Windows 7 vs Windows 10??

[free_electron]

You can forget about control over updates. It's not going to happen.

so how do it departments do that then ? we never get updates unless it applies them ?
what version do they use then ?

[wraper]

You can forget about control over updates. It's not going to happen.

so how do it departments do that then ? we never get updates unless it applies them ?
what version do they use then ?

You need enterprise version for that. Which you cannot buy in retail.

[james_s]

Well, Microsoft can forget about having me as a customer then, it's not going to happen. Their abusive tactics have thrown away all credibility that they had. I've already migrated my mom over to Linux a couple years ago and most of my ancillary machines, my work computer is a Mac. My daily driver laptop is the only one still on Windows and when Win7 becomes no longer viable that will move over to Linux as well. It's really only inertia and familiarity that has kept me on it for this long. 

[Mr. Scram]

so how do it departments do that then ? we never get updates unless it applies them ?
what version do they use then ?

Non security updates can be deferred up to a year, after that it's obligatory. The only exception is the LTSB but that's not recommended for regular use. While I don't agree with the current system the old system very definitely was broken. Something needed to be done and the amount of possible configurations needed to be reduced which is what Microsoft did.

[gmb42]

Really amuses me to see folks get so bent out of shape over free updates.  The following is all personal anecdote over 2.5 decades of home PC's (all hand-built) and looking after the machines of a small company (~150 hosts) mostly Dell for 2 decades.

The OS notifies you and gives you deferral options (Win 10 Pro at least), if I'm not making an overnight test run then start the update as I leave work, for home systems as I'm going to bed.

If I am running long term tests, then pick a coffee break and do the update, done in 5 minutes (semi-annual updates do take a bit longer, but that only happens every 6 months or so).

Fear of updates bricking machines is vastly over-rated IMHO due to the interwebz amplification factor.  I've never had it happen to me.  Shit does happen though, deal with it, you do have backups?

As for updating during presentations, then PPPPPPP (Prior planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance) and check for updates at an appropriate interval prior to your presentation.  Anything less shows lack of respect for your audience.

For Linux systems then apt-unattended-upgrade works for me, had one failure I can recall when a kernel update didn't play well when running under Hyper-V, I simply pegged apt to the previous kernel.

[wraper]

Really amuses me to see folks get so bent out of shape over free updates.  The following is all personal anecdote over 2.5 decades of home PC's (all hand-built) and looking after the machines of a small company (~150 hosts) mostly Dell for 2 decades.

The OS notifies you and gives you deferral options (Win 10 Pro at least), if I'm not making an overnight test run then start the update as I leave work, for home systems as I'm going to bed.

In the past it was way worse. Fucking crap would reboot your computer when you turned away for 10 seconds. Now they made it way less annoying apparently due to backlash. You could often see gaming streams ruined by update rebooting computer. Also this freaking crap crippled my laptop by automatically updating one driver to wrong version. It was unable to shut down properly and remained in sort of sleep state. My colleague (IT specialist) had the same issue with the same model and was pulling out his hair unable to fix the issue. He thought it was HW failure. Only after many hours of trial and error, several windows reinstalls and googling I found what was happening. And the worst part, in the beginning it was possible do disable update for particular driver. But later it changed to possibility only deterring it's update only until new version came out  . Not that it was straight forward process to begin with. You need to download special tool from MS to do that.
Another thing was HD4850 GPU. It has no official driver support from AMD for win 10. However driver which was automatically installed by early versions of win 10 worked just fine, including 3D. But then came driver update and completely ruined it. IIRC it was very hard to preserve driver version that worked.

[nctnico]

As for updating during presentations, then PPPPPPP (Prior planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance) and check for updates at an appropriate interval prior to your presentation.  Anything less shows lack of respect for your audience.

For Linux systems then apt-unattended-upgrade works for me, had one failure I can recall when a kernel update didn't play well when running under Hyper-V, I simply pegged apt to the previous kernel.

Then you are way more lucky than me. I have been burned by updates breaking stuff more times than I can count and then spending days to fix the system back to an operational state. The problem is that updates aren't just fixes but also updates to new versions which aren't 100% backwards compatible. In my case I have about 30 to 50 user applications installed and some rely on very specific versions as well. Updates are great if they are just fixes but somehow software engineers think that you should always install the 'latest & greatest' version.

