Microsoft expands Get Windows 10 program to domains

publishes opt-out instructions

[bill]

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-expands-get-windows-10-program-to-domains-publishes-opt-out-instructions/ [zdnet.com]

Microsoft expands Get Windows 10 program to domains, publishes opt-out instructions

As the year-long free upgrade offer for Windows 10 nears the halfway mark, Microsoft is getting more aggressive, with new plans to begin displaying the GWX taskbar icon and upgrade prompts on business PCs that had previously been off-limits.

Announcement from Microsoft: [blogs.technet.com...]

[ergophobe]

Bill.... have I asked this?

Can you give me three reasons to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10?

I can give you three reasons not to:
1. I take it as an article of faith not to upgrade a machine that is running without problems and definitely not to an operating system that came out after the machine was produced.
2. Though not as big a thing for me as for you.... the encryption key issue
3. It takes time and effort and would have to pay me back with saved time and effort over the long run.

[tangor]

1. Latest and greatest (so they say) Win Os, quick, lean, always updated whether you want it or not.

2. A move toward MS cloud services and storage and them keeping track of all you do and all you have

3. And other things down the road which we don't know about yet, but are sure to be nifty keen and luverly.

That said, Win10 does run well, most of the time it is not that intrusive though keeping the security and privacy locked down is a time consuming process and there's that other thingie: new machines will not offer downgrades to either 7 or 8x due to behind the scenes agreements between MS and OEM suppliers.

I have ONE Win10 machine set up to see what's going to happen, all my other work machines and those at home are locked down to 7 Pro 64 (no 8x in house). Meanwhile, two boxes with 'nix, different flavors as it is quite possible that I might actually (after all these years) migrate fully in that direction. The 'nix crowd is finally catching up on some of my must have editing software (graphics, audio, film). Yes, I could go mac for some of that.... but old habits die hard and I've not been all that enamored with the walled garden surrounding iOS and hardware.

Win 10 will be shoved down the collective throat.... that we can't stop, except by pocketbook or voting with feet, but I truly do understand the method behind this madness, expressed elsewhere and will not do so again. Just that it makes better business sense for MS to make the OS eventually pay EVERY DAY instead of when there's a new version rolled out. There is a reason why MS revealed this will be the last Winidows and from henceforth will be "Windows As A Service".

[ergophobe]

>>move toward MS cloud services and storage

The bane of my existence. I am often in a bandwidth-constrained environment (satellite internet) and the more things phone home for things I don't care about, the less I get to do stuff I do. Apple products are the worst. Left on the defaults, they chew through bandwidth like nobody's business (I have an iPhone, but have all notifications, auto-updates, etc et,c turned off).

[bill]

I have yet to update any of my machines to Windows 10, so I may not be the best person to ask at this time ;)

Like you, I have machines that are set-up and work just fine. I'm hesitant to upgrade those machines as this is the first OS from Microsoft that really doesn't let you do a bare metal reinstall (although there may be ways to do this now, in the beginning you had to upgrade from a previous OS). I have never done a MS upgrade in place. I always do a clean install. Old habits die hard.

I may be an outlier, but I really had no issues with Vista, and now that I've tamed Win8, I'm in no real hurry to move. Also, I've been dual booting *nix at home and find myself spending more time with that than Windows these days.

The security on Windows 10 is reportedly much better, but the privacy aspects have me more concerned. I'm willing to trade a lot of convenience for maintaining security and privacy. In the long run I am leaning more toward the open source community, where I can run Windows in a VM for the software that requires it, and then shift toward a more secure OS that I have more control over for my personal use.

At the office I have to use Windows, but I probably won't upgrade to Win10 until I get new hardware.

[ergophobe]

I may be an outlier, but I really had no issues with Vista, and now that I've tamed Win8, I'm in no real hurry to move.

Ha! Birds of a feather. I thought Win 95 was attrocious, Win 2000 much better, skipped XP and went to Vista which was just fine with me once I turned of the various annoyances, skipped Win 7, went to Win 8 which I also like just fine and then got a corp job where I use Win7, but find it annoying that a couple of nice Win 8 improvements are missing. But I don't see anything on Win 10 that makes me want to risk an upgrade (or possible "crossgrade" as I call them when appropriate)

[tangor]

Call 'em as you like... there are Win features us MS users like, and all come from previous versions (I still run two XP Pro 64 machines for legacy work... as well as a single 486 with Win 3.1 for Workgroups for even more elderly legacy (DOS) programming I have not yet got around to recoding. That machine is just shy of 18 years in service.

