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Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

theregister.com

101–110 of 647 posts

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#101

It’s funny for what is essentially a ‘file manager’ Microsoft makes it hell to manage your files. My friends and family and constantly confused by the 10 different interfaces there are for file management. Desktops are a mess of of half trash files. The cloud integration the file explorer is a confusing mess. The UI for saving a file from Office is the absolute worst. I’ve had to help someone just save a file and it…

So depressing because Explorer from the 2k/XP era was best in class and about as complete and discoverable as a shell ever got.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#102
Microsoft would be wise to focus on quality of service, especially now with their Open AI partnership.

Make me more productive & I'll gladly go find how I can upgrade my Microsoft services when I need to, no ads needed that add negativity to my opinion of Microsoft.

Same with their Bing division, which was mentioned yesterday somewhat on the terrible decision of forcing people to view awful clickbait, low quality news articles. How about find out what someone is interested in first, then show information that is top quality only. Why a company like Microsoft is wanting to hang out in the gutters with low quality journalism stories is beyond me... Is the ad revenue worth tarnishing your brand & pushing people away?

Create value for me & I'll give you way more of my data than I should.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#103
99% of my problems with Windows 10 and 11 ended up the moment I install simplewall. Nowadays they even have option to block future updates. Kudos to Henry for a great piece of software, as I do donate $100 once a year for all the time he saved me on dealing with BS operating system. (totally unrelated and don't know him)

https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall

one more tip re W11: when you installing fresh copy, go for offline option (no MS account) - you can find online manual on how to enable it. Your Windows will look totally different and work faster if you go with offline version (MS assumes its a computer without network access)

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#104
post #61
post #54

> As Microsoft puts it: “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).” What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So…

It's obvious what are they thinking: "This gives us conversions, this gives us money, what are you gonna do, pay 3000$ for a Mac?"

$999 macbook air is perfectly usable?

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#105

Move over to linux. KDE has the eye-candy, XFCE has the simplicity and OpenBOX is distraction free. Games work well and so do dev tools.

Are fonts still ugly as sin? That was the biggest drawback last time I tried linux as my main desktop. That and having to muck around in config files for every little thing.

Sadly something in the last few years knackered the kerning on stuff like Tahoma :(

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#106

Move over to linux. KDE has the eye-candy, XFCE has the simplicity and OpenBOX is distraction free. Games work well and so do dev tools.

Are fonts still ugly as sin? That was the biggest drawback last time I tried linux as my main desktop. That and having to muck around in config files for every little thing.

Depends on when you tried it and what you mean by them being ugly. I personally prefer fonts and font rendering in GNOME over Windows nowadays, specially in high-ish dpi displays. I haven't opened a single config file since installing Fedora on my machine last year (except for vimrc, emacs.d, etc.), although if you are a power user you might have to play with some CLI once in a while. Selection of distribution and desktop environment is everything, it makes or breaks your Linux experience so take a look around and maybe live boot one through a USB drive to see if ticks your fancies.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#108
post #69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious what are they thinking: "This gives us conversions, this gives us money, what are you gonna do, pay 3000$ for a Mac?"

I don't think they'll get many conversions out of it. They're fishing in a pool that already actively signaled that they don't like the bait.

The thinking is that MS' needs come first, and yours are way, way down the list, unless you're a volume license holder. Whereby, you get an off switch.

So the magnitude or logic of the gain doesn't factor much unless a policy hits the news with a stickiness of several months.

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