Windows 10 free: Why is Microsoft giving away its new operating system?

[SteveRiley]

What if your internet connection goes down? How are you going to use the services then?

I have enterprise use cases in mind here. Enterprise cloud services include certain capabilities that distinguish them from "free" services aimed at consumers.

* Service level agreements. Customers are paying for service; if something becomes unavailable, the provider loses money.

* Many connection points. Large cloud providers have hundreds of Internet connection points. Most businesses have redundant connections and design their networks for common failure scenarios.

* Offline usability. In today's business environment, you have connectivity almost all the time. For those rare occasions when you don't, good cloud services can stream content and applications to local devices. This is a feature of Office 365, for instance. And as Microsoft makes improvements to Office, those improvements are trickled down to your PC in the background. You never need to perform a forklift upgrade again.

Extend the above notion to servers. Many months ago, Microsoft updated Exchange Online from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013. Most customers didn't even notice. And yet one day, voila -- new features in your subscription.

What if your internet connection goes down? How are you going to use the services then?

Now let's consider the context of home users. A similar claim could be made: move your stuff to the cloud of your choosing, because it's going to have greater uptime and more security than J. Random User can build. Most of us even have two Internet connections: your primary one is your ISP that's connected to your router. Your secondary one is your mobile phone's data plan. I haven't (yet) had an outage on my CenturyLink gig fiber. But if I do, I can turn my phone into a router and get pretty decent 50 mbps throughput, thank you T-Mobile.

Now, why does the guy who runs his own Postfix server and ownCloud instance make the above recommendation? Because I don't trust the "free" (scare quotes intentional) services. I'm not the customer, I'm the product. Why don't I use a commercial cloud service? I'm a cheap bastard and I love tinkering with servers. J. Random User should never, ever, look at /etc/postfix/main.cf!

The Chromebook is a good idea, but when you lose internet connection it becomes a useless piece of hardware that you can't do anything with.

That's an implementation flaw, not a criticism of cloud-everywhere. Remember what I wrote before about "free" services. If you're using a Chromebook and you aren't connected to the Internet, Google isn't making any money off you. So of course they'll make it behave this way.

[SteveRiley]

Oh my. Installing a torrent network by default. What could possibly go wrong.

It isn't BitTorrent. It's an extension of a server feature called BranchCache, which has been part of Windows Server for a long time.

Let's take a look at a certain FAQ:

Delivery Optimization works in two ways.

Download updates and apps from other PCs
In addition to downloading updates and apps from Microsoft, Windows will get updates and apps from other PCs that already have them. You can choose which PCs you get these updates from:

PCs on your local network. When Windows downloads an update or app, it will look for other PCs on your local network that have already downloaded the update or app using Delivery Optimization. Windows then downloads parts of the file from those PCs and parts of the file from Microsoft. Windows doesn’t download the entire file from one place. Instead, the download is broken down into smaller parts. Windows uses the fastest, most reliable download source for each part of the file.

PCs on your local network and PCs on the Internet. Windows uses the same process as when getting updates and apps from PCs on your local network, and also looks for PCs on the Internet that can be used as a source to download parts of updates and apps.

Send updates and apps to other PCs
When Delivery Optimization is turned on, your PC sends parts of apps or updates that you’ve downloaded using Delivery Optimization to other PCs on your local network, or on the Internet, depending on your settings.

The logical setting, of course, is the former. The default (for non-enterprise) is the latter. Ugh. I disagree with this decision. Not because I worry about tampering: updates are digitally signed. I don't like it because it will increase the amount of traffic entering and leaving J. Random User's home network for no necessary reason.

A cynical person would point out that the question asks "Can it do it?" and the answer is not, "No it can't", it is "it doesn't".

Yeah, I saw that.

---

OK boys and girls, I'm not going to spend hours dreaming up defenses (in some cases) or criticisms (in other cases) of various features in Windows 10. Please promise me this: when you read something that sounds hyperbolic, it probably is. Fire up Google and do some research on your own. Look for the truth -- it's usually out there. Kthxbi.

[GreyGeek]

Not so bad as that, Jerry. See my earlier reply.

I read it. Given Microsoft's seedy past behavior I have only their word that it was disabled or removed. If only disabled it would take only an "update" to turn it back on. A keyboard logger is the perfect spy tool and one that is too temping. IF I remember correctly MS was the first software house to cave in to NSA's demands. But, Ballmer is not part of MS and maybe his absence has given opportunity for reforme in their culture.

