Two weeks ago I finally let the laptop take the Windows 10 upgrade after that little "Get Windows 10" icon had been sitting in my system tray since sometime back in June, quietly badgering me every time I looked at the taskbar. I'd been putting it off. Not because I hate Windows 10 exactly, I actually dont mind it so far, but because every big OS upgrade means an evening lost turning things back off that got turned on without asking me first.
So thats what last Tuesday night turned into. Ill save you some of the digging.
The one everyone's been writing about since launch day is Wi-Fi Sense. Its the feature that, by default, offers to share your Wi-Fi password with your Outlook contacts, your Skype contacts, and your Facebook friends if you connect that account, so they can get online at your place without you reading them the password off a sticky note. Sounds convenient in theory. It also means anyone sitting in those contact lists could, in theory, land on your network, and the whole thing ships opt-out rather than opt-in on a fresh install. You find it under Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Manage Wi-Fi settings, and there are three separate toggles to flip if you want it fully off. Three. Not one.
The privacy tab, toggle by toggle
The bigger privacy panel is honestly more of a slog to get through because theres just so much of it. Settings > Privacy has its own left-hand list, and each section carries its own set of switches:
- General has the advertising ID toggle, the one that lets apps build a profile on you across the whole machine, on by default. Theres also a SmartScreen web-content check and a "help us improve typing and writing" toggle that samples what you type and sends it back.
- Location gets its own tab, worth a look even on a laptop that never leaves the kitchen table.
- Feedback & Diagnostics lets you set how often Windows asks you for feedback. I set mine to Never, though a full diagnostic opt-out isnt really on offer unless youre running an Enterprise build, which I am not.
- Speech, Inking & Typing decides whether Cortana and dictation get to learn your voice and your handwriting over time.
None of this is nefarious exactly, and I dont think Microsoft is doing anything here that Google or Facebook arent already doing inside their own apps. But defaulting all of it to on during a setup flow most people click through in under five minutes is still a choice, and not a neutral one. The Insider builds at least warned testers this stuff was coming for months. The general public upgrading off the "Get Windows 10" prompt didnt get that same runway.
If youre still sitting on the fence about upgrading, or you already did the express install and havent gone spelunking through Settings since, its worth the fifteen minutes. Wi-Fi Sense alone is worth switching off if you share a house with anyone whose contact list you dont fully control, which, lets be honest, is all of us.
One more small thing while Im already in here complaining: the Start menu keeps resizing itself oddly on my laptop every time I plug in an external monitor at my desk, and I havent tracked down a fix for that one yet. If anyone reading this has found a registry tweak or a setting Im missing, my inbox is open, Ive been ignoring it for two weeks now and just shrinking it back down by hand like an animal.
For what its worth I still havent touched my actual desktop machine. Its running 8.1, it works fine, and Im in no hurry to change that, GWX icon nagging or not. Some upgrades can wait until Ive got a free Saturday and not just a Tuesday night I was supposed to spend doing literally anything else.