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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-you dept.

So it's happened; mom's venerable Dell has bit the dust and I'm being called on to find her a new laptop. Everything I've seen here and elsewhere says Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare and we're trusting Microsoft's forced automatic updates to not break the computer. Dell is still offering computers with Win 7 and 8.1, but Microsoft is pushing the OS upgrade hard and heavy. I'd love for her to let me set her up with Linux but she's devoted to Google Picasa (Google not porting their apps is another rant) and I'm not sure how often she's going to be calling me with some Windows only program she needs. And then there's Apple, which makes my fingers itch to type, but it's looking better and better. So, what is the collective wisdom of the Soylentils*?

  1. Is windows 10 really not that bad and just roll with it.
  2. Is Linux finally ready for Grandma?
  3. Stick with 8.1 and turn off all the updates?
  4. Shell out the cash for a Macbook?

*Irony duly noted.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by ArcticScavenger on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:45AM

    by ArcticScavenger (5890) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:45AM (#257884)

    The issues with Windows 10 privacy is that we don't know what Microsoft is collecting. It's all encrypted and I haven't seen anyone delivering proof of abuse. The next issue is that a large set of the privacy concern features have now been back ported to windows 7 and 8. So good luck with skipping out to an older version. In the same vein you might just as well consider a Chromebook which is much simpler OS but you are replacing Microsoft with Google/Alphabet as you analytic overlord.

    So If you do decide to turn off updates for any Windows pc your just embracing anonymous botnets instead of Microsoft, pick your evil or go open source.

    There are some Linux distros that are quite accessible, but good luck once the first error crops up because it not a question of if, but when.

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  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:31PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:31PM (#257970)

    I second the Chromebook if the only app she cares about is Picasa. It's lightweight and "just works". The powerwash feature is amazing for those "please fix my computer" moments. Embrace your google overlord.

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