Susan Bradley busts Microsoft in the chops

Topic

New Reply

Y’all know Susan Bradley – Microsoft MVP, Patch Management listserv moderator, my go-to guru for patching information – right? Here’s what she has to
[See the full post at: Susan Bradley busts Microsoft in the chops]

Reply | Quote

Replies

Susan is always right on the money! I couldn’t agree more.

MS needs the Hubble telescope to look behind them and see if they can find the line they crossed.

Reply | Quote

Unfortunately, Microsoft could care less. They are too big for any one person, even Susan, to influence their decision.

This is the way it’s going to be from now on.

Reply | Quote

Even though he is not involved in day-to-day operations, one wonders what Mr. Gates thinks about this.

Reply | Quote

And every other major stockholder, for that matter.

Reply | Quote

Gordon Kelly just broke an article in Forbes which assails MS for its GWX tactics, comparing MS to a malware operator. MS really is doubling down on the degree to which it will risk its reputation as a trusted party. This is a company that wants your information to share with its “trusted partners” for which they provide zero selection criteria.

Reply | Quote

Bravo to you Susan Bradley, very well stated!! I totally agree with everything she said. It is time for Microsoft to back off and quit being the bully that it currently is. I have a separate SSD that has a Windows 10 install, but rarely use it. My go to system is Windows 7 which is used every day and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Both these systems are almost identical with the same software, but the Windows 7 system is much, much faster the 10.

Reply | Quote

All Malwaresoft cares about is getting to a billion devices running W10 and don’t care how they get there or who they steamroll in the process… Buckle up everybody, it’s going to be a bumpy ride from now to July 29th!

Reply | Quote

This is so heavy handed I wonder if it reflects Microsoft’s urgency to get people off of Windows 7, perhaps due to some major security problems we are not yet aware of.

Reply | Quote

Hear hear.

What happened to that whole spiel about them respecting the user’s choice to say no? Or even giving users a choice that isn’t buried in obfuscation e.g. clicking ‘x’ does not imply consent!

I pretty much run GWX control panel daily to ensure nothing has been reverted because i don’t trust them to honour those settings. Presumably the people suffering through the forced upgrade weren’t running that or steve gibson’s blocking tool? Is there any evidence that the forced upgrade is happening despite running either of those tools and turning off automatic updates? The way things stand at the moment i would not at all be surprised to have confirmation of that.

Reply | Quote

I have a solution. Quit buying products that use Microsoft software and quit buying Microsoft Software.
It might take a little looking around but I’m sure if you look enough you will find what you need elsewhere.
What Microsoft is doing is inexcusable and if you keep giving them money it will only get worse in the future.
So quit complaining and do something about it. The only thing big corporations understand is the bottom line. So hit them there.

Reply | Quote

And beyond!

Reply | Quote

Even if that were the case, there would be better ways of handling it. Openly and honestly, for example.

Reply | Quote

Sorry Bill but there’s no way anybody could convince me that it has ANYTHING at all to do with Win 7 and 8 user’s security!

It has EVERYTHING to do with Microsoft’s bottom line… and nothing more!

Reply | Quote

Y’all better watch out for Ed Bott…he’ll bar you from his tweets on Tweeter if you say anything bad about or use “M$” in your tweets and defends M$ telemetry data as just for your drivers’ sake (And it’s encrypted because…).

Get or stay with the GWX Panel or Steve Gibsons’ “Never 10” freebie [grc.com/never10] as they will keep M$ from their bullying attempts.

W7 for as long as M$ security updates are coming as M$ is finally getting it right.

Reply | Quote

Amen sister! I agree with Susan all the way!

Reply | Quote

Hey, Ed’s a friend of mine! (Don’t know anything about his Twitter habits….)

Reply | Quote

And, at the core of it all for me, Win 10 is still a BETA product! Force-feeding is bad enough, but force-feeding a not-ready-for-prime-time product, especially an OS, is wholly unconscionable.

Reply | Quote

Yup! That’s how a free market’s supposed to work, isn’t it. I’m doing my part – Apple for me. Others might choose Linux. Maybe relative newcomers like Google with its Chromium OS might beef up their offerings to entice the growing parade of rats leaving the MS ship. Forty years or so ago before the minicomputer revolution really got underway, an IBM insider told me that if IBM and its mainframes ever actually had to compete for market share, someone would come along and eat their lunch for them. He was right. Maybe that’s where MS is headed now – we can always hope.

Reply | Quote

Which would open them up to billion-dollar lawsuits from enterprises with SLA-contracts etc.
I don’t see that.

Reply | Quote

As a user of Windows, I agree 100% with everything you have been saying about the upgrade mess.

That said, as a shareholder of Microsoft, I don’t really care. Their push into cloud-based services (along with Amazon) is driving their growth right now. Xbox and Office also add nicely to their revenue stream. The stock has done well under Nadella and has incredible cash flow to fund a nice dividend.

In sum, Microsoft is doing some great things. Windows is not one of them though.

Reply | Quote

Right on all counts, IMHO.

Reply | Quote

Microsoft has definitely jumped the shark. Trust takes many years of faithful service to build and it can be lost irretrievably just about instantly.

Where does Microsoft go to get its reputation back? It thinks that somehow this will all translate into its end goal, the acquisition of lots of money.

But money is not the currency of the Internet, trust is. If you have earned people’s trust, money seeks you out. If you have foolishly violated that trust the money says goodbye. It might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Microsoft is doomed. Without trust, customers look to other sources. Those sources will emerge and bury Microsoft in the grave it richly deserves. We won’t miss them.

Reply | Quote

This is yet another case where Microsoft’s “marketing” department has, once again, used misguided, mismanaged marketing schemes that, sadly, discredit and tarnish the great work of the development team.

Windows 10 is, after all, a great and very secure OS. And having only one OS platform to concentrate resources on makes great business sense. But running roughshod over their user-base makes no business sense at all!

Reply | Quote

Here, here.

Reply | Quote

Hit them in the pocketbook. I just found and installed Spybot Anti-Beacon which knocks out their telemetry; I found it by searching for ways to stop their snooping… https://forums.spybot.info/downloads.php?id=55
It works with Win 7,8 and 10.
I’m relieved to have found it and it seems to work well.

Reply | Quote

This is an extract from the Windows Secrets newsletter just received.

This is from Susan Bradley:

First, an apology to Windows Secrets readers — and especially to my colleague Woody Leonhard. Some months back, he reported a forced Win10 upgrade on one of his own systems.
But I didn’t believe him; I thought he’d missed some confirmation step in the upgrade process. Wearing my rose-colored glasses, I’ve assumed that Microsoft customers would always see the standard end-user license agreement (EULA) before any major upgrade started.
Well, I was wrong; just as I was wrong to doubt that a Windows Secrets reader received a Win10 upgrade without the user’s permission.

…and continues with details.

Reply | Quote