Seriously, WTF?
Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10.
Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box. And this has caused confusion as typically clicking a red cross closes a pop-up notification.So, just to recap, your options when told that it's time to upgrade are now:
- "Upgrade now," which starts the upgrade right away;
- "OK," which schedules the upgrade for later; and
- closing the window... which now also schedules the upgrade for later.
Microsoft is still claiming that "Customers can choose to accept or decline the Windows 10 upgrade," which seems rather disingenuous since the pop-up box doesn't have a single option on it anywhere which leads to that result.
The change occurred because the update is now labelled "recommended" and many people have their PCs configured to accept recommended updates for security reasons. This means dismissing the box does not dismiss the update.
Brad Chacos, senior editor at the PC World website, described it as a "nasty trick".Yeah, no shit, Brad. But that's today's Microsoft for you: hard at work, losing friends and alienating customers.
By the way, if you're still auto-installing Windows updates whenever Microsoft tells you to, it's long past time to stop. You might also want to look into GRC|Never10, to stop Windows from upgrading anyway, even against your wishes, because Microsoft clearly cannot be trusted to respect your wishes. And if you aren't already running Spybot's Anti-Beacon, then you should consider doing that, too (those of you who have been upgraded to Windows 10, whether or not you actually chose to upgrade, can run O&O ShutUp10 instead).
And, seriously, people... Linux. If you are tech savvy at all, you should be at least looking into running a dual-boot Linux set-up. I know that I am, and will be actually setting it up in about a month, as my summer vacation project, with a goal of completely "defenestrating" when Microsoft sunset Windows 7 ahead of schedule. Because that's obviously their next move.