A couple of days ago I wrote about how Windows 10 automatically installs updates by default and automatically restarts your computer at a time it dictates - ignoring whether that time is convenient for you or not. It so happens that at the end of October, MS announced that the free update of Windows 10, which has been supplied to its Windows 7 and 8.x users, will automatically download itself onto your computer because MS has decided not enough people have installed Windows 10 to suit their marketing machine. In fact, it turns out that MS have gone further and tested a mode in which they can make Windows 10 automatically begin the installation on your computer without requesting your permission to install (although you can cancel out of the install wizard), in the same way as the forced automatic update installation referred to above. MS nows says this was a "mistake" but has not clarified if it was deliberate or accidental. One month earlier people were upset when they found out that MS had been automatically downloading the Windows 10 update to their computers chewing up 6 GB of bandwidth and storage. MS claimed this is an industry wide practice but apart from Chrome browser updates (which in fact you do get prompted for) I am not aware that it is widespread to download a new operating system to your computer without first requesting permission. It so happened that a few days later MS backed off its claims that this was an accepted industry practice.
It's been quite obvious for some time that MS is hellbent on winning the battle of the desktop PC vs the cloud based laptop or tablet by pushing Windows 10 installations onto as many computers as possible. But frankly this is extremely obnoxious behaviour because they do not own your computer and have not asked you if you want Windows 10 on your PC. MS is back to its old obnoxious tactics in regard to competition and market share. I guess pretty soon there will be another European Union or US DOJ antitrust lawsuit or consumers' class action lawsuit against because people are entitled to demand an end to this obnoxious big business bullying behaviour on their computers.
As I have noted I still have the issue with our presentation PCs, that are used solely with projectors to put content up for an audience, popping up the intrusive demands of Windows to get updates which is a modal dialog that just takes over your PC regardless of what you are doing with it and forces you to acknowledge it before you can carry on with what you are doing. There are a few options and I am looking at the extent to which we can manage update delivery - and whether going back to a WSUS server gives us greater control over this behaviour. I have noticed it is even possible for MS to get into the hibernation mode of the computer to force the computer to wake up to install the updates even if you don't want them to install right now. I guess they think they have the right to that process as well because they have taken over shutdown some time ago making it automatically install updates by default at shutdown. It used to be possible to get around the automatic installation of updates at shutdown by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete and using the shutdown option from that screen to turn the computer off without installing the updates. But in Windows 10 (and possibly 8.1) that functionality was removed from the computer. We are getting to the point that users won't have any choice about whether to install the updates. If MS tried this bullying behaviour on server operating systems there would be a huge outcry of course.
This article makes clear that MS have been changing optional updates into mandatory ones of late so it is turning into the point that you can't actually trust MS for anything on your computer with the Windows 10 operating system. The point is being reached where people like me will start giving some really serious thought as to whether we even need to have Windows on our computers at all. If MS has such an aggressive and obnoxious behaviour with Windows 10 upgrade installation from previous OSs and forcing updates to Windows itself onto your PC then we will quite naturally start to question what else MS believes it has license to do with our computers because their behaviour has quite a disturbing Big-Brotherish aspect to it. When I look at what I have running on my PC then switching to Ubuntu starts looking a lot more appealing and using a virtual machine or some other system for the small proportion of Windows-dependent tasks.
I think that all schools and other institutional customers who have not got a Windows Update server in their premises would be well advised to look at migrating to it as part of a Windows 10 rollout because at least you have the ability to manage this updates process for your computers.
