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Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

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Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#201

Imagine a new version of Windows being released called "Windows Optimal" In addition to Home, Professional and Pro you get to buy Optimal. The catch is that it is priced 4x the home version. You wonder why? Optimal is exactly what you think it is. A ground up 0 bloatware, 0 telemetry, 100% easily tweakable privacy and performance settings from a single screen with 0 AI features, 0 Edge and 0 games. Imagine getting yo…

You are describing Windows 11 LTSC which is a product that exists because Microsoft knows people want to turn this crap off. It is of course only available in volume licensing to keep it away from normal users. Only businesses get to control their computers.

I moved all my home LAN Windows machines to LTSC IoT in February; cost me about 90 euros for each license. You can buy individual licenses from online stores that will connect to MS and validate correctly. You'll have to install the MS app store from GitHub (!), and there are some other issues, but at least you're years away from what hit everyone else this October.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#202

Microsoft has gone full-blown evil corporation again. No customer validation on any of the AI cruft. No full OPT OUT. Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. I've been a Windows user from day one and I now see a future without it. Satya had been a bright spot in Microsoft, but this blind lust for AI, especially in bed with Altman who is pure con artist, is unforgivable. Some of the investment…

Meanwhile have you used the latest Excel for Mac? 1. Open a sheet. Type anything. 2. Hide Excel (Cmd+H). 3. Bring Excel forth. 4. Stare at a blank screen where your grid should be for anywhere from 0.5 to 3 seconds.

> 4. Stare at a blank screen where your grid should be for anywhere from 0.5 to 3 seconds.

It is because is drawing the 3D surface with your Excel cells. It's not Microsoft's fault that you didn't buy a decent graphics card. /s

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#203
post #167
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows NT

> Windows NT Windows NT what ? Microsoft was always the same.

Windows NT -> Experience what a good microsoft OS was. Especially around NT 3.1, NT 3.5 their goal seemed mostly to have a good competing OS.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#204

Microsoft has gone full-blown evil corporation again. No customer validation on any of the AI cruft. No full OPT OUT. Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. I've been a Windows user from day one and I now see a future without it. Satya had been a bright spot in Microsoft, but this blind lust for AI, especially in bed with Altman who is pure con artist, is unforgivable. Some of the investment…

> Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. They put copilot in notepad. NOTEPAD.

This is the funniest thing, considering it lacks 90% of the features included freeware text editors written in some student's spare time back in the 90s.

It's basically a fancy textbox.

Microsoft's own people can't use the toolkits they write, as evidenced by the React component in the start menu(!)

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it can finally get the new lines correct for a given application? ;-)

A choice of line endings was one of the few good things they did to Notepad, but that was in the Windows 10 era.

I remember it being pretty nice to explicitly choose encoding too.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shown they don't respect the user when they force shutdown for system updates Are you familiar with the prior state of things that explicitly motivated this change?

Are you aware that MS already sells an operating system that can install patches without rebooting? Are you also aware that Linux can do the same? Why can't a supposedly mature 40 year old operating system do the same? Do you have any concept of the number of man-hours it would save globally? The amount of lost work? The impact on patching compliance and security? My guess is they don't actually believe they have any…

> Are you aware that MS already sells an operating system that can install patches without rebooting?

No. Which OS is that ? Even to update Office they throw an annoying popup and then another one to start the update and a dark pattern (close button accesible with a hidden scrollbar and no window controls) one to tell you it is finished.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shown they don't respect the user when they force shutdown for system updates Are you familiar with the prior state of things that explicitly motivated this change?

Not really. Maybe I'm jinxing it, but I've never had a problem caused by failure to update my PC. Servers I understand because they're exposed to the Internet at all times. Not PCs

> Servers I understand because they're exposed to the Internet at all times. Not PCs

Gates, is that you ? They have telemetry in PCs those days, you know. /s

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#208
post #35

It's an agentic OS now. It acts as an agent on behalf of Microsoft and its business partners, and against your interests.

it's been like that since release of Windows 10 just now it's more overt

It's amusing how short memory is. People already forgot the whole campaign of "free upgrade" and "last version of Windows", all these issues with forced upgrades which in some cases made machines unbootable.

Not mention all telemetry that was added (which turned out to be the "price" for that upgrade that even spread to W7), nagging popups and dark patterns scattered across the system, uncontrollable updates feature and updates itself which in extreme cases removed user files. We also got programs, features nobody ask for and which were installed without user consent.

Plus of course the disbanded QA and relying on the "community" instead. Which also become the cost-less help support to some degree with countless copy-pasted posts on MS forums suggesting "sfc /scannow" as the solution to every problem people faced - just so the posting "enthusiast" could get virtual points.

Windows 10 wasn't any better system but a clear sign the direction MS was heading. So before you start casting angry dv try to refresh you memory.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#209

Is this happening for EU users?

Not the actual feature being talked about here, but im using office on mac with the latest updates in the EU and havent seen any copilot junk being stuffed in there.

Maybe win11 will be the same?

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#210

Imagine a new version of Windows being released called "Windows Optimal" In addition to Home, Professional and Pro you get to buy Optimal. The catch is that it is priced 4x the home version. You wonder why? Optimal is exactly what you think it is. A ground up 0 bloatware, 0 telemetry, 100% easily tweakable privacy and performance settings from a single screen with 0 AI features, 0 Edge and 0 games. Imagine getting yo…

You are describing Windows 11 LTSC which is a product that exists because Microsoft knows people want to turn this crap off. It is of course only available in volume licensing to keep it away from normal users. Only businesses get to control their computers.

Does LTSC comes with respectable default settings or that's still a matter of setting up system?
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