Msg: Re: Windows 10

Flash,

I'm glad that you went to the trouble of accumulating, testing, and publishing that info. I suspect that the things MS elected to do with 10 will continue to be a deal-breaker for me -- even though I don't think I'd hesitate to try what Ed advised against, when he wrote: ""only Enterprise and Education versions of Windows allow the high-risk option of turning off all data transmission." At the same time, like Paul I know people who defy the supposed EOL status in continuing to run XP, though usually only on older hardware that is no longer connected to the internet. I could see following a variation on that (for some of my systems), once the MS security fixes for 7 have ceased.

If I recall correctly, you lost patience with trying to track down and deal with **all** of the many "phone home to tattle" spying channels being utilized by 10. This also made me wonder about the growth industry in apps like Spybot Anti-Beacon, that were intended to automate such Win-10 countermeasures for non-techies: how well they may have handled the job or with what drawbacks ? (I recall that some articles appeared warning of dire consequences from using these programs, but don't know how credible they were.)

I'm paraphrasing, but last June Robert wrote that he could see no reason for running anything other than Win 7, for most users. Considering my use of computers, that seems to apply for me. But I still wondered whether he had traveled this countermeasures road at all with 10, since he would also have the technical skills for that, and whether he envisioned any different game plan re Win 7 after the OS is "retired" in 2020 ?

Jordan

From: flash
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2017 4:43 AM
Subject: Re: Windows 10

Greetings Paul,

I do not know a simple way to circumvent the inquisition before you
get to actually use the OS. Be advised that the default position is
for any and all apps to phone home and report usage to MS; you have to
explicitly de-activate the function for each app separately, as far as
I can tell at this juncture.

MS claims that the information is anonymized. Be advised that several
studies have demonstrated that it is ridiculously easy to un-anonymize
the information, which is to say, to identify you personally starting
from your IP address, which leads down a virtual rabbit-hole from your
service provider to your name, home address, phone number, date of
birth, etc. etc.

Be advised that MS mandates mandatory updates in Win10. Google the
string "how to stop Win10 auto update" to see a list of links how to
stop it. Or visit my own page on how to put a stop to it:

http://www.flashq.de/win10-stop-updates.html

Do let me know how you get on with XY in Win 10. I presume some sort
of virtual DOS environment is required. Simply double-clicking on the
editor.exe file triggered an error message on my Win10 machine.