I’ve been using Windows 10’s technical preview a bit today in a virtual machine.

It’s far, far better than Windows 8. Still too garish, and too flat though.

But an absolutely terrible feature in the OS is that like Unity and other crappy OSes and interfaces before it,  it sends all searches inside the OS to Microsoft with no way in the UI to turn it off.

So for instance if you search for “rectal thermometer,” Microsoft knows about it.

This is what happens when you click on the built-in Search feature:

First of all, why would I want to see come crap about Alyssa Milano when I click on “Search?”

Second, why would I want to send any search to Microsoft, ever, if done inside the OS itself?

Yeah, yeah, cloud everything. But I’m not interested in the cloud. I’m interested in having a computer that does only what I want it to do, not a machine that spews my data all over the internet for the NSA and everyone to see.

There is no obvious way to turn this “feature” off in the UI, though I am sure with a GPO or similar it’s achievable.

But there should be a way to kill it that doesn’t require someone with a career in IT to find.

Still evaluating the OS – probably something more comprehensive about it all later.