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Comment by AnIdiotOnTheNet | Hacker News Reader

Good for you, there should be a checkbox so I don't have to suffer for your preferences.

I agree with parent, most non-technical people don't want to be system admin for their OS, so MS taking over is not really a bad deal. All my computers are IT managed and I have never had any update issues, so maybe there is some special sauce there via group policy. I have instructed them to section off my work PCs so they never update unless I tell them to, and it works. I get months and months of uptime till I take the reboot hit and do the updates.

The special sauce is probably WSUS, which allows them to control the update process for everyone and determine which updates they get and which they don't. Additionally, the WSUS channel for updates is behind Microsoft's normal updates, which allows for them to prevent problematic updates from reaching WSUS servers in the first place. Of course, home users get none of this.

I personally believe it is arrogance to say that non-technical users shouldn't be allowed to control their own PCs. And besides, a lot of users of PCs at home are technical. So I strenuously disagree with you.

Your arguing against something I didn't say. You can disagree with me, but you can't put words in my mouth. I didn't say or imply "shouldn't be allowed" or anything similar.

Since my comment was along the lines of "people should get a choice", if you did not intend to argue against that then one wonders what the point of your post was.

I mean, look at your language: "MS taking over is really not a big deal". How am I supposed to have interpreted that?

There is, just turn off Windows Updates.

It isn't so straight forward if you aren't in the know on special tooling like O&O ShutUp 10 to accomplish it for you. Even then it'll get reset after updating and you'll have to fix it again. There is no "don't ever update unless I tell you to" checkbox, there is only the option to pause them for a limited time.

Windows is actively user hostile when it comes to updates.

Use Windows Pro and Group Policy Editor. There isn't a checkbox there but a radio box that allows you to configure update behaviour in detail. Never had an issue with it during all upgrades.

And if Windows Home users should be able to disable automatic updates is debatable.

I don't think it is debatable. Users should have control over their own computers.

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