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Comment by Piskvorrr | Hacker News Reader

Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO.

- Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence of "do not upgrade")

- IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy)

- breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX)

- while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.")

- erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?")

- is very difficult to revert

- phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.)

Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel.

(To be fair, pre-installed Windows 10 is usable, better than Vista even - but breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason is a big no-no)

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More than that, what it installs fits any classical description of malware. Windows 10 comes with an OS wide key logger, that logs what you write in any application, and sends it to Microsoft.

(This usually evokes disbelief. If you think I'm wrong, please consider what you would do if it turned out I was right. Then, if you're on Windows 10, lookup your "speech, inking & typing" settings. This is where they ask permission to do this. It is turned on by default.)

No joke:

"We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions."

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-...

Doesn't every phone do this to make the swipe style keyboard work and autocorrect?

Yes, they do. Maybe not sending it to some server though.

Maybe not sending it to some server though

Those 8 words change are what we're talking about. A keyboard app obviously needs to use your data to improve auto-correct.

When it starts sending that data off-device, however, that's a whole different ballgame.

They might "obviously need" this data if they want to synchronise the improvements along all your computers and devices.

Or to make the general dictionary pick up on new terms automatically and give them to other windows users.

Edit: The full quote is actually:

> We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions. Some of this data is stored on your device and some is sent to Microsoft to help improve these services. You can turn the Send Microsoft info about how I write setting on or off in Settings.

Which means they don't send EVERYTHING so it's not really a keylogger (unless you also count the keyboard-helping stuff keyloggers?).

Furthermore on that link, it seems to me that the data they would be sending to their servers is the ones about the other services like speech/handwriting to feed into their system to machine-learn recognition.

And it is all turn-off'able which is a plus.

It seems like most people will assume the worst, I am not saying you're wrong but it doesn't seem like some "malware" thing like other people are saying..

Aaaand tends to turn itself back on. "Accidentally." Oops.

(Also, my "malware" comment was about the forced upgrade to WinX, not about WinX itself, as I have even noted in the last sentence.)

>> some is sent to Microsoft

> Which means they don't send EVERYTHING

In any mathematical or logical context, "some" can be a proper subset of "all" or equal to "all". Any lawyer or judge thinking logically would agree. If the matter had to be confronted in court, Microsoft's legalese covers the case where they capture and store everything.

Another way they can hedge is by not capturing something innocuous and uninteresting, like words you type into Microsoft Help or Group Policy Editor. Now they can say that they don't capture and store every single thing.

> A keyboard app obviously needs to use your data to improve auto-correct.

No, that's not obvious, in fact that would be the opposite of what a keyboard's auto-correct should do. Because the whole point of having auto-correct is for the keyboard to correct my mistakes, not learn from them or from the mistakes of other people that also don't know how to spell.

For this reason for example Swype on iOS has been basically unusable for me, because it makes more mistakes than I do. And no matter the implementation, now every time I choose to override the auto-correct decision for a certain word, I always end up pausing because I fear that from then on, the word will be added so some personal dictionary that I don't want. Basically learning from what the individual types is a disservice to the individual.

Also, on iOS custom keywords need explicit permission for accessing the Internet. And on Android I found no mention anywhere that Google's Keyboard sends telemetry to its parent. People just assume that for some reason.

The point of auto-correct is to fix it when you fat-finger something, not when your belief of how to spell something is "wrong". There's a reason auto-correct isn't a thing on desktops.

They need the data to know whether you meant eg "from" or "form", which they get from context by looking at hundreds of millions of occurrences.

While it's the same problem on phones and you can disable stuff there, it's less of an issue because creation (media, software) happens on a PC and that's a lot more critical. Also, on phones Apple or Google doesn't sneak in an update which re-enables the previously disabled data collection settings. Microsoft went so far to rename NT services to thwart disabling. If Microsoft doesn't fix this soon, they'll either get a lawsuit or lose serious market share.

It's a pity because the kernel and surrounding subsystems are getting better with each Windows release.

