The autoupdate scheduling is terrible. You can set a "active hours" window where it won't try to force reboot on you, but it's limited to 8 hours, and there's no provision for setting different active hours on weekdays vs weekends. Because obviously the usage profile on my home computer is the same on Wednesday as it is on Saturday.
The autoupdates load garbage onto your computer (Candy Crush Soda Saga?) even if you've previously uninstalled it and obviously didn't want it.
I paid >$100 for this, and it's stuffed with ads. Solitaire and Minesweeper are freemium apps with a subscription of $10/year to get rid of ads. Seriously? Minesweeper needs to be a subscription?
I've been running Windows on my desktops, but I've lately relegated it to gaming only, and am dual booting Linux for programming and content creation work.
Windows 7 was great, it stayed out of the way and let me get my work done. Windows 10 has a feeling that I have to work around the computer to trick it into letting me be productive.
Is this true? You have to have a paid subscription to get what is the equivalent of some 1992 public domain game?
Why that sort of advertising has been baked into a $120 operating system, I have no idea. I guess someone got greedy and figured nobody would quit the OS over it. Their Weather app is full of ads too, last I checked.
It's a large factor in why I've switched to Linux as much as possible, though MS still got my money for a W10 license so it's not much of a victory.
http://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-solitaire-requires-a-subsc...
The free license was tied to my motherboard which promptly died, so I had to buy a new one at full price.
EDIT: And besides, just because they're not an essential feature doesn't make me happy that the previously included things have been removed. Say what you will about Apple's hardware, but they went the opposite direction with bundled software. Keynote/Pages/Numbers used to be an optional package ($50 IIRC), but shifted to an included feature. They don't even have banner/video ads shoved all over.
You are really trying to get me out of the bounds of acceptable decorum of this site. Really??? I see a very prominent conditional in your reply. I suppose MS has a right to screw over people who got free upgrades (not really), but I got to pay for my copy of Windows with a new computer a few weeks ago and still get the privilege of seeing all the anti-consumer crap that comes with it. I'd also venture a guess that proportion of users who aren't using free upgrade offer will increase with time - how is your argument supposed to age, Brandon?
In fact, the whole point isn't even to make money from them, but to support the Windows developer ecosystem by promoting other apps and jump starting a viable ad network.
Also note that Apple and Google do the same thing.
Games came with the OS therefore they are part of the OS. If you didn't want them to be part of the OS then you shouldn't have included them. If I'm paying premium then I don't want to be INSULTED with ads. Nor with telemetry that's borderline spyware which was my outburst more about. All that is beside the point which was that you're making a dubious argument that applies to only a portion of people.
> but to support the Windows developer ecosystem by promoting other apps and jump starting a viable ad network.
And to that I say fire entire marketing team. How will a couple thousand fools that bought $10 upgrades in Minesweeper help jump start anything? Does Microsoft employ underpants gnomes because the plan doesn't follow. Marketing team is burning bridges way faster than foss software releasing portion of Microsoft is making them, there's no point in jump starting anything if marketing shortcuts any trust customers could possibly have in the platform. Every one of my friends doesn't trust Windows 10, even nontechy ones and the best/worst part is, I didn't have to help them.
> Also note that Apple and Google do the same thing.
If they are super abusive then so can be Microsoft. Flawless logic. I'll add that Google and Apple started their BS on mobile platforms which were for some time their own thing and people didn't care if they were soiling their own turf. The trouble with Microsoft is that they are exporting this excrement to PC segment of computing platforms which had established norms that were in place for decades that you are now breaking. If you kept telemetry/ads BS only on Windows Phones literally nobody would care.
Updates should never reinstall anything you've removed (including Candy Crush).
And yet it did. Looking into it, MS is playing the "bug" card and has said it won't happen next time. I'm not sure whether to believe them, or if it was a "we wanted to see if we could get away with it" approach to getting more ad installs.
https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/24/anniversary-update-re...
While it shouldn't be reinstalling apps you've removed, they still intend to automatically add new "promoted apps" to your start menu. But each time they sell a slot, you should only need to remove it the one time and it won't come back.
I've been using Windows 10 before it had a public release and I've never seen anything like this on my machines. It seems like you really have a mess on yours.
I also removed anything that I didn't want from the Start menu. I don't understand why you wouldn't do the same.
It sounds like the problem here is not really Windows 10.
I know you're going to tell me I should just close the advertisement and the problem here isn't really Windows 10, but the problem is that the ads exist in the first place after I paid $120 for it.
I stick to Enterprise though, maybe that's why?
The OS only sets a deadline for the reboot (where it will force if you postpone too long) if the update includes a critical security update.
Firmware and core driver updates also require a reboot, but don't have deadlines and the schedule depends on the hardware vendor.
Oh, and if your machine is in the Windows Insider program, all build upgrades have deadlines so you hit the "forced reboot" much more often than a normal user.
Are you on Insider builds? If so, you should expect more aggressive updates and bugs.
By default it helps conserve bandwidth by downloading updates once and sharing among other machines on your network.
I have similarly bloated Windows directories in other computers. It also shouldn't be my problem to Google how to delete defunct Windows system files or whatnot.
Also, the default setting is for Windows to use your bandwidth to share their system files or update files to other windows computers anywhere in the world. Not just your network. So it is in effect, using extra upload bandwidth that you would have otherwise not used. In fact, you have to set your connection to metered for this to be disabled.
You do not have to set your connection to metered to disable P2P updates, there's a setting just for that, and there's really no reason to disable it in the first place.
I disabled sharing my bandwidth because I feel like it was not in good faith of Microsoft to make it a hidden default, and it should have been an explicit opt in to do that. That and the constant nagging for Windows 10, and hidden reinstallations of windows updates that I had uninstalled to prevent the nagging indicate a lack of respect that I don't appreciate as a customer.
Default on autoupdates is the proper setting. That we're even debating this in 2016 is kind of crazy.