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Posted on 05/09/2016 8:16:25 AM PDT by dayglored
[Disclaimer: This article uses a lot of pejoratives about Win10. Don't bother taking that bait -- the important things are that a) the nagware is going away, and b) support for non-Win10 has horizons that bear paying attention to when planning for the future.]
Microsoft's "Get Windows 10" nagware will be killed off in July, the tech giant has told us.
The software has been worming its way into Windows PCs via Windows Update since last year using aggressive malware-like techniques and frequent pop-up reminders.
It quietly downloads and installs Windows 10 automatically for you, and then cheerfully offers to switch your PC over to the new operating system for free, interrupting TV broadcasts, businesses and home users in the process.
Now, kinda like the alien invaders in War of the Worlds suddenly ceased their attacks and sloped off into the obsidian oblivion, Get Windows 10 is going to stop offering its upgrade and vanish into the night, we're told.
Not because its caught some kind of bug or that some people were being driven round the bend by the pushy GWX installer – rather the disappearing act will coincide with Microsoft ending its offer of free upgrades to Windows 10 on July 29.
A spokesperson for the software giant told us on Friday:
Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app that facilitates the easy upgrade to Windows 10 will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide. Just as it took time to ramp up and roll out the Get Windows 10 app, it will take time to ramp it down.After that date, you'll have to sort yourself out, or breath a sigh of relief in the ensuing silence if you're holding out on Windows Vista, 7 or 8.
Crucially, Microsoft will continue to push out security fixes for Windows Vista until April 11, 2017; Windows 7 until January 14, 2020; and January 10, 2023 for Windows 8 – unless you cut a special deal with Redmond for longer support. Without those fixes, you'll be better off unplugging your machine for good.
And then, my guess is that we'll all find out what "Software As A Service" means. Microsoft no doubt views those 300 million PCs that have been switched over to Windows 10 "for free" as "loss leaders" -- kinda like Gillette's "free" razors (now buy the blades forever) or Mattel's inexpensive Barbie doll (now buy the clothes and accessories forever).
I've read they claim that security updates will be free forever -- well, big deal, they always have been, and by God they -ought- to be since they represent fixes to a flawed product.
But somewhere, they plan to make money on all those "free" Win10 installs.
What's your take on it?
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If you download the Microsoft windows 10 ISO, you should still be able to install it on Windows 8 or 8 pro machines that have the serial number built onto the motherboard
That is what we are told anyways for recovery reasons or replacing the hard drives in windows 8 machines
The iso is free and you can copy it onto a bootable USB stick
Happily don’t care. Been on Linux for years. Hope M$ crashes and burns.
I don’t need a snitch in the house.
The real money for MS isn’t in the OS, it’s in the developer licenses. Having hundreds of millions of Windows users means having 10s of millions people subscribing to MSDN for a lot more than they’d ever charge for the OS. The OS is a loss leader, but not in the razor model.
Been using Win10 for a over a year now and have no complains. It runs smoother than any OS I’ve ever had (I use both PC and Mac). I’ve never had any concern if data is being recorded that I wouldn’t want, but I also don’t have anything that I want to hide. Honestly, if that is people’s concern then make sure you use an email service that you host on your own server because I can assure you that Google, Yahoo and others are data mining their email servers.
I finally installed windows 10 on my wifes computer and my own. I actually solved a problem my wifes was having with shutdowns and such plus I have never had a problem with it on my computer.
“Happily don’t care. Been on Linux for years. Hope M$ crashes and burns.”
There was a thread here on Saturday that addressed the topic of switching from Windows to Linux because of the M$ nagware forcing people to upgrade to Windows 10 whether they wanted to or not.
In response to that, I submitted the post I made below for anyone that might be interested in trying Linux without making a commitment to it before trying it to see if it was right for them. I offer it again for those who might not have seen it.
“Is it a difficult task to change from Win 7 to Linux ?”
Some 20 years ago, I started running Linux as a hobbyist. It was somewhat difficult and time consuming to configure, so as I replaced my computers, I abandoned Linux and went back to Windows simply because of it’s ease of use.
When all this controversy with MS forcing upgrades to windows 10, I decided to give Linux another try. I was happy to learn that in the years since, Linux has become as easy to set up and use as Windows, for what I do.
If you have a spare USB flashdrive an easy way to find out if Linux is right for you is to go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/ and download unetbootin. Once you have it, execute it and it opens a dialog to allow you to choose the distribution you want to try. Choose the USB stick as the destination to install the files for the distro you want to try.
I chose Linux Mint 17.2_Live_x64 and was very pleased with it. Unlike the old days, the installation was automatic and found all my hardware without issue.
Once the download is complete and you’re ready to reboot, just do so, and when your computer starts, press the esc key, F8, DEL key, or whatever your particular system requires to allow you to select which OS to start.
Like I said, the installation process is almost completely automatic but most questions are multiple choice. Just choose the ones that apply to you as to timezone, authorization info if you have a wireless connection, etc.
The best part is, doing it this way you never touch your existing Windows system. The Linux OS runs entirely from the files on the USB stick. Any changes you make to the system like screensaver, applications you install, etc last only until you reboot the computer. Once you turn it off, it reboots as if it’s the first time and you start again.
The default installation comes with firefox browser, but if you prefer chrome, you can download and install the appropriate package from google.
In my case, almost everything I do is done in the chrome browser so I can’t really address issues like photoshop and other apps.
If your computer activity is mostly web browsing, Linux is a very good alternative to Windows. Hope this helps.
I’m getting ready to buy a Win Vista 64 bit machine for my wife to play her games on. Her present ‘puter is really old and running XP.
Everything else in the house is Mac.
Hope I remember how to use it.
FWIW You can also just directly download a USB version directly to a regular USB stick and it will make it bootable and ready to go.
Use Linux.
I postponed converting to Linux for a long time. Bad move. Linux is wonderful.
May be paranoid, but am leery about DL Win 10 anything on my hard drive, would like to keep any such a parallel operation.
Been free of 10 nagware until now and want to stay that way.
Google Media Creation Tool and download and run it.
Then you can either download a Win10 iso, or download it direct to a 4GB USB stick.
The iso is about 3.3 GB in size.
Ummm, wait... why in the world would you want Vista? It's not only obsolete and unsupported for mainline updates, but even the essential security updates are going to stop next year.
Please tell me that was a typo.
Yeah, I do. Not everybody is able to, though.
Nice to see that the Applebots who consistently jumped into Windows threads to snark "Get a Mac!" are being given a much needed break and time off, with the increasing number of Linuxbots jumping in to say "Use Linux!".
Don't be offended, it's not meant personally at your comment (despite this reply being to you). Just observing.
And you might want to check this chart in case you accidentally think I'm a Windowsbot. :-)
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