Every Day Now

Actually more than once a day most days. I uninstall Windows Assistant. I uninstall Windows Update. And still, Microsoft downloads more crap to my computer against my wishes. Microsoft is just another virus. Microsoft is Malware. Every Day Now.

The Death of Microsoft - and Lenovo

It will not stop. Every time I turn on the computer I bought and paid for. Every few hours when I am using it. Interrupting my train of thought, my work, my entertainment. The blue screen of Microsoft demanding I install their Windows 10 update comes on telling me I must make room for it. The SSD does not have room for it because Microsoft Windows 10 and other Microsoft products take up so much space, there is no room for it's update. I click hide and the Microsoft Update invader pops up with more messages telling me the computer cannot be updated. It doesn't end though. The interruption and stupidity continues many times a daily.

This is the end of my relationship with Microsoft because Microsoft will not allow me to use the computer I paid for. I would sue Microsoft if I had the time and means, but I don't, which is why I have a cheap computer that does not have enough room to install the damn update. Microsoft obviously does not care.

Neither does Lenovo. I called their tech support, still under warranty, and ask what they would do to make the product they sold me with the software they chose usable not that the hardware they put into the product they sold is no longer able to handle the software they chose and they said it is not their problem. I told them Microsoft made it Lenovo's problem and their brand will suffer for nt standing up and taking responsibility for their choices. They assured me when I bought the computer that it could handle the OS they chose to put on it. They lied. Lenovo can not be trusted any more than Microsoft.

So I am disabling Windows Update and cutting the umbilical cord. This will be the last machine I buy with a Windows OS. Which likely means this is the last Lenovo product I buy. I will avoid everything Windows from now on. The Microsoft invasion is over.

The daily blog said so...

Yes, MS killed Lenovo and every other company making small computers by giving them Windows 10 and then within the warranty period, making those small computers obsolete. So I turned off Windows Updates. So I will no longer consider this computer secure. So I need another computer for anything other than blogging. I want to save up for an Apple, but that might be a while. I will hope Kaspersky continues to protect my personal information in spite of the lack of Windows updates. Except for my years with Atari ST1040 in pre-PC days, I've known no other OS since Win3.1 and it is sad, but finally time to leave MS behind.

Narf.

Goodbye Microsoft.

Goodbye Lenovo.

Hello Apple.

Hello Linex

Microsoft Geniuses Do It Again

I bought these laptops, LEnovo 100S and Lenovo 110S, with Windows 10 pre-installed. Over and over again, Windows 10 shuts me out of my property, yhis computer I am supposed to own, because it chooses to update when t wants to, not when it is convenient for me. Lately, the problem is incapacitating both of the laptops I bought and paid for. I am writing Lenovo to ask for a refund because they sold me a product that Microsoft will not let me use. The same old bullshit is Microsoft's response. Jump through these dozen hoops and if that doesn't work, we'll show you a few dozen more hoops you can jump through instead of doing what you want to do with your computer.

The challenge Microsoft created is quite simple. There is not enough space on the inexpensive ultra portable Solid State Drive laptops, notepads, chromebooks, and so on for Windows 10 to update the latest update. The update just loops over and over using system resources and obstructing use of the computers, ultimately warning "you can't install the latest security updates." They require more Gigabytes of memory than there is available on the small solid state drive machines.

I am so tired of searching for solutions to the latest "Windows Update."

It is time for a Mac.

When Is 100% not 100%?

When Microsoft says so. The Microsoft Corporations is by far and away the most annoyingly intrusive organization I've ever encountered. They are computer Nazis. The will destory at will, kill at their own whim, and leave one no recourse but to turn to Apple. They are Apple's best promoter.

So I am in the middle of writing the epic answer to life, the universe, and everything and the laptop freezes. It never did that before. A complete freeze. The mouse, the keyboard, frozen. No way to save, close anything, nothing. Alt-Ctrl-Delete does not work. Nothing.

I press the power button, hold it, and shut down the laptop in the worst way possible.

I press the power button again and the laptop boots up with the swirling balls and the message

Working on updates
100% complete
Don't turn off your computer"
Freaking fracking fucking flipping MICROSOFT!

How long will the most annoying company in the universe prevent me from using my property this time?

Did Microsoft SAVE MY WORK before they took over MY computer?

What the fuck does 100% Complete mean to these idiots? 100% complete and yet "Don't turn off your computer"

Don't turn off your computer because we are not through fucking with you yet is more like it.

I turned off my computer.

And turned it back on again only to see the same fucking screen.

Working on updates
100% complete
Don't turn off your computer"
I turned off my computer and kept the power button pressed down longer.

The Lenovo screen came on and then...

Getting Windows ready
Don't turn off your computer
What the fuck?

Then

We couldn't complete the updates
Undoing the changes
Don't turn off your computer"
what about

Working on updates
100% complete
Don't turn off your computer"
What am I not understanding about 100% complete?

At least they were wise enough to put some failsafe in their code that undid the crap they tried to do when it failed miserably.

At least Google Chrome restored all the pages I had open when Microsoft complete took over my property and shut my computer down.

At least I had another computer to save the work I had been working on because it was "in the cloud."

But as long as Microsoft owns the operating system on your computer, it is NOT YOUR COMPUTER.

