The next major Windows 10 update, the Anniversary Update, is going to be released just slightly too late for its namesake event. The operating system first shipped on July 29, 2015. The Anniversary Update will come a few days after the first anniversary of that release, on August 2.
You will install this update. Or else.
If you are already running Windows 10 there will 0* reason not to update.
If you are running Windows 7 or 8.1 it is unclear what will happen:
* I am 90% sure that Windows 10 (now paid) will no longer become a recommended update and that all nagging will stop
* There is a 9% chance that Windows 10 will be moved down a nodge but that the nagging will continue as if Windows 7 was trialware that will continue to work but you should really pay for the “real” version of Windows (10)
* There is a 1% chance that all hell will break loose and Microsoft will keep pushing Windows 10 as overly aggresive as they are now…and people will start to complain about waking up with Windows 10 suddenly installed and a “pay now or within 30 days” screen (needs popcorn)
PS
0* because there will always be some tool or feature that stops working for someone
Edited 2016-06-30 10:41 UTC
Wasn’t the offer to last of July?
Yes it was. The release of Windows 10 was on July 29th 2015 and it is a free update for a year from Windows 7 or 8.1 (from 8 you can always go to 8.1 for free already).
This anniversary update comes out “at” the 1st anniversary of Windows 10 and will no longer be a free update from Windows 7 or 8.1. But of course it is still a free update for Windows 10.
So…update to Windows 10 before July 29th from 7 or 8.1 to get yourself (technically your computer) a free Windows 10 license that will last forever. Roll back or restore a backup if you really want to, your old 7/8.1 license will still be valid and your new 10 license will still last forever (technically for the lifetime of that machine)
On my gaming PC, yes. Everything else is a tightly controlled non-Windows OS (Slackware, OpenBSD, Alpine, and Elementary OS 0.4 beta, in order of daily use). Oh, and I held on to Windows 7 for my Plex server, though it will soon be repurposed as a Slackware-current workstation now that the Nvidia Shield can be used as a Plex server.
I do feel sorry for the masses though; they truly have no choice if they stay with Windows 10. An update could completely hose their system and they have no say in the matter, and little recourse after the fact. Whenever anyone asks me about Windows 10, I tell them to hold on to 7 (and how to avoid the tricky forced upgrades) unless they are gamers who feel they need DX12, and I always mention switching to Mac OS or Linux or BSD, depending on their aptitude.
I think Windows 10 is superior in every way compared to Windows 7 so unless you have specific hardware/software that works well with 7 but not with 10 I will always recommend 10. I hate the tricky forced upgrades but I recommend people to just do it. Nobody has complaint about my advice. Most of them also use some store apps in addition to their tried-and-trusted programs.
Switching to Mac Os requires buying new hardware and replacing all software. Linux/BSD also requires replacing almost all software. What is so bad about Windows 10 that makes you recommend such a big change?
Wow, you don’t get it despite people trying to explain it to you. What’s so bad about Windows 10? You! Have! No! Control! Do you finally get it? Because I give up!
Trowed away the towel several years after me, -the one responsible for lots of machines- substantially lost that control. Having hopes for the new MS and the new IT blood.
Really don’t understand Apple sweat dreams on the workspace without a partial return of that control.
Most consumers don’t want or need any of that control. And if they really want it they can still take it (even in the Home version, but I would highly recommend a Pro/Enterprise/Education version for those prosumers/professionals)
Have a look at the dism.exe command, privacy settings and policies/registry-settings before you say that people are out of control with Windows 10
Control, on those controls, and formats, and work-paths, and obsolescence, and UI, and…
I don’t recommend it so much as just mention it. The few who are genuinely interested then hear about my experiences with alternative platforms, both positive and negative. It’s not like I’m telling people “Windows sux, *nix rules!”, I’m simply telling them what I’ve used and answering their questions.
Are you comparing preview/insider releases of Windows 10 to a well-tuned Windows 7 installation with old-and-trusted drivers or something? Because there is no loss of stability among the hundred or so pc’s that I support professionally and privately.
The only half-baked things in Windows 10 are OneDrive (no placeholders), Skype (make up your mind about the direction of messaging Microsoft!) and Edge (decent back-end, way-too-limited front-end). And those are things that are not better in 7 and are in no way a reason not to use Windows 10.
Not at all, I am running the stable release of Windows 10 on both my gaming rig and my wife’s PC. That is, I’m running what Microsoft calls the stable release, however I’m of the opinion that even the stable version of Windows 10 is a perpetual beta, and the developer preview is pre-alpha. That’s the only explanation for the totality of the issues faced by the average Windows 10 user (telemetry you can’t turn off, unstable system, broken updates, no documentation on what is in the updates[1], etc).
Even having said all of that, I still use it nearly every day, because it is at least as usable as OS X or Linux or BSD most days. But I will never consider Windows 10 to be stable until it is as solid as Windows 7 and 8.1 were on the same hardware, and who knows how long that will take.
