What are Microsoft smoking? I want to know what to avoid to prevent me making silly decisions like this.
Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos
Group Policy changes in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, set for release shortly, mean that users of the Pro edition can no longer disable some of the more intrusive aspects of the operating system. Group Policy is a mechanism by which system administrators can configure Windows settings centrally, for PCs joined to a Windows …
COMMENTS
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Friday 29th July 2016 18:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
@boltar - Apple is firing into their feet?
How so? Sure, sales of the iPhone are down from its lofty peak, but two quarters of lower YoY sales hardly means Apple is in terminal decline. The whole mobile market is saturated now, and no phone has new features compelling enough to make people upgrade. They could match the total feature set of the Android market, and it wouldn't affect their sales, unless you think people will actually switch to Android in large numbers to get something like wireless charging.
There were in fact obvious reasons (pent up demand for a larger iPhone and for China Mobile as a carrier) for the sales peak they experienced with the iPhone 6, so it is not surprising when those pent up demands have been satisfied that they are experiencing lower sales this time around. So unless you consider "fulfilling demand in all potential markets leaving no more big untapped sources of growth" to be shooting yourself in the foot...
I doubt Apple pays much attention to Microsoft anymore anyway, they have never been relevant in the mobile market so I doubt anyone at Apple takes any 'delight' in it. Well, maybe a few old timers who have been there since the 90s when Microsoft was unstoppable still like seeing them brought down a peg, but they've been screwing up in so many ways for so many years you'd hope they'd be tired of it by now.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 01:19 GMT bombastic bob
double-double down on STUPID
"If I were someone like Dell, I would call Nadella and tell him to stop this idiocy because it's going to impact sales"
Whoops. too late. [negative sales impact since Win "Ape" actually]
Micro-shaft doing THIS reminds me of a Futurama episode where everybody became stupid because of giant space brains. On the news, the reporter talked about a huge train wreck, but then she mentioned that "the governor lady" was going to fix everything by "sending MORE TRAINS".
So in Micro-Shaft's case, they'll just DOUBLE-DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID, hoping it will WORK this time.
The 3 stooges, Ballmer, Turner, Sinofsky: turning a profitable technology leader into a laughing stock, since 2005. (now all 3 have been 'canned' and the direction is STILL not changing, it's just getting WORSE)
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Saturday 30th July 2016 16:57 GMT Updraft102
Not to mention telling the OEMs that they must put the IE icon prominently on the desktop, and that no other browser may be preinstalled.
If they were raked over the coals, someone forgot to light the coals first. They should have broken up MS when they had the chance. Now they're being strangely silent...
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Friday 29th July 2016 14:28 GMT ma1010
You should go right ahead and upgrade
To Linux. After being a Windows user and supporter since the 80's, I did, and I'm very glad I did. Yes, there are things to learn, and there may be a few "windows only" apps one needs, but for those you can use Windows 7 in Virtualbox, WINE, or dual boot with Internet access disabled. One way or another, you can escape what is increasingly becoming the Dark Side.
As far as I can tell, Windows is trying to commit suicide. Are most people really lame enough to use an operating system that installs programs you don't want without even asking you? It seems to me that Satya clearly believes "All your PC are belong to us." I, for one, disagree.
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Friday 29th July 2016 16:24 GMT fung0
Re: You should go right ahead and upgrade
"Are most people really lame enough to use an operating system that installs programs you don't want without even asking you?"
So far, all we know is that some are. The jury is out on most.
However, omens such as the miserable failure of Windows Phone, the mediocre response to the Windows 10 giveaway, the languishing sales of the Xbox One, the near-total nonexistence of DirectX 12 games, the crickets chirping in the Windows Store - all tend to suggest that Microsoft's Master plan is a very long way from being a rousing success.
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Friday 29th July 2016 17:52 GMT asdf
Re: You should go right ahead and upgrade
>"Are most people really lame enough to use an operating system that installs programs you don't want without even asking you?
Only if I am paid too (and they buy the machine) and even then its getting Cygwin and Solaris in a VM for getting day to day stuff done.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 14:29 GMT Kiwi
Re: You should go right ahead and upgrade @fung0
...all tend to suggest that Microsoft's Master plan is a very long way from being a rousing success.
You forgot the increasing silence from the usual crown of MS shiils (esp certain ACs) here to "correct" people making comments such as yourself.
Looks like even they have decided to stay away from MS products! (some of 'em anyway)
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Friday 29th July 2016 20:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You should go right ahead and upgrade
It seems to me that Satya clearly believes "All your PC are belong to us." I, for one, disagree.
