Review by brainout

UPSHOT: YOU TURN YOUR COMPUTER/DEVICE INTO BIG BROTHER BY AGREEMENT IN THE LICENSE AT INSTALLATION, IF YOU INSTALL WINDOWS 10. Never before in history has such a ‘license’ created such awful terms. Look in the comments for links so you can see the language for yourself. I can’t put the links in an Amazon review.

SERIOUSLY YOU NEED TO SEE FOR YOURSELF PRIOR TO INSTALLATION, WHAT HITLERIAN TERMS YOU’RE AGREEING TO.

Installation is also extremely glitchy. About 50% of the installers’ reports I’ve read, are ‘smooth’, especially from Windows 8.1.. else, glitchy. Given the above warning, I spend a lot of time watching how people in tenforums, wilderssecurity forums, bleepingcomputer and even microsoft community, are suffering with installing this horrible new Windows 10. I do have it, but as an Insider. I write extensively about it in bleeping computer and vimeo PC World Alumni forum and brainout(dot)net frankforum (latter two are my own), so you can read more there. It has no confidential data on it, and the hard drive is removable.

I personally own 16 Windows machines which are eligible for this thing ‘free’. So obviously if I found it good, would get it for them all, and say so here.

But Windows 10, is scary. First time, Windows is scary. You’ll have to see it yourself to believe it: at least, I did. That’s why I became an Insider, first.

So here, I feel I owe it to my fellow Amazonians to disclose the upshot of this awful installer:nn1. It will only allow you to do a so-called ‘inplace upgrade’ ON TOP OF your current Window 7 or 8, which 50% of the time results in disaster. People do it, to keep their current programs and settings. Don’t bet on this working. Even experts are getting it wrong, see the 1st paragraph’s forums. That is also how the free version works. Just avoid this option like the plague it is.

2. The other option is ‘clean install’, which here is only available if purchased. But people who use this, are having really bad luck, and Windows help personnel always blame the seller, so make you go back to the seller. So here, unless the seller sells you support with the license (and they usually do not), then you shouldn’t buy.

The problem with ‘clean install’ is the installer looks for a key. The key you are supposed to provide, is a Windows 10 key. The key you get is a Windows 10 key, but the installer often won’t recognize it. When you call MSFT for help, often you’re told they can’t help, you must go back to the seller. So if they are not the seller, you’re s.o.l.

More importantly, the license is downright frightening. It’s so much worse than turning your machine into Big Brother, but Microsoft tells you that you agree to let IT play Big Brother on you, even if you turn off all the privacy destroyers baked into the thing. This is a series of lawsuits waiting to happen.

And what do you get for all this? Nothing you didn’t already have. Frou-frou that doesn’t work: Windows ‘Hello’ requires a special camera you don’t have, Windows Xbox requires Xbox too, Hololens can’t work yet, Cortana is a joke, Edge is a gray sheet of paper which gets papered with ads you can’t get rid of, your search bar is turned into advertising if you search on the web, you can’t get rid of Bing, you can’t customize, there is no real Start Menu but instead a vertical version of the Win8 start Screen… and on and on with the nonsense.

Oh, and no you really can’t revert within 30 days, they overwrite your windows.old folder with the first Windows 10 cumulative update. Which happens, the day or the day after, you activate. IF IF IF you managed to activate.

Do you really want to go down the rabbithole with Alice and be much poorer afterwards? I thought not.

It gets two stars for two things it does well: it runs old software and hardware which businesses use (not consumer stuff, business stuff).. really well. I use 1980’s and 1990’s business hardware and software, and Win10 can work with them. Consumer stuff, maybe yes maybe no.

The MSfanboy proselytizing is at an all-time high. Which should warn you immediately. If faith is warranted in God or some product, then it shouldn’t need salesmen. So if everyone’s trying to ‘convert’ you to it, something’s VERY wrong with that idea of God or that product. Right?nnDISCLOSURE is one thing. That, you need. Selling is quite another, and the fanboys never tell you the many dark undersides to Win10. So…

PLEASE DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE BUYING THIS. Links will be in comments after this review is approved, so you can read the license fright for yourself.