The Windows 10 Review: The Old & New Face of Windows
by Brett Howse on August 25, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
Windows 10 Privacy
There has been an enormous amount of talk lately about Windows 10’s privacy settings, and what this means for people who use Windows 10. Yes, Windows 10 does do more with your data than any previous version of Windows, but that is not always a bad thing.
Many of the services which are designed to help you are going to require access to your information in order to function. Cortana can’t let you know about an upcoming event if it doesn’t have access to your calendar. The state of the world in 2015 is that in order for these types of services to work, you have to let them have access to your information. Cortana, as an example, does not live in a vacuum, and these same types of features are certainly prevalent on other operating systems too. Google Now is a great example of a service which people have come to really appreciate, and the very things they appreciate are based on the fact that it has a lot of access to your personal information.
Any person that is concerned about what Microsoft is collecting and how they are using it should really start by reading their Privacy Statement and getting an understanding about what is collected and what it is used for. Some of this is obvious, like Microsoft needs to provide access to your information if requested by a court order. Microsoft is not above the law. Some of it is not as obvious though, like what is your advertising ID.
Windows 10 is a free upgrade, but regardless of Windows 10 many of the services which are associated with it are free as well, such as outlook.com. Microsoft is paying for these services with advertising much like many other web services. In order to provide you with more relevant ads, you have an advertising ID associated with your account. Some people may not like this, and the privacy settings to turn this off can be found in Settings under the Privacy header. There are also more settings within Edge which let you enable Do Not Track requests and more.
Edge Privacy Settings
Search Privacy Settings
A lot of the discussion about privacy is how so much of this is on be default, and that is certainly true. If you choose Express Settings during setup, a lot of this is enabled. You can also choose Custom and choose what you want turned on during setup. Other services like Cortana are Opt-In, and will prompt you for consent the first time you try to access it. If you don’t want Cortana to access your information, please turn Cortana off.
For people that would like to read more about the individual features of Windows 10 and their privacy concerns, Microsoft has a Windows 10 Privacy FAQ page which you can take a look at. This goes over all of the features, what they do, and how you can turn them off. I really encourage users that are concerned to read this over.
Let’s be honest here for a minute though. The privacy concerns are certainly not overblown, but for most people, they will make the trade-off of less privacy if it means an improved experience. The textbook example here is advertising, where in order to deliver relevant ads to the user (or rather not serve them useless ads) the ad service must be able to learn something about the user and their preferences. Microsoft is certainly not the first company to do this, and Windows 10 is not even the first version of Windows where this is an issue. Many of these same concerns could be had with Windows 8 as well. But I think services like Cortana that are so proactive can touch a nerve with the privacy conscious and that is 100% fine. If you are concerned, the best thing to do is to read the privacy statement and adjust your settings accordingly.
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SeleniumGlow - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
What about the changes and enhancements to the Audio stack. The new windows 10 Audio stack is redesigned completely so that it reduces inputs and recording latency. This supposedly makes windows 10 Audio API on par with something like ASIO, by reserving a complete CPU core.Rickkins1 - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
Bwahahahaha, this is comedy gold. Browse microsoft's forums to see the multitude of complaints about win10 breaking sound cards etc.Rickkins1 - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
I'd just like to thank microsoft for that totally unbiased review of windows10.But seriously, c'mon, will ya...?? Do you really take us for complete idiots...??
At least have the honesty to label such a piece as "advertisement".
Oracv4Prez - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Amongst all the glow and gushing comments I think that Windows 10 is horribly flawed. Lets start with the upgrade: Th new font renders incredibly poorly on my screen (1920 x 1200) Samsung and looks horribly blocky - like an ancient PC from the 80's. Secondly, half of the programs dont work anymore and when I tried to open Microsoft's own office applications, the links all failed.SO you want to try out Edge??? No doubt it is faster for all the sites I visit. But...what about your bookmarks/favorites. It wont except anything but IE 11 and if you have them neatly sorted and try to move from another browser to IE the organisation dies.
And finally when you think you have a few things working, it crashes. Oh well, we all have the dreaded blue screen of death now and them. It politely tells you that there is an error so it will restart. You could wait --- and wait ... and wait for something to happen, but no - nothing!!!!
Tried the solutions on the web, but obviously there are still a LOT of holes to patch. Oh, and the last update (before I banished it) did more damage than the initial install, causing perfectly functioning applications to crash/or the link to disappear.
Rating: - pre-beta software status. Use at your peril!
TheReviewWriter - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
I love it Very smooth makes me feel organized and smart LOL :)Ramon Zarat - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
No matter how you slice it, Windows 10 is a step in a VERY wrong direction. If the product is free, YOU become the product. I *HATE* this business model consisting of trading most if not all your privacy *AND* control over your product for $149.00 (typical Windows license price).The entire M$ product portfolio is going into that direction. Their first failed move was the Metro atrocity to force you into the M$ store with Windows 8. Then you had Office 365 you rent for a monthly fee FOREVER instead of owning the product. Then they tried to impose an "always on" connection to the XB1 + restriction on sharing games and failed miserably. Now, it's the turn of the entire OS to be free, but at what price?
I'm a paying M$ customer since Windows 95 but this time, I'll wait until a fully hacked and fully sanitized version of Windows 10 comes out, including with the choice to install or not "upgrades" from Windows update and turning off and all the spyware shit for good.
I want to own my stuff, not rent them forever, not for free with tons of negative impacts either. I want to control what I own. I want my data stored locally, not in the cloud. And finally, I don't want to share anything that concerns only me. The *ONLY* technological improvement Windows 10 bring to the table compared to Windows 7 that is worthy of mention to me is DirectX12. If hackers can one day bring DX12 to Win7, I'll simply never upgrade.
clarkrptg - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
I would think twice about upgrading to Windows 10. I did so and now have a completely unusable computer with a black screen. I guess I should have known better,but don't understand how Microsoft gets away with this crap over and over and over again. I am moving to Mac . . . no doubt about it. I googled the issue and find a comment from Microsoft, oh, gosh golly,yes, resulting black screens are a problem. Oh, gee whiz, sorry about that. Take your computer into a Microsoft store, blah, blah, put back to factory settings, blah, blah. I have a suggestion for you Microsoft . . . I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER MICROSOFT COMPUTER AGAIN.Miller1331 - Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - link
Such an upgrade over Windows 8. Microsoft have done good this timeConcettaBustamante - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
My colleagues were searching for NY DTF IT-2663 a few weeks ago and used a document management site that hosts a lot of fillable forms . If others want NY DTF IT-2663 too , here's a link http://goo.gl/JQA7yVkelli stark - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link
WINDOWS 10 reviews are coming positive mostly like start menu is back, internet explorer is replaced by Microsoft edge there are soo many changes that are done to windows 10 you can also check reviews on this site https://www.ticketgateway.com/profile/user_profile... and you will get more updates about Windows 10