Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you
Updated Hint: It will keep going up
OSes
3 Apr 2024 | 106
Whoops! Microsoft accidentally lets out a mobile-'bricking' OS update
“A small portion” of Windows mobile users hoping the unexpected cool new update would start the month off the right way got burned yesterday. Microsoft “accidentally” released a development build of Windows 10 that can transform your phone into jelly if you try to install it. “We apologize for this inconvenience,” said …
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Friday 2nd June 2017 14:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Seems so long ago
“Today was a great exercise in our whole team coming together to solve a singular problem,”
Such postive spin takes me back to the day we carried that large foam iPhone brick collectively, the real Winphone bricks are in our pockets, now, and forever will be.
"It's dead Jim"
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Monday 5th June 2017 16:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Seems so long ago
'"Singular" = Exceptionally good'
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Not precisely, no. A lot of words get misused and thus misunderstood. This looks to be one of them:
singular
adjective
1.
extraordinary; remarkable; exceptional:
a singular success.
2.
unusual or strange; odd; different:
singular behavior.
3.
being the only one of its kind; distinctive; unique:
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Friday 2nd June 2017 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Seems so long ago
Hit me and several others I know too. Hard reboot doesn't work. Can't believe something so universally terminal to devices got released. Shouldn't they check it with some phones at Microsoft first?
I think most people won't know how to use the WDRT and many will probably be returning their devices under warranty, etc...
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Friday 2nd June 2017 17:37 GMT GoingGoingGone
Re: Seems so long ago
There are no W10M phones left at MS, or at least nobody is using them.
The utter contempt for their own creation is such that the announcement for the recent W10M Creators Update release was done via Twitter FROM AN IPHONE (by the same Microsoft Windows and Devices Group software engineer Dona Sarkar the article refers to, who is also the public face of the Windows Insider program, and much to the despair and incredulity of the few remaining loyal users).
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Friday 2nd June 2017 20:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
iPhone funeral
Wow, I forgot all about that. The air certainly was thick with hubris back then, when Microsoft thought by just throwing something out there people would abandon the iPhone. Did they really believe people actually loved Microsoft products, instead of merely tolerating them because they had no choice?
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Sunday 4th June 2017 00:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: iPhone funeral
"Average is no longer sufficient."
True, MSFT is getting by because average, if it is already in place, will work for corporations, or IT will pretend it works. Corporate IT departments seem to not want to replace MSFT even though the users would welcome it. The average IT bod who works on MSFT thinks users still really want MSFT... they don't at all, but they have been keeping up the charade so they don't have to deal with change. Users generally want the latest and greatest (i.e. Apple and Google). IT wants whatever is in place, generally, so they don't have to do work. Not in all cases, but generally true. They fought iPhone and Android until they released the users were going to come after them with pitchforks if they didn't support it. The crazy part about this one is that it would really not be much more expensive to outfit users with MacBook. It would be dramatically less expensive to outfit users with Android/ChromeOS and G Suite... probably cut their end user expenses in half and users would like the move. It's just silly.
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Sunday 4th June 2017 06:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: iPhone funeral
> Corporate IT departments seem to not want to replace MSFT
Cost, Retraining, Apple lock-in
All those shitty MS certificates on their CV
There isn't a *nix desktop that's corporate ready unless you swap for Apple.
I work in design, one of the most Apple friendly environments and still they save hardware dollar on some Leveno crap running Windows for the spreadsheet monkeys.
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Monday 5th June 2017 13:03 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: iPhone funeral
Corporate IT departments seem to not want to replace MSFT even though the users would welcome it.
There are multiple reasons for that:
1. Business workflows have accreted over time and a sensitive to versions, let alone applications.
2. Users don't necessarily welcome it - the most familiar complaint is "but I was used to the old one!".
3. In some cases (AD/SQLServer) there no easy way to replace the functionality. Yes, I know OpenLDAP/MariaDB/Postgresql exist but I refer you to point (1).
