anyway.

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Lee Reep
NAR 55948

Projects: Semroc Saturn 1B, Ken Foss Designs Mini Satellite Interceptor
In the Paint Shop: Nothing! Too cold!
Launch-Ready: Farside-X, Maxi Honest John, Super Scamp

Get a Mac. IBM is. It runs WinXP and Win7 natively under Boot Camp and you can even go Win 10 if you really want to. Then there's Parallels if you want to run several instances of OS's at the same time.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/31/ibm-200k-macs/

http://www.apple.com/mac/

http://www.apple.com/osx/what-is/compatibility/

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Tech Jerry

Windows 10 May Share Your Wi-Fi Password with Facebook

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/windows...news-21409.html

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Shrox

Master of the Dark Art of Model Rocketry

www.shrox.com