If you work on a PC that's been around since last summer or longer, you know the relentless, obnoxious, uninvited pop-up boxes urging you to upgrade to Windows 10. Its hype has been such that you'd think Windows 10 includes an app for getting the Israelis talking to the Palestinians.
Downloader beware.
The upgrade message assures you that all of your files will be just where you left them. It's easy, convenient, and free for a limited time! Plus, if you don't like it, Windows 10 creates recovery files that allow you to roll back to your previous operating system any time within 30 days. Don't believe it.
I wonder what in the world is in this good free deal for Microsoft? Could it perhaps translate into big bucks for Microsoft; i.e. Bill Gates and a few key employees and investors?
Windows 10 has its fans. Three of them are smart, computer-literate friends of mine who (along with several others) convinced me it would be wise to upgrade. Because, they argued, Microsoft will be discontinuing support for my old familiar Windows 7, and unless I upgrade I will miss out on ongoing security measures, etc.
Here is my experience. It is admittedly anecdotal, but throughout the past hellish week nearly a dozen friends have shared their own Windows 10 horror stories, including two who said it was downloaded without their request or consent. (Occasional pop-ups say Windows 10 will be installed in X-number of hours, and unless you catch it and specifically decline by checking three different boxes, it's a done deal.) I admit to voluntarily signing on.
So at 2 AM on a recent Tuesday morning Windows 10 was downloaded onto my beloved four-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad laptop. At approximately 8 AM I entered digital purgatory.
For a few brief moments I enjoyed the crisp new look. Then I realized I could not access the two critical elements of computerdom on which my day depends: email, and Word documents. Not to worry. I'm only a few minutes away from the charming and super-capable Geek Squad folks at a nearby electronics place. I hereby salute & applaud my local Geek Squad. It took several exhausting hours - mainly because I tried to work with someone in Bangladesh who couldn't restore my email - but the Geeks found my Word documents and a way I could send & receive email, even if files, address book etc were lost in cyberspace.
Two hours later it was all gone. Windows 10 was back in control, and denying access to anything. The next two days were essentially devoted to repeated trips to the Microsoft Store, where assorted other charming and super-capable geek types attempted to get Windows 10 the heck off of my weary laptop and roll things back to Windows 7. They could not. The only thing that eventually saved my life and laptop was a long ago purchase (and thank heavens for the auto-renew!) of Carbonite, which kept a copy of everything on my computer somewhere in its mysterious cloud. It took two straight days, but eventually I was back to where I was before the nightmare started.
Here is what Microsoft doesn't tell you:
Your computer may NOT be compatible with Windows 10.
If you attempt to upgrade using the link furnished with the ubiquitous pop-up, the installation may not be "clean." (This is what happened with my laptop; Windows 10 was sort-of installed, but not properly.) And you cannot simply re-install - or simply anything for that matter. So if you want to join the ranks of the Windows 10 fans, find a safe way to do so. Probably going to a Microsoft Store makes the best sense. The people at my local Microsoft Store were courteous and competent. They also kept bringing me bottles of cold water; I think they feared having a little old lady suffering a heart attack on their hands.
Your files may indeed be exactly where you left them (as you are repeatedly told,) but you may not be able to access them.
If you have a good anti-virus protection, you can get along just fine without whatever new security features my friends feared I would need.
And as for those "recovery files that allow you to roll back to your previous system within 30 days," don't count on it. I invested $149 in a package deal at the Microsoft Store so this could be done, but after two agonizing days of repeated trips we all conceded that the only hope was in the Carbonite cloud. If you really want to preserve the option of rolling back to your previous system, put every single piece of it into a cloud or onto a few flash drives.
Or buy a new PC and start from scratch. This I am doing with the nifty little Asus tablet the Microsoft Store folks set me up with so I could work during Hell Week. Of course by the end of the week I was loving it, so am spending the $300 to keep it for traveling. But I don't expect to be able to do anything but the most rudimentary tasks on it for a very, very long time.
In the meantime I will be studying my brand new, 325-page Windows 10 for Seniors For Dummies. And I'm adding my Asus to my Carbonite account.