This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen". This article appeared in the February 2016 WYSIWYG newsletter.
Windows 10, Stay With Windows 7
by Don VanSyckel
Last month I wrote about Windows 10 and Microsoft's issue that people are not flocking in droves to adopt Windows 10 and I've done more reading. I find more consensus to not load Windows 10 than I find to load it. I stand on my statement that Microsoft is in this to make money and if they're giving away Windows 10, there must be something else up their corporate sleeve. Someone suggested that possibly Microsoft is planning an 'app' store to sell Windows 10 applications. This could be but I don't see it unless Microsoft get aggressive about not allowing applications to be loaded other ways.
For instance, currently I use Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, Truecrypt, Defraggler, ActiveState Perl, MySQL, and VIM. All excellent open source software available at no cost. Other software I use includes Kaspersky Security and Power Archiver. These I purchase these from the manufacturer. I don't purchase any software applications from a re-seller. I purchase computers and the OS that comes on them from Micro Center. Note, Micro Center supports SHCC with presentations so we should support them. An app store just does fit in to my methods.
In the meantime, I was sent an email by a club member that had two interesting items in it. The first was an article about Windows 10 and the second was a link to software that can turn off the annoying Windows 10 pop up advertisements.
First about the article, it appears in InfoWorld in an issue of their "Deep Dive Series". Go to www.infoworld.com, click on "Deep Dives" in the top bar, then scroll down several articles to "Everything you need to know about Windows 10". There are five sections:
| * | Windows 10: The 'last' version of Windows |
| * | Hold off if you use Windows 7 |
| * | The good, the bad, and the missing |
| * | 10 reasons you should upgrade to Windows 10 |
| * | 10 reasons you shouldn’t upgrade to Windows 10 |
The article's bottom line is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. "If you’re using Windows 7, and it’s properly patched up and working for you, and you’ve stopped using Internet Explorer, you really have to consider whether it’s worth the effort to upgrade to Windows 10."
Second, the software that the link points to is free to download and use.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/get/gwx_control_panel,1.html
This software allows you to disable and/or remove the annoying advertisement that Microsoft placed on your PC without your permission. I'm sure this advertisement was included in an update that you agreed to but we only agreed to updates and this advertisement is not an update. I had to run through the application's control panel a couple times to get everything turned off and removed.
End of Article