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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

#641

Post by Silhouette »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #520
hrktb wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contention might be on the time frame. Desktop OS and apps won’t go away for the next 10 or 20 years by sheer inertia of the corporate market, and the halo effect on home users. And I guess the past month/years issues don’t affect business users (corporate managed desks will have any problematic feature disabled from the start) “Everyone” migrating to OSX/linux won’t happen for many many years, even if they keep…

PC gamers won't be switching to an Xbox, and so we require a desktop. It won't just be halo effect on home users, but ironically also Halo effect. The remastered collection being ported over as we speak, starting with Halo: Reach iirc.

And for small businesses, the analogous barrier is often "creative software". More and more administrative services used by businesses are moving online, and in some cases we're forced to use them whether we like it or not (for example, because certain tax/legal returns now have to be filed online using approved software). However, when it comes to creating reports, or artwork, or engineering schematics for a new building, or the 3D model you're going to be animating using WebGL on your new site, the dominant software is still almost entirely on desktops.

Some of that software is Windows-only. There are quite a few good products that run on Mac. Relatively little runs on open platforms like Linux. And for now, macOS has its own issues for long-term professional use, starting with Apple's reluctance to give any sort of concrete guarantees about support longevity. So that can be quite a barrier to migrating away from Windows for businesses.

It would be nice to think that in time Linux or other free platforms would fill the gap, but it's a chicken and egg problem. As an interesting contrast, within a very short time after Adobe went cloud/subscription with the dominant package of graphics/publication software, we had several smaller and more agile competitors entering the market at much more attractive (and non-subscription) price points: Sketch, the Affinity products, etc. We don't know to what extent any of these might already have been in development before and how much they were motivated directly by the shift to Creative Cloud, but we do know that the closest OSS equivalents have been around for years and made negligible impact, which doesn't bode well for the viability of Linux desktops as an alternative platform for "normal" business use (as opposed to, for example, specialist work like software development).

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

#642

Post by rovr138 »

Silhouette wrote: post #634
rock_hard wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really though Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!

I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one. If anything,…

I wish I could buy a really good screen with no “smart” software at all.

I can plug an Xbox if I want, or a shield, or a Roku, or an Amazon fire stick/tv, or an Apple TV, or a chrome cast

Just add a bunch of ports and KISS.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

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

#643

Post by npmaile »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #623
npmaile wrote: post #13

I understand correcting the title to be more accurate to the situation, but I think the discussion should be focused on how Microsoft is taking power away from users, and has business incentive to do so. I don't like that the greater tech community rallies behind Microsoft for doing some basic contributions to open source and then hand waves away moves like this. Edit: the comment section has shifted and I'm less dis…

"some basic contributions" is a little unfair, don't you think? * 2 of the top 7 programming languages in use on GitHub are Microsoft created and maintained. * Jockeying for top place among companies contributing code to projects on GitHub, for 4 years running. * Top 5 contributor to the Linux Kernel * Massively popular IDE in VSCode * Enormous contributions to Kubernetes and the entire community around it,including…

I'd argue that a company at the near trillion dollars scale can and should be Contributing mere than the few tens of millions they've put into open source, but you are not wrong and I'm not particularly willing to die on the hill I've climbed.

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

#644

Post by peterangular »

drngdds wrote: post #585
klingonopera wrote: post #101

As someone who uses Windows for industrial PCs, I'm pretty appalled. We've been hanging on to Windows 7, including side-loading drivers into the installation image for modern hardware, because this kind of stuff that Windows 10 does is in these cases simply unacceptable (random tip: Go for AMD, their Windows 7 support is way better than Intel, do not use Intel chipset series 300). I can't have PCs bogged down downloa…

I'm pretty sure Windows 10 LTSB exists for this specific use case

It does but good luck getting licensing. They explicitly try to make getting the LTSB/C difficult because they know everyone would buy it if they offered a "clean" version of Windows.

But - if you can swing it - LTSB/C is the only thing that I would prefer for any sort of automation etc.

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

#645

Post by rovr138 »

gnud wrote: post #529
theclaw wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view. [1] http://keypirinha.com/

Keypirnha is apparently only for "keyboard ninjas", so I'll stick with something made for the rest of us.

