Latest Win10 update and annoyances

The latest Windows 10 update was installed on the netbook without an issue.  It is a older and slower Netbook and the update took about four hours.  For modern and faster machines it should install in a fraction of the time.  Once it was done and I rebooted it ran without a problem.  Again, I don't notice any slowdown on the machine and what I normally use still works.

The annoyance is on my Windows 8.1 laptop.  Microsoft keeps 'nagging' me to update, but, right now I don't think I want to.  I don't like the idea that they force upgrades/updates and I have no choice.  The other things is it keeps 'phoning home' on things and I don't have a chance there.  The last annoyance is in Windows update as Microsoft keeps checking the upgrade when I don't want to upgrade.  Not a major problem, I just uncheck it.

My Windows 10 upgrade experience

Pre-Installation

It finally happened, Windows had a notice on my netbook that the Win10 upgrade was ready.  First thing I did was to make sure I had a backup of my data just in case.  I wanted to do my netbook first as it is an older, slower machine and if the upgrade worked well on that machine it should work well on my high end laptop.

The machine is an Acer Aspire One D255E.

• CPU - Intel Atom N455 - 1.66 GHz
• Memory - 2 Gigs (I upgraded from 1 Gig last month)
• Storage - 160 gigs

Installation

The process itself was very painless.  Be prepared to spend at least three hours for the upgrade.

Download, Configuration and Installation

Once you click the start it is almost hands off.  All you need is patience.  For the most part it does a good job of telling you what it is doing.  Towards the end it even informed me that it was taking a bit longer than normal which in itself is a nice touch from Microsoft.

The following screen captures is what you should see during the installation up to the point of your customizing the setup.

Custom Install process

Once you get through all of this you can start the final process.  I strongly suggest you pick the custom option.  This way you can turn off the sharing of information and ensure your default browser stays as the default.

Your old password is used

I am not sharing everything with MS

More things I turned off

Here is where you can modify default apps

I turned off a number of apps as I have my own

I like this, they know it is a bit slow & lets you know

When done it brings you to what you are familiar with

I tested out Old School Runescape

It actually seems to run better in Win10

There are other things I will be doing, but, there are online articles explaining this better that I can.  Do a search on 'How To Stop Windows 10 from using your PC bandwith' on how to turn off your sharing your bandwidth for downloading Win10 upgrade.

This blog was written on the Win10 netbook in Firefox and so far I have not encountered any problems.  Avast worked without issue, Irfanview worked without an issue and Runescape runs without a problem.

Update 2015/08/16

So far it has been running very well.  Did an update and it worked well and asked to reboot when finished.  Browser updated without issue and playing OSRS is nice and no lagg there.

Facebook and Android - Updated

I am a frequent Facebook user.  I like the way to keep in touch with friends and family and the rare chat.  The thing I don't like about Facebook for Android is that it is a pig on resources.  I have a Huawei cell phone and it has very limited memory.  Facebook and the messenger app takes almost 200 megs for the app itself and a lot of memory when running.  It is the same on the Google Nexxus device I have.  I looked around for a replacement as when I tried to download and install updates on the phone I didn't have enough free space.  The other problem is that at times it would take over a minute to launch at times when all I want to do is quickly log in, see if there are any updates from family and then log off.

There are a good number of apps on Google play and I tried a number of them and quickly uninstalled them.  I won't name them, but, full page add on start is not a way to get me to use it long term.  I understand the need to make money, but, a small ad at times would not be a bad thing.  Others took up the bottom 20% of the phone and cycled continuous ads.  Again, I understand the need to make money, but, that chews up my monthly data limit each month. 

I finally found an app that looks good, no ads, small (200k) and did what I needed it to do.  The app is 'Social Lite' and it looks like the web version of Facebook.  It launches within a few seconds (even on the cell phone), uses minimal memory (76 megs on the tablet when running) and very responsive when touching various items.  I haven't tried to upload photos yet, but, when I do that I am usually on my laptop as that is where most of my photos are stored.  Facebook is launching a 'lite' version for other countries, but, not here.  I don't understand why they have to have a massive app with every bell & whistle when I don't use most of that on my Android devices.

I will be playing with this for a while and if it looks good I will be upgrading Jane.  She really hates the massive impact the Android App has on her machine and when it runs in the background it also has an impact on her online gaming.

Update 2015/07/12

I installed Social Lite on Jane's machine and so far she loves it.  When she clicks on the icon it is there in about 5 seconds.  She is playing games and she will be letting me know if there is an improvement on the responsiveness of the games without Facebook running in the background.  What we all love is that she gets back almost 200 megs of storage space.