Ready to unplug yet?

In 2006, I sold the TV and haven't missed it one bit.  Skyrocketing Cable TV subscription fees, Commercial broadcasting decreasing show time and increasing advertisement times,  Going to digital tv with 150 channels of garbage, with few if any actually used. Having to buy a package of 5 to 10 channels to get the 1 I want to watch.   And where I live, the cable TV company is a monopoly. Cox Cable, Comcast, Xfinity, what ever name it is going by this year. It is that or AT&T DSL and I will NOT do business with AT&T under any conditions.

In 2019, I am considering unplugging from it all.  I just upgraded the desktop to windows 10. While it is faster than Win 7, 8, 8.1, and XP, its not really an operating system.

It is one HECK of a security problem and an invasion of your privacy. You have to go thru it constantly to turn off built in features, to maintain your privacy. Windows 10 is Spyware and Adware, with a semi-functional Operating system attached.

That is why I am ready to unplug from the internet. Facebook, google, all of them nothing but data mining companies that want access to all of your electronic devices. This is so they can read your contacts, (people, businesses, etc) and try to access those devices and locations too.

Add to this, the endless battle with commercials, also called advertisements.  Googles Adsense should be declared a virus.  "Oh, Adverts are a necessary evil" they say. Bullshit.  They are used to make someone else money when YOU should be paid for having to view them. They leave cookies on your computer or android device, taking up YOUR space you could be using for other things.

So in 2019 my cell phone company tells me I have to upgrade my phone. No one has a land line any more and I sure as heck will not do business with AT&T (crooks). So what choice do I have? Cell phone or no phone.. and now the cable company (which is a monopoly here) wants me to add my cell phone to their service!  Well, I had to upgrade my flip phone to a new "smart phone".  Folks,  "smart phone" = spyware & Adverts.  No thanks. I just want a simple phone, Unlimited talk and text, with the option to use google map, or some other application if I NEED to because I am away from my home computer.

I will never do shopping on my phone, never do email or anything that I usually do on my desktop. And after paying 200+ for a phone that will last less than 5 years, that is loaded with spyware and adware, I am ready to unplug it too and go phone less. 

Can it be done? Getting rid of the phone and cable internet will save me almost 200 a month. You bet I can do it. Not a problem at all. But it may make it harder for people to communicate with me. They will have to send a letter by snail mail, or come here in person (if I am home)..

I am Gen X. I grew up with adverts on TV, but this saturation commercialism, Adverts everywhere we are, being shoved in our face with or without our approval, the invading of our privacy by data mining software, is more than I care for.   

Maybe it is time to unplug completely.

I hate windows 10, it SUCKS.. It is GARBAGE, wish I could afford a MAC.

Ok, I have had windows 10 here for about a week now.

1. It is full of garbage you don't need. (on a PC).

2. It is full of advertising (SPAM!), everything to do with windows now has SPAM attached to it. Someone or something is constantly trying to sell you something until you get that part of win 10 shut off.

3. Microsoft wants everything you do on your computer to LEAVE your computer.  Microsoft wants to see everything you do, every place you go, ever word you type. Shutting these doors in windows 10 takes time.   You no longer have any privacy on your PC..

4. Control panel SUCKS.. now its the "apps".. And settings? They are scattered all over the F-ing place.

I just added office 2013 because I had a hard copy and found out it would work with win 10. Great, its all I needed.. nothing fancy.. and the cost was within my means.  Screw that 10 bucks a month forever payment fee for office 365.. that is a joke.

So, it then took me over an Hour to figure out how to stop the program from signing into microsoft office.. thought I took care of that earlier this week when I set the settings to stop logging into microsoft automatically.  Apparently not.  Every frigging time I add something to this, I gotta spend an hour or two closing the security doors to microsoft, and its advertising, and its spyware crap.

I swear, I wish I had money for an Apple Mac, I would go buy one tomorrow.

If I can't get this f-ked up software to run the way I want it, without having to share everything I frigging do with snowflakes at Microsoft, I will unplug the damm thing and scrap it.

Switched to windows 10

Yep, I finally made the big switch. Had to get a new mother board, CPU, memory, and new Solid state drive.