I suspect many of us are more reticent to upgrades than most, and there's no doubt that the clueless mass who "get their first computer" from the stores will have a clue? as to what is going on.

I like change... but on my terms, of course! :)

[bill]

I make extensive use of virtual machines these days, so I'm finding it less important to rely on an operating system unless there is specific software I need to run on it. Find a good solid base OS that you like and stick with it as long as it's still getting security updates. Then you can stick everything else in VMs.

Windows 10 is probably great on new hardware, but upgrading for me has become less of an issue. I'm actually surprised at my reaction to this as I have religiously updated to the latest MS OS every time they have come out for decades now.

[tangor]

I'm way behind on VM's, so thanks for the heads up. Time to investigate.

[bill]

Use a machine with lots of RAM and VMs will work great (16GB RAM works well, but more is better). The free VirtualBox is great for most situations. You'll have to install the OS yourself, then set it up the way you want. It's supposedly possible to take an existing OS and make it into a VM, but I haven't had much luck with that due to hardware issues. VMware is a paid product, and I have been able to import a running Windows installation into that. YMMV. Definitely worth looking into for older operating systems.

[J_RaD]

ergo... PEERBLOCK your win10 machines if you are bandwidth conscience

where I can run Windows in a VM for the software that requires it, and then shift toward a more secure OS that I have more control over for my personal use.

so you pretty much run BSD on every thing right?

because linux and systemd are not the open source choice.

[bill]

I am actually in the process of moving the contents of my last operational Windows IIS server to BSD. As a desktop BSD isn't all that great coming from a Windows background. Although PC-BSD is coming along nicely.

There are a few Linux distros that can run without systemd, like Debian, even if it's enabled by default. It's getting harder to avoid that though...

[J_RaD]

As of late, win 10 is taking 7 keys for fresh installs.

If you upgrade and you want a fresh install....upgrade, use the media creation tool to make a USB key

boot, do a fresh install.

Fresh installing 10 isn't a task at all.

[J_RaD]

There are a few Linux distros that can run without systemd, like Debian, even if it's enabled by default. It's getting harder to avoid that though...

stop worrying about the OS and.... harden the OS and rule by the firewall

double kill.

[ergophobe]

>>PEERBLOCK your win10 machines

I don't have any Windows 10 machines, but thanks nevertheless for the Peerblock reference. I can think of several other uses for that!

[bill]

stop worrying about the OS and.... harden the OS and rule by the firewall

I use several webservers. My FreeBSD server has required reboots for upgrades only handful of times over the past 20 years. It's very hardy. It just runs and does its job. Never worry about that OS.

My other Linux servers pretty hardy and quite easy to maintain in general. Patching regularly with the recommended settings seems to keep these severs relatively low maintenance.

My Windows servers are a constant worry. Patch Tuesday. Out of cycle patches. I'm constantly reading up on these issues, testing to figure out what will break, patching, and rebooting the server. That's not an OS that you can just let sit.

<back on topic>
On the desktop side with the push to Windows 10 does make me consider other options where i can just run the OS in the background and run my tools on top of it in a secure fashion. Although I can lock down Windows pretty tightly I'm not averse to considering non-Microsoft options that offer more control at the cost of a bit of a learning curve. Right now if the Windows 10 choice is forced on me I'll look to remain with my current systems.

[J_RaD]

I don't know what to tell you... I've configured patched and hardened many many windows servers and just let them run.....years at a time.

patch.. ok let me read about the patch, does it apply to me? Not really. No patch....continue running. My servers don't get bugs and gremlins for no reason, and actually you can run a fully unpatched system out of the box just fine, as long as the security and firewall are properly applied. This means a simple FTP server is only able to listen to 2 ports..thats all... lights out, done.... back that up on the firewall.

How can you exploit something that is hard coded?

I love my windows servers, but I would apply the same logic to ANY OS.

Common Sense = Security.

[J_RaD]

>>PEERBLOCK your win10 machines

I don't have any Windows 10 machines, but thanks nevertheless for the Peerblock reference. I can think of several other uses for that!

For those that are totally overly paranoid....sure. but simple settings in the OS itself can stop that...but oh no, that cannot stop the triggered.

For those, they have the peerblock tool............or you know, let them install linux and have them call you ever 10 mins asking questions.