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Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

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Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#161

Post by weka »

danShumway wrote: post #11
mentos wrote: post #2

“They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet. Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.”

That's a pretty clear dark pattern, no? At the very least, it signals that Microsoft really doesn't want users creating offline accounts. Which is troubling, because their TOS for online accounts is quite onerous, and includes a couple of problematic restrictions, including a mandatory arbitration agreement. If I was a Windows user who relied on local accounts this would be very worrying to me.

It's most definitely a dark pattern.

Just how reddit now prompts you to enter an email when you register but it's not marked as required and it doesn't say optional either.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#162

Post by withaplomb »

thrower123 wrote: post #146
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #100

...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic. Here’s a true story that happened to my family. My son is the only person in the house who uses Windows. For his game machine. He set up a Microsoft online account. It got hacked - someone set up a fake family and managed to get my son’s account listed under it as a child. As a consequence, he couldn’t install any new software. I’m not sure wha…

I'm almost certain that you were not talking to a real Microsoft employee. Most Fortune 500s have their helpdesks and customer service outsourced to the Tatas and Wipros, Cognizants and HCLs of the world, who may or may not further subcontract the actual bodies filling the roles. Quite frankly, first-level support is useless and ignorant; at best they have scripts for common issues, but to do anything you need to def…

Even people who are bad at their jobs are real people. We can’t assume that everyone of low intelligence or motivation is sub human. Just say agency and authority, that made your point.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#165

Post by chank »

blahedo wrote: post #71
chank wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal is, big corps want it. Everything as a service. Easy to write off. Easy to ramp up and down as needed.

Do they though? My friends that work IT in corporate settings seem to tear their hair out every time MS (or anyone ) tries to auto-push an update that they haven't had a chance to rigorously test for compatibility and security with their existing stuff. Some of them have fiduciary responsibility to not add/change/upgrade software without carefully testing it first. That doesn't seem compatible with the trajectory Win…

They do. I work in a very large corp. 25k+ employees, 5bn+ net revenue per year. Our entire IT dept. is outsourced, we're on office365, rent all of our hardware which is refreshed at regular intervals as part of the deal. Everything developed native cloud, all our offices are rented. We basically do everything we can to reduce capital expenditures.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#166

Post by inferiorhuman »

nickjj wrote: post #81
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pre…

As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.

I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement.

At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enforce invasive telemetry. I don't care how good WSL is, I don't want to be spied on or coerced into allowing spyware to run.

The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you. I've used chocolataey (ugh), and I don't want to do all of my development in a VM. I recently set up a Win 7 VM to get a small C# library built. Turns out it was easier to build it on my Mac and copy it over.

Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates

Let me stop you right there. I'm not going to consider anything with forced spyware and forced updates. Until those are fixed I don't care about the rest.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#167

Post by jen729w »

weka wrote: post #158
tapirl wrote: post #153

As a happy Win8 user, that's exactly the reason why I switched from Win10 to Linux. Many offline functions need online to perform. It is sad.

And I refuse to kowtow to a company who thinks its okay to purchase a stand for $1,000 for another piece of hardware you've additionally paid for.

Couldn’t resist a dig at Apple in a totally unrelated thread, eh?

You know you can use any monitor you like. You don’t have to buy their $6,000 monitor. I’ve used Macs happily for years and have yet to spend that much on a monitor or a stand.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#169

Post by dhruvkar »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #154

Meanwhile, the Linux world is wasting its biggest opportunity to take over the desktop space. IMO, Unintuitive interfaces (e.g. Gnome shell), forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps) and lack of care for graphic design are the biggest things keeping the masses away from the Linux desktop, because in other areas (speed, robustness, privacy, control) it just blows Windows out of the…

Pop_os! has done a lot for user experience (install and use), trending closer to macOS.

I do see efforts being made towards capturing desktop users.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#170

Post by orangecat »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #60
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games, and given HN's userbase (mostly young men), I think a lot of people here use Windows.

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games

Steam's Proton is amazingly good. I recently switched from an iMac to a PC, and was expecting to use Windows for games and Linux for development, but Proton has run everything I've tried with excellent performance and stability.

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