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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#491

Post by hendersoon »

The forced telemetry and blocking local user accounts is particularly egregious. I've been running Shutup10 for over a decade now, disabling their telemetry after every update. It's outrageous that they force mt to do this.

And local accounts, all the methods required following a guide, using a hidden hotkey like shift-F10 and typing in an obscure command. Nobody did this by accident, or was coerced into it. These were sophisticated users who did not want to login to a MS account. Microsoft not only didn't care about their users' preferences, they actively fought us. It's downright offensive.

And like a battered spouse, we lived with it, we took the hits, because we wanted to play videogames. Well, now Windows is no longer required, thanks to Valve's work on WINE. And suddenly they're apologetic and conciliatory. No thanks, Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#492

Post by kstrauser »

craftkiller wrote: post #116
9dev wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, but that wouldn't be honest. Slack is more pleasant to use, but not 6k more pleasant to use. I'd rather put up with Teams and get my devs a raise instead.

How few devs do you have? Assuming a small startup of 12, you'd be able to give each dev a raise of $42 per month. Your devs would have to be severely underpaid to notice a $42/month raise.

And if you put it to a vote, "would you rather upgrade from Teams to Slack for $9 per month, or get $9 of taxable income more per month?", I think there's a very good chance you'd be switching that week.

(I don't love Slack by any means. Still, I'd pay $9/mo out of my own pocket not to use Teams.)

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#493

Post by mock-possum »

pier25 wrote: post #459

Microsoft should be scared about the Macbook Neo. They're going to lose a good chunk of the market because of it.

But what PC user is going to be like “oh now that the NEO is out, I’m finally willing to switch to a completely different operating system”

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#494

Post by toast0 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #412
maerF0x0 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Consumers have the final say, our economic system fundamentally is consumer spending. (Ok, save for most recent year(s) of mag7 AI buildout. But generally that's the case for USA economy). We have to stop taking out our wallet and just accepting things like sheep. (nearly) Every one of the "scrapped" comput…

I think consumers largely have stopped taking out their wallet for Microsoft, at least enough of them to cause Microsoft to start walking back a little bit. Nearly 1 billion PCs have stayed on Windows 10, 42% of the global desktop marketshare is still on 10 despite EOL. Linux has been showing consistent growth on the steam hardware survey as well, and time will tell but I have a feeling the MacBook Neo is going to pu…

> I think consumers largely have stopped taking out their wallet for Microsoft, at least enough of them to cause Microsoft to start walking back a little bit.

Microsoft has largely stopped asking consumers for money. The last paid upgrade was Windows 8, IIRC. Since then, Microsoft wants consumers to upgrade, so it's free, with full screen prompts at login, and sometimes the 'no thanks' button just does it anyway.

Microsoft sells consumer OSes to OEMs. I haven't been looking, but I assume they don't allow OEMs to install Windows 10 Home anymore; and maybe not even Windows 10 Pro. So when consumers buy a new PC, they're getting Windows 11. The only Linux option at most stores is Chrome OS, which Google is shutting down, and is just a browser for most users (it's a useful product! a lot of users just need a browser; but it's not a platform of empowerment)

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#495

Post by mock-possum »

zabzonk wrote: post #97

> injected advertisements into the Windows 11 Start menu's "Recommended" section. These showed up labeled "Promoted" and pushed apps like Opera browser and some password manager nobody asked for. And the Start menu was just one surface, they also placed ads on the lock screen, in the Settings homepage hawking Game Pass subscriptions sorry, I have never seen these supposed ads in win11. the lock screen does display ic…

Oh I’ve definitely seen all those things… in the short minutes after a fresh install, before I wipe them out.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#496

Post by surajrmal »

deaux wrote: post #416
nicoburns wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line. I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Until we change that, the power will always be with these kind of companies. Perhaps governments could levy punative fines in such situat…

None of those. All we need is enforcing laws that are already on the books. Antitrust laws. Break up big tech.

Anti trust laws do not generally apply to these situations. The government has had an appetite for antitrust, but the cases are far from a slam dunk. We need modern laws for modern problems.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#497

Post by exhilaration »

smt88 wrote: post #462
pier25 wrote: post #459

Microsoft should be scared about the Macbook Neo. They're going to lose a good chunk of the market because of it.

No they're not. They're going to continue making enormous amounts of money from corporate IT lock-in, Azure, and AI. Windows' biggest competitor is iOS, and many people have stopped using Windows entirely and just rely on their phones. Microsoft has had record profits since that started happening.

Funny you mention iOS - my MegaCorp-issued iPhone has Microsoft entune for device management and Active Directory membership, Microsoft Authenticator for single sign-on, and really high quality versions of Microsoft office apps - Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel. Microsoft is all-in when comes to iOS.

Over Peak I had to update a shared Excel file on SharePoint each night - because as we all know, Excel is the finest multi-user database in existence. I had no problems doing that from my iPhone.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#498

Post by wackget »

mkup wrote: post #276

Shameless plug: My products (FlashBoot and Emergency Boot Kit) can filter all types of potentially unwanted traffic from your Windows PC to Microsoft cloud: namely, Telemetry, Windows Updates, OneDrive, builtin advertisements, tracking of your location and many more — making Windows 10/11 completely quiet online — something competitor’s tools (e.g. various GitHub scripts) can’t achieve. https://www.prime-expert.com/

I admire your effort to increase user privacy but it's very difficult to argue that allowing a piece of proprietary closed-source software to make fundamental changes to your operating system is a good idea.

For starters, it doesn't explain what exactly it does. This is all I could see on the info page:

> Privacy Enablement Center: Politely ask already installed Windows 10/11 to phone home less, or add Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy to already installed Windows, in order to block Telemetry, Windows Updates, OneDrive, builtin advertisements, tracking of your location and other types of potentially unwanted Windows network activity — making Windows 10/11 completely quiet online — something competitor’s tools can’t achieve.

That sounds an awful lot like using the hosts file or a firewall such as Portmaster[1] to block known tracking domains, no?

[1] https://safing.io/

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#500

Post by rmah »

nicoburns wrote: post #380
Macha wrote: post #7

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. Especially with software where they can just go flip a switch and turn off whatever feature did cross the line but keep everything they gained by inching up to the line, which seems to inevitably result in things like the condition of windows 11. I think the only way this gets b…

> I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line. I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Until we change that, the power will always be with these kind of companies. Perhaps governments could levy punative fines in such situat…

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.
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