For all you Windoze fans, I just found this writeup you may find useful: --------------------------------------- "Windows 10: Return of the Borg" I think Microsoft has gone way overboard in their zeal to get it installed on every system they can, as fast as they can. They may well have crossed the line where even their licensing agreement can't keep them from a class action lawsuit. Lots of people have been angry for months about the incessant and increasingly pushy way they've tried to force upgrades. That's not surprising, really. Free or no, there will always be people who like what they've got. Some of them will have really good reasons not to upgrade. They have leapt right over the line, though, from pushy to actively deceptive. The move that made the difference? The newest upgrade alert reverses the way the close gadget works. In almost every other instance I've seen, clicking the close gadget (the X in the upper right corner of the alert box) has the effect of saying "No. I don't want to do this." It had that effect with the upgrade options, too, until recently. Now, if you click that, MS takes it as permission to install their latest and greatest. Seriously. For Microsoft, "no" is the new yes. .... I can only think of two places I've ever seen the close gadget used that way before. Deceptive web ads, where the gadget is fake to begin with, and malware. Great company you're keeping, Microsoft. I've seen numerous first-person reports of machines that have been bricked by the upgrade. (That's a technical term for "rendered useless." As in, it might as well be a doorstop.) There are also people who need to keep systems that use Win 7 and 8.1 for various reasons. Leo Notenboom mentioned his need to have those for answering questions from subscribers as one example. There are others. And even if you disagree with their reasons, the choice should be left to the end user, not some arrogant schmuck in a far away land. .... The reasons for this are many. The most commonly cited are improved security, more convenience for the end user, lower cost of maintenance for MS, and all the usual suspects. These are valid objectives, and generally true. What isn't usually discussed is the new money models they're incorporating. Well, newish for MS, anyway. It appears that Win 10 is an effort to combine the models of Google and Apple. For example, as the Windows App store grows, there's a lot of potential cash in that for them. And Cortana's integration with Bing is an attempt to grab back a bigger share of search traffic (and related ad revenues) from the Big G. Those are legitimate aims. Competition in those areas is likely to be helpful in a lot of ways. And it wouldn't surprise me if the added profit from it meant that the consumer versions of Windows stayed free forever. But that all depends on MS having all that user data. They swear it's not personally identifying, and that there's no privacy threat from it. Most people believe that. Or did. After this latest trick, I personally don't trust them a whole lot more than a less famous hacker who'd break into a system any other way. Think of it as anti-social engineering. .... When I first heard about this latest gimmick, I immediately thought of the Borg. "Resistance is futile. Your technology will be assimilated" Fortunately, there are ways to prevent this alien incursion into your hardware. You can use Steve Gibson's Never10 or the GWX Control Panel to stop the upgrade notifications and prevent any unwanted installation of BorgOS. If you have at least 6 gigs of ram and your hardware is relatively new, Windows 10 is a nice option. But it should be your option, not a choice forced on you. Resistance is not futile. -- Tony White