September 14, 2015

Automatic Update is evil

As if we didn't already have enough reasons to hate "Automatic Update" on Windows, it turns out that people who have automatic update enabled have been getting the Win 10 upgrade downloaded, 8GB of it, even if they haven't said they want it. It went out over the weekend.

It's for our convenience, you understand, to make the upgrade experience more easy and comfortable. And if you don't intend to upgrade, then it consumes downlink bandwidth and disk space for you automagically.

Tomorrow I'm going to watch carefully when I do my next manual update to make sure they don't toss in this same upgrade.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 01:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I've been using Windows 10, and the interface is pretty good--it improves on all the interface issues of Windows 8.  The upgrade process was straightforward and issue free, and the ability to share tabs across devices is nice. (Like what I'm reading on my desktop can be pulled up by my phone)  If it was just this alone, I'd unreservedly recommend upgrading.

But the Windows Update thing is seriously making me consider going back to Windows 7.  I get a notification telling me (I'm paraphrasing the dialog "Windows has updated: [X] Restart at 0330  [  ] Restart at X time on X date (with the pulldowns for "X date" within the next 7 days).  Fuck you, I'll decide when I want to close all my stuff and restart.  Note that if you don't see the notification, it defaults to "Restart at 0330", so you could leave work on the desktop and come back the next morning to find that Windows has blown it up.  If I wanted that shit, I'd just use my work laptop for everything.  (A buddy once had a forced restart in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation to the Colonel in charge of our district--though that's our IT policy, rather than Windows, since it's still Win7.)

Finally, I do a lot of traveling and use a MiFi, which has a metered connection.  I turned off Automatic Updates in Windows 7 and 8 because, sometimes Windows would start sucking down my data allotment.  For this reason, I haven't updated my travel computer, and I probably won't until they settle this down.

Posted by: CatCube at September 15, 2015 05:31 AM (fa4fh)

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