[SteveRiley]

But, Ballmer is not part of MS and maybe his absence has given opportunity for reforme in their culture.

Possibly. I've seen great reform in, for example, Azure and .NET -- full on embrace of open source.

In Windows? I dunno. The people running the show now came from Windows Phone. Someone on another list said (about Wi-Fi Sense):

Surprised no one saw this coming. It was added into Windows Phone some time ago. Since the kids from Phone took over the OS team under Terry Myerson and designed Windows 10 from their deep, disruptive knowledge of the phone industry (/jk), it was natural for this to make the crossover.

Phone-ish software running on the desktop disturbs me.

[Qqmike]

re A-V security, Defender, etc.: Thanks GreyGeek and SteveRiley for your responses. Will look into the Panda 2015 and MalwareBytes. I must say, we never had a problem running 8.1 using only Defender for 2 years ...

[Qqmike]

re A-V security, Defender, and issues ... Looking at this from Ms's POV: Surely they would not want everyone's 10 system smashed by virus activity. Right? I mean, that would affect MS's "plan" (I think) to universalize [the world of Home Sapiens] w/Windows 10. Thus, a rational person would conclude that MS corp. will do a good job on built-in A-V protection/Defender.

[jpenguin]

I hear that solitaire now has ads that you can pay a monthly fee to dissable

[GreyGeek]

I hear that solitaire now has ads that you can pay a monthly fee to dissable

IF that's true it is obscene. MS being paid to serve those ads on one end of the pipe and being paid on the client side to disable them. It's their desktop/OS not yours. The EULA says so. You've always been a renter.

[SteveRiley]

It's been this way since Windows 8. The Solitaire game you're familiar with made its last appearance in Windows 7. In Windows 8, it was replaced by the "freemium" Microsoft Solitaire Collection.

http://m.windowscentral.com/heres-wh...ree-play-model

I've been reading a handful of articles today about the various privacy invading mechanisms in Windows 10. What a shameful attitude the company has taken with respect to its customers.

[Qqmike]

SteveRiley: I've been reading a handful of articles today about the various privacy invading mechanisms in Windows 10. What a shameful attitude the company has taken with respect to its customers.

If you reach a point where you write up some summary highlights of the issues, I'd be interesting in reading such. Or, any specific recommendations on what 10 users might do to turn off (or on, as the case may be) some of the settings in Privacy/Settings/Control Panel.

A-V protection: Seems clear from most reviews that Defender is not enough. Safe browsing is important. Along with MalwareBytes, BUT it looks like the not-free $ Premium version is necessary as the free $ Home version scans but does not do real-time monitoring of potential attacks.

[Qqmike]

Gosh, not difficult to stumble upon issues to look at:

https://www.rt.com/usa/311304-new-wi...rivacy-issues/

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/

http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10...ow-to-opt-out/

First, you’ll want to open Settings and click on Privacy. There, you’ll find 13 different screens — yes, 13 — to go through, and you’ll want to disable anything that seems worrying.

Haven't studied this, just noting it as something to study after reading, being informed.

[mparillo]

I've been reading a handful of articles today about the various privacy invading mechanisms in Windows 10. What a shameful attitude the company has taken with respect to its customers.

As the Apple fans would say, Win10 is gratis. Therefore you are not the customer, you are the product.
In the Open Source world, our contributions are our currency.

[life0riley]

Excellent topic! My wife is finally convinced we will be Windows free by the time Windows 7 support ends. There won't be Windows PC left in the house. I look forward to the release of Kubuntu 16.04!

[ronw]

I've canceled my Win10 upgrade "reservation", killed the installed-without-any-notice GMX executable process that puts the upgrade flag in the systray, uninstalled the obscure "Important" Windows update that installs GMX, and manually hid said update after it came back on reboot. I fully expect it to somehow return and I will need to do the registry hack to turn it off (we'll see how long that lasts).

An informal poll of our clients indicates I won't need Win10 for product support for a long time, if ever.

[TWPonKubuntu]

More news on Windows 10
...
So my question is "How many of you will be returning to Windows when 10 is released?"

Momma didn't raise a fool, I did not just fall of the turnip truck and no I will not be going back to Windoze...