Windows 10?

[Rick Danger]

Black Friday
As retailers start to gear up for Black Friday, I went through the Sunday circulars.

Office Depot/OfficeMax still has some Windows 8.1 machines for sale. But the ads don't actually say Windows 8.1. They say "Windows 10 Upgradable".

BestBuy is only advertising Windows 10 machines.

Touchscreen devices are running at least $200 USD higher than non-touch devices. If you see a touchscreen device at a price comparable to a non-touchscreen unit, it will be short on memory and storage. Caveat emptor.

Be on the lookout for.....
Sometime ago on this thread we discussed how to prevent Microsoft from gathering telemetry and personal information from your computer. One simple method I documented was modifying the HOSTS file to cause attempts to communicate with specific hosts to "loopback" thus suppressing the connection. This method is effective for Windows 7 and 8.x systems.

Mr. A435843 stated that he did not think modifying the HOSTS file would work under Windows 10. I would not want to play poker with him, because as usual he was absolutely correct. Our fiends - err, friends at Microsoft apparently have modified the TCP/IP stack under Windows 10 to prevent modifications to the HOSTS file from blocking connections to their servers.

I considered how Redmond could get away with tampering with what is an open standard protocol. I realized that a "Poor Man's" denial of service (DoS) attack can be crafted easily by designing a payload that would poke a few lines into a HOSTS file (which is plain text anyway) effectively blocking your PC from connecting to specific hosts or servers. So they probably justified this as a security issue.

So, no doubt Microsoft will be pushing down a security update to Windows 7 and Windows 8 to prevent using a HOSTS file from blocking communications with their servers. I'd keep my head up and my eyes open for such an update.

Lost in the confusion
In all the hub-bub about Microsoft taking a more aggressive approach with pushing out Windows 10 there has been no further talk of a "Windows 365" subscription product. I'll keep looking.

The Lord (Redmond) giveth, and the Lord taketh away"
Last week I discussed the remaining lifecycle schedule for Windows products. But then came the news that Microsoft is going to play hardball trying to push consumers and enterprises into upgrading to Windows 10.

So the question is: Can Microsoft legally get away with modifying it's already published lifecycle to force retire Windows 7 and 8 ahead of schedule?

I'm no lawyer (I'm just a normal person (LOL)). But recall that Microsoft once offered "unlimited" OneDrive space as part of an Office365 subscription, then reneged and limited Office subscribers to 1Tb, citing user abuses.

[Rick Danger]

The features of the new Windows 10 version 1511- a.k.a. the Windows 10 Fall Update.

NO major improvements. Updates to Edge, Cortana, Skype, device activation improvements, start improvements, nested virtualization, improved memory management, better printer support, et. al.

Actually the BIG news is the new version numbering scheme. YAWN.......

Windows Feedback is now part of Windows 10. So I guess you won't have to work quite as hard to have your complaints ignored.

Not exactly the improvements I care about though. Still the forced updates, the intrusive data collection, the lack of add-in support for Edge, no mention of improvements to apps or the Windows Store. If Microsoft purports that this is what Windows users really want they are either out of touch or abusing illicit pharmaceuticals.

I walked three miles today. I wouldn't walk three blocks to get Windows 10 version 1511. Sorry.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...10-fall-update

[Ernesto75]

My first impression is the only improvements to note are Nested virtualization (virtual machines in Hyper-V) and an improvement in Memory management (which is already used at startup).

I guess not many people will use or see them.

The challenge will be for the programmers.

[m100]

3107998 is in optional for me just in case that helps.

[cityfan]

Thanks A435843.
I just noticed that somehow my option of downloading updates but deciding whether to install them had been changed to automatically install important updates! Pure luck that I caught it before closing down. May be worth members checking out their own machines.

[Rick Danger]

Originally Posted by CityFan

I just noticed that somehow my option of downloading updates but deciding whether to install them had been changed to automatically install important updates! Pure luck that I caught it before closing down. May be worth members checking out their own machines.

After reviewing and downloading most of the security related updates, I am not seeing any changes to my Windows Update settings.

Susan Bradley had sent out an email ahead of the Tuesday updates:

From: "Susan Bradley" <sbradcpa@pacbell.net>
To: "Patch Management Mailing List"

November 2015 Security Update Release Summary - Microsoft Security
Response Center - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/arch...e-summary.aspx

Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for November 2015:
https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms15-Nov

It's a big one. MS15-112 to MS15-123. The known issues kbs are not public yet.

Microsoft Support:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3101746
Microsoft Support:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081320
Microsoft Support:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3101246
Microsoft Support:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3108096

Advisories
Flash (duh) and interesting for HyperV
Microsoft Security Advisory 3108638:
https://technet.microsoft.com/librar...y/3108638.aspx

One of the updates, KB3107998 is related to the Lenovo USB Blocker (version 1.0.0.37) , so I elected not to install it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3107998

Since I deinstalled Internet Explorer from my personal laptop I do not install any IE related updates.

[9876543210]

Some people may find this of interest. Recently, I had a problem with my old laptop so I started looking around and found a more recent Dell Latitude i5 and decided to put the old one on the local Craigslist (I did figure out the problem and it was, simply, a loose connection to the wifi card).

So here is the ad I put on CL:

Dell Latitude E6500 laptop for sale
$200 obo
I have a very nice Dell Latitude E6500 business class laptop which works great. There are no known problems, I just found another Latitude which is a bit newer and faster.
A few specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 processor running at 2.80 GHz
4 GB RAM
Western Digital 320 GB 7200 rpm HD
NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS 160M5 256MB DDR3
15.4 in. (diagonal) WXGA+ (1440x900)) monitor
Intel Wifi AGN and bluetooth
Gigabit LAN
keyboard back lights
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Service pack 1 (plus all current updates)
Security software: Comodo firewall, Panda AV, Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware
Misc. software: Adobe Photoshop CS2, LibreOffice 5.0 plus necessary utilities

This laptop has had a fresh repartition, reformat and reinstall and is ready to go. If someone prefers, I could allow the Windows 10 install or install a Linux distro (usually use Ubuntu or Mint). Windows 10 nagware and trackers are still active but could be deleted if the buyer wants that done.
So thanks for looking and e-mail me if you have any questions.

Never did get any real responses but I did price the thing a bit high (can always go lower) but I checked on the ad a couple of days ago and found CL had flagged it for removal! What? I've never had that happen before and I've bought and sold quite a few things on there. Tried to get a response from CL about their problem but was unsuccessful.

So I was wondering if anyone else has any idea of why this ad could be flagged on CL? I have my ideas (of course) but am just wondering if anyone else has the same idea.

[jimboy51]

So having read all the posts,it's best to stick with windows 7

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by jimboy51

So having read all the posts,it's best to stick with windows 7

For as long as MicroSoft will let you....

[rlg118]

Windows 10 bumps up support-call traffic
http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/...-call-traffic/

Still no formal word on the Win10 Fall Upgrade
http://windowssecrets.com/field-note...-fall-upgrade/