[1] http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/demise-detailed-info-about-windo…
Edited 2016-07-01 01:20 UTC
The average Windows 10 user doesn’t experience an unstable system and broken updates, and doesn’t know anything about telemetry. Not even most pro-users read the documentation of what is in the updates (now documented better than before, lack of documentation hasn’t been an issue for a while now)
I am not saying Windows 10 is perfect and Windows 7 is bad. I am just saying that Windows 10 is giving less problems and more features compared to Windows 7. Your mileage may vary, but your experiences match mine in June/July/August/September last year, not anymore.
That tells me an awful lot about your ego and your take on this, which seems to be “fuck the regular user, all hail Microsoft!”. If you feel that ignorance is bliss on such a controversial and polarizing subject, I think we’re on entirely different planets here and any further discussion is pointless.
I will say that in one sense I agree with you: Windows 10, the OS itself, can theoretically perform better than its predecessors, given fully supported hardware. As for the rest (telemetry, clearly beta-level “stable” version, lack of support from Microsoft for Windows 10 specific issues, etc), they really need to work to make it a truly stable OS.
Morgan,
I agree, windows 10 is the most invasive windows yet and the fact that MS has been caught phoning home despite user privacy settings is extremely concerning.
And this argument that users don’t know anything about the windows 10 data collection, honestly that makes it all the less ethical that MS is doing it. Only an MS apologist could be supportive of that.
Now personally I hate that windows 10 is “bugged” by default, but realistically because of the actions of these corporations to push spyware into their products, it’s the new norm whether I like it or not…at least let me opt out of this crap. Per microsoft, windows 10 basic telemetry can not be completely disabled for home & pro users, a fact which I find very unsettling:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/windows-10-do…
“This policy determines the amount of feedback data reported back to microsoft. A value of 0, applicable to Enterprise or server devices only means no telemetry data from OS components is sent to microsoft.”
There is no legitimate reason for this whatsoever, they’ve clearly nixed the option for home and pro users because they want to disrespect end user wishes. They’ve gone to even greater lengths to override the end user by ignoring DNS and hostfile blocking, both of which are commonly employed to stop undesirable traffic. They’ve made it extremely difficult for users to disable telemetry.
This says nothing about my ego or about my personal take on this. As I wrote in another post here I personally dislike what Microsoft is doing in these areas. But facts are facts and you and I are not the average Windows 10 user. OSNews is a bubble of tech-enthousiast that represent the “1%” of the tech knowledge. You and I are discussing the differences between policies and registry settings for making changes to the update settings in different versions of Windows. I wish the average Windows 10 user knew more about this topic but the fact is that they just click “next next finish” during the installation and are happy when internet works, their documents show up and the apps/progs that they need/expect are there. They store their documents and email unencrypted in the cloud and have only vaguely heard about drives/partitions (just like I have only vaguely heard about Serpentine belts and Timing belts but still use a car on a daily basis like most average car drivers).
I am talking from a practical point of view: These issues are currently there, but I can sidestep these issues, I can complain about them through the official channels (that is how we got Update-Info back!), I can complain about them through the media (that is how we got the Close-Button to not update 7->10) so the negatives are tiny for me and my users. In the mean time the positives of 10 compared to 7 are quite big so I accept these trade-offs. No “fuck the regular user, all hail Microsoft”, just a realistic (tech)worldview about the current state of affairs.
The fact you have zero control over the OS?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-tol…
With 7/8/8.1 It takes less than 15 minutes to have the OS call nothing more than the nist.gov time servers, with Windows 10? Far more skilled men than I have tried and failed to get that OS to stop phoning home, and the fact that they actually baked DNS into the services to bypass HOSTS file blocking is frankly beyond the pale, in fact I’ve only seen that behavior once before…with malware.
Even that article from arstechnica doesn’t claim that anything bad is actually happening. And a few days earlier the same writer wrote this: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/windows-10s-p…
And zero control? http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclaim-your-…
I actually find the privacy settings in Windows 10 better organised and apps are much better to secure than programs.
Continuously referring to that ancient article without updating your knowledge about the control you actually do have is disingenuous. I would personally like to know about everything that happens on my system but I choose to trust the OS and programs that I use. (Nobody can prevent a banking program from doing unwanted things with your banktransfers no matter which OS you use. Eventually you choose to trust or distrust based on experience, knowledge, common sense, etc)
I think the point he was making is that you shouldn’t have to go in and turn all that crap off in the first place. A proper OS has sane, security-conscious, privacy-friendly defaults. Windows 10 is having none of that shit; if you leave the settings to the default when installing or upgrading, your PC is a sieve leaking your information all over the place.
