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Re:Microsoft Removes the Option to Opt Out of Windows 10 Fre... by AnthonyMouse on Saturday October 17, 2015 @12:04PM (#10404819)
Most people only want the security updates. You can tout the new features of Windows 10 all you like, but most people don't actually need them and the short-term value of the new features is less than the retraining cost of learning how to use them. Incurring that up-front retraining cost on a frequent basis causes you to never come out ahead. This is why everyone kept using Windows XP until it was completely unsupported and Windows 7 is the new Windows XP.

If anything what people want are less frequent releases with longer support periods. Or at least designate specific infrequent releases like Windows 7 for multi-decade long-term support -- if they would do that then they could reduce the support period for the non-LTS releases and end up supporting fewer versions at once.

Re:Microsoft Removes the Option to Opt Out of Windows 10 Fre... by Silhouette on Saturday October 17, 2015 @09:11PM (#10406858)
If anything what people want are less frequent releases with longer support periods.

I wish the big name software vendors would understand this, but the hype train has a lot of momentum right now and it seems like everyone is trying to jump on board.

The reality is that stability and reliability in your software bring huge benefits. Big changes can bring big benefits too, but usually any improvements are more modest. And the kicker is that even quite small changes can make something work worse from the user's personal, subjective point of view, and this is actively bad.

My standard policy on our Win7 machines at work has been security updates only for quite a while now. I don't see anything pushing us to install Win10 on any of those machines right now. In fact this whole farcical exercise has been a great demonstration of why we shouldn't: the more Microsoft try to abuse the update process in older versions of Windows, the clearer it becomes that a version of Windows where updates are mandatory shouldn't be trusted.