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The issue here is not auto update of software per se, but the fact that Microsoft downloads a massive new operating system, without the customer's consent, over metered Internet connections. This unauthorized download is costing some customers money. An expense they did not agree to!
See this line in the opening message of this thread:
Quote: My client just got her internet bill for the month - data usage is up 300 percent and she is now responsible to pay for this
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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Cornelius Henning wrote: This unauthorized download is costing some customers money.
Yes, I got that from the OP. I've seen many people, including in this thread, claim that auto update itself is a terrible thing. I thought you were referring to auto update in general and not just this specific instance. My mistake for misunderstanding.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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The impact seems to vary depending on which version of windows you upgrade from. I upgraded from 64bit 8.1 and discovered that the upgrade cost me 3.4Gb against my data cap. Upgrading from 32bit would be substantially more costly as the upgrade downloads both the 64bit and 32bit versions. (I discovered this in one of the later updates where the test for 64bit was not performed before downloading the update. Bad, bad, Microsoft!)
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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It's probably stated deep in the Terms. So while they did it, you're probably the one responsible.
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Sad person that I am, I read the terms and yes, there is a clause that forbids class actions.
They must have spent more time on the terms of use than thinking about the impact of force feeding the punters.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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"The Terms"... Which terms? Windows 7? 8? 8.1? 10?
If it's a generic restriction against class action lawsuits (which I'm not even certain can be legally binding) then I can see it being in there for a long time. But then again, if it was only added to the terms recently, there may be an argument that the user didn't or couldn't have agreed to those terms.
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It is the Windows 10 terms that users are required to agree to if they want to use the software.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Haha, so Microsoft expects that hold up in court?
"Hey! You haven't installed this software we surreptitiously downloaded in the background, but you can't sue us about it!"
Good luck. I hope it's been in their terms since Windows 7, otherwise they won't have a leg to stand on. As I said though, I'm not ever sure that clauses like this are legally binding. It'd be like trying to say you can't sue them for downloading child porn or pirated movies to your computer without your consent. No way that flies in any sane court.
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I don't think they do think much before they do something. Plus, I barely trust a company that can't count correctly.
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Terms in a EULA aren't law, and there's no reason a judge has to respect them.
That said, I kind of hope it doesn't become a class action. The plaintiffs in a class action never get anything near an amount that covers their actual loss.
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How does it come about that each PC has a separate download? Surely these 30 PCs are not each individually connected to the Internet? 
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it is being downloaded silently by windows update, we have it a work on all windows 7 and 8.1 machines.
Were just lucky to have a leased line
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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No indeed.
I'm quite surprised Microsoft did this, they should know better.
Chances are they will have to revert that again due to too many complaints. (fingers crossed)
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They should block M$ from the firewalls, easy!
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
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Precisely why you should have auto update turned off on your PCs - if you have win 7 or 8 configured to just notify when important updates are waiting, you can go into optional updates and turn off the win10 download. That said you have to go and check this every time you download patches as windows repeatedly turns this download back on.
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I have PeerBlock, now *that* is a little piece of software that works  It blocks millions of IPs, including MS one. When you need you allow them for a while.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
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23741 wrote: I just heard from a client where they have a very bad internet connection due to their location where their data cap is somewhat restrictive.
...
there are no plans to update to Windows 10 at this location.
The boneheaded prefetch move not withstanding (and this's why businesses should be running pro/enterprise and using WSUS instead of windows update), they're one of the groups that'd benefit the most from a W10 upgrade. Configure it to share patches on the lan using P2P and they'll only have to download them once instead of 30 times even if they continue to leave updating in consumer mode.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: Configure it to share patches on the lan using P2P and they'll only have to download them once instead of 30 times
Exactly the point I was trying to make earlier. I couldn't work out why, especially with a poor connection, you would have 30 computers each independently updating. Contributory negligence and all that!