I think there's an alterior motive to forcing the updates.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 16:39 GMT Updraft102
Re: You should go right ahead and upgrade
It's time. MS has been abusive from the start, but until now, they've mostly been abusive to their competitors. Now they've started abusing their own users.
You know, when this GWX nonsense first started to really flare up, back when I had just tried Win 10 and decided I didn't like it, I decided to keep Windows 7 and wait and see if 10 would get any better. Four years is a long time, and surely by then MS would have gotten the picture from feedback from its users, right?
I had 10 installed on a test PC so I could monitor its progress. I also put Linux on that test PC as a dual boot, just to see how it had grown since I last used it (in the form of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn).
As the year-long free upgrade progressed, I became far less optimistic about the odds of Win 10 evolving into something I would want to use. Despite user feedback, MS seemed determined to charge ahead in the wrong direction. I decided, eventually, to step up the "getting to know Linux" thing; with Linux only on my test PC, I wasn't using it enough to really get to know it, and I wasn't working on migrating at all. My main PC then became a Win7/ Mint dual boot machine.
In time, I wiped the 10 install on my test PC. I'd given up on it; no need to keep testing. When the story is over, close the book (I think I saw that in one of the original '70s Herbie movies). My main PC then became a Mint/ Win 7 machine; I use Linux wherever possible, and I am preparing for the day when I can dismiss Windows permanently. I'm not one of those Linux die-hards who hates anything Microsoft (or that isn't FOSS)... I really like 7, and I liked XP a great deal as well. There's just no future in them; XP has already been abandoned, and 7 will be too in time.
If you can handle Linux and its relative lack of graphical UI for administrative tasks (for day to day use, there's no need to go outside of the desktop environment) and incompatibility with some Windows programs that don't have Linux equivalents, there's never been a better time than now. Microsoft has shown us clearly that nothing less than complete control over our PCs is their goal. It's not getting better-- it's getting worse. First we hear that Cortana can no longer be set to use search engines other than Bing. Then we hear that the Windows Store can no longer be disabled via group policy except in the educational and enterprise versions of 10. Then we hear that Cortana can no longer be disabled. Now we hear that the ads for apps can't be disabled.
That last one probably wasn't meant to be discovered until after the free upgrade period, which ended yesterday, but the rest of them happened even while MS was still trying to get people (home users) to accept Windows 10 for free. Now that all of the home users that wanted 10 have it, and most of the future growth of 10 will be in the enterprise sector, we can expect the drip, drip, drip of news about which options MS has taken out of the non-enterprise versions to turn into something a lot bigger.
We're in for some interesting times. I fear that people who have migrated to 10 are in for some rough seas, and we can't be sure MS won't put some extra "goodies" into the 7 and 8 security updates that gradually result in them slowing down in an attempt force people into 10 quicker. With closed-source software, there has to be a degree of trust in its publisher, and it is clear that MS cannot and should not be trusted.
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Friday 29th July 2016 14:56 GMT Antron Argaiv
I've always seen an OS as a tool. Allows me to use the hardware, but is strictly functional -- and doesn't get in the way.
Now, Microsoft is trying to turn Windows into a marketing platform. That's fine, but they should at least be up front about it.
Look, you pay nothing for Windows (almost). It comes with your machine, just like that useless 16k flash card that came with your new point and shoot camera. It's free, and it's pretty much worth what you paid for it. If you don't like Microsoft having control over your hardware, go out and buy a different OS -- either the commercial version of Windows, or OSx or Linux, whichever suits.
I've chosen Linux (with a VirtualBox install of XP for those Windows apps I can't live without)
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Friday 29th July 2016 15:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
"buy a different OS -- either the commercial version of Windows, or OSx or Linux,"
Already purchased OSX, iOS, Android and have a distro of Linux.
Also have a few copies of Windows 7 (pre Telemetary) and even a copy of XP all brought and paid for,
I would "Happily" pay for a version of windows 10 that was a simple operating system without. telemetry, forced app installs, spyware and forced updates. I would even pay a premium to counter the loss that Microsoft make from Not being able to mine my "PERSONAL PRIVATE" information. but windows enterprise 1) is not completely clean of this bloat and 2) try going to M$ and saying can i please have only one copy of windows 10 enterprise... the answer is NO.
I can just for once say i am supporting the French as they are challenging Microsoft slurping. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/20/france_windows_10_microsoft/
just sell a TF / SWF version and that will keep me and probably data protection regulators happy. if people still want cheep and "user is the product" software they have made an informed choice and have an alternative. otherwise M$ are taking advantage of their dominant market position and imposing restrictive unfair terms i their ULA.
