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"Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

nytimes.com

11–20 of 29 posts

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#11
post #4

Microsoft is perhaps the worst offender in this regard. Every update to Windows makes it worse in one way or another, and it's become quite exhausting.

I would have cut Microsoft a lot of slack if the purpose of Windows 11 was to cut down on the sheer amount of cruft and legacy jank that Windows has acquired over the years.

Alas, Windows 11 is merely rounded corners, a worse file explorer, telemetry galore, and a mandatory Microsoft account meant to hock OneDrive and Copilot on unsuspecting laypersons everywhere.

Even simple applications like calculator and photo viewer now launch with a noticeable delay, no doubt because they have to try and communicate with some Microsoft service somewhere in the cloud before letting someone use an application locally.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#12
post #4

Microsoft is perhaps the worst offender in this regard. Every update to Windows makes it worse in one way or another, and it's become quite exhausting.

I would have cut Microsoft a lot of slack if the purpose of Windows 11 was to cut down on the sheer amount of cruft and legacy jank that Windows has acquired over the years. Alas, Windows 11 is merely rounded corners, a worse file explorer, telemetry galore, and a mandatory Microsoft account meant to hock OneDrive and Copilot on unsuspecting laypersons everywhere. Even simple applications like calculator and photo vi…

All valid points but it's definitely possible to use Win 11 without a Microsoft account.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have cut Microsoft a lot of slack if the purpose of Windows 11 was to cut down on the sheer amount of cruft and legacy jank that Windows has acquired over the years. Alas, Windows 11 is merely rounded corners, a worse file explorer, telemetry galore, and a mandatory Microsoft account meant to hock OneDrive and Copilot on unsuspecting laypersons everywhere. Even simple applications like calculator and photo vi…

All valid points but it's definitely possible to use Win 11 without a Microsoft account.

Correct, for now. It is getting increasingly difficult to bypass and it’s not unreasonable to think that the command line and registry tweaks that are still available today will get disabled in the near future. Microsoft has already disabled a few bypasses.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points but it's definitely possible to use Win 11 without a Microsoft account.

Correct, for now. It is getting increasingly difficult to bypass and it’s not unreasonable to think that the command line and registry tweaks that are still available today will get disabled in the near future. Microsoft has already disabled a few bypasses.

Bypasses will continue to be available for as long as Microsoft still wants to make money from government agencies with isolated networks.

Just means you might eventually have to pirate some special SKU of Windows that you can't buy as a normal user.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#17
post #9

The irony behind this is that Upgrade as a word becomes scary once you've already lost ownership of said devices. We have whole industries that have to rely on Windows 7 and self-built Windows 10 images because they can't upgrade into a shitty cloud-prioritizing OS. Microsoft just completely ignored them, essentially alienating whole industry branches. Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high…

> Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high oven, wasting millions of EUR in energy costs, for example. And yes, that happened at a steel factory here. They switched to open source afterwards and reimplemented everything from scratch I'm searching for this but not getting any results. Could you share a link where I can read about it?

I can't find it neither, but "high oven" is properly translated as blast furnace.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points but it's definitely possible to use Win 11 without a Microsoft account.

Correct, for now. It is getting increasingly difficult to bypass and it’s not unreasonable to think that the command line and registry tweaks that are still available today will get disabled in the near future. Microsoft has already disabled a few bypasses.

Command line and registry tweaks? I didn't bother with any of those and got an unlinked account set up the minute I first booted up Windows, as did all the non-technical folks in my family. Sure, the option is obscured very much during the first launch process, but it's still very much doable by someone without any technical chops.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#19
FYI, it's one of the articles that does not even start scratching the title topic surface in the first 3 paragraphs.

Regarding upgrades. It always requires QA to exist (as some rumor says that for example MS went with telemetry only in win11 instead of a proper QA approach) for users to consider upgrading at all.

Re: "Upgrade" has become the most frightening word in the English language (2016)

#20
post #9

The irony behind this is that Upgrade as a word becomes scary once you've already lost ownership of said devices. We have whole industries that have to rely on Windows 7 and self-built Windows 10 images because they can't upgrade into a shitty cloud-prioritizing OS. Microsoft just completely ignored them, essentially alienating whole industry branches. Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high…

> Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high oven, wasting millions of EUR in energy costs, for example. And yes, that happened at a steel factory here. They switched to open source afterwards and reimplemented everything from scratch I'm searching for this but not getting any results. Could you share a link where I can read about it?

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