SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Next week Microsoft will begin the slowish rollout of its big update to Windows 10, the Creators Update.
Right now, it's doing a little damage control, and preempting complaints about privacy, by listing the types of information its operating system will automatically and silently leak from PCs, slabs, and laptops back to Redmond.
When Windows 10 came out, Reg readers were alarmed by the volume of information the software was collecting and sending back to base. Ever since then, Microsoft has been fighting a PR battle to reassure people that such data slurping isn't all bad – it's "just" telemetry and diagnostics and potentially your files.
Now Redmond's had a little rethink for the Creators Update, and decided to come clean on exactly what the software will phone home – even insisting the closed-source operating system will scoop up less surveillance this time.
What makes you think it's your data?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:26AM (6 children)
Being I am an old retired engineer, several of my neighbors have had me over from time to time to go over their machines and clean 'em out. Generally, I have gone through with a few cleaner programs and deleted the stuff they no longer want from their hard drive, then once clean, I run CloneZilla on their machine so next time won't take so long, and keep the file on one of those 1TB portable USB drives. One drive holds all of our backups. And I back up those files as well on yet another terabyte drive. Most of them are grannies and grandpas who are using their machine to communicate with friends and family, so their machine doesn't have a heckuva lotta stuff on it.
Increasingly, I have had to tell these people that once they go to WIN10, I can no longer help them.
I begrudgingly have to let them take it to the Geek Squad. But, they have money. And the latest new, shiny.
I simply don't think its worth it to me to have the latest new, shiny anymore.
It's not like I am trying to impress a MBA boss anymore about my mastery of the latest technology.
If he wants to risk telemetering his stuff all over the net to any interested party, that's no longer my business. He's got money. He can pay whatever it takes. That's the thing about money. If you have plenty of it, you do not have to take the same concerns a lot of us have to.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:50AM (5 children)
i stopped providing windows support to friends/family in 2000. Since that time, my standard response is, "I'm afraid I cannot do windows support as the system is broken and will be back in an unusable state soon after I fix it. I can, however, upgrade you to linux and will happily provide you with help in getting to use it." There are mkre people that happily took the plunge than I expected!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:06PM (2 children)
"I use iTunes Store and Fitbit Connect. Can you upgrade my laptop's Windows operating system to GNU/Linux and keep those working?"
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday April 08 2017, @07:37PM
I have a Garmin Vívosmart HR+ with GPS. It is accurate, as opposed to Fitbit. Same story: the browser plugin works on Windows, but not on Linux. I looked around, some people attempted various projects, but all in all it requires support of the manufacturer to do a good job.
But why to look at fitness bands or other odd hardware - I cannot even connect to my company's VPN from Linux Mint 17.3. It connects briefly, works, but in about 1 minute the connection is dropped. It is a known issue with many possible causes. The only thing I do not know is the solution :-( Naturally, the same VPN (L2TP/IPSec with PSK) works fine with any Windows client and is used by many people daily. Do I have to debug OpenVPN now? Why does the same work on Windows?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 09 2017, @06:07AM
> iTunes Store
A quick Web search reveals there's a HOWTO for that:
https://andrewhickey.info/2014/12/03/howto-access-the-itunes-store-in-gnulinux/ [andrewhickey.info]
Another option, of course, is to get a Macintosh computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:34PM
i did the same thing. all family members that i used to help with windows now use various distributions. grandma included. there's no excuse to deal with windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @10:33PM
This is the path I have taken. My tech support time has dropped to zero. Ubuntu 16 LTS is Good Enough for desktop users. It has Firefox and Palemoon installs easily. Upgrades may take getting used to. Most things work. Just like win98. Some things don't. Just like win98.
It is the year of the Linux desktop for me.