[wraper]

Just remembered how windows update ruined every single AIO computer of particular model in several offices in different countries of company I worked at. They could no longer boot completely and could not be fixed remotely.

[NorthGuy]

Really amuses me to see folks get so bent out of shape over free updates.

Free cheese can only be found in a mousetrap.

[Mr. Scram]

Free cheese can only be found in a mousetrap.

Tell that to the owners of literally billions of devices without software updates and known vulnerabilities.

[nctnico]

I guess you never heard of the phrase 'the cure is worst than the disease'.

A vulnerability is only a problem if people can get to it. In many cases the vulnerabilities are only a problem in very specific use cases.

[SiliconWizard]

Well, it allows to choose your executioner, which for some people is weirdly reassuring.
 

[NorthGuy]

Tell that to the owners of literally billions of devices without software updates and known vulnerabilities.

Think about it. A single entity has uncontrollable access to 80% of computers in the world. What if this control falls into wrong hands? This is a huge security threat for all of us and for each individual alike. This is way worse than all the little security threats it seeks to prevent.

[HighVoltage]

At one time I had a huge problem with an automated update and since then, I have automatic updates disabled on all my PC's for years already.

Instead I am using a good firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.

I do the same on some older XP machines and have zero problems.

[james_s]

Free updates are fine, I get free updates on my Linux machines and I don't mind it at all. They're security patches primarily, they're clearly labeled as to what they are and do, nothing is obfuscated, I can choose what and when I install them.

I would say it amuses me but in reality I find it extremely annoying when people smugly proclaim that it works for them and doesn't cause them any trouble and therefore it's fine. For me it is not fine when my computer is suddenly hijacked for an hour or more when I need to use it for something, or when it automatically force reboots while I've got half a dozen programs open with projects in various states, or when my settings that I have carefully tweaked are suddenly reset to default values, or when garbage bloatware I have deliberately uninstalled is installed again automatically. This is absolutely not acceptable behavior, I demand full control, the computer works for me, not the other way around. As long as companies fail to understand this they do not get my money. People need to understand that not everybody has the same needs or use cases and what is not a problem for one person may be a very big problem for somebody else.

I work in the tech industry so I'm around a lot of engineers and power users and for everyone I encounter who actually likes Win10 there are at least 10 who hate it and either rejected it or regret upgrading, I'm certainly not alone. The fact that it took years of extremely heavy handed tactics pushing, nagging and tricking people into updating for it to even break 50% speaks volumes. That is tens of millions of people exerting considerable effort to avoid it and quite a few of those have good reason for doing so.

[james_s]

I guess you never heard of the phrase 'the cure is worst than the disease'.

A vulnerability is only a problem if people can get to it. In many cases the vulnerabilities are only a problem in very specific use cases.

You will never convince a fanboy or corporate apologist, to them the company can do no wrong and the pathetic ignorant peons need to bend over and take it because someone else knows best.

To the rest of us it is obvious that a computer that is doing unexpected things, acting as a platform to push and monetize products and services we didn't ask for thwarting our efforts to configure things and keep it under our control, and becoming unusuable for significant periods of time due to forced updates is indistinguishable from one that is infected with malware that is performing similar actions.

Fanboys will also consistently ignore the fact that the vast majority of malware and virus infections out there are due to the user installing sketchy things, either random warez, crapware installers bundled with legitimate free software or various social engineering tactics to coerce people into downloading and installing fake virus cleaners and such. All the patching and updates in the world can't patch user behavior.

Anyway it doesn't take a genius to see that the whole forced update thing is really all about monetization of the platform, only an idiot would believe that Microsoft gave Win10 away for free out of the goodness of their hearts to bestow a gift on humanity. It's free because it gives them unprecedented control over millions of computers and creates a platform for gathering marketing data and hawking their services. If a company gives you something for free then you are the product, there's something bigger in it for them, always.

[dzseki]

Sorry for my ignorance, but receiving endless security updates doesn't mean that your computer has infinite vulerabilities, with updates MSFT just pathcing those they know of... so in the end the difference is little -in percentage- of the vulnerabilities with an obsolete and a recent OS? 