Maybe something like nLite can be used to create a Windows image that doesn't contain the nasty stuff, but then an update would reinstall them

The icing on the cake is that even when using Windows Enterprise edition in a Windows Domain, you cannot control what updates are installed as you could before. This is a huge problem because stuff you don't want will be slipped back in.

They just lost their mind.

And that’s why you use the AOSP keyboard, not the Google spyware keyboard.

Typed character recognition...

Unbelievable

Makes you wonder if they are really saying profiling in obfuscated terms.

I wonder how does this hold against intellectual property rights... Can they own all the software I may produce on their OS?

It sure seems like they can have an easy access to the source code..

I'm sure the TOS has you relieve them of liability and hold them harmless for any use they may make of the software that you wrote.

>More than that, what it installs fits any classical description of malware. Windows 10 comes with an OS wide key logger, that logs what you write in any application, and sends it to Microsoft.

I've yet to see any actual technical evidence of this. Quoting their very unspecific legal documents is hardly evidence of anything.

Go to "speech, inking & typing" settings. The dialog literally says they will collect your typing history.

The traffic is encrypted, and no one has been able to MITM it yet, as far as I know. But Microsoft has confirmed in the press that yes, they do this.

>Go to "speech, inking & typing" settings. The dialog literally says they will collect your typing history.

And until someone bothers to do a MITM we really don't know what that means.

>The traffic is encrypted, and no one has been able to MITM it yet, as far as I know. But Microsoft has confirmed in the press that yes, they do this.

Are you sure? Unless they're specifically trying to prevent such you should be able to just drop in your own root certificate and MITM it with the tool of your choice.

One would hope they got their crypto right (I'd assume it's done via ssl with a pinned cert, but I haven't checked). More worrisome is what they do at their data centers - officially they might paint one picture of how well they have secured their system both technologically from outsiders and from employee insiders but behind this pretty picture could be a total shitshow behind the scenes and we wouldn't know. A rogue employee could socially engineer his way to data and dump it on the internet - similar to what happened to OkCupid. They could be infiltrated by Chinese with their infinite budgets and then you take a "voluntary" trip to China. They could be forced by USG to reveal data, and I'm all for nabbing terrorists, but USG has proven that they aren't any better at securing their stuff so China scenario again applies. Or Microsoft is after a few years pushed into corner even more and become really evil and start monetizing data to everyone with a dollar and it turns out they consulted lawyers to arrive at minimal method of data anonymization that would still be accepted by courts.

In the end, it's customers who have bought their computers and should retain ultimate agency over their hardware and what Microsoft is doing isn't necessarily in their customers' best interest because it puts undue, poorly communicated risks on them. Most users aren't equipped with necessary background knowledge to evaluate these risks so aren't even capable of consciously accepting them.

edit: oh it's you ryan. I'm sure you already know all this. :)

I generally agree, but I wouldn't necessarily call Win10 a downgrade - it's definitely better than 8 (I would think twice about upgrading 7 as having Win7 means that you likely have a pretty old hardware).

I honestly don't understand what's going on. This looks like one of the most idiotic thing an IT company has ever done, and Microsoft doesn't care. They don't even try to explain it. And they fucked up big time - rarely any kind of scandal from the computing world reaches the general public, but this one did. I've been asked by random people for advice on whether or not to upgrade; people seem to know Win10 is "evil" and are annoyed by nagging.

Win 7 became available starting at late 2009 and was popular well after 8 came out, I would suspect most computers that sold with it preinstalled would have no problem running 10.

Does 10 even have higher system requirements than 7?

They only just moved them up. 10 I've found runs better on older hardware than 7, it's was the same story for 8.

I don't know about the requirements; I did upgrade from 7 to 8 (while also replacing a hard drive) and then to 10 (because I wanted Bash for Windows). It works very well, but my computer is a desktop, and I did pay a bit for it back then. Meanwhile, a lot of computers had Win7 preinstalled, and I wouldn't call most of them powerful. Hence the caution - OEMs don't give a shit, they'll happily sell a laptop that can barely lift its own OS[0][1], so if you upgrade that kind of equipment you risk basically bricking it.