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Win 7/8 don't support P2P patching; when MS pushed the W10 installer to everyone using Windows Update (even if you didn't reserve it earlier) it hammered their bandwidth hard. W8 does have an option to not do some things on a metered connection (not available in W7) and has some ability to snoop those connection types (presumably by the IP your provider gives you) but unless they made an exception for the W10 offer it'd've gone through since the site would need to be configured to have windows update use their metered office connection to patch (vs your or I not wanting to download Patch Tuesday to our laptops while tethered to our phones while away from home).
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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23741 wrote: They have approximately 30 PCs - where each of these PCs were forced behind the scenes to download Windows 10 for installation - without the users consent
While it is a boneheaded move from Microsoft, I manage less than that many PCs and VMs here at home, and I've prevented that whole fiasco from ever happening by running my own WSUS machine, from which I can control any and all patches Microsoft tries to push out. And it's no trouble keeping it up to date even on my puny 5mbps residential DSL connection.
This Windows 10 update thing has been discussed for months already - whoever is doing their IT administration seriously needs to keep up and plan for these things to avoid exactly this.
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dandy72 wrote: I manage less than that many PCs and VMs here at home, and I've prevented that whole fiasco from ever happening by running my own WSUS machine, from which I can control any and all patches Microsoft tries to push out.
Out of curiosity, how much time/money did it take to setup? I've generally had 3-4 PCs at my home over the years; and while my cables fast enough bandwidth isn't a real issue, I've occasionally found myself wanting more centralized control over things. Needing to upgrade all of my boxes to Pro Versions of Windows and to get Windows Server license has always looked like a lot more money than I'd want to invest in the project.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Hard to put an actual time figure as I'm a software developer, not an IT guy, but I do draw on decades of experience managing my own stuff - I view that as just being one part that's understood to be part of my job description and never had any formal training to do that sort of thing. In a larger environment, where somebody is expected have a full-time job dedicated to IT management, I'd leave it to those people.
I have to think that someone who's in charge of 30 PCs in an actual office environment would have, if not the know-how to get WSUS going, then at the very least the resourcefulness to do the research for it. Honest, installing it from scratch and going over the options and configuring it probably took me less than 20 minutes (it's pretty trivial). The rest of the initial process consists of just letting it download everything you allow it to, which can take a few hours for the initial update synchronization. But that's completely hands-off.
As for cost, well, WSUS is part of Windows Server, and my use of that license is covered by my MSDN subscription. For a standalone server in a standard office, I believe it's a few hundred bucks - well worth it if it means that office's IT guy remains in control of the Windows patches. Otherwise, if you're leaving every computer handle its own updates...I wouldn't want to be part of that organization.
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dandy72 wrote: I have to think that someone who's in charge of 30 PCs in an actual office environment would have, if not the know-how to get WSUS going, then at the very least the resourcefulness to do the research for it.
Assuming there is someone actually in charge, as opposed to "Joe Who's Good with Computers" (read "has installed a Minecraft mod") handling day to day trivial problems as an ancillary duty and the boss hiring out to people like 23741 for specific problems that are beyond his ability but not for general support. For a small business, I wouldn't be surprised if that's all they felt they needed until some disaster convinced them otherwise (depending on what the overage charge is, this might do it, or might not).
dandy72 wrote: As for cost, well, WSUS is part of Windows Server, and my use of that license is covered by my MSDN subscription.
Not really, although I've never heard of MS auditing individual licenses. MSDN server software/OS licenses are only licensed for development/test purposes; not production use.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx[^]
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: Not really, although I've never heard of MS auditing individual licenses. MSDN server software/OS licenses are only licensed for development/test purposes; not production use.
So where do you draw the line? I actually write software that does patch management, and getting the current enterprise patch state from WSUS/SCCM is part of what I do.
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My understanding is that you can tell Windows 10, as with Windows 8 previously, that you are on a metered connection. Once that is set then I think low priority updates are not downloaded automatically.
Not tested this but that's my understanding.
All round good guy.
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