2. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could probably utilize that to get that to go away.

3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk. That is deleted after 31 days.

4. They claim that it will begin to cost money to upgrade starting next year. Whether or not that becomes reality could go either way. My guess is that yes, it will cost money just like a new Windows 10 build costs money now.

5. You can turn off a good portion of the privacy-invading settings, but it's still fairly invasive. Microsoft as a company has actually been ramping up their support for other platforms which is kind of cool. I haven't heard about any specific back doors in the Windows OS itself, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. The OS is closed source, so it's really anyone's guess.

And then they push it again:

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/you-need-to-stop-k...

"Updates that have been hidden can appear again if a new version of the same update is released. That’s the case with KB 3035583; not only has it received an update (thus unhiding it), it’s status as an ‘Optional’ update has been changed to ‘Important’."

This announcement today seems like they'll do it again, even stronger, with revenge.

"Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device"

Windows 10 strikes back.

> 3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk

And if you really try downgrade, it doesn't work:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...

"Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"

I have actually done it, so I can guarantee that it has worked correctly at least once ;-)

Many others have had the same experience, as Google will show....

YMMV. For me, Win10 totally destabilized a netbook that was previously running smoothly on Win7. And for some reason, the backlight control worked under 7 but not 10, locking the screen at a battery-draining 100% brightness. Wasted an hour or two on the phone with Microsoft just to learn that they have no idea of the cause or solution, despite web searches turning up plenty of reports of this issue. At least the revert function worked.

edit: Uh, yikes, apparently even that's a bit broken.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10477988

Windows is closed source but many thousands of people have actually read the code. This includes numerous governments (including the Russian government), US organizations, large companies, universities, and even amateurs (Microsoft MVPs).

If you want to read it, email [email protected] or see Shared Source Initiative https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/

You will need a good reason. I don't think "I want to look for backdoors" will work. They might point out that plenty of other people have already done that ;-)

3) OK I'll guess at this one. Space. If they are retaining a bunch of information it may take up a significant amount of space they can free by getting rid of it. But I don't know for sure. It might just be that 31 days is a standard tech return policy period and they can.

2/4) I think you can turn the notifications off. And if you are going to learn a new OS it makes sense to learn the one that you are going to be moving to no the one you are going to be moving from. http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/disabling-windows-10-upgr...

5) This is opinion and people disliking the new direction of Microsoft. You get new features (Like Cortana) but it costs you in privacy. How much is that cost? Only Microsoft really knows... But you can always set up a dual boot or something to address some of those issues. MANY Linux distros are almost easier to get used to than Windows 10 (from windows 7). And win 10 even stole some features from them.

<soapbox> I just want to let everyone know that anything you post here (on the internet) is already being gobbled up by the NSA, just about anything you do on your phone, and now anything you do on your pc (presumably). Lets focus on changing the law, because Linux is not a viable solution for 99% (that stat is made up) of people, which means that your parents, friends, and everyone else aren't protected even if you are.

While changing the law is ridiculously hard, if you are concerned about privacy mention it to friends and family so they know and evangelize. Microsoft is no more evil than anyone else. I presonally think that at their core they don't want to give this data to the NSA, they want it to figure out how users are using the OS (what every dev wants). So they've tooled it to the Nth degree and it's only a privacy issue because they aren't clear what they collect (but they let you turn it off) and we don't trust them to let us turn it off. </soapbox>

A philosophy teacher once told me "you are not what you think, but you are what you say and what you do".

Nobody cares what they or don't want, it's what they do that counts. And what they do is not pretty, in fact in think it's despicable.

And I'm not "one of those Linux guys". I'm a C# dev that would be perfectly fine with Microsoft products as they are now if they didn't fuck their efforts with "telemetry" updates.

I'm trying 3 Linux distro this week-end to see the one I can live with.

Now, what to do regarding Windows 10 ? If you're a fairly computer savvy person, for home usage, I'll say disable the updates, get an AV and a firewall and keep a weekly backup.

Updates loose any credibility if the vendor issuing them cannot be trusted and MS has shown with those tactics what the endgame is. Checking every update what it does and if it's safe to apply to the system takes more time and energy then keeping a weekly backup of the system and basic security. Now why should someone play hide and seek with MS and their dark patterns instead of using the system as is ?

I'd say that this is a pretty sad state of OS updates we're in regarding Windows, if not software generally.

So, Windows 10 actually does not complete against Linux or PC-BSD, it completes against previous versions of Windows without telemetry crap, i.e. Windows 7 and Vista. Exactly these operating systems with disabled updates will dominate for the next 20 years, not Linux or BSD.

Btw, this approach (disabling updates) also solves all well known problems with long time reboots, metered internet connections, tray nags about Windows 10, insufficient disk space to save old OS etc.

Funny you mention pc-bsd. I lost the boot sector (perhaps) on my ssd in my win7 machine so this weekend I installed pc-bsd on the 'broken' ssd. During the install I was given a warning that something in my uefi was funny. Windows just failed to install with errors and no help to be found on the install cd (retail version).

So...I'm currently, as of 24 hours ago, using pc-bsd. I can't see most people going for it though. The kde desktop uninstalled itself randomly so I ended up installing gnome desktop and am using the classic version of gnome. It's going well now though. Actually really well, but I keep waiting for something bad to happen. If it behaves for a bit longer I might just switch.

There's an evil side to microsoft that I wouldn't miss but I do already miss liking microsoft. I've used them for a really long time. There's a lot of good design and engineering in there.

Q3: The 31 day deadline is to free-up space once a user has settled down with Win10. Advanced users can work around this [2].

I can’t answer all these questions unfortunately! Q1 and Q5 are fairly subjective - I think it's up to you to form your own opinion on those.

[1] http://www.howtogeek.com/218856/how-do-you-disable-the-get-w... [2] http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rollback-windows-10-after-30-d...

For the 31 days thing, I strongly suspect it's mostly just a marketing thing. "Try the newest Windows out for 31 days, risk free!". I could see it being an issue of storage on tablet devices with minimal storage or laptop/desktops with similar issues.

I've since wiped out my Win10 machine (by accident...oops) and went back to 8, since that's what I had a license and disc for. Not sure if I'll go back to 10. The privacy issues concern me greatly.

Windows.old directory gets purged after 31 days, so there's no going back.

I use 10 at work, honestly it's not bad. I haven't upgraded on my home machines though...

4. Yes, for 1 year the upgrade is free. After that point you have to pay for the upgrade, just like to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 you had to pay for an upgrade license.

5. Other than Microsoft's weird ideas on how they will push out updates that may affect your privacy it seems to work well enough in the industries I've tested it in. If you have any older 'expensive' software you may want to verify that it is compatible before migrating.