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Windows 10 is approaching the end of its first year out in the wild and so far, over 350 million people have made the upgrade. To mark the occasion, Microsoft is planning a big Anniversary Update, which will come out on the 2nd of August. While it will bring plenty of new features, it will also stop people from disabling Cortana, the Windows 10 digital assistant.
Previously, Cortana actually had an off switch, you could opt out of all of its features and just be left with a basic search bar. However, in the upcoming update, this will no longer be an option and Cortana will arrive switched on permanently for everyone.
This means the basic Start Menu search bar used to find files or programs on your PC will have Cortana built-in. The anniversary update is mandatory too, so there is no completely avoiding it unless you are an enterprise customer.
Cortana can still be easily ignored, the Cortana search box in the taskbar can be switched off. On top of that, the privacy conscious can sign out of Cortana and use it anonymously, so Microsoft won’t receive any data surrounding calendars, contacts or browsing history that is directly tied to your account. Anonymous usage data will still be collected though.
In a statement given to Business Insider a Microsoft spokesperson explained: “With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the search box is now Cortana. Customers can expect the same great search experience powered by Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana’s personality. We know consumers want choice and we make it easy to customize Cortana’s personalization or opt-out of Cortana’s suite of personalized services.”
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KitGuru Says: I have had Cortana switched on since installing Windows 10 but I don’t ever really pay any attention to it and often forget it’s there so I don’t think this is really a big deal. However, that’s just me, other people may have good reason to dislike Cortana. How many of you guys have Windows 10 installed already? Do you use Cortana at all?
I don’t have it anyway… when we will see it in more countries?
LOL I am sure we will figure out how to get rid of it.
Just gotta find the files where Cortana sits and delete em.
I bet that Microsoft will scan for missing files with every update and re-download them.
Great, maybe it is time to register inbound and outbound communication in my firewall, to block updates entirely. Why should I update my windows 10 anymore? When it is blocked, Windows will try to update itself, then it wont be able to. 😀
Hi cortana! Want to go on a date?
Cortana: not even in your wildest dreams you basement dwelling moma’s boy fatass WoW player, A.K.A.- loser!
HEY! I don’t play Warcraft!!…. anymore…. Damn, cortana is so realistic, just like real women!
I am scared…. I am downloading windows 10 right now… I held out long as I could, but I’ll need dx12 someday =,(.
MICROSOFT- all I have to say to you as I begrudgingly install your app, is shame on you. All the spying, all the store pushing UWP nonsense, metro, and forced updates. This isn’t what made windows a legend! Bill Gates! Please come back out of retirement and take back control of your company! He’d come back dressed in black with bulging muscles and biker chains, tattoos that say “M$” and kick some ASS!
He murdered Steve Jobs…. company
He murdered all his competition
now he is gona murder you!
BILL GATES IS BACK! AND THIS TIME IT’S PROFESSIONAL!
BILL GATED rated pg 13
My download is almost done =,(
Goodbye windows 8.1… I will actually miss you. We had so many adventures together, and I learned so many things as I practiced my craft, using apps that ran on you. So many games were played. We argued a few times but eventually we sorted things out as I changed FOR YOU! I changed for you, so you would be happy to run the things I needed.. We got old together, and now it’s time to put you in the old folks home, because that’s how much I care.
This is it… Please take off your hats in respect folks… I am no longer a boy, but now a dude. Windows 10 is downloaded, and ready to install. May God have mercy upon our souls! SHAME ON YOU M$ … SHAME! ON! YOU!!!!!
Meanwhile with 1.4 Billion active android users happily being tracked by google Corp, our ever reliance on sat-nav and search engines and our willingness to sign multipage contracts without reading them I think its a bit late to bitch about Cortana.
Besides I don’t know when the Cortana project was started but isn’t she about due to start degrading with rampancy? If not follow my lead and set up your phone and your PC beside each other and have a Cortana vs Google Now faceoff then go live in the woods.
Here come the draconian business practices…
I earn in the range of $6.000-$8.000 /month with an online job i found on internet. For those of you who are prepared to work easy online jobs for 2-5 h /day from comfort of your home and earn valuable paycheck for doing it… This is a job for you… SELF99.COM
fwefwe
Kinda like how if you update a game on steam and it replaces missing files right? Well then post pone windows updates as much as you can to do big updates at once instead of small ones constantly so you Dont have to constantly delete the files. Also, Im sure if enough users complain or even withdraw from windows 10 back to older OS, Microsoft will quickly change it’s tune on Cortana being on 100% of time.