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Friday 29th July 2016 20:49 GMT Zakhar
"you pay nothing for Windows (almost)"
You are really out of your mind!
Look here (sorry it is in French, but you can understand easily!)
http://www.ldlc.com/informatique/ordinateur-portable/pc-portable/c4265/
As you can see if you take the basic model this vendor really "play balls", that is they display the REAL price of Windows. So if you compare the first 2 machines, the one at (BI3-4H10) at 580€ and the other one (BI3-4-H10-H10) at 700€, you will notice the ONLY difference is W10!
That is the O.S. is not at all free, it costs 120€. For this machine that is "entry level", that is almost 20% of the total price gone to slurpware.
Of course, that is a "good vendor" that gives you a choice to buy a machine with or without slurpware. But for one "good vendor", there are thousands of thugs that force down you throat 20% (or more) of what you pay to something you don't necessary want.
In my dictionary that is called: extortion. W10 and the "new policy" won't chance that, they will continue to extort people, because NO it is NOT free, not at all!
When hardware was super expensive, you didn't even notice the extra charge of W$ that was around 5%, but now it becomes more and more irrelevant. When you start paying 20% or more in software for a machine, you start thinking twice!
So please, stop pretending it is free. It is not, and apparently not close to ever be free.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 17:05 GMT Tom 7
Windows is not free
When I buyed a laptop a month or so ago I saved £79 by not having Windows 10 home and £109 by not having Windows 10vProfessional. That is 30% of the cost of a low end laptop.
How much more I've saved by not having anything MS cloud based like anything MS is anyone's guess.
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Friday 29th July 2016 22:35 GMT Richard Plinston
> you pay nothing for Windows (almost). It comes with your machine,
Actually, in most cases*, you do pay something for Windows that comes with the machine. Or specifically, the OEM has paid Microsoft and this is included in the cost.
* Sometimes there are versions that are free to OEMs, such as 'Starter with Bing' that was locked
into MS services.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 16:51 GMT Updraft102
Someone mentioned crapware on the Dell PCs above.
There was a minor controversy a while back when Dell started offering one of its PCs (a laptop, I think) with Linux instead of Windows. People were shocked to find the Linux version had a cost premium above and beyond that of the Windows version.
It turns out that the large amount of crapware Dell is paid to install on a new Windows PC nets them enough money to more than completely offset the cost of a Windows license. The Linux version, not being compatible with any of the crapware, was clean.
So if your PC comes with crapware, dealing with removing all of that is the price you pay for Windows... or you could say that if Windows was free, the revenue from the crapware would subsidize part of the PC and lower the cost to you rather than pay for Windows.
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Saturday 30th July 2016 20:08 GMT Richard Plinston
> So if your PC comes with crapware, dealing with removing all of that is the price you pay for Windows... or you could say that if Windows was free,
The OEM paid money to Microsoft for Windows and that cost is added to the cost of the machine. Even if crapware pays the OEM and subtracts cost from the machine that does not make Windows 'free' in any sense.
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Monday 1st August 2016 12:33 GMT smf
>The OEM paid money to Microsoft for Windows and that cost is added to the cost of the machine.
> Even if crapware pays the OEM and subtracts cost from the machine that does not make
> Windows 'free' in any sense.
It's free in the sense of free beer.
Producing beer costs money, if you get it without paying for it (i.e. free) then somebody is subsidising it.
Free TV stations (if you have them in your country) are also subsidised by adverts.
I don't think you understand what free (in the sense it was used) means.
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Monday 1st August 2016 20:50 GMT Richard Plinston
> if you get it without paying for it (i.e. free)
But you don't get Windows for free. You are paying the OEM for the computer, part of that is going to Microsoft. Whether that price you pay is higher or lower because of other subsidies is irrelevant unless the whole product is free - you _are_ paying.
Alternately you may claim that 'the hard disk is free', but you have to pay for Windows.
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Sunday 31st July 2016 18:08 GMT Reg Sim
You do pay for Windows, the OEM pays MS to licence it for your computer, and you pay the OEM. Its also not particularly cheap. If you enjoy playing games you also do not have a huge choice of good OS for games and productivity.
No I would rather like the EU data commisioner to come in and tell MS we need to beable to turn these things off, and when they are off they stay off unless we explicitly turn them back on.
The 'Free upgrades' to windows 10 are for Microsofts benefit not ours. At least Windows 10 is not a usability disaster like windows 8.0.