[SilverSolder]

It's free because it gives them unprecedented control over millions of computers and creates a platform for gathering marketing data and hawking their services. If a company gives you something for free then you are the product, there's something bigger in it for them, always.

It seems the subscription model is the "plat du jour" of most of the big IT companies these days -  Google, Apple, any number of application vendors.  Look what happened to Youtube:  it was free for years, then the advertising began...  of course, you can subscribe and get away from that.     Dropbox was free for years, today the restrictions are getting tighter, encouraging you to subscribe to regain lost ground. 

Microsoft and others want to remove the choice of "just owning the application" and being free to use it for 5-10 years, warts and all...  yet that is actually the most cost efficient way to run the shop (which means, of course, least profitable for the vendor).

What nobody seems to have thought through is that there are only so many subscriptions the average consumer, business, institution can afford to have leeching away at their accounts every month...

[Mr. Scram]

Think about it. A single entity has uncontrollable access to 80% of computers in the world. What if this control falls into wrong hands? This is a huge security threat for all of us and for each individual alike. This is way worse than all the little security threats it seeks to prevent.

Okay, let's think about it. We've been getting black box updates all our lives. In theory you could refuse them, but few people or companies do this in practice. You wouldn't know what to refuse in the first place. We're not even talking about covert updates systems or the things you're trying to avoid already in the software from the start. So how much bigger is the current "issue" really? Not a smidegeon. It would be much better to have open source updates which can be checked and installed or refused at will, right? Except that it's not. Malware has been found in open source code and was cleverly hidden to look like a tiny coding error almost anyone would overlook in the unlikely event they'd be looking at the code in the first place.

[BrianHG]

Warning to Windows 7 users!!!

I would disable/stop using Windows Updates now while things still work because believe me, sometime between now and January 2020, Microsoft is guaranteed to throw a monkey wrench into an unsuspected update and you will be fucked with no going back...

[Mr. Scram]

Warning to Windows 7 users!!!

I would disable/stop using Windows Updates now while things still work because believe me, sometime between now and January 2020, Microsoft is guaranteed to throw a monkey wrench into an unsuspected update and you will be fucked with no going back...

You're thinking of Apple. Besides, it's much easier. Just reveal a massive security issue right after the end of support and people will be forced to upgrade or suffer.

[SiliconWizard]

I just got the first pop-up warning upon starting Windows 7 today about end of support.

More information points you to a funny MS page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-7-end-of-life-support-information?OCID=win7_app_omc_win

They don't just suggest to switch to Windows 10. They actually suggest to buy a new computer!

[dzseki]

They don't just suggest to switch to Windows 10. They actually suggest to buy a new computer!

But don't worry! Just this last time, pleeease. You know, Windows 10 is the "last" version you will not have to buy new computer anymore, you could enjoy all the upgrades FOREVER... or maybe not... 

[NorthGuy]

Okay, let's think about it. We've been getting black box updates all our lives. In theory you could refuse them, but few people or companies do this in practice. You wouldn't know what to refuse in the first place. We're not even talking about covert updates systems or the things you're trying to avoid already in the software from the start. So how much bigger is the current "issue" really? Not a smidegeon.

This makes whole world of difference. Say, with Win 7, when I realized that new updates are likely to be harmful, I simply disabled them and killed Update service. That easy. Of course there may be something I overlooked. Well, if Microsoft attacks, I'll just kill the whole box and move to Linux. I'm 90% ready for Linux.

[Mr. Scram]

This makes whole world of difference. Say, with Win 7, when I realized that new updates are likely to be harmful, I simply disabled them and killed Update service. That easy. Of course there may be something I overlooked. Well, if Microsoft attacks, I'll just kill the whole box and move to Linux. I'm 90% ready for Linux.

You're not getting the point. If the intent was to sneak a malicious update onto your system, Microsoft has had all the means necessary all those years. Updates were black boxes anyway, so you wouldn't know what to install and what to omit. You're also fully relying on Microsoft to only use the update system in the way they say they do and not to have any other systems or mechanisms in place. You're only fooling yourself that things are any different now when it comes to malicious updates being installed. You already fully trusted Microsoft to do what it said it does. You only think you had more control, but already fully depended on the good nature of Microsoft. Worse still, issues with Linux distros have shown that even open source code can be made to be malicious without people catching on.