Whether doing in upgrade or new install, be sure to carefully read and opt out on anything you don’t want (I opt out on everything). This includes the infamous gathering of usage data.
There are a several other ‘features’ that I choose to turn off. Go into the settings, right click on the start menu:
Choose Settings and click on Notifications & actions. Disable anything you don’t want
Choose Focus assist and choose options there.
Choose Display and choose whether to leave Night Light on. Night Light changes the color temp of your monitor to a warmer (more yellow) setting in the evening to reduce eye strain. When I first installed Win 10, I thought my monitor was broken because of the yellow cast at night. Finally figured it out and turned if off since I don’t have any natural light where I use my PCs so the lighting is always the same.
When I had bought a new laptop that came with Win 10 and it started asking me if I wanted to do things like activate Cortana and collect usage data I did this. I had found a list online of all the hidden “spyware” features of Win 10 and also made sure to deactivate those. I will be doing the same with my upcoming update.
What burned my butt about Win 10 was the missing tools that have been a part of Windows since 2.0 or before. Calculator! Paint! Write! Etc. Etc. Etc.
Oh, you can GET those, if you install apps. Even though the apps are free, when you click “I agree” you allow Microsoft and God and everybody else access to every single thing you do!
I have been screaming about this to the world. “There’s an app for that!” leaves us naked in the ether.
~VOW
The purpose of Night Light is not to reduce eye strain and ambient lighting has nothing to do with it either. It’s because blue light suppresses melatonin production in the body and can disrupt your circadian rhythm. Some people find it hard to sleep after exposure to a lot of blue light, so a lot of devices have been offering night mode that reduces blue light emission at night.
Ummm…Calculator and Windows Paint are still there and Write was replaced by Wordpad in Win95. If you do a Windows search, they’re all there. If you keyboard has a Calc hotkey it will pop up the calculator automatically and I’ve seen some keyboards with hotkeys for Paint and Wordpad also.
Right click on the Windows Logo/Start Button to get to the old style menus. I haven’t seen the default tablet interface in years. I realize I’m on a Win7 machine when I absentmindedly right click on the Start Button and nothing happens!
If you really want to tweak Windows (any version) visit blackviper.com and use (READ THROUGH EVERYTHING THOROUGHLY FIRST). You can’t really mess up anything with the “SAFE” settings, but I once forget that I turned off the Printer Spooler (not a SAFE opiton) in WinXP and thought my printer was broken! IMO, the tweaks don’t do much anymore with SSDs and 8GB+ RAM, but it’s nice shut Microsoft out of many “features” as you can.