You have NO privacy... Get used to it! --Scott McNealy If you're paranoid... Use Tails booted from a USB stick.
I'm a gamer and I'm actually thinking of ditching Windows. I want to try out an Archlinux setup and probably have Windows 10 on dual boot. With Vulkan coming out soon and Valve pushing for games available on Linux, I believe they are going to run good enough, even with WINE. Batman Arkham Knight is supposed to come out for Linux soon, if they manage to make it work properly.
I think Microsoft's change to a malware operating system is deplorable. I've done a complete clean reload of 8.1 Pro and, even though recent updates have tried to make it as bad as 10, I can at least combat their telemetry more effectively. They keep figuring out ways to make the Win10 upgrade come back but I found a way to eliminate it - at least for now. They've gone from trying to make a good operating system to making an operating system full of spyware and adware. Shame on you, Microsoft. ps: Windows 10 is NOT an upgrade.
Well, the bright side is now people are going to be looking into Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Mint, etc. Those that enjoy freedom and privacy will end up switching to Linux even if it takes some repatterning of the brain to learn how to do things a little bit differently. Microsoft only bundling the latest version of DIrectX with Windows 10 just shows their old, "embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy. They are really a terrible company and many people in this world are smart enough to finally look for alternatives to the Windows trap. Are we, as a society, really going to rely and be trapped in a web of deception coming from Redmond for another 30 years? Think about it. Microsoft doesn't care about innovation. They care about data mining, advertising, and shoving bulls**t down ignorant users' throats. For them, it all comes down to how much profit the board can squeeze out of their dying Windows paradigm. If Windows was on the upswing, Microsoft would probably not push all the privacy busting stuff. Since, however, it's on the downswing, Microsoft is going for surreptitious and controversial angles to try to maximize profit. Will it backfire on them? We'll have to wait and see. IQ's are dropping all around the world rapidly, so it's hard to say if it will or not.
getting one step outside it doesn't matter a lot which data microsoft is collecting from windows 10 as every single package you'll send over the web is doubled onto american serverfarms. you are already saving your habits on twitter, google and facebook. that known, you should be aware it's the same if you're gonna use linux and mac. I wouldn't blame MS too hard but I understand the misfortune of bloating windows 10 with ads and no opt-in for the data gathering orgy. indeed there are still pretty good features as pdf printer or directx12 in now, not everything is bad at least you can learn how to de-crappify your system ... now ... for the ads in solitaire, I mean they can be blocked with a hosts manager like hostsman but I dislike the need to use third party apps to do such things too, from a perspective on security. regarding bitlocker keys autosave in skydrive, think about using veracrypt or truecrypt, as not even microsoft is supporting gpt encryption actually. learn to deal with it or stay with windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 as long as you are not aware how to stop the ads and tracking features.
The thing is, the more we have to "de-crappify" our systems, the more the next versions of Windows will "crappify" our systems. Microsoft is way out of touch with their customer base as if that's anything new; it's as if the employees there have Stockholm syndrome. MS is currently conditioning people to having a locked down PC (even though the hardware is owned by the consumer) so eventually you will be renting your operating system. And I don't mean locked down in the security sense. I am talking about Microsoft owning your ass. That is the unfortunate fate of Windows: SaaS. The only reason that Windows isn't fully SaaS now is because consumers rejected the idea. But give it some time. Don't want ads in your Solitaire game? You better pay up!
that's why I prefer to pay for an OS or just using open source like debian, free isn't really free in such a case, maybe sanyo nutella isn't the right guy heading this company into the right direction.
Have to disagree on being out of touch with their customer base. You and I and most people on any kind of forum like this are not their customer base. I do IT support for small business and some general public. 90% of them at least couldn't care less about this stuff. Just recently moved and small company with about 40 users completely over to google. They wanted their mail system upgraded and insisted on pushing everything to the "cloud". Now every single business email no matter how sensitive goes straight to google. They are also making extensive use of google drive as well, putting sensitive documents on their including electronic schematics on their products. This company in the past has had a problem with chinese knockoffs of their products and still they dont' seem to care about possible privacy issues because the perceived convenience is more important. Microsoft is only copying the apple/google model which has worked great for them. The general public just eats this stuff up.
No need to chase ghosts . That will need to disable the Telemetry that creates and sends them to Mum.
What if I don't use any of these, for one thing because I'm aware of that they're doing what you've said and for another because I find them to be incredibly s**tty platforms (except Google, which can actually be quite handy).
Google is quite handy, but it is also completely biased. Search engines like DuckDuckGo, Startpage or IXQuick get the same, if not better results but leave out the Google sponsored results.
One thing I don't get... We're living times of clashing and barrier breaking. SCO-BRICS vs NATO, right? Without any doubt, Russia and China, the faces of SCO and leaders of the BRICS, are aware that since Windows 8, there is a major electronic snooping operation. Also, without any doubt, they will not allow Windows 8 or 10 on their most important and critical servers and be worried about Windows machines all over Russia and China... Forget the EU and the US, where Microsoft and other lobbies are just too powerful. If you can lobby for evil, why can't you lobby for good? Russian and chinese governments are strong regulators (to say the least...). And they do work very well. Why not pass laws on Russia and China, to allow all software to run properly on all Operating Systems? I am not proposing anti-Windows laws. I am proposing fair laws, that allows us to choose which OS to run on our computers, smartphones, etc... Open APIs allow software to run properly on all OSes, Windows, Linux, MacOS... It is fair. Microsoft would not be happy. But they would have very few arguments (if any at all...) against fair laws, regulating this aspect of our electronic lives. And if you talk about Russia and China, then South America and Africa will follow. Just a question of time. Why not?