Windows 10 Upgrade Topics

There is much discussion now about recent changes in the Windows 10 upgrade notifications and behavior, and the scheduled July 29 end of the free upgrade availability. Below are some recent articles that address these topics.

• Windows 10 Hits 300 Million Active Devices, Free Upgrade Still Ends July 29
• Microsoft Will Turn Off Windows 10 Upgrade Nagware In July
• The Ability to Cancel or Schedule the Windows 10 Upgrade is Not New

An alternative to upgrading in-place is to perform a clean install. This requires more work, but results in better performance and reliability by virtue of not carrying forward the baggage and debris accumulated by years of running Windows 7 or 8. Below are some articles about clean installation.They cover much of the same ground, with some variation in wording. The first link gives important details about the overall process, including how to handle your programs, files and settings. Note: in order to use the media creation tool you must be logged in with an Administrator account.

• How to clean install Windows the right way
• Microsoft instructions for media creation and clean install
• How to do a Clean Install of Windows 10, the Easy Way
• Revive a Windows 7 system with a clean install
• How to Clean Install Windows 10 on a Solid State Drive

Windows 10 Guides:

• Complete Guide to Windows 10 
• Understand and Configure Privacy Settings

Also see these two Youtube videos:

• 5 Things You Should Do After Upgrading to Windows 10
• Windows 10 Beginners Guide

Frequent Lightning Disrupting 75 m

Frequent lightning on the morning of 4/27/16 dominated my reception on 3740 kHz (and all of the 75 m band). The 24-hour map of lightning below shows where the activity was located. Yellow represents data that is up to 15 minutes old, relative to 0535 CDT. Orange is up to 2 hours old, and red through blue represent data that is 2 to 24 hours old.

From LightningMaps.org - Click to enlarge.

My SDR receiver display below shows that static crashes were very frequent and very broad-banded.The top part of the display is the panadapter format, with signal level represented on the vertical scale and frequency (kHz) on the horizontal scale. The bottom part of the display is the waterfall format, with time progressing vertically down the display, frequency on the horizontal scale, and average signal level represented by color.

Panafall display at 0623 CDT - click to enlarge

Compare this display with the one in my earlier post that showed less frequent lightning activity compared with a nice strong signal from W4PRE.