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People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

windowscentral.com

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Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#61

Post by oliwarner »

grujicd wrote: post #12

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…

> far more political than technological

I don't know. A company worth trillions of dollars does a pretty fine job of making Windows incrementally worse in new and interesting ways, each release.

There's some truth; the bloated company structure has contributed to these unforced errors, but just at an engineering level, people are releasing this tripe without the skill or training or backbone to know what is bad, and push back on toxic management decisions.

Engineers collaborating with oppressive management is a technical failure. Google is riddled with the same problem. I'm sure all the FAANG-a-likes do. Paying billions in salaries to sycophant devs. They have the market share to keep failing upwards. They don't deserve it.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#62

Post by hhlevnjak2 »

ooterness wrote: post #3

Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.

I recently changed my distro to Bazzite expecting it to work well on a laptop since it's supposedly optimized for handhelds. While it "just works" and I had no hardware problems, it still required tweaking to get the battery life anywhere close to what it would be in Windows. "Normal people" would still need someone to support them with the installation to get it to work well for their machine.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#63

Post by jcelerier »

999900000999 wrote: post #29
spandrew wrote: post #13

I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in). Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch. If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really suck…

The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people. I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed. Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such. The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.

200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops. Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768.

This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#64

Post by Rapzid »

grujicd wrote: post #12

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…

As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS.

It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.

But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:

* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates

* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead

* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)

* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)

* Internet search results in the "Home" search

* Random popups and product recommendations

* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update

Holy. Hell.

Edit: I recall now; Windows was installing a power automate extension into Chrome during Windows Update un-prompted last year. Caused a minor panic.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#65

Post by wvenable »

throwa356262 wrote: post #7

Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

Apple is a hardware company -- their software exists to support their hardware.

Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#66

Post by bombcar »

longislandguido wrote: post #33
spandrew wrote: post #13

I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in). Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch. If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really suck…

The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop. They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."

Can you recommend a Windows laptop in the $400 range? I'm interested in a craptop for various Windows things that still pop up from time to time.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#67

Post by 999900000999 »

jcelerier wrote: post #63
999900000999 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people. I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed. Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such. The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.

200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops. Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768. This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.

Used, on eBay you can find something very capable for 200 to 250.

Around 300$ it gets better, specifically if you're open to Dell and other brands.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#68

Post by tonymet »

I’m a Windows fan, and I could see this being a pain for OEMs and installers / IT guys – but I don’t see why people are making a huge deal . Windows quality is a much bigger issue: latency, reliability issues, inconsistencies in the UI, etc.

Windows account login provides decent value: Bitlocker recovery, device management, Onedrive sync (even the free version), simpler RDP & remote RPC authentication.

You won’t even defeat telemetry with a local account. Windows TOS grants telemetry consent.

Why do you guys care so much about this? It feels like a bikeshed – something easy to complain about with little nuance. What will be won if MS concedes?

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#69

Post by wvenable »

dahdum wrote: post #51
nubinetwork wrote: post #34

The only benefit I've seen to having a Microsoft account is that I don't have to remember a cd key anymore if I have to reinstall... other than that, what was it actually used for?

They use machine id, shouldn’t need the key to reactivate on reinstall.

But you can move your key across devices -- just de-register the old machine and register on the new one.

I bought a Windows Pro license a decade ago (maybe for Win7) and I'm still using the same license for Windows 11 on a new PC.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#70

Post by miyoji »

WarmWash wrote: post #22
ooterness wrote: post #3

Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.

The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.

The problem with Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS.

We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!

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