What’s up guys, I’m ThioJoe, and with Windows 7 officially dead, having reached
it’s end of life, I recently talked about the need to upgrade to Windows 10.
And unsurprisingly, a lot of people got REALLY mad, acting like upgrading to Windows 10 would
be worse than death.
Though it might have partly been because of the slightly sarcastic title.
Now I personally think Windows 10 is a totally fine operating system.
Not like “yea awesome!” like I thought about Windows 7 was on release, but I definitely
don’t think it deserves all the hate it gets.
That being said, I DO think I understand why some people hate it, and they have some good
reasons.
So we can go over those reasons, and also why they’re not such a big deal, and how
Windows 10 isn’t as bad as it used to be when initially released, and why you might
want to consider giving it a chance.
Before we get started let me give my quick shameless plug for my truly amazing Instagram
account, where I post the most amazing tech memes and cool pictures.
You’ll literally die of amazement and laughter if you go on there, so be sure to check that
out, it’s just @ThioJoe over on Instagram.
And with that out of the way, let’s get into this.
So if you ask people why they don’t want to get Windows 10, you’ll get a huge variety
of answers.
But there are few that really cause the bulk of the concerns, which I’ll first just name,
and then we can address them in greater detail.
And remember, I actually agree with all of these, I just want to show you all how these
issues CAN be fixed with not too much effort.
It seems to me, the absolutely biggest flaws people hate in Windows 10 have to do with
Privacy and Data Collection, and also the forced updates, especially when combined with
poor quality control on those updates.
The other major reason many people cite as their reason for hating Windows 10 is the
terrible bloatware, along with Cortana, which some might consider both a privacy issue AND
bloatware.
Alright so let’s first talk about Windows 10’s privacy issues.
You’ve probably heard that Windows 10 ‘spies’ on you and collects all sorts of information.
Windows does do a form of data collection called “telemetry”, which is the root
cause of these complaints.
Telemetry collects things like diagnostic info like errors, logs of frequently used
programs and features, stuff like that.
None of which supposedly supposed to contain any personal information that can be used
to identify you.
From Microsoft’s perspective, this data allows them to identify problems with Windows
itself, and it’s features, so they can identify and fix them without relying on people to
submit feedback to find out about them.
It can also fix issues users don’t even know is a bug at all.
For example, maybe a specific program crashes when a user runs it, but then they just run
it again and it works fine, so the user forgets about it.
But Microsoft could see that this same crash happened to a million people, so even though
for each user it’s not a big deal, it’s actually a big widespread problem they otherwise
wouldn’t have known was even happening.
They can also use the data to tell which features people use the most, or which settings people
change the most, so they can know what to prioritize.
Now on the other hand, from a user perspective, a ton of people simply don’t want a company
collecting any data about what they’re doing, even if it’s apparently not personally identifying.
It’s very understandable, and I actually fall into this camp where I don’t like ANY
data collection on my devices.
But fortunately, there are several ways you can reduce or disable the collection.
The easiest way to limit the collection is go to Settings > Privacy > Diagonstics and
Feedback > Then change the diagnostic data setting from “full” to “basic”.
This won’t stop it completely but definitely reduces it a lot.
To completely stop it, there are several ways, but the easiest way is probably to use a free
program I made an entire video about before called “ShutUp10”.
I highly recommend that video which I’ll have pop up here and will also put in the
description.
I won’t go to in depth into it here, but it’s a program made by the reputable O&O
software company which lets you easily disable lots of settings in Windows 10, including
data collection and privacy settings you’d normally have to mess around in the registry
to change.
So definitely recommended.
Alright now the other biggest reason I see so many people hating on Windows 10 has to
do with the forced updates, especially considering Microsoft’s history of absolutely TERRIBLE
quality control and testing history for many of these updates.
This one is also very understandable, because Microsoft has repeatedly released major feature
updates that broke things, though these feature updates should NOT to be confused with security
updates which are very important.
One infamous example was the October 2018 update Microsoft pushed out that was deleting
tons of files in certain directories for certain users, and nobody knew why at first.
This forced Microsoft to pull the update almost immediately, and permanently damaged Windows
10's reputation when it comes to major updates.
And I can definitely relate to this, because it does seem like after every major feature
update, which occurs about twice a year, I do come across weird software and stability
issues for a few weeks until the kinks are ironed out.
