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I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

extremetech.com

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Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#521

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

teekert wrote: post #155
shantnutiwari wrote: post #119

Microsoft has been using this dark pattern for a while now. Around 1-2 years ago, I upgraded MS Office on my Windows laptop. It asked me for my username/password-- which I didnt think strange, as I assumed it needed it to upgrade. And thats when I got a message "Good news! Your Windows machine now uses your Microsoft to login." W.T.F. I was never asked, never warned, just tricked into replacing my local login with an…

Do you really need Windows? Our family laptop runs Linux, it does Teams for school, MineCraft, Netflix. You could do Office365 from a browser, although I admit, it is less than ideal. But it seems like you are almost at the emotional state make the jump... what's holding you back? I bought a Dell Latitude E5450 for 350 eur about 2 years back. It was used but looked new. It came with Win 10 Pro, which sits on my NAS a…

I unfortunately kept all my backups as NTFS and I maintained that for a while because "legacy" and I was lazy. Converting them all is gonna take a while. So I'm sort of waiting until it's inevitable.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#522

Post by caeril »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #399
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm over in Mac-land so a bit unclear on the state of things, but it seems like the problem must be marketing by now, right? I can't think of any use cases for mainstream users where Windows is a requirement. Graphic designers, digital art types, and musicians are all fringe and mostly on Mac anyway. PC gamers are a fringe crowd. Practically all productivity software has migrated to the cloud. Desktop Linux usability…

Linux simply has too many rough edges still exposed to appeal to a lot of less technical users. Even in the best case scenario (super standard desktop with hardware well supported by FOSS drivers), there’s always some odd thing that requires one to pull out the terminal, usually because UI functionality was insufficient or failed to work as expected. That does not bother me or probably most of us on HN much, but for…

> has too many rough edges still exposed to appeal to a lot of less technical users

This is ridiculous. Not only does Ubuntu LTS work just fine for my incredibly non-technical wife and children, but my wife prefers it to Mac OS.

Linux with a basic Gnome desktop has been perfectly usable for well over a DECADE now for non-technical users.

This particular bit of FUD has been wildly inaccurate at least since Fedora Core 3.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#523

Post by noobquestion81 »

nickjj wrote: post #117

I know the post is about Windows 11 but I installed Windows 10 for someone on a laptop about 2 months ago and it had the most crazy dark pattern I've ever seen to be able to proceed past the installation screen without a Microsoft account. Short of not connecting to the internet first the only way I saw where it was possible to create an offline account was to first attempt to sign in using an incorrect password with…

I had the same experience a couple months back trying to set up a gaming PC. This was after the initial screen set my speakers to max and then blasted Cortana screaming at me in different languages. This was at about 3am in the morning, and I have pretty good speakers. After recovering from my heart attack, I then proceeded to fight for ~20 minutes on how to install without a Windows account - since I had already set up Wifi, the easiest way was to unplug my router for a bit. After a while Windows booted up, but would constantly BSOD on reboots. I gave up and bought a console.

Absolute trash OS, sorry.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#524

Post by no_time »

alpaca128 wrote: post #149
nickjj wrote: post #117

I know the post is about Windows 11 but I installed Windows 10 for someone on a laptop about 2 months ago and it had the most crazy dark pattern I've ever seen to be able to proceed past the installation screen without a Microsoft account. Short of not connecting to the internet first the only way I saw where it was possible to create an offline account was to first attempt to sign in using an incorrect password with…

Microsoft really is one of the worst examples in the dark pattern department that I've ever seen. Same with their email service, where you can register an account without issues and after a few weeks of use I was presented with an unskippable input field for my phone number. Don't want to give MS your phone number? Too bad, better hope you don't need those emails anymore.

>Microsoft really is one of the worst examples in the dark pattern department that I've ever seen.

It's insane. Every I reinstall windows and try to download Firefox, the number of times Microsoft pleads to continue using Edge is increasing.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#525

Post by gentleman11 »

grumpyprole wrote: post #400
gentleman11 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux needs killer app equivalents. Many of the foss versions of windows programs have pretty painful UX or are missing key features (eg, smart select in gimp is really frustrating to use vs photoshop or affinity). Foss really needs to start tempting designers to participate more

It's worse than that. The desktop efforts are heavily fragmented and arguably the leader, RedHat's "Gnome", while quite polished, is actually quite user hostile (e.g. works very differently to anything else, perhaps to dodge patents; and constantly changes/removes popular features). Linux needs to have a standardised "platform" with stable APIs.