I don’t see how it’s that different from launchy.

Hit a key combination, GUI launches, you type.

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

#646

Post by Silhouette »

xoap wrote: post #500
benhurmarcel wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reasoning behind that? Putting a major desktop product as part of the cloud organization seems a bit ridiculous from afar.

In these situations there usually is no actual logical reason. The corporate "reason" is that a new CEO must be seen implementing dramatic changes (activity > progress). In this case I'm not sure if Satya the Saint [tm] started this roadmap, but for sure he managed to associate himself with it and take credit for it. As others said, a new CEO can easily reverse the whole process in order to have a "new" little triump…

Given Satya's background, it seems fairly clear what the board were looking for when they chose their new CEO, and he's delivering exactly what we might have expected.

To be fair to him, from a business perspective, look at Microsoft's share price since. As long as the cloud hype continues and no-one is looking too closely at where Microsoft's money is (and in some cases now isn't) coming from, the stock is likely to keep going up and he probably has free reign to do almost anything he wants. What is anyone going to do about it?

I'm still a little surprised that none of the other IT giants appears to have identified the Windows 7 EoL next year as a rare opportunity to grab a significant chunk of the desktop market and been building a credible competitor. Even with the current trend for shifting things online, local computing isn't going anywhere any time soon, not least because many people and businesses want a level of security, privacy, longevity and reliability that online services simply don't offer. We've seen many times that a new, significantly different platform with enough "killer apps" to gain a foothold can then grow and do well, from mobile devices to games consoles and of course the whole world of cloud computing and SaaS, all of which have disrupted traditional desktop/laptop/server markets significantly while creative very lucrative new industries in themselves. I was wondering a few years ago as the intended strategy for Windows 10 was becoming clear whether an Apple or a Red Hat or even a traditional heavyweight like IBM might have stepped in. I guess no-one thought the cost/risk was attractive enough.

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

#647

Post by rovr138 »

dgzl wrote: post #593
proc0 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative.

Are PC games that important?

For some, yes.

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

#648

Post by samstave »

imglorp wrote: post #598
samstave wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, but that is something us sysads for decades get... You think that joe mechanic who just bought his daughter a new machine has any of this lexicon. Whomever is responsible for all of this bullshit at MS should be hit in the face with a shovel. Recently, and I’ve been in tech since 1997, I bought an office lic at Costco because I needed excel on a machine... You know what a pain in the ass it is to install off…

If don't need 100 pct of Excel's bazillion features, Libre Office is a decent alternative. It works with Excel files, doesn't need Windows (but it can run there), and doesn't nag you to join any clouds. And it's free. There's very few home users who actually need full Office.

Excel is a requirement for the integration I want to do to another program: bartender

To print barcodes and labels in serial with an ODBC connection... so libre won’t work

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

#649

Post by amaccuish »

FireBeyond wrote: post #592
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's even possible to merge your iCloud account (Apple ID) with your Mac user account. Aren't these always separate identities? I thought what Microsoft is pushing people to do is to use a single identity for both their PC and their Microsoft account, just like Google does with Chrome Books. My concern with the single identity model is not just privacy. I worry that if somet…

> but I don't think it's even possible to merge your iCloud account (Apple ID) with your Mac user account. Aren't these always separate identities And enforced as such - just like you cannot have your macOS password be the same as your Apple ID password.

> just like you cannot have your macOS password be the same as your Apple ID password.

Huh, yes you can? http://osxdaily.com/2015/03/24/use-icloud-password-as-mac-lo...

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

#650

Post by filleduchaos »

FireBeyond wrote: post #594
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, OP is not talking about a mobile device, but a PC. The PC is in the same device bracket as Macs. And Apple does not provide Macs "as computer as a service". Everything works with a local account. I don't even need to have an Apple ID. The OS also remembers your choice of disabling telemetry, without resetting it after the next update. Apple provides managed and unmanaged. Microsoft appears not to provide unm…

> Everything works with a local account. I don't even need to have an Apple ID. Like App Store? Or are we talking about "for varying degrees of 'everything'"?

Have you ever used a Mac?
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