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Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

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Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#501
post #9

This is in the email that microsoftadvertising.com is sending unsolicited to the support email account of one of my sites: “Microsoft Advertising 88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined last year Search is at the center of online shopping 88-90% of online shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their shopping journeys. Two. Most searchers are open to switching brands In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we…

I am sorry, but that sounds like a scam. I doubt that it's an actual ms domain.

It does sound like a scam, but if you've ever tried to use a Microsoft account (I have to sometimes for work) you'll eventually land on a pile of domains that look like scams, and bizarrely want you to type in your password in a UI from the 90s among other things.

(as an aside, I like UIs from the 90s but it's jarring when you fall out of the regular glossy experience into like totallylegitimatemicrosoftazure.com or whatever)

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#502

Linux/*BSD may still be that awkward friend who sometimes misreads your intentions and causes awkward moments or knocks glasses over, but at least tries to respect you (snapd excepted). Windows these days doesn't seem to respect you. There's a difference in my mind between struggling to make your computer do something (because nobody made it easy yet) and struggling to make your computer do something (because a marke…

Even snapd is mostly just an Ubuntu issue, you can always switch distros (though obviously Ubuntu is the most visible distortion so it’s actions have a lot of weight).

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#503

I am a happy Windows "user". Specifically, I use it for its superior battery/power management on laptops, and mainly as a VNC client to connect to Linux desktops. As long as I'm in control of the firewall, it's also free from ads.

Any tips on setting up the firewall to block the MS-generated adds?

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it do ask you whether you want to change the setting, except the default is nuking all your settings. And something even more annoying is: That pops up in the OOBE of every major update. If you accidentally click "yes", your settings fxxks up. Come on, I already click "no" last time, you shouldn't even ask me again about this.

My favorite part about this "helpful" prompt is that "no" is tiny text at the corner of the screen, and the yes-please-change-all-my-defaults button is a giant "ok". This kind of behavior should be illegal, IMO.

If it's got any data protection impacts, it is illegal in Europe under the GDPR. However its enforcement is significantly lacking even against very obvious and blatant breaches, so anything slightly more subtle has no way of being addressed.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When was the last time you tried Linux? Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response. I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly . It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.

Because 20 years ago using Linux meant that I had to deal with configuring ALSA, NDISWrapper, GRUB, CUPS, etc. whereas last night it took me less than 15 minutes to install Mint on a late-model ultrabook and have everything working perfectly. It's a real phenomenon. Some vendors are better than others at Linux support. I would suggest sticking to Lenovo or Dell if you'd like a smooth experience.

I think its just a bit of a crapshoot with hardware. I'm running Mint right now and I love it, but hardware support isn't perfect:

- My AMD zen4 CPU still isn't fully supported by Mint's shipping kernel (5.15.0-56). It works today (including sleep states). But it took a month or two to get a kernel which supported sleep states correctly. And I still can't see CPU or motherboard temperatures.

- My keyboard and mouse don't work over bluetooth. I think its the vendors' fault, but I bet they'd both work fine work on macos or windows.

- My speakers randomly get all garbled and weird sometimes. I've figured out running `sudo killall pulseaudio` fixes it (until next time).

- I like using Apple's "magic touchpad". But the driver is nowhere near as good as Apple's. Sensitivity is all wrong in linux. It registers accidental light touches as clicks sometimes, and it just feels janky. And application support for smooth scrolling is all over the place - some apps support it perfectly and others (Firefox, IntelliJ) interpret any tiny single pixel scroll on the touchpad as a multi-line scroll. I've reverted to using a traditional mouse.

That said, some things have been a delight. My old AMD 480 graphics card worked perfectly out of the box, with no configuration required. When I upgraded out my motherboard and CPU a few months ago, the computer booted just fine with no reconfiguration or anything. It just took it all in stride. (I've still never seen windows handle that so well.)

I'm not surprised some people have no problems with desktop linux. But YMMV.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite part about this "helpful" prompt is that "no" is tiny text at the corner of the screen, and the yes-please-change-all-my-defaults button is a giant "ok". This kind of behavior should be illegal, IMO.

It's not going to be illegal anytime soon, but in the meantime, you can punish them by moving to Mac, or Chromebook. I did that after an update that went too far

Chromebook is worse. They pioneered the "in order to use this device which we let you pretend to own you must first attach yourself to our borg" model.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#508

Last week I allowed it to "upgrade" to Win 11 22H2. Part of the upgrade involved silently resetting a heap of my default apps. When the upgrade was done, Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to Edge. Also, the default apps for PDF, JPG, PNG, TXT, MKV, and probably others that I haven't yet discovered, were set to their MS equivalent apps. Microsoft, this was not a nice thing to do to a user.

I've never had that happen to me in 20+ years of using and updating Windows. I suspected it's an urban legend but when a friend told me they experienced it with a feature update in Windows 11 I inquired further: It turns out during the first startup after a feature update in Windows 11 (and 10) they sometimes show a bunch of new prompts, one of which is a very vague text with a big (default) "Recommended Settings" an…

I've never had it happen. The number of dark patterns trying to convince me to switch is infuriating. Major update "required sign in", defender "unsafe system state". I'm sure I've reset things accidentally and forgotten with it

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#509

Last week I allowed it to "upgrade" to Win 11 22H2. Part of the upgrade involved silently resetting a heap of my default apps. When the upgrade was done, Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to Edge. Also, the default apps for PDF, JPG, PNG, TXT, MKV, and probably others that I haven't yet discovered, were set to their MS equivalent apps. Microsoft, this was not a nice thing to do to a user.

Hey, sorry that happened, it should have preserved all of the default applications, etc. There are multiple suites of tests and processes that exist to try to ensure updates preserve user data and preferences but clearly something went wrong here. I’m just a developer, not a spokesperson, but I want to ensure that this is investigated if possible. If you file a bug in feedback hub under the Windows Update category it…

>If you file a bug in feedback hub under the Windows Update category it will collect the diagnostics required to fix this issue and prevent it from happening again.

As if it didn't happened AS intended, using a dark pattern by choice, and compatible with many other similar changes increasingly happening on Windows for the last 5 years or more?

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#510
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're extremely lucky then. On our (very large, very strictly managed Windows 10 fleet) Edge is CONSTANTLY becoming the default PDF handler. Its a real PITA and MS has failed to give admins the tools to manage this correctly. These anti customer dark patterns are going to drive a wedge into the golden goose of corporate sales. At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in places you'd nev…

> Someone over there needs to get their head out of their corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full steam It was probably some manager's KPI at Microsoft to increase Edge market share so he decided that forcing Edge to default everytime would push him ahead and get him that sweet promotion. Microsoft lacks a common vision for Windows and g…

> Windows now feels like a product built "by committee"

Since Windows 10, it definitely feels more like a Linux distribution than a polished, paid product. A hodgepodge of garbage with differing (and sometimes opposite) UI paradigms, incentives and terrible quality.

This is something we tolerate in the Linux world because it's all done by mostly unpaid random people with different goals, skill levels and opinions, but seeing this from a huge, for-profit company that produces masterpieces such as Windows 7 is ridiculous.

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