[added analysis] October Steam survey: Windows 10 loses 17.3% market share, Windows 7 gains 23.7% market share

[Hellion]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well not to start a debate over it because I don't want to, Windows telemetry data is no where near as bad as people try and claim it as nor is it personally identifiable either. Taking a stance against it is fine, I just don't think serves in any way to make out that something doing something it is not or to over state somethings effects or impacts better conveys a point.

According to the findings of several europeans countries it very much is.

 

See the current legal proceedings that are taking place regarding this.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Hellion said:

According to the findings of several europeans countries it very much is.

 

See the current legal proceedings that are taking place regarding this.

https://betanews.com/2017/06/30/france-drops-windows-10-privacy-case/

[NelizMastr]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I think you missed this part 

 

 

Hah, woops! Still early in this part of the world   I need more coffee.

[Hellion]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

https://betanews.com/2017/06/30/france-drops-windows-10-privacy-case/

I'm talking more recently then that. I believe the dutch were leading the charge this time around.

 

That article is also very ambiguous suggesting that microsoft isn't committing to keeping it that way but rather changed it to get some heat off it's back.

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

39 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Windows telemetry data is no where near as bad as people try and claim it as nor is it personally identifiable either.

Looks like you completely missed the topic about the Dutch Privacy Authority's investigation into Win10's telemetry then. 

They do collect personally identifiable information even on the basic setting. 

 

 

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Looks like you completely missed the topic about the Dutch Privacy Authority's investigation into Win10's telemetry then. 

They do collect personally identifiable information even on the basic setting. 

I'll wait for that to actually get settled before jumping to too much, also yea I was meaning basic not full. However the full setting does collect more than I would have expected.

 

Also I think we might have different definitions of personally identifiable (This data is you, by looking at the data we know your name etc), but hey this is a boring as shit subject anyway so I'll go back to my wait and see.

[TetraSky]

On 11/5/2017 at 4:21 PM, Tech Wizard said:

Welcome to the master OS, China!

More like because Windows 7 was/still is, easier to pirate compared to Windows 10.

In any case, no real surprise here. Windows 7 got a huge boost in market share, to replace the really aging Windows XP at the time. Considering the time frame between 7 and 10, not that many are willing to buy a new PC. Many also dislike "change" (caveman mentality, unable to adjust to change, prefer to stay with what is "known" to them) so that doesn't help.

Add to that the, arguably, "poorer" chinese market and suddenly you have skewed result in favor of the older OS.

[LAwLz]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Also I think we might have different definitions of personally identifiable (This data is you, by looking at the data we know your name etc), but hey this is a boring as shit subject anyway so I'll go back to my wait and see.

I see this come up a lot in Windows 10 threads. It usually ends up being pro-Microsoft people having a ridiculously high standard for what they define as "personally identifiable". Anything short of your full name, in combination with a photo of you usually gets dismissed as "not PII".

According to the law, what Microsoft collects is personally identifiable information. PII includes but is not limited to:
Your name

Your gender

Your location

Birth date

 

Essentially any information which can be used to identify you is PII, even if it has to be combined with other data first. You can not seriously suggest that you believe Microsoft could not track down you if they felt like it. I am sure they could.

 

If we go by European law such as GDRP then the term personal data is eve broader than PII.

 

I don't know why you said Windows 10 doesn't collect personally identifiable data, but it most certainly does. Dismissing two government investigations which found that they violated the privacy laws does not exactly come off as unbiased either.

Now, you might not care if it does, and that's fine (as long as you keep that opinion to yourself), but please don't go around lying to others.

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Essentially any information which can be used to identify you is PII, even if it has to be combined with other data first. You can not seriously suggest that you believe Microsoft could not track down you if they felt like it. I am sure they could.

That's actually more what I meant, being able reverse the data back to an actual identity (even assumed) and being able to profile that identity. Rather than being a statistical data point contributing to a larger set of data or subsets. It's late and I was merely being lazy in what I meant.

 

55 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Dismissing two government investigations which found that they violated the privacy laws does not exactly come off as unbiased either.