[0] - Just recently I've been "fixing" such one laptop for a friend of my mother - it was barely strong enough to lift its own Windows installation. I made it much more useful by just replacing the RAM die with a one I pried off a broken laptop that serves as an "organ donor". Hell, I found getting moar RAM to be a quick solution for most of the lower-end laptops that get "too slow".

[1] - this happens for mobile too (as I experienced first-hand), so my rule of thumb is that in terms of computers and smartphones, buying cheap is worse than not buying at all

They just increased them. You now need 2GB for the 32-bit version of Win10, iirc. That's the only change, though.

What would someone with 2GB memory do with a computer? State at the desktop? Once you start opening tabs, Firefox and Chrome can easily take up 4GB memory if available.

Isn't it only 1.5GB that'd be left for user apps? I seem to recall 32-bit windows only had 3.5GB total accessible for some reason.

32bits can only address max 4gb ram and I think video ram was counted for or some other overhead. With 2gb the 32bit maximum should have no effect.

If available. If not, you'll quickly learn to not open 50 tabs (it's not like you're actually browsing in all of them). Had to work on such a PC out of necessity, and :5 tabs should be enough for everyone" ;)

But seriously: 2 GB on Windows (7) is still usable, even though not entirely comfortable. (Of course, on LXLE, 2 GB is a lot, but that's an entirely different can of worms)

Requirements don't enter into it - and even the requirements from Win7 to Win10 didn't rise that much. I could live with slightly hungrier but better OS. Emphasis on "better".

If China did this what would you think the reasons would be? Of course it would be to spy on their citizens, to exert social control.

What makes us think the US is so different after the stuff that's gone down in recent years?

I genuinely consider it a possibility that this is linked to the panic over terrorism and that governments now have access to the data being hoovered up on practically everyone by Microsoft.

Of course I have no evidence. So the best that can be said objectively is that we cannot know either way, but still my gut is sending me warning messages.

> "Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary"

(also read https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ )

Everyone does this. Try sending an image of child sexual abuse through your gmail account and see what happens. Google even tells you they do it for rights enforcement:

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

> For legal reasons

> We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

> * meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

> * enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.

> * detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.

> * protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

"If you want privacy, you must be a child molester or a terrist." Obvious troll is obvious.

On a more serious note, "everyone does that" makes it okay? Really?

Obvious reading comprehention failure is obvious.

DanBC didn't write anything which could imply he believes that "If you want privacy, you must be a child molester or a terrist".

"Try sending an image of child sexual abuse through your gmail account and see what happens." - the implication is clear: "why else would you fear the Big Brother?"

I think you need to reread DanBCs comment.

His comment is stating what google does and gives a pretty strong example, not justifying what they do.

No, the implication is - do that for a practical demonstration that Google does the same thing 'kuschku pointed out Microsoft does.

I presume the purpose of that sentence is to back up the previous one ("Everybody does this").

That's not what I meant. How could I make my comment more clear?

What I meant is that almost all companies will invade privacy to prevent and detect certain crimes. MS does it, but so do Google, Apple, etc etc.

Okay, I apologize for having misread you. Thanks for a level-headed clarification to my angry comment.

How is that even in the same league? Google can disclose, what you send to their servers. Microsoft can disclose, what you keep on your own machine.

>Microsoft can disclose, what you keep on your own machine.

Want to expand on that a little? Presumably the above quote is regarding skydrive etc.

After some light googling, it appears, that it was a part of original privacy statement, when Windows 10 was released.

For example: https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-persona...

(when googling the phrase cited by kuschku, the first link is to reddit and there it links to edri).

> We will share personal information with __companies__, organizations or __individuals__ outside of Google if we have __a good-faith belief__ that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to: […] __protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google__

That alone can be turned into "we can share whatever we want with anyone whenever we feel like it" very easily, you realize that?

The proper solution would be

> We will share personal information with governments if we are required by law to do so.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Better than 8? Maybe.