Majority of users probably wouldn’t care either way and probably wouldn’t be interested in the hassle of going back to 7/8 even if they did prefer it.
depends on said firewall, they have workarounds to 99% of consumer available ones, so you might think is blocked, but often will not be
massive difference of a phone which you are buying for specific uses kind of like a console, and a computer which is all your games, files, apps etc, they think they have the right to tell you what you can or cannot use, when you can use it, or how it will be used/updated etc, MASSIVE fk difference, just cause other companies did this, does not at all means MSFT should have, and certainly not rolled updates to pull the same crap with win vista/7/8 users, they should be facing lawsuits and get told by supreme courts to get rid of the forced spying/updates/control over property which does NOT belong to them.
I guess millions do not care, but I can assure you tens of millions do, MSFT needs be slapped quite hard for pulling the many things they did in win10, performance is only such a small fraction of good considering all the BS that is also part of it that many users simply will not know about or how to prevent it, so MSFT gets its cake and eats it too.
you really do not want it anyways IMO, user interface is garbage, it does NOT perform any better then win 7 or 8/8.1(which are also garbage) it forces downloads, force updates of programs that are beyond X “age” since last updated etc, there are far more bad then good with win10 which MSFT could have easily avoided, but they dont care, they make billions $$$, so they continue being tools, the last windows which was awesome was 7, why, Bill Gates forced them to fix the fk up that was Vista, so 7 came about, after that, he was no longer there, so they pulled similar BS with 8/8.1/10 after tons of closed testing where many of their user base told them not to do this or that, but they did anyways.
It sucks cause many want to use windows as this is what they are used to using, and now if we want to use it, we have to deal with the BS ways that Win10 now has, its heads they win tails we lose business practise, kind of like Nvidia runs things.
Have you really used them? I mean there are a few things that I find at least suspicious, but in matter of performance they are the best windows I have ever used, and I use computers since the DOS era.
I didn’t noticed at first, but since I still use windows 7 in the office I started getting frustrated with windows 7 soon, because I have being using windows 10 at home and they perform better and are more stable, so I had something to compare now.
Before that I was thinking windows 7 are the best because I was comparing them to windows XP and vista.
As for the UI I find it way better than windows 7, those tiles at start menu have really made me ditch stardock and rainmeter that I had in 7, unlike that fullscreen crap from windows 8 that cut you off the desktop and finally the winkey+tab does something useful and brings all the windows you have open in one screen.
As for the updates, I haven’t anything forced on me, I have windows updates open (which perform really without interrupting me, unlike in windows 7 where they could chock my CPU, without any reason), the other programs that you mention where are they? You mean from the windows store? The rest of the programs I have doesn’t get forced to update, and I don’t think it is possible to be honest.
Also do you really judge an OS from the bundled apps it have? Who use them anyway?
What the hell lol I have no idea what point you are trying to make. You do know Android is not just in phones right? Its in consoles, TV’s, tablets, Christ it’s even in microwave ovens and it’s extremely dubious spying and tracking methods are a he’ll of a lot worse than anything Microsoft has ever pulled.
Why is it people think just because you don’t put down £100 on the counter for Android you think they are the good guys. You do realise Google stores all your data, search history, map data right back to 2005. I requested and deleted mine and it was about 1.5gb yet people are worried about Cortana on the desktop. She’s really not that bad and no-one is forcing you to use it, just ignore it if you don’t like it.
Exactly! If they want not to force disable Cortana they need to enable it first.
I use Windows 7 and what is this Cortana? 😉
Ahhh, the Orwellian nightmare just begun!
I fully expect M$ to progressively remove all users rights and control to finally switch to a subscription model. And if you dare not pay them 1 month, you’ll lose access to your own computer and data! The trap is closing! It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! Welcome to the future! A future where you have no rights, own nothing and perpetually pay! What a great, consumer oriented business model!
The terms and conditions will read “The operating system and all software installed is the property of Microsoft. Fuck you.”