What investigations? Unlike what seems like a lot of people I don't follow these Windows 10 things and anything that big or to the scale of the accusations would not go quietly even for the non interested.

 

Also as I mentioned earlier I only meant the Basic setting, and as far as I've heard there has been no actual ruling that Basic collects data that would fit the above requirement. Certainly accusations but more often I see news stories pop up and then comments flood in with "See look proof" etc when it's not it's only the start of a legal challenge and their evidence they are presenting.

 

Full, yes.

Basic, far as I know no/not proven?

 

Edit:

Also what everyone seems to miss out is how the data is actually ingested and stored, you're always going to have to send some form of identifiers otherwise there is no way to actually ingest the data properly. What usually happens is the data is anonymised when being processed in then the original deleted. There seems to be an assumption that the transmitted data is stored in full and in it's original state by Microsoft, unlikely as that's incredibly inefficient and a very unuseful way to store data.

 

Also damn it dragged in to a discussion I don't want. I'd still like to see those two gov investigations and what they actually covered. Also I'm not sure if I claimed I was unbiased, I'm not my belief is much of the claims people are making are mostly rubbish and are drawing faulty conclusions of information they have seen which doesn't mean what they think it means and largely ignore how Microsoft actually stores the data which is actually the part which would mean they are breaking the accused laws.

[vorticalbox]

On ‎05‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 9:36 PM, Captain Chaos said:

It's only the tech-savvy ones who are still running Win7 at home because they managed to dodge all of Microsoft's dirty moves during that first year.

if that were the case wouldn't windows 10 be massively higher in terms of share than windows 7 as "normies" vastly out weight the tech-savvy in numbers. 

[jagdtigger]

@leadeater

Just think about it with simple logic. If telemetry was really only debug and performance info why would they go so great lengths in making it hard to block? Sorry but this stinks.... Normally very few user disables it(in prior versions), why the sudden rush with 10?

Edited November 8, 2017 by jagdtigger

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

What investigations? Unlike what seems like a lot of people I don't follow these Windows 10 things and anything that big or to the scale of the accusations would not go quietly even for the non interested.

Well, if you don't follow the news then why do you make comments like how people are just blowing it out of proportions, and absolute statements such as it isn't PII that's being collected?

I don't get why so many people are willing to argue from ignorance regarding Windows 10 and data collection.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Also as I mentioned earlier I only meant the Basic setting, and as far as I've heard there has been no actual ruling that Basic collects data that would fit the above requirement. Certainly accusations but more often I see news stories pop up and then comments flood in with "See look proof" etc when it's not it's only the start of a legal challenge and their evidence they are presenting.

 

Full, yes.

Basic, far as I know no/not proven?

Microsoft collects a huge amount of PII even at the basic settings. That's what the recent Dutch investigation found. It's linked a few posts above yours if you're interested.

The Dutch used Microsoft's own data viewer tool and found that Microsoft collects a lot of PII even with the music basic settings enabled. On top of that they were found to collect some data which was not documented in the overview of basic telemetry.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Also what everyone seems to miss out is how the data is actually ingested and stored, you're always going to have to send some form of identifiers otherwise there is no way to actually ingest the data properly. What usually happens is the data is anonymised when being processed in then the original deleted. There seems to be an assumption that the transmitted data is stored in full and in it's original state by Microsoft, unlikely as that's incredibly inefficient and a very unuseful way to store data.

IF (huge if) it is being anonymized then it is done on Microsoft's servers, not before it leaves your computer, in which case Microsoft are incompetent. Also, I would not trust Microsoft to actually do it. Even if you have blind trust in a literally criminal company, you still have other things to worry about such as NSA or other government organizations (as well as potential data breaches) to worry about.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Also damn it dragged in to a discussion I don't want. I'd still like to see those two gov investigations and what they actually covered. Also I'm not sure if I claimed I was unbiased, I'm not my belief is much of the claims people are making are mostly rubbish and are drawing faulty conclusions of information they have seen which doesn't mean what they think it means and largely ignore how Microsoft actually stores the data which is actually the part which would mean they are breaking the accused laws.

