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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how Windows 10 can be used in a lot of small business environments.

If you are big enough to get the enterprise version, everything apparently can be tweaked. But there are a lot of tiny businesses that order a PC from Dell, install some software for their vertical, and then do little more than regularly install updates. My old dentist was a two person operation. They aren't going to get the enterprise version yet they need to handle medical and billing records securely.

Either I'm totally misinformed, or the professional version of Windows isn't suitable for many professionals. I'd be happy if somebody could explain why it's the former.

I also wish Microsoft were more transparent about the data that is sent to them. Why is a machine with all the options set with privacy in mind still in constant contact with Microsoft?

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Apple devices have the same issues but for some reason nobody is talking about it. Just install Little Snitch and you will see arrays of services trying to access apple.com. I don't think they are malicious but it makes the device super noisy and exfiltrates a lot of information.

Putting on my trusting hat, I would think that MS is only transmitting enough data to keep the machine running and virus free without any intervention from the non-technical people. So it would be a safe machine for a small company without any IT staff. A lot of those companies just take the computer out of the box and plug it in and don't do anything further anyway.

I don't see why they don't just add the option to disable that with appropriate labeling, though, if nothing else to satisfy the more vocal, privacy-concerned folks.

> I don't see why they don't just add the option to disable that with appropriate labeling, though, if nothing else to satisfy the more vocal, privacy-concerned folks.

Your last point basically contradicts the first one, IMHO, because you have an OS that itself becomes a giant spyware. You don't know what MS is doing with all that data. The could very well resell them to 3rd parties, give it to states, ...

And the "you can't turn that off" is obviously by design. You can't turn off a spyware.

> trusting hat

If you are wrong and Microsoft suffers a breach, your defense for HIPAA violations has to be better than "but I trusted Microsoft!"

> I would think that MS is only transmitting enough data to keep the machine running and virus free

I don't think that's true. It uploads what you type, your calendar, contacts, etc... so that things like Cortana work better. What makes me nervous is that even if you turn off all the Cortana things that you can, Cortana is still always running. Plus, how often to business users use Cortana?

Well, mostly what they would lose is the None/Security level. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85... has a description of the levels. The minimum for Open License is only five copies BTW.

Unfortunately with all US and Alaska tribes, their IT/MIS upgrade their systems as soon as an new OS releases... So in order to keep up we have to install the latest Windows to ensure our application runs without issues. That is the only reason why we do it, though we test on VMs and our workstations are still Windows 7.

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