As for not upgrading to Win 10, it is not entirely because of advertising, though a significant enough deterrent. No, it's more about the snooping and prying into personal files and folders, sharing that information with 3rd parties and using MY resources for purposes not benefiting me... and that's not silly. My sister recently told me that while she was upgrading to Win 10, a download of 3gb, 11.6gb was uploaded as well. She states that nothing else was uploaded during that time and that her broadband service was reduced to dialup speed for 3 days because her 100gb per month quota expired sooner than was budgeted for. That is serious shit and tantamount to theft.
Really? Now we're going with "well somebody told me" as proof? I would LOVE for your sister to show that was Microsoft doing that and it wasn't something she told it was OK. I'll bet you dollars to donuts it was backing up her My Documents to OneDrive as she told it to during the install. It's a clearly labelled option. If she didn't read the menu's when doing the upgrades, that's on her. They aren't hidden. They aren't written in some mumbo jumbo meant to confuse people. Regardless of what ulterior motives Microsoft may have, products are sold to appeal to as many customers as possible. This means having features like automatic backups on by default. I upgraded 4 different computers at my house and neither the AP's logs nor the firewalls logs show any massive change in outgoing traffic. But, guess what, I READ the options it gave during the install and selected according to my preferences.
More importantly, guess what would have happened if that feature was off by default and something happened to her drive and she lost all of her pictures and what not. "But they said Windows 10 can backup my documents automatically". That's something anyone who's worked in IT more than a day has probably heard 1,000 times before.
So in principle, my refusal to upgrade to Win 10 is just that, a matter of principle.... not wanting to be caught up in the commercial bullshit MS has decided to engage in to betray its loyal customers, of whom, most are totally oblivious to the fact they are no longer OS licensees but data mines and commercial guinea pigs to profit yet another company that's [now more than ever] driven by sheer greed. I have boycotted a number of companies and products because of greed and unethical practices in the past and morally I'll continue to do so... because I can.
Welcome to the world we live in. Have you looked into the companies that make the parts for the computer you are using right now? How about the ISP you are paying for the ability to type on this forum? Guess what, they are greedy b-holes too. Unless you're living on a farm, eating food you grew, using tools you made, you're likely giving money on a regular basis to companies that are driven by sheer greed. But, you (just like me and everyone else) have either decided it's worth it to use their services or decided to try to not think about it. Yeah, I have no doubt that the inclusion of these items was fueled by greed. But guess what, that greed has lead to features MOST people want and to be blunt, greed isn't going anywhere.
Oh, and about turning off all these nasty features, who's to say MS can't reactivate them remotely? I was revealed that Samsung could reactivate voice controls on TVs remotely when customers turned them off over privacy concerns... and being these 'features' and their intent are documented in the EULA, Microsoft could well argue it is entitled to... or disable the OS if users repeatedly turn them off. At the end of the day MS thinks it has everyone by the short n' curlies because Mac is way too expensive, Linux has too steep a learning curve and Win 10 is the last edition ever. Well not this black duck! I can and will turn to Linux when Win 8.1 is either too compromised or becomes unsupported/obsolete.
What makes you think they can't with Windows 8.1? How do you know they aren't already? Most the population has zero idea what is actually happening on their home network. If you hadn't seen these threads on Windows 10 would you have had any idea this was happening? Be honest. I suspect no. I'll also bet that if your sister (and probably 90% of the population) wouldn't have either if she hadn't run into a data cap.
My roommate was shocked the other day when I told him he needed to stop going to certain types of websites on my network. He was like "how did you know I was doing that". Simple. It's my network. Your data is going through my firewall. I can see everything you want to do should I desire to. But, guess what, your life isn't that interesting. I really don't care what your taste in porn is as long as there's nothing that might result in the FBI knocking on the door.
I feel largely the same way about Windows 10. Lets say they remotely turn on the automatic backups of my documents without me knowing and somehow magically manage to make it invisible to the firewall. You know what they are going to find out? I'm partial to petite brunettes with glasses and I play Star Trek Online. Congratulations, I hope that was worth the effort. Everything else is stored on my SAN which is blocked from getting out to the internet on the firewall.
Hey, if you're just trying to have a cause you can get angry about, great, more power to you. Personally though, I'd pick a cause with a bit more impact. You know, like world hunger or AIDS. Because, again, let's be honest. Even going with the worse case scenario (ignoring you can prevent them from doing this), what are they REALLY getting? Some family pictures? Windows 10 isn't the problem here, poor computing practices is. Windows 10 is just taking advantage of that. Just like numerous other companies have been for ages and guess what, the general public really doesn't care because the benefits out weigh that.