A summary of the Dutch investigation can be found here. They actually used Microsoft's own tools to analyze the data and found things that Microsoft didn't even have documented. They are not some clueless idiots who just assume things without doing proper research.

 

Here is a summary of the French investigation, although please bear in mind that only the french document is deemed authentic.

 

There are not some knee-jerk reactions either. The reason why the investigations are starting to get published now are because they have been going on for many months, a year and some are still ongoing.

 

Article 29 Working party from EU are not happy with them either, although I can not find an official report.

 

According to the Dutch investigation data protection agencies from the Netherlands, Germany, France, U.K, Spain, Hungary and Slovenia are all involved in investigating Windows 10. We will probably hear more and more about these investigations later, but what we know right now is that Microsoft collects a ton of personal data which can be used to identify you, in ways that does not comply with consumer protection laws of some countries. And yes, that includes the basic settings.

 

 

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also I'm not sure if I claimed I was unbiased, I'm not my belief is much of the claims people are making are mostly rubbish and are drawing faulty conclusions of information they have seen which doesn't mean what they think it means and largely ignore how Microsoft actually stores the data which is actually the part which would mean they are breaking the accused laws.

So what you are saying is that you assume people are talking rubbish and drawing faulty conclusion, despite the fact that you by your own admission have not researched what claims are actually being made or what evidence that has been presented?

So you tell people that they are wrong, even though you barely know anything about the subject yourself?

You might want to reconsider doing that. It's not exactly a rational or logical stance to have.

[linustouchtips]

the newer hardware is going to be the nail in the coffin for win 7 users i mean you can try to get around it but ms is going to pressure the industry into adopting win 10 sooner or later.

[jagdtigger]

7 minutes ago, linustouchtips said:

the newer hardware is going to be the nail in the coffin for win 7 users i mean you can try to get around it but ms is going to pressure the industry into adopting win 10 sooner or later.

Well they pretty much failed with AMD(Ryzen chipsets have official drivers for win7)... And if worse comes we can still set up a VM and pass over the GPU to the VM .

[linustouchtips]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Well they pretty much failed with AMD(Ryzen chipsets have official drivers for win7)... And if worse comes we can still set up a VM and pass over the GPU to the VM .

i can already picture it 2021 new software and video games minimum req. os win 10  

[Tech22]

On 11/5/2017 at 4:45 PM, AluminiumTech said:

I moved to the UK.

 

In Hong Kong there's no restrictions on Windows 10 or any Windows.

 

Windows 7 and XP are only really prevalent on Business computers.

 

Schools who used Windows 7 are migrating to Windows 10. The healthcare system still seems to use Windows Vista and IE6.

No?

 

Lots of nontechie people in HK use Macs lol. The amount of people using Windows 7 there isn't super huge outside of corporate and education.

My friend is a radiologist. When he switched companies a few years ago he went from windows XP to windows 7. They cannot upgrade further because their voice dictation software STILL has no windows 10 drivers! So if companies are not even developing for windows 10, this must means something then

[AlTech]

31 minutes ago, Tech22 said:

My friend is a radiologist. When he switched companies a few years ago he went from windows XP to windows 7. They cannot upgrade further because their voice dictation software STILL has no windows 10 drivers! So if companies are not even developing for windows 10, this must means something then

People are developing for Windows 10.

 

It's just that many businesses who made a product for XP or 7 are likely not going to continue to support it and would either remake it or discontinue it.

[laminutederire]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

While Microsoft isn't perfect, I read your link from the CNIL, it does say it collects too much informations on UWP programs (which are installed and how much time you spent on it). While it is not okay, it is not the huge spyware concern that some are making it about. It is not keylogging you for everything you could give them as info.

I think the issue here is that some people do overreact a lot on some aspects which forces others to do the opposite to balance out the discussion.