4. It takes a good deal of vision/guts/money/time to rip out existing business processes and rebuild them from scratch. That combination of 4 factors is very, very rare. To quote Sir Humphrey "that's a very bold step" and that's not something IT directors & senior execs want to hear..
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Friday 2nd June 2017 13:25 GMT Steve Davies 3
Interesting
Tim Coulling, a senior analyst at Canalys, thinks the issue's reach is fairly minor because the install base for Microsoft mobile devices is relatively low and people with those devices would have also had to choose to install the update immediately (unlikely).
Come on MS, admit it, this platform is as dead as the proverbial Dodo. Put the few people still running it out of their misery.
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Friday 2nd June 2017 17:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Interesting
Clunky Android?? Perhaps sub £100, but spend a reasonable amount from a decent manufacturer that doesnt load it up with bloat, and of course make sure it's sim-free (so a carrier doesn't load their bloat on) and it's anything but clunky. It's fast, feature rich and secure.
I think you need to either unplug from the internet (as you can't spot fud when it's passed your way), or need to stop being a cheapskate, and spent a more reasonable amount of money on your device. A couple of hundred quid will get you a pretty decent mid range android phone.
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Friday 2nd June 2017 18:47 GMT Nolveys
Re: Interesting
Come on MS, admit it, this platform is as dead as the proverbial Dodo. Put the few people still running it out of their misery.
I don't think MS's relationship with Samsung is all that great at the moment, they'll probably have a hard time getting their hands on the proper batteries to finish the job.
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Friday 2nd June 2017 13:28 GMT Justice
What's that???
You didn't back up your device before applying a major update?
Oh, boo hoo hoo.
You must be so lost without all the data you acquired since you last found the motivation to get up off your arse and sync it with your box with lights.
Gutted.
Probably because it takes up a whole three minutes of your valuable time and could really have been done while you were watching cat videos instead of just leaping in there.
What a personal disaster.
Ray. The permanently sarcastic man.
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Saturday 3rd June 2017 10:42 GMT TheVogon
Re: What's that???
"You didn't back up your device before applying a major update?"
Windows phone automatically backs up apps, config and settings. Most people use OneDrive to backup everything else.
And most people use the default settings to automatically install updates when the phone knows it isn't being used. Usually overnight...
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Friday 2nd June 2017 13:30 GMT Richard Jones 1
MS Mobiles or Smoke Signals
“Today was a great exercise in our whole team coming together to solve a singular problem,” Sarkar tweeted yesterday.
I guess they were not eating their own dog food (using the company devices) if they managed to communicate. Though on second thoughts perhaps they came to the same room to communicate because they ate at the company dog bowls?
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Friday 2nd June 2017 15:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: so a subset of a subset of Windows phone users ?
The child was also an orphan who had no money. The child had to work 23 hours a day 7 days a week just to get some food. They had no worldly possessions such as toys and lived in nothing but rags just eking out an existence in such a cruel society.
Yet the worst thing that ever happened was getting a windows phone.
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Friday 2nd June 2017 20:05 GMT MelmIT
I use a lumia 650 from my employer and i actually like the thing w10 mobile. It does what it should do without any fuss. Has expandable memory and a replaceable battery,works well with o365 and the oled is easily readable. Oh yes and i can make a phonecall with it too.
Too many of these chintzy phones has blinded most folk as to what a " smartphone" is for.
Oh and i do not need to download any unnessesery apps to check how long my toenails have grown in the last hour.
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Saturday 3rd June 2017 13:27 GMT MelmIT
Re: "We knew the risks"
Have you ever actually a winphone??
Or do you get a new android or apple every 2 years from your provider, using such salesspeak like "bezel" and "curved" to turn yo on?
It's probably slower than when you first got due to all the useless"apps" and photos from imgur.
Like your inflatable doll you should empty it now and again.
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Saturday 3rd June 2017 02:26 GMT aqk
OMG! Thank goodness I have a Grandpa Box!
Yes, I have one of those old big beige boxes that has seen a multitude of mainboards, processors (usually AMD) and more than one PS that has burned out.
