CbB Updated

[Promidi]

16 minutes ago, TerraSin said:

Telemetry, not Facebook

Someone claimed that the Facebook App is built in to recent Android devices.  I responded about uninstalling the Facebook App for such Android device is possible by rooting their phone.

With regards to disabling telemetry in Windows 10, I have disabled as much as I can and still, I have not experienced any loss of useful functionality.  I still have the ability to install Windows updates come Patch Tuesday... and Windows 10 1909 still does I everything I need it to do.

[TerraSin]

Decrapify Windows 10 script is awesome for this.

[Mánibranðr Studios]

7 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Over 3+ years is a pretty long mission, and backup drives are not that expensive.  If this is actually "mission critical" then that implies money is made with such machines and services, thus you are in a better position than most to afford to upgrade over that time.

As was pointed out by others, not doing anything also carries a risk.  

I was scared about the update as well a long time ago, (would my far more expensive I/O hardware stop working with the lack of drivers)?  So I waited until others took the plunge, I was not an early adopter in the update.  Plenty of risk staying where I was though.  

 

That's just wrong. I don't have the kind of money or tools to mitigate the risk.

[pwal³]

19 hours ago, Promidi said:

It can if you know what your doing...  and if you root your phone...

sure, i just don't have the time or energy for those kind of shenanigans these days

[TheSteven]

23 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

I don't have the kind of money or tools to mitigate the risk.

It really doesn't take much money...

Hard drives are cheap. How big is your boot drive?  
You can buy a 2.5"  2TB bare drive for under $60** and a 30day trial for Acronis True Image 2020 for free.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomputing/thanks/acronis-true-image-2020/
and if all goes well you can keep the backup and later if need you it then buy a licensed version or wait till they have a sale.
Note that there are other good backup programs and some decent free ones - I've just been using Acronis for years and have been happy with it.

**a quick google search came up with 4 deals on 2.5" 2TB drives.
Granted they're bare drives, but that's really all you need. 
The reason I mentioned 2.5" drives is that all you need to run one (connect it to your PC for use) is an adapter cable (and assuming that your USB ports are up to spec - no power supply or power cable needed).
You can get SATA to USB cables dirt cheap.
USB 3.0 to SATA III Adapter Cable with UASP SATA to USB Converter for 2.5" Hard Drives for $6.99
or on EBay for $2.78
SATA/SSD/HDD Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2.5 Hard Drive Top

If you already own an HD docking station then you can save $10 or more per drive by buying 3.5" versions.

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by TheSteven
edited for clarity

[Mánibranðr Studios]

13 minutes ago, TheSteven said:

It really doesn't take much money...

Hard drives are cheap. How big is your boot drive?  
You can buy a 2.5"  2TB bare drive for under $60** and a 30day trial for Acronis True Image 2020 for free.
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomputing/thanks/acronis-true-image-2020/
and if all goes well you can keep the backup and later if need you it then buy a licensed version or wait till they have a sale.
Note that there are other good backup programs and some decent free ones - I've just been using Acronis for years and have been happy with it.

**a quick google search came up with 4 deals on 2.5" 2TB drives.
Granted they're bare drives, but that's really all you need. 
The reason I mentioned 2.5" drives is that all you need to run one (connect it to your PC for use) is an adapter cable (and assuming that your USB ports are up to spec - no power supply or power cable needed).
You can get SATA to USB cables dirt cheap.
USB 3.0 to SATA III Adapter Cable with UASP SATA to USB Converter for 2.5" Hard Drives for $6.99
or on EBay for $2.78
SATA/SSD/HDD Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2.5 Hard Drive Top

If you already own an HD docking station then you can save $10 or more per drive by buying 3.5" versions.

 

I appreciate that you're trying to bring deals to me, but saying that it doesn't take much money isn't going to cause the money I need to make the purchases to magically appear on my lap.

Besides, any money that comes my way is going to towards helping a friend not die from a spider bite.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Freyja Grimaude-Valens

[TerraSin]

Just now, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

I appreciate that you're trying to bring deals to me, but saying that it doesn't take much money isn't going to cause the money I need to make the purchases to magically appear on my lap.

Depending on how much you need to back up, you can use services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. for all the important files that need backed up. Another thing you can do is create a partition on your existing hard drive and move the files into that so they will not be erased when upgrading to 10. I've personally never had an issue with any of the computers I've migrated over but I understand the concern. There are ways around it though to protect your work without losing anything.

[Toddskins]

On 1/4/2020 at 9:54 AM, TerraSin said:

I hate to tell you this but if you have a smartphone, the same thing is going on. It's listening to you right now so it can use keywords to advertise to you better. Likewise, Google is spying on you every time you make a search, many programs send data back to their servers, Apple sends the same type of data to it's servers, if you have Facebook or use Amazon, your whole argument against Windows 10 gets thrown out the window, the list goes on.

As Promidi stated, the telemetry stuff can be turned off. It takes only a couple minutes to do and you can go deeper than the options if you wish and turn more off but you start to lose functionality which if you're not using a lot of that stuff, won't really matter. Automatic updates can likely be deferred or if you're brave, turned off completely though I would recommend keeping security updates on either way.

Also, firewalls are wonderful things.

Your words, and that of any others you find to support your suicide, can reside with yourself.

I do not use Google, Chrome, Facebook, or any other social media sites.  I use my phone for talking, and the dictionary app I have on it.  I don't let miserable Google know anything.   And I'm not about to let Microsoft know any more.

And why buy a spyware OS to begin with, when what I have is bullet proof and runs perfect?  Please.  No need to give a response.   Really.

[sarine]

In my experience every iteration of Windows has been an improvement over the previous, with one exception. I'm not talking about Vista, but Millennium Edition. 

I think the biggest factor in making Vista a fiasco was an innocent timing error / over-optimism by Microsoft; people were still rocking 32-bit single-core CPU's with 4GB of RAM, whereas some new backbone improvements in multitasking, e.g. multithreading, memory management and aggressive application pre-loading only began to make sense in a multi-core system with 8GB or more RAM, whereas much of it wasn't visible or was outright detrimental to performance on current hardware. The transition to 64-bit also made the experience better (early adopter here) and the contrast to 32-bit XP starker.

Out of all the different Windows versions from this millennium, my absolute worst was 64-bit XP; it just wasn't meant to be. Windows 8 was at least as smooth as 7 except for the input hang-ups (some issues with interrupts? I don't know.) and compatibility issues. Windows 10 also does this from time to time (simply stops responding), whereas I don't recall this ever happening on 7. In most other aspects Windows 10 has been the most stable Windows to this day, even if I can think of a dozen things to complain about right off the bat.

Edited January 16, 2020 by sarine