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Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

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Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#531

Post by GordonS »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #171
fortran77 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things. I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware…

> I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face I have trouble understanding this perspective since it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux. If they wouldn't be materially different experiences, the metaphor doesn't hold water.

> it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux

With MacOS, your choice of hardware is very limited, and you have to pay way over the odds for it. You also can't run a lot of games on it.

With Linux, the desktop experience is, IMO, not as good as on Windows, and neither is driver support. Things have improved a lot here, but the UX is just not as polished as Windows. I do love Linux though - for servers, I wouldn't use anything else.

I really like Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise (apart from dick moves like this, of course). I can build incredibly powerful desktop or laptop machines, in terms of RAM, CPU and GPU - and everything is more or less guaranteed to "just work", and be stable too. You get excellent multi-monitor and high-DPI support, good accessability features, Hyper-V for running VMs, Sandbox coming soon, WSL for a Linux-like experience - and WSL2 will soon make it even better. And of course your gaming options are much better too.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#532

Post by klodolph »

bachmeier wrote: post #502
Kuinox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means? If the button was there but hidden, would that count as "still there"? What if it was there but labeled "Click here to brick your computer"?

Anybody who has ever administered Windows PCs professionally at work should know what it means. I would not expect home users to know or care.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#533

Post by klingonopera »

Spivak wrote: post #530
klingonopera wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword ( who are they selling too?). Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives? Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested…

Linux is not a one-time investment unfortunately since the software landscape is constantly changing. For people who are invested this is generally a good thing. There are more distros that you’ll run into in the wild than editions of Windows easily which is doubly true in the embedded space. In the enterprise where Red Hat and Canonical dominate licensing is becomes an issue again when you use their paid offerings.…

Yeah, but try to get a Windows XP version running nowdays. You have to reinstall every 30 days or so, because of the activation shut-out. Windows 7 improved on this by ways of nagging instead of shut-out, so I thought we were on a good path here. And when those activation servers go down... what then?

Linux? I'd just treasure that one (non-licensed) ISO I used, and that's it. Once I got a working setup, it could probably run for a century. EDIT: ...or at least until 2038 ;)

EDIT2: It's also not really an embedded system, it's a control PC. Embedded PCs are those in ATMs, BK's product screens, running car washes, what we have are full-fledged PCs that just happen to be operating test-rigs. These of course have fail-safe shutdowns (run by actual embedded hardware) if that PC hangs or faults, but they're not actually intended to be embedded.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#534

Post by Kuinox »

mastazi wrote: post #527
Kuinox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.

To what i see, the top upvoted comment is at the third position behind a lot of subcomments, because of the "hot" ranking of reddit. By reading the discussions here, i don't think that a lot of people realised that the option is still there.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#535

Post by kchamplewski »

bachmeier wrote: post #502
Kuinox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means? If the button was there but hidden, would that count as "still there"? What if it was there but labeled "Click here to brick your computer"?

Domain joining means connecting the machine to a Windows domain allowing domain user accounts to be used, and allowing for the domain to administer the machine.

It's actually quite a helpful option to have, but it's completely absurd for the only way to create a local account to be via the domain join option.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#536

Post by mastazi »

CRConrad wrote: post #405
darklajid wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking of going down that route, but for various reasons I NEED Outlook and Office a lot, although my main work is development and could work on another platform. If you do this (as I did in the past) you're now juggling N Windows VMs to avoid ONE Windows host system..

How about the Office / Outlook Web interfaces, shouldn't they be usable from any OS?

They don’t handle well some edge cases, for example I had Word documents with complex layouts that would be broken and partially unreadable when using the web version of Word.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#537

Post by adontz »

To workaround a lot of other similar issues, to remove crapware bundled with Windows, to move entire profiles (and not just some folders) to another disk, to make installation experience much more pleasant I use NTLite. Windows setup can actually install Windows we want. Just it is not exposed to GUI and Microsoft original configuration tools are extremely terrible and confusing.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#538

Post by nikbackm »

klingonopera wrote: post #512
kyberias wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should use the appropriate edition of Windows 10 for your use case: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. You can disable all the updates and everything you want.

Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword ( who are they selling too?). Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives? Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested…

IoT Enterprise is basically the same as Enterprise LTBS.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#539

Post by wolco »

Spearchucker wrote: post #427
xtracto wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. People have short memories of Microsoft practices and for some reason have "drunk the kool-aid". Ballmer was better because his tactics were not "sleazy", they were straight and clear. This new exec team is sleazy and trying to give a "good face" when the reality is that they are as bad as they have always been. But people get flashed with the new & shiny open source crumbs that are given…

How are Microsoft bad? The topic is about a change Microsoft made to benefit their online services. This isn't a great development by any stretch, for sure. And yet when compared with companies that collect and traffic in personal data Microsoft is in my opinion relatively(!) benign.

Comparing them to Google/facebook and saying they are benign misses the point. They are not using your data for there non-existing web ad-network but they are sending you ads directly through your operating system. You are safe on that front but losing control quickly.

They are funneling you into their cloud services. They are changing purchase models into subscription models. They own your operating system and can do what they want with it including kicking you off. And they also partner with law enforcement freely. Where thoses boundaries start/stop who knows but there does seem to be more underaged porn arrests with a single image found. Didn't microsoft develop some image detection that the police use? Perhaps scans are happening locally.

Facebook will polute your feed with personal ads. Google will polute the web with personal ads But microsoft will destroy your life.

Not sure who's better but why do we trust large brands?

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#540

Post by tjoff »

mastazi wrote: post #527
Kuinox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.

Well, this is nothing new. The same story resurfaces pretty much every release of windows 10, as it did almost every release of windows 8.

Not that it makes it better.

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