Their tactics do seem to be getting people to switch. It's becoming a chore for me to update Win8 security patches without Win10 adding itself to the queue.

Getting all the older aka easier virus targets off of the Internet to me is a VERY helpful aspect.

We had a new 'monthly winner' at work today - 786 virus infections. It took over 10 minutes to boot to a [unusable] desktop.

786 virus infections

That's about standard from what I see, I have had many machines run into thousands of infections, not on the machines that I have supplied I must add!

Do not allow MS Update to include KB3035583, if you already have this in your updates then delete it, this will remove the Win10 prompt on Win7 machines, no idea if it is the same for Win 8.0/8.1

I fail to see how upgrading a computer will remove virus infections. If it is infected with persistent malware it needs to have the hard disk erased and the OS installed from scratch. Which is a problem with Win10 because it won't activate as clean install unless you pay. Thus, Microsoft's policy on this is encouraging 'dirty' upgrades instead of clean installs, and hence the proliferation of malware.

In any case, the notion that older systems are more virus prone is a myth put out by Microsoft to push upgrades. The major risks these days are insecure browsers and insecure browser plugins, plus social engineering exploits.

Any computer which continually nags the user to update software is at risk of social engineering tricks. Better that it doesn't do this at all, and the user is warned never to respond to such popups. All too often that 'Flash player update' you were told was necessary to view a (compromised) website turns out to be a spambot or password stealer.

In any case, the notion that older systems are more virus prone is a myth put out by Microsoft to push upgrades. The major risks these days are insecure browsers and insecure browser plug-ins, plus social engineering exploits.

Counterfeit copies of Windows XP fail Windows Authenticy. This denies them all security fixes from Service Pack 3 onward. That's an attack surface of close to 100 exploits. No myth in that, check years past raw logs to see what older bots were running on. There is a whole world of counterfeiters that for 10+ years have been spreading this low/no cost XP all thru Asia continent and other areas.

We had a new 'monthly winner' at work today - 786 virus infections.

I had a new one over the weekend on a laptop - 5,290!

I had a new one over the weekend on a laptop - 5,290!

Sweet!

PC came in with 'slow' complaint 2 days ago.....turns out it was running 3 anti-virus programs: Avast, AVG and McAfee.