After its pop-up encouraging users to upgrade to Windows 10 was called a “nasty trick” by many users, Microsoft has back pedaled and undone some changes recently made onto the pop-up.
Users were very frustrated when they found that clicking the cross to dismiss the pop-up box actually ended up being interpreted as them agreeing to update.
In response to “customer feedback,” Microsoft promised to add another notification that provided users with “an additional opportunity for cancelling the upgrade.”
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“We’ve added another notification that confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade and provides the customer an additional opportunity for cancelling the upgrade,” Microsoft recently told a news source.
“If the customer wishes to continue with their upgrade at the designated time, they can click ‘OK’ or close the notifications with no further action needed.”
It was Brad Chacos, senior editor for PC World magazine, who called the pop up “a nasty trick” despite himself being a fan of the Windows10 operating system.
“I don’t think that adding more pestering pop-ups improves the situation. At the very least they should add a large, obvious ‘No, I don’t want this’ button.” the editor continued. Since the Windows 10 update became available, Chacos has been a more vocal critic of what he sees as “heavy-handed tactics that Microsoft’s been using to force people into the upgrade.”
Chacos stated that since users previously had to press the cross to cancel selected upgrades, swapping out the cross meaning for one that is affirmative in wanting the upgrade is “akin to swapping out the brake and accelerator in your car.”
Users have been swapping horror stories of difficult upgrades and the unnecessarily frustrating process of attempting to stop an upgrade after it has accidentally started. Havard Hughe’s experience was one of the more typical ones:
“Windows 10 update ran on my PC despite all my efforts to stop it, including dismissing the update several times and frantically trying to abort the installation as it started when I was halfway through writing an important email… My attempt to roll it back to Windows 7 resulted in the blue screen of death and a dead PC. Now I have to reinstall my home computer from scratch because of this so-called ‘free’ upgrade. As someone who paid for my software and was perfectly happy with my fully functional Windows 7 machine, this has been an absolute disaster.”
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Unfortunately this author has had her own issues with the Windows 10 update. While I opted into the update purposefully and of my own accord, the new software ended up being incompatible with my refurbished ThinkPad, which came with Windows 8 already installed. Issues with internet connectivity didn’t start maturing until the month after it was possible to opt into rolling back to Windows 8, at which point Microsoft service support told me that I would have to purchase Windows 8 again, but from a third party provider because Microsoft no longer carried the Windows 8 software. Duped and frustrated, I was forced to choose between buying something I already bought and pirating something I already bought.