Well, first the hardware. Got another Asus gaming mother board, with an AMD CPU. Got 16G memory. Wow.. that was cool, never had 16G of memory before. It might be overkill. But what really got me was the M2 SSD solid state drive.  This thing is slightly larger than a pack of chewing gum. And it is lightning fast. Power on to being on line is less than 45 seconds. It took win7 almost 4 minutes to get fully functional.  And this new MB added the USB 3.1 connections to it. Wow. Big difference over the 2.0 speeds.

Now as for windows 10.. This is no longer an operating system. Its a SERVICE. And it is spyware with an operating system wrapped around it. The menus's have changed. It will require some new learning, as its not as easy to find things like I could with XP or Win7.  It is supposed to make us more productive. Nope.. I spend more time trying to find stuff on the menus than I do actually doing things.

Win 10 is more like a glorified android operating system you will find on  your smart cell phone. Yet its on a desktop computer. Kind of a "one size fits all". Security wise its a nightmare to me.

I do not like my files leaving my system. So I turned off the One Drive, and Cloud options.  Every time I start the computer I have to log in. Then I found a way to avoid that and disabled that annoyance.

The "start" menu that was in the lower left corner changed, and takes some getting used to. Still learning that and probably will be for a few more weeks.

Last, Microsoft office. Now its office 365, and they want 10 bucks plus tax each month. So over a year you are paying 120 + Bucks, year after year. With XP and Win7 you could purchase office one time and use it for years.  I just found out there is a student version for Win 10 that gives you just Word and Excell, for about 160. I will be getting that soon, as those really are the only 2 programs I used. I liked MS publisher, but not going to pay a monthly subscription fee for it. I do not like giving any business,  Microsoft, my utilities company, my housing company, automatic access to my bank account. Too many places like that get hacked and its an easy way for hackers to get access to your bank account to drain it.  Not worth the risk, so I avoid it.

The other thing is how Win 10 wants to "sync" all your devices.. it means giving Microsoft access to your cell phone, tablet and anything else that is android driven. Nope. Not going to happen. My info is private, and I do not want it shared. If I do not prevent MS getting access to it, they will get it and do with it as they wish and that is an invasion of my privacy on a level I cannot tolerate.  I would rather unplug completely than allow that to happen. And the way things are going, that may be what I do in the future. I have already unplugged the TV and sold it in 2006. And not missing a thing. Most of all the high cable TV bills and endless advertisements.

Over all, I am both impressed with win 10 and disappointed in it. Yes it runs well, but no, its one heck of a security risk.  And most computer users do not understand that risk.

Will I ever switch to windows 10?

Hi folks, it has been a while since I posted anything on this page. Just been busy living life. Not a whole lot to write about unless I wanted to waste space.

But recently windows 10 crept into my life again. A friend of mine had a windows 8 notebook that was not working right, and that she had not used in 2 years. She gave it to me and asked me to wipe out all her data on it, and if I could get it to work, to give it to someone who could use it.

Step back in time for a moment here. XP was the most liked OS from Microsoft. Win 7 was ok, but it was moving towards what is now Win 10. Win 8 was almost a completely new operating system with its new look and the way things were organized. Many say XP and Win 7 had better organization. They could find things easier on those systems. This is why they were so uncomfortable with win 8 and win 10. Lack of start button, a shutdown button and other basic controls, the home screen layout and other things, just made the win 7 post OS's seem alien to many people.

And another big fact. Win 10 had two major changes. Win 10 was no longer a stand alone operating system but rather like a service, constantly upgrading and updating. Good? Bad? Depends on your point of view. All that background stuff going on eats up a lot of bandwidth (data) if you are on metered service, and slows down your computer if you do not and are busy doing things.

The second major change was the user agreement and this alone has caused many people to swear they would never upgrade to win 10. To put it in simple words, windows 10 is spyware with an operating system wrapped around it.  As part of the user agreement, windows has reserved the right to what what you do, and report it to anyone. That is correct. They reserved the right to watch, log, record every keystroke, every word your computer microphone picks up, anything you do while using their software and share that data with anyone they want, with or without your permission to do so. In other words, they totally removed your right to any kind of privacy.