Personally I don't mind using w10, especially since there are people more apt than I am investing what is happening with telemetry in Europe. I'm personally more afraid of what Google wants to do with my data. Because having an android phone is so much worse since it is more tedious installing app while circumventing Google claws, and I noticed they had no issue selling my data to anyone. (Funny thing is that they always sell it too slowly, I always end up buying what I was researching on way before they give me ads with that, etc. ).

So while there are some issues with it, it's not the worse situation ever, and people do overreact as the justice system in many countries is working on figuring it out, and if it was THAT bad, Microsoft would already be severly punished, or at least they would have to make a lot of efforts to hide it (And I'm not sure they'r that smart anyway).

[jagdtigger]

15 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

While Microsoft isn't perfect, I read your link from the CNIL, it does say it collects too much informations on UWP programs (which are installed and how much time you spent on it). While it is not okay, it is not the huge spyware concern that some are making it about. It is not keylogging you for everything you could give them as info.

I think the issue here is that some people do overreact a lot on some aspects which forces others to do the opposite to balance out the discussion.

Personally I don't mind using w10, especially since there are people more apt than I am investing what is happening with telemetry in Europe. I'm personally more afraid of what Google wants to do with my data. Because having an android phone is so much worse since it is more tedious installing app while circumventing Google claws, and I noticed they had no issue selling my data to anyone. (Funny thing is that they always sell it too slowly, I always end up buying what I was researching on way before they give me ads with that, etc. ).

So while there are some issues with it, it's not the worse situation ever, and people do overreact as the justice system in many countries is working on figuring it out, and if it was THAT bad, Microsoft would already be severly punished, or at least they would have to make a lot of efforts to hide it (And I'm not sure they'r that smart anyway).

The data stream going to their servers is encrypted so there is that, plus if it were just a bunch of diagnostic data why they do not allow the people who want to disable it fully, instead they do everything to prevent said people from doing so? It just does not make sense how suddenly they need it, compared to 7 and older where you could switch it off and MS still got problems fixed... The only explanation is that there is more going on than MS wants to admit.

[Delicieuxz]

On 07/11/2017 at 4:11 AM, leadeater said:

Only legacy/existing updates, all current updates are done through the rollups and not released as individual packages. The only exception to this, not really, is .Net updates but those were always rollups without being called as such and drivers distributed by Windows Updates but it's not hard to figure out why those are not done using the rollup method. There are still .Net rollup updates as well, just there there is a very small amount that don't come under those e.g. 

KB3186497 which is an updated offline installer for .Net.

 

And for both operating systems you can download the update rollup packages through WSUS, Windows Update Catalog or Microsoft Website.

 

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

Wannacry and all other known and exploitable SMB1 and SMB2 exploits, plus more that would take a while to find. Microsoft doesn't release security patches for the fun of it.

 

Edit: Sorry no, didn't read it properly. KB4012215 is the rollup.

 

Hi leadeater. Looking into it, there are indeed security-only updates for Windows 7 being released seemingly every month, up to the current month. Check out the list on the left-hand side, here:

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4022722/windows-7-update-kb4022722

 

All those monthly security-only updates are available for download from the Microsoft Update Catalog, and I imagine are also available for download through WSUS.

 

That's a great thing for Windows 7 owners seeking to have a reduced amount of Microsoft's back-added spyware and data-theft. I think that some of the security updates add telemetry, but that most of that stuff is surely coming in the non-security parts of the roll-up updates.

 

I guess a person can vet the security-only updates thoroughly to have only the most important ones, and prevent Microsoft's telemetry from being installed on their PC even further.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

 

Hi leadeater. Looking into it, there are indeed security-only updates for Windows 7 being released seemingly every month, up to the current month. Check out the list on the left-hand side, here:

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4022722/windows-7-update-kb4022722

 

All those monthly security-only updates are available for download from the Microsoft Update Catalog, and I imagine are also available for download through WSUS.

 

That's a great thing for Windows 7 owners seeking to have a reduced amount of Microsoft's back-added spyware and data-theft. I think that some of the security updates add telemetry, but that most of that stuff is surely coming in the non-security parts of the roll-up updates.

