The (legal) data mining of millions and millions of users is a huge amount of potential revenue. Since each W10 user agreed to the EULA, all extracted information is the property of MS and theirs to peddle as they wish. That alone should be enough to send one screaming into the night over W10.
I'm glad I was waiting for Skylake-e instead of upgrading to Skylake. If I had built a Skylake machine, then told after I built it that I would be forced to upgrade to Win 10 in 18 months to be able to keep using the new features, I would be suing M$py!
I'm just flabbergasted that M$py has become so draconian in such a short period of time. I thought Ballsmore (sic) was bad but Nutella (sic) makes himself look like a sweet, intelligent guy.
I discovered a hidden BT folder on my OS partition (a few weeks ago) on my PC.
I have the Windows Update service totally disabled now.
Once people have posted the info about the latest MS malware updates, I re-enable the Windows Update service and download any real updates that have been released.
Despite the claims of the W10 fan boys and shills (on TenForums, for example) it is fairly obvious that MS is collecting more data than they claim and it is selling it to the highest bidder.
Actually Oems could get on there case for not supporting windows 7 or 8.1 reason because I looked online, there is still have tons of refurbished systems with 7 or 8.1 that can't be upgrade to windows 10. I am surprised some of those could even run windows 7 or windows 7 pro.
Obviously they were flawed anyway being refurbished... left over low powered junk.
It's just speculation as to MS's part in the big push of Ten, but data mining is big business nowadays. And a lot of places are jumping on the bandwagon. When your software runs on 95% (+/- a couple points) of computers all over the world, you have a huge potential for income from that gathered info. You've seen reports of the amount of data gathered by Google alone. Imagine having many, many more times that amount of data just because of the sheer volume MS OS's out there. And unlike Google which only gathers info when you use their services or apps, 10 is gathering all the time, from the moment you turn your PC on to the minute it shuts down.
OS's don't make money anymore according to recent reports, & in the wake of Apple giving away their latest OS upgrade away for free, other avenues of income need to be sought out. Although I can't see why Apples move would panic MS as they still sell their share of OS's as well as apps. As I said, they have the Lions share of the business.
And it could very well happen down the road, that some legalese in the EULA will give them the right to either bombard you with "user specific" ads, of even charge for patches. Or, you may have to pay a fee NOT to see ads.
So for now it'll be interesting to see what happens down the road if/when the reason for the push is revealed. One thing I do not appreciate is having to spend time pouring over updates on patch Tue. As if it wasn't bad enough in the past 6+ months of buggy updates to watch out for, now there's another thing to try & avoid.
From appearances, having been found out & faced with a lot of people now deciding to stay with their 7 & 8 systems due to "spying issues" with 10, MS decided "If you can't win em over, then alter the already in place OS so it does the same thing 10 is doing now." Add telemetry trackers to everything, and they won't be missing out on data from 7 & 8 users.
I can accept that an OS may need data input from users, especially in the early stages of development. That's a given. If you're a beta tester, expect a bit of monitoring in most instances. And even after development, perhaps some monitoring may be present, but in this instance, the right thing to do would be to offer an off switch for those who do not wish to participate. But the only true off switch I've seen for 10 is to use a 3rd party app. And the latest actions, an almost panicked approach to pushing upgrades on those not wanting one, suggest something is afoot.
Interestingly, in the late 90's, Intel announced that it would fit it's chips with a Unique Identifier Number, making it easier for customers to interact with stores & verify their identities. Privacy advocates did not agree & pointed out that these UID's could be used to exploit or track peoples surfing habits. Bowing to public outcry's and threats of boycotts, Intel sacked the program. Two months after Intel's announcement, MS, perhaps also fearing repercussions, publicly announced that it would change the features on it's Win 98 OS, which was initially going to do the same thing that the Intel processors were to do.
Your post showing the GWX Control Panel appears to be an older version. The latest is v1.7.1.0 released 18 January 2016.