Worse than 7 on the same hardware? Absolutely, emphatically, YES. I.e. downgrade, QED.

"Win7 means you have pretty old hardware" - well, let me see here. I'm typing this on a top-of-the-line 2016 ultrabook, with Windows 7. Exactly because this is a work tool (like "for people to do some productive work on"), enterprise tends to prefer boooooring older OS over colorful cloudcloudcloud spyware.

IMNSHO, this is just a bunch of schmucks with KPIs based on new WinX installs. "Screw the userbase over? No problem, as long as we meet our bonus targets." This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years: nah, underneath it's still the same MS we used to know, just with a new paint job.

> This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years

That I agree with, and it's mind-boggling why they're doing this. As you said, it basically wiped out all the goodwill MS was building over the last few years.

I don't think it's the same "evil" Microsoft at work here - they got burned really badly by WinXP's "never upgrade" long tail (and the fact that people tended to just disable or infinitely defer Windows updates, so you also had a huge base of machines with targets painted on them), and are swinging the pendulum HARD the other way to do everything in their power to prevent that.

It's probably not going to work out for them, given the number of issues people still seem to have about 10 even after using it for extended intervals, but I think it's fear of another XP, not malice or anti-competitive practice, that's driving this.

Is it the same no-evil care for customer who pushes them to serve ads in the OS? I am sure they only serve ads "to improve the customer's experience"...

No, AFAICS that part is some combination of trying to mitigate the total cost of {free OS, no-upgrade cost}, and wanting some of the fun information companies like Google get from their more invasive telemetry.

I understand but that makes Windows 10 pretty toxic. I think people would be less bothered (or less people would be bothered) if they were upgrading their users to an awesome OS. In my opinion they are upgrading their users to a piece of shit OS designed to monetize their users. That to me is an "evil" behavior.

Well, technically Win10 looks better and is more awesome than Win8 (which I'd call a half-assed UI that got stuck in the middle of thinking "I'm on a PC" and "I'm on a phone". But otherwise, your point stands. Especially compared to Win7, the gains for users are not obvious.

I agree that it makes Windows 10 highly toxic and unlikely to be touched, and that it's a horrific behavior.

I just think it came about as a result of a number of rational and ethically ~neutral decisions, rather than the level of deliberate malice and anticompetitive practice the Microsoft of the 90s had.

Who cares for the motivation (outside of MS)? End result is identical.

Understanding the motivation and decisions that led to an end result allows you to better gauge whether they're likely to, say, change their stance on a topic, or other decisions they're likely to make going forward.

For example, I submit that it is extraordinarily unlikely that Microsoft will actually end the Win10 upgrade program on July 29th, because their primary goal is to migrate as many people away from their aging older platforms as possible, onto a platform they can find ways to monetize into infinite incremental upgrades.

In other words, whether they're doing it to be Eeeeevil (unlikely), or for profit (probable), the result is still the same: "YOU WILL SUBMIT TO WIN10, YOUR LORD AND MASTER"

Free, yeah right. I'm pretty sure that I have paid the Windows Tax on every (non-server) computer that I ever bought.

And wait for the next shoe to drop. MS is going to want to get paid for this "service"(ads & metrics aren't enough, MORE is always the goal). Despite the cheers of the marketeers, this SaaS is not perpetually "free". Thw more people trapped, the more that will subscribe when the extortion...er...subscription comes due.

> they got burned really badly by WinXP's "never upgrade" long tail (and the fact that people tended to just disable or infinitely defer Windows updates

Well, there's a reason for that. Software seems to change way too fast and it breaks the most basic expectations people have (which I think are very good) - that if a piece of software works, it should continue to work. If I buy a machine that has Windows and Microsoft Word on it, I should expect the OS to boot up and Word to open the documents I made with it for as long as the hardware itself doesn't deteriorate. My programs shouldn't suddenly stop working because they don't feel like it. My OS shouldn't suddenly update to a different looking one because "fuck you, that's what you want anyway". And they definitely should not do any of that in the middle of you working.

