Ben Funk over on TechReport has linked to a Terry Myerson blog post where he states that in early 2016, the "Windows 10 Upgrade" update will be changed in status from "Optional" to "Recommended". Therefore, if you haven't changed your Windows 7 system from automatically installing updates to manually notifying, but not installing, now is a good time to make that change, and audit every single "patch" you see. There have already been reports of users unknowingly experiencing ISP bandwidth overages due to downloading a massive 3 GB file due to the "Optional" update that was not requested, but Microsoft seems to be throwing caution to the winds.
In the blog post, Myerson has this statement: "Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don't love it." Historically, Windows has been far cleaner to install on a blank disk than to upgrade in place, so this sounds like a recipe for many support calls. There also seems to be no backtracking on any of the privacy concerns, or perhaps taking the "zero telemetry, selective update install" functionality promised (but not yet delivered) to Enterprise customers, and extending it to consumer licensees who value their privacy.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @03:14PM
One month later: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/10/windows_10_forced_download/ [theregister.co.uk]
So I suppose that Microsoft's Windows 10 action plan consists of "DILLIGAF". It's probably also based out of the fear that Windows 10's market share would be as tepid of that as Windows 8: back in April 2013, IDC detailed the situation [theregister.co.uk]:
So Microsoft's tough decisions consisted of turning Windows 10 into the equivalent of foie gras (thanks to the commenters at The Register for that analogy). Consumers get tiles and tablets and Cortana shoved down their throat, and have their personal clickstream, memory dumps, and perhaps even more stolen from them. And we still haven't heard about the update that allows Windows 10 Enterprise users opt out of telemetry collection [pcworld.com]. How much does a single Windows 10 Enterprise seat cost?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @04:11PM
You can't buy a single Win 10 enterprise seat. You can buy a MSDN subscription for a few K though and obtain the enterprise version that way, or just use TPB.
(Score: 1) by DonkeyChan on Sunday November 01 2015, @02:46AM
I've seen several clocking in at 6.1GB.