Hacker News Reader

Comment by sker | Hacker News Reader

I vowed to never "upgrade" to Windows 10, but this really makes it tempting. Damn you, Microsoft.

There are other things to consider, like losing all your unsaved work when Windows decides to run updates and reboot without your consent (I'm assuming they haven't reversed course on this, it's happened to me numerous times although I'm not on the Insider preview program. )

It's not optimal but you can create your own policy settings that stop automatic update downloads and installs. It will still bug you a LOT about it though.

You can specify the time when the computer will reboot. Like the middle of the night.

You can defer the reboot for a few days but after a while, it will prevent you from putting it off and will finally force a reboot.

Another crazy workaround is to mark your wifi as metered in its config. Then Windows will never automatically download the updates at all.

I enabled it when after saying "no thanks for the reboot now", it self-rebooted 10 minutes later

Honest question: what sort of work are you doing on a desktop workstation that cannot be safely checkpointed once or twice a month?

A small Azure instance is probably cheaper than the electricity you pay for your beastly desktop machine.

For me, it's because I hardly ever use my Windows partition. What happens is that I boot it up once every few months, and then Windows Update immediately has a panic attack and starts downloading vast amounts of stuff behind the scenes and harassing me about reboots --- while I'm trying (and frequently failing) to get work done.

I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).

At this point I no longer trust Windows Update to do its job properly. The idea of it even thinking about forcing a reboot terrifies me.

> I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).

I sort of get this, but I also sort of think that it's unreasonable. On the one hand: yeah it's annoying. On the other, you're using outdated software, yo. Security is seriously business and just being in a VM is not actually great protection.

> I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).

I don't mean to be cheeky but, if you were actually going to do that then you probably wouldn't be 2 months behind on the update schedule?

I have this constant internal conflict between, "This is my computer it should do what I tell it to do" and "Wow as a user I am acting unreasonably and recklessly by expecting that thing to work the way I want it to." Maybe I'm just projecting that at you right now. If so, sorry.

I reboot every 2 months or so.

I often keep e.g. games suspended, especially when they are slow to start or have poor savegame support. I minimize them and suspend with process explorer. End user triggered savegames have had declining support for years.

I also don't particularly enjoy re-setting my screen session just the way I left it. There's a reason I run screen; it's persistent.

I stop the Windows Update service on a loop, because (on Windows 7 at least) it's quite buggy, eating hours of CPU time at 100% on a core, and stopping it once isn't enough.

I don't do any real work in Windows any more. In many ways, that makes it more annoying to reboot, because less perceived uptime has been had.

I'm not OP but sometimes I'll do a high def video render that's only practical to run overnight. If I lose several hours of processing because Windows decided to reboot itself somewhere in the middle of the night I won't be a happy camper.

...when its time for a reboot it will warn you 3-4 times before it restarts. by default it sets reboot times at a time when your pc is not being used usually in the middle of the night.

assuming that people don't use Windows 10 as a server but as a workstation the "will lose your unsaved work" argument is a bit exaggerated.

That's exactly how it works. You're presented with something very attractive looking (and that everyone else uses), but you have to give up something in return. It used to be a straightforward "please pay for our product", but since "free" had proved itself to be better for businesses, now it's privacy and control - and, of course, no advertising or other vendor-written description would ever tell you that you give up those.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com