Microsoft Hit by First Successful Windows 10 Forced Upgrade Lawsuit

[btarunr]

Microsoft has been hit by the first successful lawsuit over its forced Windows 10 upgrade. The first of possibly many, Teri Goldstein from California, successfully sued Microsoft for $10,000 in damages and legal fees over its deceptively designed Windows 10 upgrade software, which automatically downloaded and upgraded her computer's Windows 7 installation almost without the consent of the user. She convinced the court that the upgrade made her computer slower, and that she lost business due to the upgrade process and the slowing down of her computer. Microsoft dropped its appeal and paid up.

Microsoft is heavily criticized for the way it distributes its free Windows 10 upgrade for PCs with Windows 7 and Windows 8. What started out as an optional upgrade, quickly evolved into an almost unavoidable upgrade that forces itself upon the users, through clever design of the upgrade software's user interface. Microsoft recently changed Windows 10 upgrade into a "recommended update" for Windows 7/8, making users with auto-install for recommended updates discover that their machines have been upgraded almost without their consent. Could this be the first of many successful lawsuits over this issue at least in a precedent-driven American civil justice system?



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[revin]

Microsoft dropped its appeal and paid up

They[M$] know damn well that the Red X is to Close, not sneak around to install thru the back door when nobody's looking !!
That is pretty low of them to sneak force crap to people and now they gotta pay up and may be other's to follow !

 

[Chaitanya]

That upgrade poop up was really annoying, I hope that pop up stops from now on.

 

[arterius2]

win 10 is much faster than win7...

 

[Prima.Vera]

I have a Dell XPS old laptop which was forcibly upgraded to Win10 without a warning, without anything.
Now what the SHITHEADS from M$ failed to understand is that the upgrade made the laptop unusable, since most of the drivers are garbage (video, keyboard, card reader, etc), or don't work (sound, camera, etc)

And the system is so sllllooooooooooooow now...

 

[R-T-B]

Could this be the first of many successful lawsuits over this issue at least in a precedent-driven American civil justice system?

No, because as we already noted and have been discussing in the forums, this occurred in small claims court.

win 10 is much faster than win7...

If the system gets a good set of drivers. Many don't.

 

[cryohellinc]

Issues with windows 10 arise when people have old scrub PC. Example my parents, took me some tweaking to disable it for them at all, and leave their Win7 PC running smooth, as in their case, same as in many other "older" populations PC is used mainly for documents, basic browsing, printing, reading, watching news. Simple two to three click away stuff. In that case yes, Windows 10 is over complicating stuff and is unnecessary and irrelevant to what they do.

However I am a PC enthusiast, and I always try to be up to date with my hardware and software. Due to that Win 8.1 Upgrade into Win 10 via Windows Update was not an option for me. Made a clean install of Win 10 with all fresh drivers. No issues at all. Smooth amazing system that works as quick and in many cases faster then Win 8.1, set aside Win7 totally.

All the whine about " bad, crashes, they spy on me" buddy, nobody cares what is on your PC, and if you care, there are many options ( wont advertise ) to easily disable all the tracking/ information gathering services MS installed on Win10. Usual problems occur when people Upgrade, as it tries to keep the old data and merge it into new system. That doesn't work well. Clean install, with fresh up-to date drivers and software combined with latest BIOS usually fixes any issue.

And all the arguments regarding Win7 being faster in gaming than Win10 is simply a lie by people trying to argument their what-ever choice of staying on Win7.

 

[TheDeeGee]

win 10 is much faster than win7...

Yep, i made the leap from Win 7 to 10 without having tried 8 or 8.1

I'm using it for almost 4 months now and havn't looked back ever since.

Windows 10 is a true succesor of Win 7, just like 7 was of XP.

 

[Octopuss]

win 10 is much faster than win7...

What the hell does it have to do with the topic discussed? Switch on your brains before you post some nonense next time.

 

[cryohellinc]

What the hell does it have to do with the topic discussed? Switch on your brains before you post some nonense next time.

It has exactly Everything to do with Topic itself. Clearly the lady which sued, had no intention or lack of knowledge/ misinformation regarding Win10. Upgrade itself is Free into a system which is faster.

However I can see the both sides of the argument. While Win10 IS faster than Win7 and it utilises modern hardware better than older hardware, the whole Upgrade system is flawed. If you have older hardware where for instance older drivers might conflict with new Windows, than it does make sense to stay on the old system, which Must be an option made by Microsoft. The issue here is that it in a way Forces you to go to Win10. As in my comment above, Upgrade never works well. It always leaves issues under the hood that might arise sooner or later down the road of using the operating system, hence why a clean install is always a good choice.

System should give you a reminder, however it is up to you to Upgrade or not. What Microsoft makes in this case is a cheap forceful marketing and literally "pushing" the product down your throat. "Dont like the taste of this new sandwich? Well we will still force feed it to you because its good, its your tastes which are bad. "

That sort of approach is wrong, and Microsoft is getting punished for it. For a good reason.

 

[Melvis]

About time, id have a few clients that would be very happy to hear this and would even consider taking them to court as W10 upgrade broke there PC and I had to format and start over again for them, they would like MS to pay for the damages for sure.

@Prima.Vera Ive had the same problem with clients PC's, auto upgraded then they became unusable.

 

[shhnedo]

win 10 is much faster than win7...

Can you guarantee that for 100% of upgradable windows 7/8.x users? Can you guarantee that their old 2005 PC, which barely runs windows 7, can run an upgraded windows 10 smoothly without proper drivers and all? Can you do that? No, you can't.
Anyway, did you even read the title of the thread? I'm pretty sure it doesn't say "windows 10 vs windows 7 performance". Now, if you don't have your own opinion and are ok with someone else forcing you to use something you may not want to use(if you were actually informed about it, which you're clearly not), please, join the rest of the sheep. I like my 7 professional install on my ssd and unless I own a PC which can actually take any advantage of the changes in windows 10, dammit i'm sticking to 7 until the very end! I consider myself sort of an advanced user and as one I can decide for myself what OS I want to use.

