Does Microsoft own my laptop?

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve heard that the Bank owns my credit card, and the DMV owns my driver’s license. I guess that simplifies their legal basis for confiscating my card or license when it needs confiscating.

Do yung’uns remember when almost all the telephones in the U.S.A. were owned by The Telephone Company? (I don’t recall The Phone Company ever showing up to grab their property back, but I suppose it happened to some.)

Anyway, my question — maybe I should be posting in GQ — is Does Microsoft own my laptop? It sure acts as though it does. It updates and reboots at its whim. Just yesterday it installed a massive new version of Windows 10, and today it tells me it’s going to do the same again real soon. (It presents a window with clickable options, but “Opt out altogether” is not one of the clickables. The options were something like "Hurt you immediately,’ and “Postpone and let us hurt you at our whim sometime in the near future.”

I suppose some avid Windows users would agree that this new W10 (“W100,10”?) now ranks 2.5 on a beauty scale of 1 to 10 while the old W10 was only 2.4. Everything I’ve noticed so far is Worse.

For example, I clicked to turn on a hot-spot broadcast from ten feet away, entered one of two possible passwords, and waited. Under W10 connection would have been instantaneous. Under W100,010 or whatever number it is, it thought and thought and flashed little “thinking bubbles” across the screen. “WOW!!!” I thought. “This W10,000010 is really something; it’s running some elaborate diagnostics or whatever.” After a long delay, the diagnostic message came back: I’d entered the wrong password.

Let me digress. On a certain on-line game there’s a clickable labeled “Ready.” If you click it, it says “Not Ready.” (Click it a 2nd (or 3rd) time and it will say “Ready” (or “Not Ready”) again. But when it says “Ready” it is NOT Ready. It’s when it says “Not Ready” that it’s Ready! That behavior is not specific to that game; it is ubiquitous in the post-rational era. As another example, in Youtube the muting icon will be labeled “Mute” when you’re NOT muted, “Un-mute” when you are muted. Does everyone know what I’m talking about? What’s the word for this phenomenon? I’ll call it “Ready Reversal.”

Anyway, during the installation of Windows One Thousand and Ten (or whatever it is) I was presented with a menu to select eight wonderful features. That was an easy decision for me — I want zero new features: CP/M made me happy and it’s been all down-hill since then. But was Ready Reversal in effect or NOT?? I didn’t know (and couldn’t Google for an answer; Microsoft was in total charge of my keyboard, Internet and mouse). So I ended up with NONE of the features … or ALL of them, I’m not sure.

Anyway, I’m seeking legal advice so perhaps should have posted in IMHO instead of GQ.

Was there some fine-print I signed when I took delivery of a laptop with W10 pre-installed? Does Microsoft own my laptop? If not, are they guilty of a crime (theft of services? pandering?) or will I have to sue them in civil court?

I’d ask if any Dopers want to join my class-action suit — $777 million for the lawyers and 7¢ for each Windows victim — but I don’t think we’d win anyway. Because I’m pretty sure Microsoft owns my laptop.

2

…no.

3

Not really, you can always put Linux on there.

But my IT department essentially owns my computer. If you think Windows updates are annoying, you haven’t seen their system. Mandatory updates at random times, possibly bricking one computer (I didn’t see it happen, just how it was explained to me). I went to grab food around 1 and come back to “your computer will restart in 3 minutes.” If I get rid of the computer I have to clear it with them.

And don’t get me started on MacOS and iOS deciding to auto update, breaking software that relies on one specific version of the OS. And no real way to turn it off - iPad is permanently off wifi to prevent users absentmindedly updating.

4

Since the answer to the question asked is pretty obvious, I’ll just complain about Windows.

I was on a video meeting on my laptop when it crashed. OK, that happens. But apparently it decided that it needed to send information about the crash to Microsoft, without giving me the opportunity to cancel. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but I was missing a meeting, and it took at least 5 minutes of badly missed time before it finished gathering the data and restarting. Dear Microsoft: fuck you for not including a cancel button.

Then when it restarted it turns out that needed to install an update. So instead of starting up it installed an update, which also took a very long time. Dear Microsoft: fuck you for not including a “pause this update” button.

After the update was installed it rebooted, at which time…it decided that it needed to install another update. Then it rebooted again.

Altogether, that crash took 40 minutes to recover from, and I missed out on a very important meeting. Pre-Windows 10 it might have taken 2-3 minutes.

Fucking Microsoft.

(I also have another story which pisses me off even more, but that I can’t share on this board)

5

Microsoft does not know when you are giving “very important” presentations. It just updates on a well published schedule. If you don’t know that schedule and cannot be arsed to test your stuff before getting on a stage, who do you think should be blamed?

6

Windows Updates are not that predictable. At most you know the general day they put out the actual scheduled minor updates, but that’s it. There are unscheduled updates that go out, and sometimes you don’t pick up scheduled updates on the day of.

Then there are the major updates that go live whenever Microsoft feels they are ready, often overriding settings not to go out and seek for them. October’s version 1809 has been sporadically popping up everywhere. It is not remotely on a schedule.

It is entirely Microsoft’s fault in how they have implemented their update system. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to delay an update during a presentation. And other OSes that require updates don’t force upgrades whenever they want like this. And Microsoft’s excuse of it making it easier to support is silly, since they could just say “We only support Windows with all the updates” for each version they wish to support.

There’s no reason for you to jump to Microsoft’s aid against someone who is experiencing the poorly designed Windows Update system, and frustrated about their computer. If you know about computers, you could do what I’m going to do in my next post and help him learn how to take back control of his computer. Not attack him because he dared say something negative about Microsoft.

