Windows 10: Microsoft pushes Windows 10 upgrade to PCs without user consent

This is supposedly a free upgrade. The W7/8 licencee was asked if they wanted W10 - if they wanted it they were asked to reserve it within a one year period. If MS sends it to you without your consent, you could be paying 5 times the cost of a legal W10 license - in ISP fees. MS does not financially benefit from the massive overage charges imposed by ISPs, but they do get to use the bandwidth of others to distribute W10 to others. The ISPs are complicit as they too would have had to know or would have eventually figured it out. Greed has no bounds.

 

Maybe I didn't understand your comment about they would have to pay 5 times later or whatever. If they don't want the free one why in the world would they buy one. They like what they have and don't want the upgrade.

 

Emma

The poster meant that if someone was on a limited or metered connection, the overcharge cost could run into hundreds for an unwated 3.5GB download (though I think hundreds is excessive an estimate)

zoo

 

This whole fiasco ended up costing me an extra $120 last month.
I am on LTE wireless with a 10GB/month limit with overages costing me $10/GB.
the fist auto download failed at about 5GB and I had to use the Media Creation Tool to download and rerun the upgrade manually. That was the first extra 6GB.
Then on my backup Windows 7 machine even tho I hadn't reserved it, Microsoft downloaded the update files again. Goo thin I had my updates set to "manual". That was the 2nd 6GB for a total of 12 extra GB...hence the extra $120.
I hold Microsoft fully responsible for both instances, in as much as they obviously didn't plan properly for the massive download requirements on July 29th, hence the first failure.
And then, on top of this they take it upon themselves to chew up my cap and force the download on a machine they didn't have permission to download to.
I should send them a bill for $120 but that idea wouldn't have a snowball's chance.
This has really impacted on Microsoft's credibility and I would not be the least bit surprised if somebody launches a class-action suit. Probably too little, too late but it might make Microsoft sit up and take notice.

All that being said, my experience with Windows 10 Upgrade has been a mostly positive one.

One strange thing I've notice since I turned off automatic updates is that some of them now show in Optional in italics. I have no idea why.

 

Zb, sorry about that. I missed the isp part.

 

Well this is the problem! Either you do or you don't! I think the original concept was to be able to deliver each newer version as you would have received a service pack. If the notification arrives that 10 is ready to go on you can still opt out simply by not clicking on it.

As for those who keep things set to automatic those are the ones who have found 10 was already on and some obviously not too thrilled about seeing 10 imposed on them without consent. And this is where the fur can fly when getting into cat fights with a monopoly like MS! You simply won't prevail.

But in order for a monopoly to keep it's hold it has to make sudden unexpected moves in order maintain the advantage in view of how the open source community for example has seen a tremendous growth over the last quarter century now celebrating it's own 25th birthday! MS has to fight back with enticements like making a new version "Free for You! see!" to be the attention getter. When they ended up trashing Windows with 8 in order to bring in a dual platform type OS they had to make a come back in some fashion after 7 had previously been the Champion of all versions up until that time!

 

OMG are you serious , i wish i could say the same , all the ones i know don't have a clue about all the dangers and different types of malware .

When i tell them to be careful and try to educate them they say , "it's a brand new computer , how could it have malware " OR " how can the computer be infected , i have anti virus protection" no joke.

 

I hear you Night Hawk. their intentions were probably good but their execution was wanting. It's almost as if they over compensated. I also hear you about monopolies but even the biggest can be humbled...Nortel, GM, etc. by bonehead moves. Human nature is such that people (and companies, who are just groups of people) never believe that it can happen to them.

 

What really aggravated a lot of people were the updates claiming they were important but they were only important if you had intentions to upgrade .

 

It's not only the elderly but how many kids with tablets and access to mom and dad's pc? It doesn't take much effort to click on the wrong thing unless you have adequate web filtering in place that blocks bad sites! Malwares and adwares abound the web!

It's ironic I was just watching a talk show where one of the 2016 candidates was discussing how corporations in the US have to start investing domestically after all these years of outsourcing jobs to other places simply to be nothing more then "Profit Houses" without any regard for the middle class workers who find themselves jobless! It's ironic that one photo sums it all up! Spotted this one on one of the social networks.





Part of that was blotted out for the obvious political mud slinging going on but the facts are still relative!

"You must have or Else!" is the mind set there. When looking at the updates for any version from XP onward you always see one of two things. "important" and "optional" when looking over what updates have already gone on as well as those still waiting when running a manual search. The full details of exactly what each one is for is left in the dark place and not for you to know! Unless there's a real need like a service release which might roll up a list of patches for the new version that were just seen or a full service pack if not something required to enable some feature that comes disabled by default like Hyper-V in 8, 8.1, and now 10.

 

Seniors are not stupid, they just never had computers when they grew up or when they worked. Some of their adult children know less than they do and their grand kids, though great at running games on a smartphone or tablet, know very little about how to use a PC. They have name recognition and that is about it. They have a very cavalier attitude toward security and privacy.

 

Sorry this one is a bit personal, won't do it again.

Thank you leopard. I will be 79 next January and quickly approaching my expiration date. I love this crazy machine, I was 65 when I bought my first one. I am very independent and was determined to learn it. You are right about seniors not growing up with them and they are not stupid. When I bought my first I realized it was the future and bought 5 new computers for family members that still had small children and one for a suicidal nephew, his mom said I saved his life. I really don't like what MS is doing to us.

 

It's never too late to learn Linux *Wink Generally I'm still a Windows guy but a few years ago I thought it would be a good idea to start learning Linux, just in case to have an alternative. And now I'm really grateful I did because if MS continues the google and Apple route, forcing spyware on it's users and leave them with no choice whether they want to download something or not the day will come when I'll inevitably have to switch to Linux because I don't like being forced to download updates, run spyware on my pc etc. Once Windows was all about choice, customization, openness and all that. Well, things change, that's how life works and it's good, would be very boring if everything stayed the same *Biggrin

 

Can I please have back an OS that just does what I tell it I want to do? No automatic cloud crap, no pushed software or ads. Download updates on my own terms. Those were the days!

I highly recommend the sci-fi show Continuum. It is almost prophecy.

 

Night Hawk & Others, even the most technical person could click on the wrong thing-I have. This one thing I like about google chrome browser, it keeps adobe flash player in a sandbox. I actually wish chromium, opera, firefox also had the sandbox. I think there is a way to enable sandbox on chromium but I am not sure if it really works. Chromium can (was able to) be installed on windows using Chocolaty package manager.