 

I guess a person can vet the security-only updates thoroughly to have only the most important ones, and prevent Microsoft's telemetry from being installed on their PC even further.

Yea I was mistaken on that one, which is why there is an edit in the second quote. I approve the Security Monthly Rollups through WSUS, been doing that for ages now so incorrectly thought that was the only way the were delivered, oops.

 

The other thing that you can't do on Windows 10 is select which updates to install when you check for them unlike Windows 7/8, Windows 10 just installs everything it sees which can be highly annoying (because Server 2016 is like that) when you need to test a single update not all of them.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, linustouchtips said:

i can already picture it 2021 new software and video games minimum req. os win 10  

Hopefully by then we will have Linux as an alternative . For instance i have Kubuntu as my daily driver since February on my laptop and aside from a university course(Excel VBA) i dont even start windows... (I still have a hefty backlog in windows only games but fortunately a bunch of the multi platform ones...

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Well, if you don't follow the news then why do you make comments like how people are just blowing it out of proportions, and absolute statements such as it isn't PII that's being collected?

I don't get why so many people are willing to argue from ignorance regarding Windows 10 and data collection.

Because thus far the ones I have seen that Microsoft has actually be found guilty of is around improperly informing the user what the settings do and having too intrusive defaults. That's not quite the same as saying Windows 10 under any configuration allowed by Microsoft is harvesting massive amounts of personal data, or in some even bolder claims keylogging etc. Statements like this which were actually just being said it in this thread which I was replying to.

 

You're going to have to forgive people when you see claims like that come up regularly and you do actually bother to go check them and it's not even close to what is being said, so it doesn't take much of repeated patterns to make you go with a suspicion of doubt.

 

We all have our bias on subjects and everyone can be guilty of confirmation bias, too much of it leads to one or both parties just ignoring each other claims.

 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

A summary of the Dutch investigation can be found here. They actually used Microsoft's own tools to analyze the data and found things that Microsoft didn't even have documented. They are not some clueless idiots who just assume things without doing proper research.

I'll wait for an actual legal ruling on that one, that's the investigations findings and their summary of facts. This is what I mean by jumping to conclusions.

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Hellion said:

It's pointless, yet you continue to take part? Pot meet kettle...

 

 

It's not a matter of preference. It's a matter of principle and willfully allowing a corporation to take advantage of you while you continue to support their efforts.

 

Pretty much the exact reason society as a whole is becoming progressively worse and thin skinned. No one stands up for what is right because it's become taboo to not be politically correct which leads to being taken advantage of over and over again until you have no rights.

 

I'm advocating that people grow a pair and draw a line when enough is enough. There will never be a reason that validates an invasion of privacy much less choosing to give it away to a corporation to profit on.

Can't accept that other people have different opinions, then blames other people for society being shit.  Gotchya.

 

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Because thus far the ones I have seen that Microsoft has actually be found guilty of is around improperly informing the user what the settings do and having too intrusive defaults. That's not quite the same as saying Windows 10 under any configuration allowed by Microsoft is harvesting massive amounts of personal data, or in some even bolder claims keylogging etc. Statements like this which were actually just being said it in this thread which I was replying to.

 

You're going to have to forgive people when you see claims like that come up regularly and you do actually bother to go check them and it's not even close to what is being said, so it doesn't take much of repeated patterns to make you go with a suspicion of doubt.

 

We all have our bias on subjects and everyone can be guilty of confirmation bias, too much of it leads to one or both parties just ignoring each other claims.

 

I'll wait for an actual legal ruling on that one, that's the investigations findings and their summary of facts. This is what I mean by jumping to conclusions.

 

Give up,  I try not to get into discussion regarding telemetry anymore for exactly the same reason.  There is a mindset that is so heavily set against MS and windows that no amount of evidence and open minded discussion will prevail. 

[Tech22]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

People are developing for Windows 10.

 

It's just that many businesses who made a product for XP or 7 are likely not going to continue to support it and would either remake it or discontinue it.

They released the windows 7 drivers about 2 years ago. Not sure.