I am one of those who often disable / delay auto-updates. Because of the times I had my computer reboot when I stepped out to get a tea. Because of the times I auto-updates for apps burned significant chunks of my transfer when I was using a mobile connection.

Particularly with Windows 10 (maybe 8?), Windows will try to guess when your (desktop/laptop) computer is unused based on knowledge of when you've been actively using it, and default to that as an update install time.

But more generally, it's a balancing act - for everyone who is running in an environment where they have everything locked out and they just want an application to keep running, there's also plenty of people who leave their machines running public services connected to the Internet with no firewall, antivirus, or anything of that nature, and refuse to install updates because it interrupts the service.

I think Microsoft decided they'd rather be shit on by consumers for forcing automatic updates than be shit on by everyone for a poor security record ever again.

Which sounds all reasonable; great even. But then MS adds the secret ingredient, which completely breaks it: mandatory autorestart that can't be switched off without also breaking the autoupdate (or at least, I have yet to see a way to do that in WinX). "Oh hey, while you were out to a meeting/lunch/sleep, we decided that nothing you had open was of any value, and threw it away. Shouldn't have been using that software if it didn't provide autobackups, eh?" (Even with software that does have automatic backups to guard against unreliable machines (sic!), it's an emergency measure, not something I should want to use)

Better than 8? Possibly, except that Windows update in Win10 is out of control - nagging, forcing reboots, quietly resetting itself to more liberal settings if you ever try to restrict it, and pegging your CPU the second you go idle for more than 15 seconds. I need a Windows VM for Visual Studio and have both a Win8 and a Win10 one sitting around. While the Win8 one does look silly compared to Win10, it also manages not to antagonize me on a regular basis.

> Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" - note the absence of "do not upgrade")

Just like on iOS! I can just now, or later for my pending upgrade. It pops up everyday.

This drives me completely insane as well.

Note that I would have no problem updating my iphone if it didn't force me to install the latest Xcode to keep developing on it.

>Windows Nein upgrade is malware, IMNSHO.

This is a particularly shitty meme, can we just stop with it?

>IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy)

This is how windows updates have always worked, no?

>breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX)

>while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.")

These do not malware make.

>erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?")

Try to decide which. Erasing and hiding are two completely different things. And again, this does not make it malware as I doubt they're intentionally deleting anyones files.

>is very difficult to revert

Significantly easier than any previous windows version. If you don't want it, why would you install it? You can just decline the install when the installer starts.

>phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.)

Yes and so did every windows version before it. Significant parts of the new telemetry have also been backported. Oh, and malware writers certainly don't claim that.

>Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel.

No.

Shitty meme for a shitty forced upgrade, very fitting. Where do you want to go today? Eh never mind, we get to decide that.

No, that's explicitly not how MS updates worked: up to now, they were updates to existing OS, not automatic reinstall.

If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto.

Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both). I don't give a flying fork if that was intentional, it should not have happened, full stop.

In other words, FU, astroturfer. Take your piece of crap and shove it. (Yes, your wonderful Windows Nein has given us about a man-year of unplanned maintenance so far, so you see how happy I'm about it)

>No, that's explicitly not how MS updates worked: up to now, they were updates to existing OS, not automatic reinstall.

A semantical difference really, previous windows updates just didn't include major UX revamps.

>If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto.

surely you got an EULA prompt, no?

>Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both).

I certainly agree that microsofts QA has failed horribly here.

>In other words, FU, astroturfer.

One could easily accuse you of the same.

Or major driver changes, huh? Never ever ever had I a working device driver turn nonfunctional overnight. Before this "upgrade," that is.

Who exactly got an EULA prompt on an unattended, locked workstation with nobody at the sear? As I say, the downgrade was full auto: evening W7, morning W10.

>Or major driver changes, huh? Never ever ever had I a working device driver turn nonfunctional overnight. Before this "upgrade," that is.

Blame your OEM, they're responsible for keeping their drivers functional. Microsoft didn't just go behind OEMs backs and do this.