No one would ever steal it- they'd sniff "Ha! This old geezer is still running Win 3.1!" as they went for my 48"TV set. Mind you, the big LED screens might be a giveaway...
But hey! I'm still current! Running Ubuntu 17.04 and Win-10 (fast) Build 16199, which both work great!
So... what's all this nonsense about telephones turning to jelly and frying?
You mean I can run Windows-10 on my rotary-dial phone now? Wow! This IoT thing has really got outa hand!
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Saturday 3rd June 2017 07:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Got an MSI GS30... a 13'' laptop 4th gen i7 with Iris Pro Graphics that docks to a dock( sic! :) ) containing a full size desktop GTX 1060 6GB vid card on PCIe X16 full speed bus. Dock also contains a SATA SSD drive and speaker/ PSU. Plus many USB ports and ethernet card...
All the communication with dock devices is through the port on the back of laptop's motherboard that slides into when in desktop mode.
Few days ago I've noticed some errors on the docked SSD - which didn't make sense as the drive's health is fine...but still it had issues communicating with that sata.
After creators update, noticed stuttering after a couple of hours of gaming Star Wars Battlefront (a demanding game). Restart will solve it, disabled brand spanking new feature 'game mode'..
Two days ago however, whilst looking at my desktop and speaking on the phone, I noticed the screen go fuzzy rgb pixel soup - like a video card or south bridge/ pci bus failure.
Had to completely wipe and reinstall windows to get it back to its senses, as with the Iris Pro graphics, I could use that Windows install, but in device manager it would show the nVidia GTX 1060 card as 'display adapter' with an exclamation mark. Any attempt to uninstall or re-install nVidia driver would result in 'failed to detect compatible hardware'.
SFC scannow from powershell had not found anything wrong with the system...
After re-installing windows 10 it just came back to full working order, therefore I suspect the driver for my 'non-so-common' rig must have been borked big time!
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Saturday 3rd June 2017 14:04 GMT Deimos
I suspect the dark side is showing
I think the win 10 phone version and many other M$ products are actually the output of a huge misery producing AI. After trying to setup my first personal M$ crud in five years (a laptop and Xbox one s), I finally reached the conclusion that M$ are actually fuelled entirely by pain and suffering.
Obviously mainstream products have dedicated teams of pain goblins to cause enough horror to feed the dark lord bill but what of rarer products? How can you ensure that every tiny bit of Redmond crud reduces people to gibbering insanity?
Thus was born the super pain AI, itself entirely powered by people's despair at trying to not crap-grade to win 10. An AI designed to do nothing but hurt people, so entirely undistinguishable from actual interaction with M$.
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Sunday 4th June 2017 04:39 GMT Kiwi
Seems par for the course..
My understanding (and being a Linux fanboi I could be wrong here) is that these releases are for those who wish to experiment with the latest versions before the last[cough] of the bugs are ironed out? Kind of a pre-alpha release (with the actual release version for the normals being the alpha release, and enterprise users getting a pre-beta quality release?)
So.. First, don't keep valuables on dev/test systems
Second, back your valuables coz bad shit happens (especiallly with phones being light and so quick and easy to steal, or just easily dropped into bad places like toilets, drains, concrete etc etc)
And most importantly 3rd, if you think you know your shit enough to use a testing release, you know your shit well enough to do a backup, and you know the risks. If you don't know how to backup or don't know the risks, don't use the test releases!
MS aren't alone in releasing test versions of software that breaks things.
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Monday 5th June 2017 00:04 GMT Ian Joyner
Haste makes ...
Usually it is Samsung that rushes out faulty products. OK, quickly getting out a security update, the imperative is to get it to users before hackers can cause them damage. However, it does seem that MS has rushed this somewhat. MS (and Android) have a big problem in that there are so many different devices to test against.
I'm not saying this is impossible to happen on an Apple platform (and it has in the past), but Apple have far fewer devices to test for - that is the advantage of integrated hardware and software. Apple is also very careful to do the testing - especially when it comes to product releases. They don't rush to market to get competitive advantage.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