That bothers me. It bothers me a lot. It bothers me alot because of the recent  happenings with the 2016 US Presidential elections, and how claims are being made, that data collected by people on the internet somehow contributed to interference with our election process by outside interests.

It bothers me because of recent events with FaceBook, and its data collections.  And Google, and now Microsoft thru its Operating System. Privacy advocates are very much alarmed as to what Microsoft's win 10 user agreement implies.

That said, lets get back to the little laptop. Ok, so this HP Pavilion x2 notebook, with 4g mem, 120G HD, with a detachable screen that is the size of my Samsung tablet, is sitting here on my desk.

The Operating system would not operate correctly and I had to do a factory reset, losing all data, which in this case was not a bad thing at all.  It took about 2 hours to do. But something was wrong and it had no sound. So I needed to find drivers for it.  But there is no sticker showing the model number of it anywhere on the thing.  So I had to figure out where to find that info in win 8.

But wait - I just found out after that notebook finished its factory reset, it was no longer windows 8. It was windows 10!  mm This changes everything. I am not a fan of win 10.  Well I found the info I needed, and managed to finish setting up the "new" old notebook.

It was while I was trying to get the thing to work in the first place, and after the factory reset which upgraded it to Win 10 that I started noticing things.

First, the thing all but demanded I have a Microsoft account to continue. I got around that.
Second, it wanted email account information. I got around that.
Third it wanted a password. I could not get around that so I made it a simple one. Now I have to input the password every time I start it up.. This is another annoyance.

The average computer user would not know how to get around these startup problems and would end up giving MS some very sensitive data.  It is my intention of finishing the setup on this laptop without giving it ANY personal data or any way it can track back to me.  That privacy issues stands out as a flashing red flag when it comes to windows 10.

So I get the thing running.. Keep in mind Win 10 has been around a few years now and some "kinks" and "bugs" have already been fixed.. like the start button, or the "power button".
This one does not have a "my computer" icon..  I am finding it difficult to find things I could easily find in XP and Win7. Everything is there, but its all been changed around and reorganized making it difficult to find things that I once could find in seconds. Where is the control panel?

Why the boxy look on the home screen? Is that the home screen, or is it this other one with regular icons and the trash bin icon?  I don't know.

Either way I have decided to keep this little notebook. But I will never use it for Email or personal stuff which MS Can collect data from and track.  Why keep it then? Because most folks have already or are slowly migrating to Win10, since its the only OS available to them now, and I am starting to get more "service calls" by family and friends to come fix their computers. Computers running Win10 and its nice to have a little one here that I can use to see and play with to figure out what the did to theirs and how to correct it.

As for my Desktop computer, which is really in a full size tower case, when Win7 stops working, I might just unplug from the internet. I have no desire to allow MS, Google, or FB to be tracking me, spying on me, and dumping thousands of Adverts on me after paying the outrageous Internet access fees, that our local ISP's charge around here.

I will still have that little notebook laptop to use to fix other folks computers. So I will be fine.

Also one other note.. I gave up on tablets.. They too are being bombarded with adverts. At least with win7 I have 2 good adblockers.  Even my smart phone is now being hit with adverts. So I stopped using it for anything other than Talking and texting.

Facebook's twisted standards shuts out voices on the subject of the southern border.

Ok, I gotta spew here.

A friend of mine just got thrown into face book jail again because of a comment he made on facebook on the southern border problem. I saw his comment, and told him "you didn't go into enough detail to enable them to understand you were making an observation, not doing hate speech, which is what they claim it is".

His comment was " Nothing is going to change on the southern border until a bunch of bodies are found, shot up by Americans  defending their homes and lands from this invasion. Then maybe our stupid government will do something. Unfortunately it will be to go after the Americans"

Dude, you should have continued saying "no one wants to see this happen. But many people on the border feel it is too close to coming to that point now. Relatives on the border feel they are in a war zone and for the first time are carrying 24/7. Mean while congress passes another amnesty which is not helping this situation.

If congress continues to do nothing, I fear we will soon see a day when this kind of situation happens for real. "

Then they could not claim hate speech..

But hey, what do you expect? We know facebook is left wing trash anyways.