If you are familiar with Windows 10 you will be aware of a number of issues that are material to computers that are used mainly for presentations of content onto a projector. Microsoft has changed these operating systems to be more pushy and intrusive in the areas of
- Updates
- Notifications
Firstly updates, since Windows 8 the default setting for update installation has been to automatically install the updates and then automatically restart your computer regardless of what you are doing at the time, with all apps forced to close whether the data in them is saved or not. MS has understandably really got users’ backs up over the forced updates. You wouldn’t want your computer to suddenly restart in the middle of your slideshow or some important document you are editing, and yet even on Enterprise edition that is the default setting. Also since Windows 10 there is no GUI access to change the settings to stop the automatic installation. You have to be running an edition of 10 that gives you access to Local Group Policy Editor in order to be able to change these settings, and that will be Pro or Enterprise, as I covered in a previous posting.
Secondly notifications, we have this thing called popup or toast notifications and there is a notification icon that sits in the task tray that the messages pop up from. I previously posted how to switch the computer into quiet mode and keep it in quiet mode in order to turn off the popup notifications. Although it stops most of them MS is still being pushy with update notifications and I have noticed that the update alerts will appear at startup or resuming from hibernation. I have also seen them start to popup if I have not responded to the alerts notification that has been suppressed even in quiet mode, it seems MS will only allow the update alerts popup to be suppressed for a few days then it will just ignore the quiet mode setting and start harassing you again, popping up the “You need some updates” in a modal dialog that you have to dismiss in the middle of anything you are doing.
The next step to look at is presentation mode. Laptop computer have access to the Mobility Center which has a button you can click to put the computer into presentation mode. A desktop doesn’t have access to the Mobility Center but there are other ways of getting to that setting so I am about to start testing those options.