Is Microsoft tricking you into using Windows 10?

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Darnell
They tried. They failed. Again.
If you have to resort to deception and trickery to get people to buy your product, that should be a huge signal for you that your product is either not what people want, not what people need, or both.
Fact is, Windows 7 will be a safe, useable, and reliable OS for ten more years even without Microsoft’s “support”. There is no reason to replace it, especially with an inferior product like WIN8 and/or WIN10. Microsoft needs to realize that the market is saturated, and if they want to sell an OS they are going to have to offer something that is SUBSTANTIALLY new, different, and better FOR THE END USER, as opposed to simply being good for the industry in Microsoft’s opinion.
Michael Shields
Yes, Microsoft is trying to do just that. One friend of mine, just last week, went home for lunch and when she got back to work, Windows 10 was being installed on her work computer without being authorized to do so.
Andrew
No Michael, they are authorized to do that unless you tell them not to. You agree to that arrangement when you buy a Microsoft product. But you do have to know ahead of time that this is the arrangement, and you have to know how to tell them not to. Since the arrangement details are spelled out very vaguely in the fine print, most people are unaware of this. And since nobody reads the fine print whenever Windows updates are installed, most people had no idea how to opt out of the update. If your friend (or whoever is in charge of the system where she works) can read, then it should never have gotten as far as it updating itself. My grandmother was able to prevent it from attempting to install on her computer, without any prompting from me, and she is in her 80’s.
Is it sleazy? Yes. Is it deliberately difficult? Absolutely. Is it deceitful? Well, not in the legal sense, no. But it does realy on the laziness and/or illiterate nature of their customers, and it does take advantage of known weaknesses in their userbase in order to make money. So it is at least ethically dubious at best.
I am sure that in its justification of this effort the first words out of their spokesman’s mouth will be “We just want…”
As in “We just want to give our customers the best product” or “We just want to provide our customers with the best service”, etc. Which is fine, except when you focus on what you want, you won’t be able to focus on what your customers want. And that is how you end up being the Titanic of software. The unsinkable Microsoft, sinking faster every year due to short-sighted leadership ignoring what the people want.