Laptop Mag has reported that tech-support reps are telling their clients to avoid Windows 10, or uninstall the operating system.
“While going undercover for our Tech Support Showdown, we spoke with several agents who either actively discouraged us from upgrading to Windows 10 or failed to understand core features of the new OS,” the publication reported.
According to the Laptop Mag report:
- Phone-support reps from Dell and HP discouraged users from upgrading to Windows 10.
- An HP rep tried to help us roll back to Windows 8.1 during one of our support calls.
- A Lenovo rep was confused about how Cortana works.
The full report from Laptop Mag, titled PC Support Reps Tell Users to Uninstall Windows 10, is available here.
Phone-support reps from Dell and HP told us they discourage users from upgrading to Windows 10. An HP rep even tried to help us roll back to Windows 8.1 during one of our support calls. A Lenovo rep had nothing negative to say about Windows 10, but was confused about how Cortana works.
When we called Dell's support line and asked how to change the touchpad's scrolling direction on an Inspiron 15 5000 that we had upgraded to Windows 10, an agent named Jalvin told us the company is getting a ton of support calls from Windows 10 users. He recommended that we revert our notebook back to Windows 8.1, before transferring us to another rep. He told us, "there are a lot of glitches in Windows 10." Ironically, the answer to our question wasn't even Windows 10-specific. All we had to do was right-click the touchpad icon in the system tray and change a setting in the Dell control software, which is the same process as in Windows 7 or 8.
In a statement, Dell told us:
"As Windows 10 continues to evolve, we sometimes recommend a customer revert to their previous operating system to troubleshoot a specific issue they're having. In addition, we have a continuous feedback loop with Microsoft in which we share insight from our customers, like the one received from this particular call, to inform further updates to the OS and ensure Windows 10 reflects the experience our customers are seeking. We remain committed to Windows 10 and are ready to help our customers make the transition as easy as possible.”
We called HP to ask how to enable its CoolSense utility, which controls a notebook's temperature, on a Pavilion x360 that we had upgraded to Windows 10. Though the company offered the software as a Windows 10 download on the product-support page for our laptop, this utility didn't work for us. During a 57-minute-long call, a support agent named Kate took over our computer and, after she couldn't get the utility working, tried getting us to roll back to Windows 8.1. During the process, she said, "I really don't recommend [that] customers upgrade to Windows 10." When even the rollback didn't work, she advised us to buy a $40 recovery USB key to get back to the older version of Windows.
- See more at: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/support-reps-diss-windows-10#sthash.nE8ohRC8.dpuf