Msg: Re: OT: Windows 10 free upgrade

Paul,

In terms of what I'm aware of, I think "Anti-Beacon"

(possibly free ?), from the Spybot anti-spyware folks,

may have been the pioneer in this category. There

seem to be a number of other contenders now.

I also recall various internet-published articles warning

that "taming" Win-10s worst proclivities would would

result in fatally compromising the OS, in one way or

another. But that could easily have been alarmist spin --
I don't know. Since I have a spare box or two to

experiment with, and can clone HDDs against major

setbacks, I hope to put it to the test. Supposedly,

this includes ways of escaping / controlling the

auto-updates you can't otherwise evade, unless you

have the Enterprise version. (I am personally more

interested in the "LTSB" track that does not make any
major changes for a couple years.)

Good places to research this creative tampering would
likely include Wilders and InfoWorld.

Some time ago, our own Flash published a laundry list here

of things one needs to shut down in order to regain user

control. That was taking a very piecemeal, Do It Yourself

approach. These automate-the-process-for-you programs

seem more appealing, provided that they work and are

essentially non-damaging to Win-10.

I'd certainly like to hear his current wisdom on the subject,

with the benefit of a couple years more experience behind it.

Jordan

On Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 7:45:23 AM PDT, Paul Breeze wrote:

(PS. Should have read this more closely; effective appears too often.)

Following Carl's message a couple of weeks ago, I too have been looking
at Windows 10. I could not upgrade my version of Windows 7 but after a
clean install I was able to buy a pro licence for about £2 on Ebay. This
new OS is on a new hard disk so that I can swap it in and out with my
active Windows 7 system.

I now have a working version of Windows 10. I would like to contain its
ability to send data back to Microsoft. There are various programs that
try to do this but I have no idea how effective they are. The one I
have installed is called WPD. It appears to be comprehensive but I have
no way of testing how effective it is. Does anybody else have any
experience of this, or of trying to control Windows 10 by any other
means. There seems to be a community interested in making Windows 10
private and I would be happy to go down this route if I knew that it was
effective.

Paul