Microsoft is Pushing Windows 10 Just a Little Too Hard

This is a daily opinion column written by Lowell Heddings, the founder of How-To Geek, featuring his take on the latest in the world of technology.

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Microsoft has really pushed Windows 10 to the point where it’s getting annoying — first they automatically installed a service that ran all the time to show the Get Windows 10 icon, and then they started automatically downloading Windows 10 onto people’s computers even when they didn’t want it. Now because of an “accident” they automatically triggered the installer on some people’s computers.

From ArsTechnica:

Windows 10 upgrade installing automatically on some Windows 7, 8 systems

For the first year of its availability, Windows 10 is available for free to most Windows 7 and 8 users, and Microsoft has been trying to coax those users to make the switch by delivering the operating system through Windows Update. Until now, the OS has been delivered as an optional update; while Windows Update gives it prominent positioning, it shouldn’t be installed automatically.

This system has already generated some complaints, as Windows Update will download the sizeable operating system installer even if you don’t intend to upgrade any time soon, but, over the last couple of days, the situation seems to have become a little more aggressive. We’ve received a number of reports that people’s systems are not merely downloading the installer but actually starting it up.

And from ZDNet:

Windows 10 upgrade nags become more aggressive, offer no opt-out

Reports are circulating that some users are being presented with dialog boxes that only give them the option to start the upgrade process or reschedule it for a later date. Others are finding that the Windows Update screen is only offering them the option to begin the upgrade process, with other system updates being hidden from view.

We get it, Windows 10 is a free upgrade, and the security enhancements alone make it worthwhile for most people. When it was first released, we told everybody to hold off for a few months, which was good advice considering some of the problems people had. But by this point it’s getting a lot more stable, and their big service release update is right around the corner. It’s probably worth doing the upgrade for the average person.

But there are a lot of people that are using software that just might not be compatible. Small businesses might be running important applications and can’t deal with the downtime of upgrading. It’s not right to automatically push down the entire operating system upgrade when nobody has asked for it.

Seriously, do they need to push it quite this hard? When you make a good product, people will want it, especially when it’s free. Over 100 million people have upgraded already, after all. There’s no reason for them to try and shove it onto everybody’s computer immediately.

On a completely unrelated has nothing to do with it note, some unconfirmed reports are saying that the insider builds of Windows 10 now have “suggested apps” in the Start Menu. Which sound a lot like ads for apps to us.