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Monday 1st August 2016 12:33 GMT smf
I have run every Microsoft OS since the 1980's. Windows 8.0 wasn't a usability disaster, it was a pr disaster. But then every version of windows has been, including windows 95. The problem with windows 95 was introducing that stupid start menu. The problem with windows 8 was removing the stupid start menu.
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Friday 29th July 2016 20:12 GMT Someone Else
@ Credas
It's this kind of intrusive bullshit that turned me from a fairly happy majority Windows 7/occasional Linux user to the reverse of that, to the point where Windows 10 is kept on hand for emergency use only.
YMMV, of course, but for me, I'd only consider using Win7 for "emergency use only". Win 10 is itself an emergency, and fixing an emergency with another emergency just doesn't seem right.
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Friday 29th July 2016 18:33 GMT Nick Ryan
Setting this registry values makes sweet FA difference on Windows 10 Pro anyway.
Also, as soon as the primitive joke of an "app store" fires up it queues all manner of abject junk to be updated on the system. It doesn't matter if you immediately uninstall the rubbish, if there's an "update" queued the the PoS app store will just reinstall it regardless. Once all updates have been completed by the "app store", then it is possible to finally remove the rubbish. Resetting the app store makes no odds as the updates are already queued and in typical delightful MS fashion, entirely invisible.
None of this can't be fixed with suitable PowerShell scripts that run on login or other schedules but the rubbish apps will be there for a period of time. One other thing noting is that these junk apps are installed per user, per machine therefore a user using a system that they haven't used before will have the junk apps installed just for them regardless of whether or not other users, or local administrators, have removed them on that system.
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Monday 1st August 2016 12:41 GMT anonymous boring coward
"The question now is, if you actually pay for this spamware, will you still be bombarded with ads from their 'partners'?"
Those who upgraded from Windows 7 have also payed for their "free" version of Win 10 with a perfectly good copy of Windows 7. Now gone, and replaced with crap. And then they will continue to pay, and pay, and pay...
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Wednesday 3rd August 2016 21:47 GMT anonymous boring coward
I used to write "paid" until someone corrected me.. Also, the spell checker liked "payed" more this time -go figure! My defense it that English isn't my first language, and at least I don't write "I would of had there balls in a vice.." or "Here, here!" or "Their's no reason to say your going out tonight" or "Viola!" or similar. I'm trying. K?
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Friday 29th July 2016 13:34 GMT Doctor Syntax
"If you don't know how enable/disable any setting applied by GPO then you really shouldn't be using the Pro edition"
Read the following sentence from TFA several times until you understand it.
"Certain settings can now only be applied to the Enterprise and Education editions of Windows Pro."
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Friday 29th July 2016 13:56 GMT Fuzz
You have missed the point by such a long way here.
GP is a way for businesses to centrally manage settings in Windows and other software. Some of the settings handled by GP can be set in the gui. Most require obscure undocumented registry entries.
The particular settings that are being talked about here have no corresponding setting within windows. The app promo is the thing that creates tiles on the start menu for any new user asking them to install candy crush.
The pro version of windows has always fully supported GP. This allowed businesses to use the pro OEM license of the windows that came with the PCs they purchased. Now Microsoft is turning Pro into a weird stripped down OS to try and force companies to purchase enterprise.
What they're going to find is that the centralised management provided by AD is the single most important feature of Windows in a business and there are going to be a lot of business who are already paying for server licenses and CALs to allow them to use AD that aren't going to fancy also paying for licenses for the OS.
Note that Enterprise Windows isn't a license you buy instead of Professional, you already have to have an OEM pro license on the computer so you have to buy Windows twice just so that your users aren't asked to download Candy Crush every time they log into a PC.
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Friday 29th July 2016 15:33 GMT Bronek Kozicki
I know this is beside the point ...
.... but you could always install Start10 for your users, to replace builtin start menu. Start10 supports GP, you can download adm templates from vendor website, it is very cheap and is way better than builtin start menu anyway.
Well of course, I do know that next month Microsoft will damage something else in Pro edition, making Windows 10 even worse for those who do not want, or cannot, switch to Enterprise of Education edition. See title ...
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Saturday 30th July 2016 01:29 GMT bombastic bob
Re: I know this is beside the point ...
"but you could always install Start10 for your users, to replace builtin start menu."
only a partial fix. Classic Shell is FREE, but that's not enough either. You still have:
a) adware
b) spyware
c) 2D FLUGLY interface
d) "the METRO" all over the place, particularly "Settings" vs Control Panel.
no thanks. I'd rather switch to an open source OS like Linux or BSD, or "go MAC".
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