heywood on 3/8/2015 at 19:58
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
(
http://i.imgur.com/pR356Rc.jpg) This is entertainment. This is fun.
I'm going to wait a while. A long while.
Hopefully by that time I don't need Windows anymore, and I will switch full-time to Linux. During the last decade I needed Windows to play games. But I might play less games in the future. Or more games will become available on Linux (via steam ?). I will not upgrade to Windows 10 just for DirectX12. Not worth it. Only if games will become DX12 only, and I'll still be playing, then I might switch.
Or maybe someone will build a free tool that disables all privacy-violating features of Windows. And keeps them disabled. I suspect there would be a market for that.
Has anyone ever played games in a VM (virtual machine), with full access to your graphics card ? It might become worthwile to run Linux for normal work, with a totally fresh Windows install inside a VM, with only a few games installed. That way you can avoid feeding Windows any data at all. I hope that is possible, and I hope there won't be any performance penalties. Maybe you'll need to install a bit more RAM. I dislike dual-boot, and Wine might not always work with all games.
Check into GPU pass-through if you want to run modern games in a VM.
I'm not sold on Linux either. I ran Linux from 1995 to 2013, sometimes as a primary operating system and sometimes as sandbox for programming and generally hacking around with Linux. In my opinion, it never really made it to prime time as a desktop OS. There were always things I couldn't do in Linux or couldn't do well in Linux that left me with a need to boot Windows, and not just games. Also, the user interface design seems to have peaked out. GNOME Shell and Unity were interesting at first but not efficient to use. Every other Linux desktop seems like a poor clone of Windows 9x/XP, Mac OS X, or a mashup of both. And I never liked rolling-release distributions, due to their tangling package dependencies, constant change and the frequent need to debug package installation problems. Overall they seemed to require too much maintenance.
If you're interested in privacy, you have to be careful in the Linux world too. Ubuntu got some heat for integrating Amazon product suggestions into the search results returned by the Unity shell.
icemann on 5/8/2015 at 16:21
I finally have the "Get Windows 10" icon, after doing a massive PC upgrade (I'd previously been using the same PC since 2010). Will enjoy reading of your experiences.
WingedKagouti on 6/8/2015 at 08:32
That is a fairly decent article. And it does have a very good point at the end: If you're using a smartphone, you're likely already sharing the same kind of information with the makers of its OS already. Unless you've taken specific precaution to turn off those features, if at all possible.
dj_ivocha on 7/8/2015 at 09:19
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
If you're using a smartphone, you're likely already sharing the same kind of information with the makers of its OS already.
"But they do it too!" is hardly bringing a positive note in a pro/contra list, to be honest. Instead of aping Google, Microsoft could have positioned themselves as a privacy-friendly company and most certainly would have gotten a lot of new customers just because of that. Doing exactly the same, but more poorly, as your massively bigger competitor won't help you get a bigger slice of the pie. Said pie IS the reason they were forcing Metro down everyone's throat with Win8, after all (and are probably still trying to do it with 10, albeit more subtly).
But who am I kidding, this is Microsoft we are talking about. Why try to innovate in a positive way when you can just underhandedly destroy another company and steal their patents instead *cough*Nokia*cough*. :p
Chimpy Chompy on 7/8/2015 at 09:46
well, win10 was kind of a disaster on my system. Start menu wouldn't respond - either to the win key or clicking the start button. Anything based on metro apps (or windows store apps? or whatever we're meant to call them) basically wouldn't load. System was slow to respond to inputs in general. Firefox crashed repeatedly.
Maybe I downloaded a faulty copy or something? But it's back to win 8.1 for now...
WingedKagouti on 7/8/2015 at 10:49
Quote Posted by dj_ivocha
"But they do it too!" is hardly bringing a positive note in a pro/contra list, to be honest. Instead of aping Google, Microsoft could have positioned themselves as a privacy-friendly company and most certainly would have gotten a lot of new customers just because of that.
<snip>
But who am I kidding, this is Microsoft we are talking about.
At least you're aware of why your suggestion will never happen. I don't think anyone would ever expect Microsoft to not go as far as they think they can, without breaking the law, to earn at least some sort of money. People definitely don't pick Apple because they want privacy or they're idiots. Google lives only because they earn money from aggregating as much data as they possibly can to make ad profiles.
And yes, "the others are doing it" is not a positive, but with the way most people use their smartphones, Google apps and Facebook, it's not a negative either.
Instead of appeasing the minority that won't switch to Microsoft unless they basically revert to absolutely no data gathering (even for Windows Update purposes), Microsoft are aiming to make more money on those who don't care to keep their privacy. Which from my experience with non-Tech savvy people are a much larger crowd than those with security concerns, especially if they get some minor benefits from accepting the default Win10 settings. In the end, it seems likely that Microsoft will make more money in the long run with their current strategy.
doctorfrog on 8/8/2015 at 01:01
Both Windows 7 and Office 2010 are on my system right now, work great, currently cost me nothing, and will continue costing me nothing. A free year of a new operating system with a subscription-based model isn't very compelling. Eventually, I'm sure I'll upgrade, but I'm in no hurry.
I really, really don't like the idea of a subscription-based OS, or subscription software in general. The personal computer is personal, and I don't like strings going all the way back to the mother ship checking if I still have permission to run programs on my computer. If there's any way to excise online activation nonsense from the OS, it would be much more attractive.
But of course, I'm a fool for not delivering my trust, love, and data to :angel:the cloud:angel:
Vae on 8/8/2015 at 01:20
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
Both Windows 7 and Office 2010 are on my system right now, work great, currently cost me nothing, and will continue costing me nothing. A free year of a new operating system with a subscription-based model isn't very compelling. Eventually, I'm sure I'll upgrade, but I'm in no hurry.
I really, really don't like the idea of a subscription-based OS, or subscription software in general. The personal computer is personal, and I don't like strings going all the way back to the mother ship checking if I still have permission to run programs on my computer. If there's any way to excise online activation nonsense from the OS, it would be much more attractive.
You have been misinformed...Windows 10 does not use an annual subscription-based model. The "free year" is simply the one year time-window that started on July 29th, for the opportunity to upgrade from Win7/8/8.1 for "free".
Quote:
But of course, I'm a fool for not delivering my trust, love, and data to :angel:the cloud:angel:
The use of OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud storage) is entirely optional within the context of using Win10, or any other OS for that matter.
doctorfrog on 8/8/2015 at 06:02
Quote Posted by Vae
You have been misinformed...Windows 10 does not use an annual subscription-based model. The "free year" is simply the one year time-window that started on July 29th, for the opportunity to upgrade from Win7/8/8.1 for "free".
Indeed I have been. Thanks for the clarification.
Quote:
The use of OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud storage) is entirely optional within the context of using Win10, or any other OS for that matter.
I do realize that, but what I'm referring to is any non-optional online tether attached to my computer. Badly worded. But if I'm mistaken about that as well, I'd be glad to find that out.