>Who exactly got an EULA prompt on an unattended, locked workstation with nobody at the sear? As I say, the downgrade was full auto: evening W7, morning W10.

That's certainly strange, are you sure it wasn't just the W10 installer? Or did it really go straight to the login screen?

I would blame my OEM IFF I were planning an upgrade. Then I would test it out first, see that it broke stuff, and go looking for a solution.

Oh wait. That's what we did, found that the drivers weren't there, and FRIKKIN DECIDED NOT TO UPGRADE because of this. Acceptable risk of running a recently EOLed product and all that.

Nope, nope nope nope, Microsoft knows better: "here's your new nonfunctional box, not our problem anyway."

No, not an installer: a fully upgraded, but - sadly - significantly dysfunctional W10 (Note that other users around the thread offering similar experiences, so your insistence that it can't ever ever happen sounds very much like wishful thinking). As I said: we have repaved from backups, installed GWX Control Panel, and disabled Windows Update. Personally, I am pretty angry about that last thing, too - but I had no power over mgmt: thanks to your poisoned update, they don't trust it to actually bring security fixes any more, quite the contrary: you, in effect, have mounted a denial-of-service attack on us via WU and nobody cares if it was intentional - "Windows breaks by itself when you need it the least" is now firmly believed by everyone affected (we are considering a move from Win altogether, because for all we know, you might have some other control channel up your sleeve for pushing some more "upgrades").

Did ryanlol/l0l switch to a special arguing account, or is that a different user?

Seems very meta :D

Haha, that's a good idea. But no, the "ryanlol" account has rather restrictive ratelimiting in place.

What the fuck is "IMSHNO"? Not even Google can answer. Is it so difficult to write what acronyms mean instead of acting like a super cool geek?

"In My Not So Humble Opinion." They switched some letters around.

Not the parent but it's just a typo for IMNSHO, surprised Google didn't get that with only a single adjacent letter swap error.

Ah, I apologize for having confused you. Mistyped "IMNSHO", which stands for "In My Not So Humble Opinion". (Originally, I had used "IMHO", but then have realized that my opinion is anything but humble.)

> breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason

Obvious reason is they want people to upgrade. Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS even when the upgrade is free.

edit: 7 year old OS.

The rest of the world (not us) just wants a user interface that's consistent. People need the use of their computers nowadays. They build their lives on top of them. Sweeping that out from under people without asking is NOT ok. Many people rely on old/custom software that could have easily been rendered useless in the transition. This was not an acceptable response to users refusing to upgrade. They should be allowed to do that... They bought the old version. Who cares if the new version is free.

Make people WANT to upgrade

You know, being faster and cleaner, added features, reverting what they borked up with 8. What they managed to achieve is a public disgust when someone mentions "windows updates" (in case Windows wasn't mocked enough already).

Good job MS.

> Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS

Why?

They can just end support for old versions per their EULAs and shut-off access to the update servers.

Canonical doesn't care if I'm still using 8.04, they have no responsibility or liability for old releases. Why would MS be any different?

There's a deeper reason for this upgrade push but I don't know what it is.

Yeah, yeah. IF that upgrade was onto something that works like the existing setup, and especially IF it gave ME a choice when to upgrade, no problemo. See, I may have had reasons for holding onto W7, and they weren't "let's spite the Redmond people".

Opening up shop in the morning and finding that none of your equipment works anymore, despite having been perfectly fine yesterday is EEEEEEXACTLY the reason people are refusing to upgrade (because no drivers for WinX, because fuck you that's why, Where Do You Want To Go Today - Windows X Or Windows Ten?). Replacing Microsoft's frustration of "the adoption charts are not high enough" with my frustration of "okay, companywide downtime while IT repaves from backups and scrambles to block the now-rogue vendor" works for them (externalizing costs, hooray!). In the shortest of short terms only, alas - the trust we had in the OS is gone, this could happen again (e.g. at any time in the future MS could decide that their old OS cannibalizes the sales of their Windows Up To 11, or whatever). NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

(Technically, "we want you to upgrade because we want you to upgrade" is a bit of circular reasoning)

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