 

[dorsetknob]

Forum Thread its being Discussed in here since yesterday
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/there-is-hope-yet-all-is-not-lost.223688/#post-3479545

 

[Caring1]

That it is, but official TPU threads should remain open.

 

[dorsetknob]

an acknowledgement credit would not go amiss or an official link to the thread i started 6 hours previously

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

an acknowledgement credit would not go amiss or an official link to the thread i started 6 hours previously

Have a cigar

 

[Fx]

All the whine about " bad, crashes, they spy on me" buddy, nobody cares what is on your PC, and if you care, there are many options ( wont advertise ) to easily disable all the tracking/ information gathering services MS installed on Win10. Usual problems occur when people Upgrade, as it tries to keep the old data and merge it into new system. That doesn't work well. Clean install, with fresh up-to date drivers and software combined with latest BIOS usually fixes any issue.

Your insensitive argument fails fast. If "nobody" cared what was on our PCs, then they wouldn't be trying to gather information from it in the first place. Just because you are fine with it doesn't mean it is a trivial matter for everyone else.

You might as well allow Microsoft to come into your home and do a search through your file cabinets. You may not even have a problem with that since you would likely say, "I have nothing to hide" but that is a violation of American's 4th Amendment.

You lack the fundamental understanding of what rights and privacy means...

 

[Slizzo]

What the hell does it have to do with the topic discussed? Switch on your brains before you post some nonense next time.

It has everything to do with the topic since his statement was based on those of the plaintiff in this case. How about you stock up on some reading comprehension?

 

[Blinken]

Your insensitive argument fails fast. If "nobody" cared what was on our PCs, then they wouldn't be trying to gather information from it in the first place. Just because you are fine with it doesn't mean it is a trivial matter for everyone else.

You might as well allow Microsoft to come into your home and do a search through your file cabinets. You may not even have a problem with that since you would likely say, "I have nothing to hide" but that is a violation of American's 4th Amendment.

You lack the fundamental understanding of what rights and privacy means...

Agreed, someone needs to read up on the 'i have nothing to hide' fallacy.
And it's been shown, even if you turn all the settings off, even Cortana, it's still sending data back to Microsoft.
Not to mention after certain system updates, some privacy settings are reset to their default ON setting.
Actually, the best way to turn off all the snooping is to be running Enterprise or even Server 2012 and use Group Policy settings.

 

[sttubs]

Why don't people that did not want Win10 just roll back to their previous OS? True it's a pain the ass that they shouldn't have to endure though.

 

[syrup]

Agreed, someone needs to read up on the 'i have nothing to hide' fallacy.
And it's been shown, even if you turn all the settings off, even Cortana, it's still sending data back to Microsoft.
Not to mention after certain system updates, some privacy settings are reset to their default ON setting.

"Umm, that was fixed when they pulled the November update" is what I would've suggested.

Except that when I bought a new laptop with Windows 10 just one month ago, and the November update later applied itself, many of the privacy settings I'd carefully gone through and changed when first setting it up were quietly changed back to the defaults. The Ars article I linked mentioned four; in my case it was closer to ten settings that got switched. It also reinstalled numerous apps I'd uninstalled.

Been using Windows since 3.1 and never felt this uneasy about the level of control Microsoft wields over my system; there's a real sense now they can change the deal at any time, and get away with it.

 

[cyneater]

OMG the pure bullshit in this thread is amazing.

Who cares if you think windows 10 is faster on your over clocked water cooled 1337 gamming rig.
7mm Remington is faster than 45-70 .... But that's like comparing an orange to mars..
Who cares it is not relevant please start another thread to why windows 10 or why you think windows 10 is faster.

The lady sued Microsoft because they forced windows 10 on to her computer...

Yes you might use windows 10 but I don't care.

I don't say BSD / Linux does this better every time you post something although its tempting some times. I have better things to do.

Sadly some windows 8/10 users are brainwashed to tell you how much better there OS is all the time.
Pretty what mac boys use to be like.

I don't like windows 8/10 the gui sucks that my opinion

Windows 10 forced onto computer = bad

 

[cryohellinc]

Your insensitive argument fails fast. If "nobody" cared what was on our PCs, then they wouldn't be trying to gather information from it in the first place. Just because you are fine with it doesn't mean it is a trivial matter for everyone else.

You might as well allow Microsoft to come into your home and do a search through your file cabinets. You may not even have a problem with that since you would likely say, "I have nothing to hide" but that is a violation of American's 4th Amendment.

You lack the fundamental understanding of what rights and privacy means...

What privacy are you talking about? Stop being delusional, they ALREADY have Any possible data they might ever need from you gathered and stores in their databases. Specifically in USA. Win10, same as any other windows will allow them to spy on you. They tap to your phone, email, skype, facebook, google or any other service. Sit in a bunker with a tinfoil hat, maybe then you will be secure, don't forget to remove all the electronic devices around you.

Point is, nobody cares what you do, you are one in a billion, there is nothing special about you. Download your pirated software and movies with music all you want, nobody really cares about that.

However when they Publicly announce something that Windows 10 does, everyone start to moan that they are getting spied on. Grow up.

Win10 data gathering is officially aimed at improving the ad's content, all those search features and cortanas and all that silly stuff. If you use it, cool, if don't disable it. However dont expect that using Win7 will be more secure then Windows 10.

 

[Jetster]

Its says judgment but I suspect it was stetted out of court. If it was a judgment there should have been punitive damages

 

[birdie]

win 10 is much faster than win7...

How much?