You are correct to a point. If you use contemporary computer/smart-phone based services using their default settings you willingly surrender telemetry and data about yourself and how you use those products.
What most people out there overlook is the fact that;
1) If you dig through the settings on Facebook, Amazon, Google, OSX, Windows etc. you can switch a lot of the data-collection off - you still need to trust the provider that off means off, but is much better than doing nothing, 2) Tracking cookies can easily be disabled or defeated with 10 minutes of research, 2) In the west we are (for now) free to choose to use encryption services (VPN, PGP etc.) to limit what many service-providers are able to collect, 3) You are free to choose not to use these services (which might be an inconvenience) and use other products.
20th century dictators would have loved to have the kind of data collection and telemetry analysis now available to most corporations. It's sad how willing most are to provide it for free (as in beer) trinkets and convenience and believe that provided this data is not opened up or joined up…
I suppose he probably means CEIP which is enabled by default in Windows7. Like i allready pointed out above.
Also i think that people do need to realise that Windows10 is basicly not a standalone OS anymore. Its basicly an cloud based OS which is build up on MS online services. Thats one of the main reasons that you basicly cannot disable all the spying and data collection in it. You can disable some of the data collecting and spying, but definitely not all of it. If you could disable all of it, you OS would get pretty much unusable.
And like allready pointed out above, no matter how hard you try blocking those MS spying domains, no matter how manny blocks you set in place. MS own a gazillion tracking and spying domains. They well get you nomatter what, some of the stuff is simply hardcodded in the OS. A simple update could over rule every changes you make.
Ya, it's closed source so you don't know what it is doing. There can always be things that are added in via update that subvert your changes to the OS or add in other malicious functions.
I also think that the fact that Windows10 is basicly a cloud based OS build up on MS services. Is also one of the reasons that you dont own the OS anymore. Wenn using Windows10 you are basicly the product, and you get licensed to use those Microsoft services. Why do you think that DX12 will be Windows10 only? Maybe because DX12 is not only an api anymore, but also a service? And your hardware basicly gets licensed to use it? MS wants to dominate the gaming world, with their DX12 api. And the Xbox console platform based on the same api.
Maybe my thoughts might be a bit too far off right now. But yeah.
Hopefully Linux and Vulkan is getting a bright future, and might become a good alternative option for desktop users and gamers one day.
Professional gives you an extra option to delay updates that are not related to security. That is all. To disable all of the telemetry you'll have to basically hack the operating system. Fortunately there are tools for that. (Like "O&O Shutup10" for instance)
I don't have any networking experience, but finding out what gets sent would be so fucking useful. Whether to smear the shit all over MS or find out if it's harmless, either way. I just wanna know man.
Huh, I thought stuff like Pro, Enterprise, and Education would allow you to turn off the telemetry stuff.
Just never connect to the internet, problem solved? No seriously though, I sort of hate that Intel and Microsoft sound like they will hold up their promise about not having security updates for Skylake systems on older editions of Windows.