That is !00% true.

Narf!

Microsoft Still Sucks (Worse Than Ever)

So windows still, after all these years, chooses when I can use the computer I supposedly bought and own. For the past few weeks Windows has been blocking me from using the computer by opening a window that I can not close without accepting something but it is not clear exactly what I am accepting. Subservience. Submission. Again and again it does it telling me it cannot upgrade without me checking my privacy settings and more than once I set the settings and it apparently does not like my choosing to share nothing with Microsoft for even after I click accept it lets me use the computer for a little while and repeats the same process. hen it asks again it reset my privacy settings to share my information with MS in spite of my turning off any sharing with MS. Tonight it asked me to restart. For forty minutes it has been spinning it's wheels with

"Getting Windows ready.
Don't turn off your computer.
It should read

We have taken over your computer again,
Do something else or buy a MAC.
You can use your computer again when we tell you.
Go away.
Then, when Windows finally let me enter my password and get back into my computer and what do I see but a damned advertisement Windows SPAM. As if that is not bad enough, about an hour later the same window opened as I was typing (preventing me from saving my writing or doing anything else with the computer) showing the same message and with the same reset privacy settings that Microsoft seems to want. Again I turned off sharing with them and clicked accept and then clicked OK. I am not sure what I was accepting again and I hope the turned-off setting I chose does not get turned back on again by MS. This should be an illegal invasion of privacy.

This is the message I left on the MS webpage that they put up to explain what they are doing, but they don't care.

You are lying. I have set my privacy settings several times and clicked Accept and then OK and all I get are advertisements - SPAM - but no update. Each time the request to set my Privacy Settings window opens again, I find Windows reset my choices to your choices. The window blocks me from using my computer. Windows is losing me on this one. Mac does not do this. Give me my computer back and stop SPAMMing me on my own computer or I leave Windows for good.

Here is some information about what they have been up to.

Here are some suggestions about what we can do.

1. Go to Settings – Privacy and go through the 13 different screens there and turn anything which concerns you to off. The biggest, most universal settings are under ‘General’, while the other screens let you choose which apps can and can’t access your calendar, messages, camera, mic, etcetera. There may well be stuff you want to leave on – for instance, I do actually want Windows’ Calendar app to access my calendar data (obv), I just don’t want it to sell that data on because I don’t want to be bombarded with flower ads when it’s my mum’s birthday.

2. Depending on whether you’ve been finding it useful or not, you may want to go to Cortana’s settings and turn off everything there. It’s just working as a basic file search for me now, as I didn’t want its ‘suggestions’, I didn’t want it to lock me into Bing and I didn’t want a tiny part of my processor to be forever dedicated to listening out for voice commands I will never use.

3. This is the crucial one, and so fundamental to Windows 10’s tracking that Microsoft have stuck the setting on an external website, which they say is so that it’s on one easy dashboard, but I find it hard not to wonder if it’s in the hope that we don’t easily stumble across it while browsing Windows 10’s own Privacy menus. Said website is colourful and cheerful and can play a video at you talking about how wonderful targeted advertising is. Ignore the bumf and instead go directly here and set both options to Off. It’s the innocuous-sounding “Personalised ads wherever I use my Microsoft account” which is the likely root of all this, because having that on means Windows 10 itself becomes a hub for targeted ads. You’ll probably have set up Windows 10 with a Microsoft account, because it heavily encourages you to do so with talk of synchronised files and settings and a OneDrive cloud account during installation, but this means the OS is signed into that account all the time. As a result, Windows 10 itself has it spyglasses on, not just apps or pages that you’re signed into with your MS account.

I notice that every time I go back to that page, the “Personalised ads in this browser” setting has silently turned itself back on again. This is concerning, but I’m not yet sure if it’s a bug or if it’s exploiting sessions as an excuse to reset regularly. Judicious ad and cookie control with your plugins and browser options of choice can change this, however. Again, do remember that many websites are dependent on advertising revenue to survive, but opting out of targeted advertising – and having that opt out be respected – is another matter entirely.

4. You may also wish to remove your Microsoft account from Windows 10 and use a local account instead. This will double-down on restricting what’s harvested, though you’ll lose out on features such as settings synchronisation across all your PCs and will suffer more nagging from stuff like the Windows Store and OneDrive. Probably not a big deal for many people, I suspect. Go to Settings – Accounts – Your Account within Windows 10 (or just type ‘Accounts’ into haha Cortana) to get to the relevant options.

If you have multiple PCs already running Windows 10 you’ll need to do all of this on each of them, although your Microsoft account opt-out should be universal.

None of these options mean you’ll see fewer ads, but they do mean that not quite so much information about you will be gathered and sold, and also that the ads you do see won’t be ‘relevant’ to what algorithms have decided your interests are. It is worth noting that some folk find the latter to be preferable to entirely irrelevant ads, and in some cases even useful – but certainly not everyone. Hopefully you can use the information here to make an informed choice about what happens. Again, in many respects it’s not wildly different from what already happens on your smart phone or your browser, but it’s important that you should know about it, and that Windows now has something of an ulterior motive.

More options, or clearer options, may become available in time, depending on how much of the world frowns at Microsoft about this. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything else that needs doing in order to have Windows 10 respect your privacy.