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Comment by failedPatch_002 | Hacker News Reader

  Change the wallpaper.

Oh, I thought it was going to be:

  Prevent users from disabling automatic
  updates, and require persistent internet
  connections, and then deploy updates 
  every 7 days, so that users lose 10 or
  maybe 20 hours a week, waiting for failed
  patches to retry, and display ominous
  warning messages like "DO NOT POWER DOWN
  OR UNPLUG YOUR COMPUTER WHILE WE CONSTANTLY 
  WASTE YOUR TIME WITH BULLSHIT."

But I was pleasantly surprised by a different answer! Wow!

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As much as I'm not a fan of the forced automatic update (even on pro), I think your post is extremely mis-representative on multiple levels.

With the group policy editor you can disable the automatic updates on pro and up. The UI won't change, but the setting will take effect.

If I could buy the Pro version as an individual, and run it on an isolated machine, as I've done with every prior version of Windows I've purchased, I probably would have upgraded by now.

Since they don't offer that, and the non-pro version treats ALL users as imbeciles who cannot manage to keep their machines secure and up to date, and who are unable to decide for themselves if the benefits of participating in usage metrics gathering, voice-operation, and integrated web and local search outweigh the risks and costs, I'll be sticking with Win7.

Are you thinking of the Enterprise version?

Pro is available just fine: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZSHDJ4O/

And my Win 10 is Pro since i upgrade it from Win 7 Pro.

Hmm, I am. Does the Pro version support turning off the privacy and updating features without being joined to a domain? If there is only partial control, that's not good enough. Otherwise I may owe you a beer :)

I'm sorry, but i have no idea what it does in regards to privacy features.

I do however have access to this, and it works: http://i.imgur.com/9dutfsY.png

[Image shows Local Group Policy Editor screen with Configure Automatic Update settings pane open.]

Important: installing many big update packs manually will toggle this setting back.

As much as I'm not a fan of misrepresentation, I think Microsoft's practices, in general, are deceptive and wasteful, and promote administrative and operational policies among IT and ops teams that perform comparably.

How so?

10 hours a week to deal with patches?

If the PC reboots with your work unsaved, you could lose a day's work, for example.

You have a day's worth of unsaved work?

Not really your place to judge is it? What if they are in the middle of a long running task and the machine shuts down? Maybe it takes all day to run that process intensive task? Boom updates reboot the machine and a whole day's processing was lost. It is the users' prerogative on how they want to use their machine (poor software design choices and all) and if they don't want to take an automatic update and reboot then so be it. Or what if some people like to wait a couple weeks and see if Microsoft accidentally breaks something major with an update... pretty sure that has happened before.

Lost a 3d print because of windows update.

Switched to Octopi after that.

If this happens every week and you haven't done anything about it, well...

It only has to happen once.

Besides which, a predictable failure is still a failure. By your logic, Win95 crashing several times a week wasn't a problem either.

Win95 crashing several times a week was a feature that would let you get away with not seeing this other bug: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/216641

This thread is predicated on the assertion that users lose 10 or even 20 hours per week to reboots. Not just once.

In my case, I started a simulation running overnight. The next day I found that Windows had rebooted to install a patch and killed my simulation. (I'm now using a Mac.)

Hit that Ctrl-S now.

And in 5 minutes.

And 5 minutes after that.

Repeat until you stop working today.

Hit Ctrl-S every start of the day after 5 minutes of work.

And 5 minutes after that.

Repeat until you stop working that day.

There you go. Saved you a lot of hours of work.

We're power users. We've already been burned by this, and we know how to defend against it.

That doesn't help my mom when she's writing a long letter and (rightly) expects her computer's RAM to hold the information and warn her before it does anything destructive. That doesn't help the middle-schooler who is suffering through their first 5-page essay.

Use an OS that behaves in a way I like more.

Save when convenient.

Repeat as necessary.

I prefer to use software that behaves the way I want it to, rather than modifying my own behavior to work around its shortcomings.

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