All that being said though, there is very good news.
You might not have realized that as of the May 2019 update, Microsoft has changed how
major updates are pushed out, fixing one of the biggest reasons people are holding off,
at least in my opinion.
You see, Windows 10 will no longer force you to install the big major feature updates that
are released twice a year, and typically these are the main cause of new issues and bugs.
Now in Windows update, it will only install the big updates if you manually choose to,
but can still get all the minor quality of life updates like bug fixes and security updates.
You’ll be able to delay these major updates until your current release version reaches
it’s end of life, which is about 18 months.
So you can now basically delay these major, often problematic updates by over a year,
and by then any bugs should be ironed out.
So if this was the main reason you didn’t like the idea of Windows 10, there might be
no more reason to worry.
Also keep in mind if you use Windows 10 pro, which is an extra $100 to upgrade from the
Home version, you can exactly control how often you receive both feature and security
updates separately.
I personally keep feature updates delayed by at least 2 months or so, but do not delay
security updates, and don’t think you should either.
If you’re curious about the other differences between Windows 10 Home and Pro, I also made
that video which I’ll have pop up here if you want to watch that after.
Ok moving on to the next reason, we have pre-installed bloatware.
Few things are more annoying than freshly installing Windows 10, and then seeing your
start menu full of crap, including candy crush and literal advertisements for dumb apps.
But these can be easily disabled right away.
Programs like candy crush can be uninstalled from the list of apps in the settings, and
for the ads, which Windows calls “suggestions”, they can be disabled in the Start Menu settings,
by just disabling the setting to “show suggestions on start”.
And then there’s Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant, which some people hate
for several reasons.
They may find it simply annoying, as well as concerning in terms of privacy, and are
suspicious of letting yet another virtual assistant keep track of their questions and
searches.
I myself have Cortana disabled because I never use it.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to disable completely without Windows 10 Pro, but not impossible
in Home either.
In home it requires editing the registry, which is not recommended if you’re not familiar
with that sort of thing, so you’ll just have to look up how to do that if you want.
But in any case, you can at least prevent it from tracking most data right in the Cortana
& Search settings.
So year, Windows 10 definitely isn’t perfect, but most of the biggest complaints can be
fixed, and only requires doing so once and you’re done.
And I can see why many people using Windows 7 might say, “well why should I have to
go through all that hassle, Windows 7 works fine”.
But if you know me, I’m a security nut, and I don’t think it’s worth continuing
to use an insecure operating system just because you aren’t willing to spend an hour getting
Windows 10 how you want.
And remember, you can still upgrade from 7 to 10 for free, despite Microsoft not advertising
that, so just Google how to do that, it’s very easy.
Now despite all the issues we’ve talked about, I think Windows 10 has lots of great
features making it worth using.
First of all, it IS more secure, not just because it gets regular security updates,
but it also has better security features in general.
For example, it has exploit protection built into the OS, which used to require separate
software called the “Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit”.
It also even has built in ransomware protection you can enable.
There are also plenty of features previous versions never had, including DirectX 12 for
games, and other little features like clipboard history and clipboard syncing.
Also, being the latest Windows OS, it has the best driver and software support.
And with Windows 7 now out of service, developers and hardware manufacturers might not focus
on Windows 7, so things might not work quite as well with it going forward.
And this one is just in my opinion, but I actually like the new start menu, and think
it took the best parts of previous versions.
Unlike Windows 8 which was an absolute abomination and only had tiles, Windows 10 brought back
the list of Apps on the left like you saw in Windows 7, but also lets you pin tiles
for shortcuts to anything on the right side, or remove any tiles, and arrange it all however
you want.
So at this point if you’re still a holdout on Windows 7, perhaps this video alleviated
your concerns on upgrading to 10, or at least just when it comes to the most common deal
breakers.
Obviously I can’t address every single complaint people have, and I’m sure in the comments
plenty of you will have other more specific issues you have when it comes to Windows 10.
And at the end of the day it’s up to you, but I just want to make sure you are fully
informed on why you upgrade or not.
But anyway, if you guys want to keep watching, here’s a couple videos I mentioned earlier,
about that ‘ShutUp10’ software, and differences between Windows home and pro.
So thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.