How MSFT's tricky new Windows 10 pop-up deceives you into upgrading

alphanumeric said:

Let me put it to you this way. If you just ignore it, and do nothing to stop it, eventually your PC will do the upgrade on its own. If you take the time to use this new decline option, no more nag screens and no upgrade when your not looking. As far as I can tell anyway. I'll have to leave my Windows 7 PC running to see if the prompts come back. So far they haven't. Time will tell. Based on my tests, your much better off just taking the time to decline the offer than trying to block each new GWX App that's installed via Windows update.

If somebodies computer is set to automatically check for updates does the Win10 upgrade download in the background or does one have to manually check for updates first? If it automatically downloads in the background what happens if the user doesn't even know it's downloaded and doesn't do anything?

I have never believed that Windows 10 will be their last operating system, although they might keep the name. Suppose you bought a legal copy of Windows 10 on a DVD. Do you really believe that twenty years from now you will be able to install it on a new computer?

And MS said from the beginning why they removed the Start Button from Windows 8. They wanted people to get used to the tile interface, so they would be more willing to buy Windows tablets and smart phones. That type of thinking explains why Android is the most popular smart phone OS, and why Windows 8 was so widely rejected.

alphanumeric said:

You buy new hardware. And before everybody flams me, it's like that now. There are people currently running older versions of Windows because their hardware won't support the newer versions. When end of life comes for that version of Windows they either buy a new device or just keep on trucking with no updates or patches. It's up to the individual when they hit that wall. How that pans out with Windows 10 I have no idea? Only Microsoft knows that. How they plan to keep track of it I don't know? There are lots of Pros and Cons to this plan.

You are exactly right. The difference today is that Windows 10 won't allow you to turn off the upgrades. That means at some point your hardware will be outdated but you can't stop the upgrade train. Most people with older OS's, pre- Windows 10, had third party security software that would take care of that end of things. Then you run your hardware until it no longer supports the programs you need, or the hardware died, and buy then you new hardware and it has the new OS.

However, with the new model it could cause your hardware to still be viable but useless because it begins to lag support for the upgraded OS. I'm sure some marketing heads are assuming clueless users will just buy cheaper hardware more frequently. You know, so we can expose the toxic metals in our motherboards to landfills. (But I digress.) I think in reality the good news is that it may open an eventual market for a Google or some other yet to be conceived truly user friendly Linux based OS to roll in for those people who don't want to drop 900 bucks every three years on new hardware. It won't be a replacement for Windows, but they'll license some deal with Microsoft for legacy APIs. The new Microsoft has already shown a willingness to expand into that area. It would be a win/win for the company if it were to happen.

Either that, or we'll start seeing consumer leasing programs similar to the corporate leasing programs in place now for computers.

alphanumeric said:

In my testing, even if you do nothing, eventually the GWX App opens a Window on screen with the accept decline options. It also shows up if you open Windows update. If you just close the Windows with the X, it will upgrade. If you take the time to decline, it won't.

What would happen if someone was to shutoff their computer before they get the popup or for some reason their computer restarted? The reason I'm asking is because some are saying that their computers where upgraded without their knowledge.

Winuser said:

What would happen if someone was to shutoff their computer before they get the popup or for some reason their computer restarted? The reason I'm asking is because some are saying that their computers where upgraded without their knowledge.

It wouldn't really matter if we are talking just a popup. I've seen somewhere else that was tried and the popup came up again later. If you close it after it tells you it is scheduling it, I believe it's scheduled since you need an explicit no to opt out at that point.

Life would only get serious if the upgrade was running. If you shutdown your computer while it was updating you would pretty much "brick" your machine and have to reinstall the OS and programs from scratch, and hopefully restore you data from backup. However, I don't think that's possible. I haven't seen or heard of an upgrade running with nothing saying so on the screen. Just the upgrade running while people were away or sleeping. What's more likely to happen is you walk in and see the upgrade countdown screen on your monitor. If you freak and shutoff the power then yea, you're hosed.

Microsoft is really getting aggressive with their windows 10 upgrades.