I upgraded to Windows 10 this weekend on the only Windows system I use, my gaming system. I had it on good authority that the games that I’ve been playing occasionally were well supported (pretty much Guild Wars II) and that it was an improvement over Windows 8 (which, unfortunately, came on my system and I was too lazy to downgrade it).

Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. They got rid of the fullscreen start menu replacement in favor of a much more user friendly option that is a natural extension of what they had right in Windows 7. There are, however, some pretty significant privacy concerns, so right off the bat I did the following (most of which I document here in case it’s not exhaustive and for later reference):

1. Privacy Settings
   1. General: Turned all off
   2. Location: Limited to only those apps that I want to see my location
   3. Camera: Limited to only those apps that I want to have camera access
   4. Speech, etc: Turn off “Getting to Know You”
   5. Contacts: Turn off “App connector”
   6. Calendar: Turn off “App connector”
   7. Feedback: Set to “Always” and “Basic”
   8. Background Apps: Turn off all but apps I actively use and want running in the background (Twitter, Dropbox, etc)
2. Wifi
   1. Wifi Sense: Turn off “Suggested” and “Contact” connection
3. Cortana
   1. Turn off Cortana
   2. Turn off search suggestions
   3. Turn off popular news
4. Edge
   1. Save passwords: off
   2. Save form entries: off
   3. Do Not Track request: on
   4. Search suggestions: off
   5. Block all cookies
   6. Media licenses: off
   7. Page prediction: off
   8. Set Chrome or Firefox as default browser then never open Edge again