You have to individually click on 13 switches across three pages during the installation to turn off the majority of it, and you have to delve into the registry and issue arcane command line incantations to turn off the non-user-facing controls. Even after all of that, basic telemetry is still being sent (and the jury is still out on whether said telemetry is personally identifiable). Quite simply, that should not be necessary and should be opt-in instead of opt-out. If you believe otherwise you’ve really drank the Kool-Aid.
Windows 10 doesn’t have to be as good as, say, OpenBSD when it comes to security and privacy, nor even in the same ballpark. No one expects that. But it should at least not be a regression from Windows 7.
I would expect Windows 10 to be more secure by default, but less private. Windows 7 comes from a time where everything is done locally. Windows 10 is from a time where machine learning and cloud based tooling is starting to get big and a lot more information is expected to work across devices.
Of course I would prefer that:
* Windows 7 users should just be able to say yes/no (and yes, but not now. And no, but ask me again next month).
* Windows 10 should have a built-in “full privacy on” switch, just like it has a flightmode to turn of all radios. I would also prefer a “what kind of user are you? Beginner/Normal/Advanced” question with matching defaults during setup.
* Having an option to have everything fully encrypted with a key that only I have would be great
But Windows 7 isn’t more secure or private for me compared to 10. And Windows 10 has so many features that 7 hasn’t and that I use every day (Winkey+X, HyperV, Store) that I would be a lot less productive on 7 compared to 10.
The number of times Ubuntu updates have broken something has been far more numerous than Windows Update.
They’re both equally awful in my experience. They ust break different things. Ubuntu breaks drivers, Windows updates break Windows Update!
“…The number of times Ubuntu updates have broken something”
;D
No additional comments.
You’ll notice that Ubuntu isn’t on my list of daily use OSes, except in the form of Elementary OS which is a very broken beta I’m playing with for fun. 😉
That’s funny, my experience is the opposite. Or at least when it comes to LTS releases.
I’d imagine gamers don’t take you seriously anymore once you mention mac/linux/bsd as an alternative to Windows. I know I wouldn’t!
Could Steam pass your QC?
Can Steam bring me access to a regular [light] desktop?
Wow, you completely misread my comment. I specifically said “except for gamers”:
I thought it was inferred, but for gamers (myself included) I recommend Windows 10.
I have little faith about it, but I hope MS does make that Win10 upgrade finally paid and we can live in peace with our current installs.
Nah, keep dreaming. They’ll make it paid, then nag everyone to pay. Or worse, install it forcibly then make you pay to get into your own machine just to remove it.
darknexus,
Haha, obviously they can’t legally do that.
Thinking outside of the box, what they could do is back port some of the advertising/monitoring changes to windows 7 and then re-purpose “windows update” as an advertising platform for the holdouts. In other words, instead of making windows 10 more appealing, they could make windows 7 share some of the cons. This seems so unethical to me that in the past I would have thought it unlikely that a company would resort to it, but it’s a brave new world, and I can’t write-off this possibility anymore.
I was trying to be facetious. Then again, this is the US so who knows what they’d get away with.
Leave that pain just to those that installed pirate.
Nobody would have predicted a post like this 1 year ago
This really shows how badly Microsoft handled this whole “Free Windows”: People are now asking them to make “new Windows” expensive so their “current Windows” works better!
No I won’t. Come the end of September I will get rid of my last Windows system. Then I’m done, finito with Microsoft.
From then on, it is Linux and macOS for the foreesable future.
Sorry, MS for me, your ship has sailed. Beware Icebergs ahead.
Can we finally not get it for “free”? can microsoft finally fuck off about telemetry… nope… still have to manyally hide those updates-
Except that the damned things don’t stay hidden!
Pretty sure this update will have it … Correct me if I’m wrong.
Well, more like Ubuntu bash.
As in, the exact same binary found in Ubuntu.
Yes, it has been in the (Anniversary Update) Insider Previews for about 2 months now and has been updated and improved a few times already. For such a deep big new system it seems to work really well, although the “emulated” filesystem will need a bit of work in the performance area: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-how-well-does-it-run…
Edited 2016-07-01 01:18 UTC
Windows 10 is just a little bit shit – but it is just a little bit shit in every direction I look. Not shit enough to rebel or stop using it altogether but it is still a little bit shit.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up. “Windows 10, we cleaned up a bit of shit over there but for no reason at all we added a bit of shit in some other places. We added a few more doggiebags and some perfume so in total it became a nicer place to be. PS, the added shit and perfume is free…for now…come get it while you can”
I find it entertaining that if you click one sequence of things, you get the newer looking control panel with stick figure icons. If you do some other method of getting to it, you get to the older one with colored icons.
Someone was confused somewhere on how they wanted things to work. Microsoft, attempting to polish a turd.
Which makes the traditional pro-MS FUD talking point about Linux Desktop’s lack of consistency that much more projective(sic) and hilarious.
https://i.redd.it/vwr8lrdi5f7x.png