Windows 10 is now more widely available to eligible upgraders. It’s a neat operating system, but there are some tweaks you should consider implementing.
Windows 10 Is Sharing Your Wi-Fi
By default, Windows 10 wants you to be connected. Isn’t that nice and warm and fuzzy? Yeah, sure it is, but it comes with some solid privacy concerns. The default is to connect to open hotspots and share your Wi-Fi connection with Outlook contacts, Skype contacts and Facebook friends. You may be comfortable with sharing with friends, but automatically hooking into public hotspots is a great way to get phished. Disable it by heading to Settings>Network & Internet>Wi-Fi>Manage Wi-Fi Settings.
Windows 10 Updates May Be Eating Up Your Bandwidth
Microsoft’s strategy for delivering Windows 10 updates does away with the old “Patch Tuesday” methodology for rolling out masses of updates. Indeed, the number system is a little irrelevant itself, as it appears that Windows 10 will just be a continually upgraded creature from now on.
Delivering all that data is tricky, as we’ve seen with the actual rollout. Part of Microsoft’s strategy around this is to enable peer to peer sharing of updates, either across a local network, or the Internet at large.
If you’ve got a number of Windows 10 machines, local network update sharing makes a lot of sense, but within the Australian context unless you’re sitting on a fast, fat data pipe, sharing it out is perhaps less enticing. It’s enabled by default, but to switch it off, search for “Check For Updates” from the start menu. From there, choose “Windows Update”, and from within there, “Advanced Options”. In the section “Choose How Updates Are Installed” there’s a toggle for “Update From More Than One Place”. That’s where you control exactly how you want updates to be handled.
Dammit, I Still Don’t Have A Start Menu!
Windows 10 mixes up the “live tiles” feature of Windows 8 along with the classic start menu, because it was one of those features that a lot of users wanted back.
But what if you don’t want live tiles at all? It’s a remarkably simple fix. Right clicking on any given live tile in the start menu gives you the option to unpin it. Do that to every tile, and you’re left with a blank area where the tiles used to be, which is kind of ugly. However, you can click and drag that blank area to neatly collapse it to the left, giving you a more classic start menu look.
Windows 10 Is Spying On Me!
You know how Google makes a lot of its money from data mining to deliver more “personalised” ads to you? Microsoft would like some of that sweet, sweet advertising cash too, which is why Windows 10, by default, does a lot of data mining. Getting the utmost privacy within Windows 10 is rather tricky, all things considered.
You’ve got to head to Settings>Privacy and adjust the settings for General, Location, Camera, Microphone, Speech Inking & Typing, Account Info, Contacts, Calendar, Messaging, Radios, Other devices, Feedback & Diagnostics and Background Apps. Yep, you’ve got to do them all individually.
While Cortana isn’t active for Australian English just yet, once she is you’ll need to consider canning her, as like Siri or Google Now, she’s collecting personal information. Depending on your usage and comfort levels, you may also want to consider not using a Microsoft account on your Windows 10 machine in order to keep everything private.
Kill Quick Access
The new default in Windows Explorer is “Quick Access”, a feature that shows you your most recently used files. Some will love it, some will hate it, but it’s again pretty easy to fix if you prefer a more “classic” view. While in Windows Explorer, select View>Options. At the top of the options dialog you’ve got the option to change “Open File Explorer” to “This PC”, which restores the more classic view if it’s to your taste.
Sources: BGR, Lifehacker, PC World
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