OK so this is the story. I have been wanting to upgrade for a while now but I was around when the mass hysteria with win10 happened. I stated reading all type of crazy stuff. Things like they are spying, they are scanning our drives, pirates are going down because MS bought a company that deals with piracy and they are now scanning everything. Dont use a windows 10 PC unless (insert crazy theory here) Its been a couple months now and just wanted to know if anyone has a reason why I should not upgrade? Windows 10 free upgrade will be over soon and wanted to take advantage. Just wanted to know from you fine folks which are already are using windows 10 what the deal is. 1. are they really spying on us per say. I have read the MS does this on win 8 as well. 2. Are they really scanning our files and checking if we have cracked programs? 3. I think this is the first version of windows that has had this much panic, what gives?
It's the first version of windows in which information is taken automatically and can not be 100% turned off through any normal means. This information is encrypted and can not be examined for what exactly is in it. You just have to trust Microsoft. As such, there has been an explosion of anti-telemetry programs like O&O ShutUp10, W10Privacy, etc. Windows is not constantly checking for cracked programs. Telemetry services can be turned off in windows 8 & 7 and as far as I know, telemetry was beginning to be added to them around the time they started to push windows 10. Personally, I have other reasons for not running windows 10 at the moment. Incompatible programs, general instability and bugs, high cpu & disk usage for certain programs, slower performance overall compared to 8. Telemetry issues is just icing on the cake. I would not be pissed if there were actually toggles in the OS to turn it all off with out messing with 3rd party utilities and such. Every month after they release a cumulative update I test it again to see if certain problems are solved. As things are I will remain on Windows 8.1 for the forseeable future. Windows 10 still needs time to mature. What you could do is make a backup of your current OS with something like Macrium Reflect and then go through with the upgrade for Windows 10. This will activate your computer and you can go back to your backup if something goes wrong. Windows 10 from then on will activate with that specific computer when ever you install it.
There's no telling how much spying MS included to the OS, we just find out as much we can, remove/block it and call it a day if there's no evidence on network showing irregular or phone-home connections. There can be much more to the transparent communication but i just can't care that much to find it. Don't think that's just Win10, it is possible the spying be installed to Win7, 8 via regular recent WU. No MS OS are safe if you want to be paranoid. In summary i think Win10 is quite bloated, require stripping dozens of features before install, and because servicing the WIM is rather done by trial and error it takes time to do but still worth it at the end.
There will be thousands of thoughts on your questions, no their not scanning folders, no they will not get number and call your girlfriend/boyfriend, MS is spying to simply see what you like, they in turn sell it to a company who may send you e-mail trying to sell you something, which is easy to solve, junk mail. Now the other is the NSA, if you are not plotting to overthrow Government, not planning on blowing anything up,then you have nothing to worry about. Windows 10 is great, if you decide to upgrade, I'd wait on Windows 10 Anniversary Edition (Redstone 1) which will be out on or before 15 July 2016, and no they will not mess with your bank account.
I've got no issue with Windows 10. I've been using it since it first Insider Preview Build came out. Microsoft doesn't scan files, documents, online browsing etc. Microsoft only gathers usage of your PC to improve it Windows. There is 3rd party tools to stop telemetry and to uninstall default Apps.
I guarantee you they are not scanning your pc for pirated pc software. If they tried to do so, even by only scanning for known cracks it wold have false positives (a lot of games from GOG.com actually use known working scene cracks to be DRM-free) so don't worry about that. yes there's a lot of spying. but it's not for THAT purpose. That's a feature of windows 10 for XBOX ONE, where there will be no false positives.
Windows 10 is still not stable. Installing nothing but Microsoft Updates and no programs, eventually, you'll notice even Microsoft's own apps will stop functioning. Start adding Microsoft 3rd party programs (Microsoft Office for example) and eventually services will stop functioning. Windows 10 is a time bomb in my opinion. I've needed to format and reinstall Windows 10 enough times to frustrate the hell out of me. I don't even bother trying to fix it anymore. A lot of the online fixes either don't work, will make things worse, will break other things, or will be only temporary. Even on this very site, the most common questions are how do you get "X" app working again or why is my store not working or why is something not updating... ect.. etc... The speed of how soon this happens will depend on how much you use Windows and how often up upgrade. A quick view of your service log (Event Viewer) is telling. I've found Windows Vista once fully updated to be more stable (obviously, Windows 7 and 8 as well). * note this is without trying to disable anything, using only the stable release and not the preview (not counting early releases or betas).
think for yourself, why do you need to move to 10. There is nothing that 10 do that you couldnt do on 7, nothing.
So true. Windows 10 is still not stable enough for the masses. But is was released -as-is- because promises were made by marketing (Typical) and engineering is trying as hard as they can to keep up. I've seen this -exact- scenario play itself out in hardware design as well as software development. More times that I care to mention. Unless you're involved in Windows 10 to help improve it and are a power user, then leave it alone and wait until it's stable enough for full production. And don't drop it in a mission critical computer unless you know what you're doing. Too much has changed "under the hood" to guarantee that older programs will still work. Don't eat a half-baked cake and then complain that it tastes terrible. .
Hello! The biggest problems are: Windows 10 don't support 100% all NT based drivers!!! Not all hardware contains drivers for Windows 7, 8.x, 10!!! Performance and memory caching technology. Task Scheduler full with tasks by default. Don't support all old software by default. Compatibility View!!!