For a while now, I have been thinking of switching to Windows 365. This is halfway there because the heavy tabs are streamed from the cloud, but I am starting to think that the only way I can trust software to work is with a monthly fee. This has the added advantage of being able to switch to a thin client, and the data restoration and storage is paid for and is someone else’s problem.
But then I think there is another side to this. Windows has always continued with this cycle of planned obsolescence. The latest iteration was the worst. My copy of Microsoft Office 2019 slowed to a crawl after the Windows 11 update. Then, I had to buy a 365 subscription. That Office license was supposed to be good for life. I won’t forget that!
So I set up an older computer with 4 gigs of ram with Mint. It is snappy. I bought Crossover. It runs Word, but not PowerPoint. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of Office 2016 that is stable with Wine/Crossover. So again I am stuck paying the Microsoft Mafia. Honestly, I am fine with paying. What I am not fine with is them adding no new features, and bogging down my hardware so I need to buy another machine.
I also feel acutely the need to get control of my email back from Google, as many others do.
The reason I, and I think a lot of others want privacy is because they are sick of the obsolescence kill switch. Give me light hardware and web applications that can get as much cloud processing power to run as needed, and I would be happy. But I really need to trust that cloud provider and I don’t trust Microsoft. After all, they are using emails to get URLs to scrape for Bing. Not good.
Maybe this is a nice balance of a cloud operating system and local control.