It’s not user hostile, I love gnome. It might slow down if you don’t reboot (could be a hibernation or suspend issue?) but the Ux is great. Windows is a nuisance after using gnome. You do need to install some addons that should be built in

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#526

Post by no_time »

acapybara wrote: post #133

When Windows 10 came out, the telemetry, MS account features, forced auto updates/reboots made my computer feel like it was no longer my own. Having used Microsoft OSes since DOS, this was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. After dabbling in Linux for years, this was motivation to commit 100% to using Linux as my main OS. It was mildly painful at first, but after sticking with it, I would never go back.

>When Windows 10 came out, the telemetry, MS account features, forced auto updates/reboots made my computer feel like it was no longer my own.

Oh you don't know how good we have it. You just wait until Pluton comes out. Right now there is always a patch, a registry hack or some kind of modification that makes everything bearable. With Pluton you are 100% at the mercy of MS.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#527

Post by reaperducer »

gigel82 wrote: post #453
gabereiser wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would think, but that's not the case. It's used to correlate data sharing between data brokerages. Facebook has your number, Twitter has your number, Microsoft has your number. What better FK to link all this data together than that? Now Microsoft knows what you searched for. Twitter knows what you bought on Amazon. Facebook knows who you hung out with. It's all about the data brokerages.

I'd be very surprised if these companies actually share the private data with each-other (or any external party for that matter). I worked at a FAANG and they take private data handling very seriously (you can't even access it internally without a very involved approval process and always partially).

I'd be very surprised if these companies actually share the private data with each-other (or any external party for that matter).

They share it with "trusted partners." Which means data brokers. It's like money laundering, but for information. Look for the word "partners" in the small text of anything you commit to from signing up for e-mail to installing software to buying a car.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#528

Post by notRobot »

teekert wrote: post #466
rambambram wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed funny! What happened after you installed the .exe Ubuntu? You clicked the icon and then ..? I'm just past the 'stage' you're in now, I recently deleted my partition running Windows (kept it for GTA5). Only Ubuntu now.

I bet this was with Wubi which made a Windows file with whole install and booted into that.

Yep!

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#529

Post by naikrovek »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #472
vel0city wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro is sold to individuals and you can easily get a laptop with a Pro license from an OEM.

Seems like there's also Pro for Workstations. Also, full disk encryption seems to only be available in Pro?

Yes. Well, BitLocker is in Pro, Pro for Workstations and Enterprise. Same for Hyper-V, if that matters to you; not available in Home.

Home edition is for non-commercial use. I don't know if that's in the EULA or not, but that's the use case that Home is meant for.

Pro and higher are for work use cases, and features add on as you go up the line. Pro for Workstations and Enterprise support slightly different feature sets, IIRC. Creating new ReFS filesystems is only available on Pro for Workstations, for example.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#530

Post by cmiles74 »

kijin wrote: post #144
cmiles74 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Password recovery seems like another big reason to push this. Many consumers don't really have any tech support, aside from vendors like Dell or HP. With an MS account, Microsoft can manage this process.

Most consumers buy their PCs from big box vendors who can help with password recovery and whatnot. Microsoft might do it better, sure, but why would they want to pick up the cost of doing it themselves when they've been outsourcing it to OEMs for so long?

I disagree that most PC vendors are capable or good at helping consumers reset passwords of local Windows accounts. This is not a trivial process, take a look at the HP support page on this issue.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04648973

It's unlikely that people with Windows Home have a password reset disk and there's likely only the one account on the machine. That leaves them with "have a computer repair service recover your local password" or "reset your computer". In my opinion, the majority of people would be better served by a Microsoft account, where Microsoft can handle the reset through their website, rather than a password reset disk or wiping their machine in desperation.

Also note how excited HP is to get out of the business of handling this very situation.

> HP recommends using a Microsoft account for signing into Windows. Using a Microsoft account offers many benefits, including easy password recovery. If you currently have a local user account, consider switching to a Microsoft account after recovering or changing your current password.

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