Of course Microsoft’s update paradigm is Microsoft’s fault.

7

My small tablet (or whatever) Surface Go will not allow me to download Firefox or Chrome. Whatever they can go fuck themselves.

8

Now to answer the OP:

You did in effect agree to allowing Microsoft to be able to do these things, but you did not transfer ownership, either by law or in fact. You still have control over your computer, and you have the right to use software that circumvents this bullshit.

That’s right. There is software that stops Windows from pulling this shit. One I found quickly by Googling is Kill-Update. I can’t vouch for it since I don’t use Windows 10, but what it says it does is exactly what needs to be done.

You will also want to look up how to set your Internet connection as a “metered connection.” This has been the best built-in way to limit updates. It’s not guaranteed to work, which is why I recommend the app, but I do think you should probably do both.

Still, it is important that you still do update Windows. **Blocking updates indefinitely will make your computer less safe. ** Instead, I recommend going to https://askwoody.com, and reenable updates when the graphic on the top tells you that it is safe.

If that’s too much work, then you can try just enabling the program when you’re in the middle of something, and disabling it when you don’t mind if it updates.

One thing, though: never be a “seeker.” Never press the button that says “check for updates.” That can lead to picking up the major updates before they are ready. The version released back in October STILL isn’t ready, according to the professionals on that site I linked.

9

You own the laptop. You do not own the copy of Windows that is on it.

With previous versions of Windows, you still did not own it. Microsoft owned it, and sold you a license to use it. They still owned it. You only licensed it.

Starting with Windows 10, you no longer license a copy of Windows. Instead, Windows is a service. You pay for the service, and Microsoft provides and controls the service. They control when it upgrades. There’s none of this nonsense of hanging on to an older operating system because it actually ran your programs correctly. Nope, you upgrade when Microsoft upgrades their service.

Welcome to upgrade hell. If you use anything other than what comes with Windows, you can all but guarantee that one of Microsoft’s upgrades will eventually break it.

10

Why? Download or install? That doesn’t sound possible these days.

11

This. You own the laptop. If you want, you can install Linux and never use Windows on it. But you don’t own the copy of the Software. Microsoft owns the software, and does with it what it pleases. You can either continue to use that software, or not, though.

12

I have bought sealed copies of Microsoft Windows. But I have never paid extra and purchased a new computer with Windows pre-installed on it, only to then wipe it and install some other operating system- that’s just stupid.

MS software has always been covered with various crazy license agreements concerning its use, but that is probably of less interest to the end-user than the actual performance. Bitching definitely won’t help; just install Linux.

13

If it’s a work PC or laptop, your updates may not be on Microsoft’s schedule, they may be on corporate IT’s schedule. And while you may know their schedule, there may not be anything you can do about it.

It used to be that when corporate pushed an update, you’d get a message that an update had been installed and you had eight hours to restart. At some point IT decided that was much too generous, and shortened it to 15 minutes – with no option to postpone. I’ve frequently had that message come up five minutes before, or five minutes into, a meeting.

(One time we had a bunch of upper management onsite doing their semi-annual dog-and-pony show, and halfway through their presentation the “your PC will restart in 15 minutes” message came up. And there was nothing they could do about it, other than rush through the rest of their presentation before the laptop rebooted.

14

It’s probably in “S Mode”. You can switch out of that.

15

My complaint: I am left-handed, so my first job upon getting a work or personal PC or laptop is to switch the mouse to left handed. Ever since I got the Windows 10 update, on the occasions I (unwillingly, as others have mentioned} reboot, my laptop reverts to right-handed while I input my username and password. And since I mentioned passwords, I am a grown up and if I choose to run the risk of someone unauthorized using my laptop for possibly nefarious reasons I should bloody well be able to.

16

This is astonishing to me. That we’ve come to the point where our tools are rendered unusable when we need them, and not much can be done about it.

Who are these people? Who at MS, knowing this sort of thing happens, allows it to continue? What will it take? Planes falling out of the fucking sky?

17

Not sure about the rest of your rant, but I have to give you points for linking to The President’s Analyst. :slight_smile:

18

No, you idiot. You have completely failed to understand the point.

First, and this is irrelevant, but why the fuck do you think I would need to get on a stage to join a video meeting? The entire point of video meetings is that you don’t have to go to a physical location to join them.

But that irrelevancy aside, the point is that my computer was (silently) set to install an update the next time I rebooted. Which would be fine, except that it rebooted unexpectedly due to a crash, at which time the update suddenly because extremely inconvenient, and at that time there was no way to delay it.

Now, a stupid person might ask why I didn’t reboot prior to joining the conference. That would be because I was working prior to joining the meeting and didn’t have 40 minutes to sit around with my thumb up my ass waiting for the computer to install updates. Which is why updates are set to install when rebooted, so they can be installed after the workday is over and I shut down. Except (and this is the point you utterly missed), the computer unexpectedly shut down in the middle of the workday and then prevented me from working for 40 minutes while I had time-sensitive stuff to do.

And may I make a suggestion: if the only way you can be an effective apologist is by utterly missing the point, then maybe you should re-consider being an apologist.

19

**

Thank you.

20

No Microsoft doesn’t own the laptop. They just own everything that you do with it, unless you use it as a space heater, paperweight, or MAYBE flashlight. That doesn’t mean they own what you produce with it, but they own the methods and processes that you use to produce things with it. Don’t like it? Use a different operating system to interact with your hardware, there’s more and better challengers to Windows these days than there has been in the desktop world for decades.

Enjoy,
Steven