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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

#731

Post by m0zg »

achamayou wrote: post #568
m0zg wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> getting worse and worse at an alarming rate That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.

It's not part of Azure, it's part of Experience + Devices, which is a different top-level group from Cloud + AI.

The _hardware_ part is a part of Experience + Devices. The software part is in Cloud + AI (AKA Azure).

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

#732

Post by infectoid »

mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

I friend of mine recently moved from Windows to Mint (Linux). Reckons it's great.

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

#733

Post by samstave »

imglorp wrote: post #655
samstave wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Libre does support ODBC, perhaps not exactly the same way though.

Its on the reverse.... bartender (from seagul scientific, which their software is fantastic by the way) doesn’t support it...

I have a bug filed with them where if you build a thing in google sheets and export to xlsx and attempt to connect to that data source it crashes.... (but if it is native xlsx it works fine) hence my need to install excel on that particular machine, as the bartender software can take tabular input for varying data for each sticker printed ( cannabis compliance labels, which I have now mastered)

They are a great company though, and bartender is an amazing program. I suggest everyone download their free version and learn it.

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

#734

Post by Richicoder »

GordonS wrote: post #498
userbinator wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there were no forced updates I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back . This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malwar…

I have Enterprise on one machine, Pro on another. I don't recall ever having a reboot forced, but sometimes they make it really annoying, popping up a " please restart now to apply updates!" message multiple times a day - I'd really like a "remind me in x days" option for these notifications.

In more recent versions this exists, though I'm not sure how long it'll let you push it off.

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

#735

Post by 3131s »

wolco wrote: post #528
cwojno wrote: post #203

I've switched to Linux + Mint in part because I don't want to be using Windows any more. Many of my games work with Steam on Linux now, actually. With Google's docs/drive, everything works cross platform. I really have no productivity loss by not using Windows any more.

Mint vs Ubutuntu vs fedora. What's the right choice in 2019 for a power desktop user who wants video drivers to work,for a 7 year old hp machine?

I have two HP laptops running Linux -- my work laptop is running Manjaro with i3, and the other is Linux Mint with MATE. I absolutely love these two machines, neither have any compatibility problems with Linux.

No experience with Fedora, but of the other distributions that I have tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, CentOS...), Mint is my suggestion for beginners. Now though I like Manjaro for its rolling releases of the newest software.

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

#736

Post by logimame »

arbol wrote: post #418
logimame wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently hackintoshed a XPS 15 9550, and holy shit it became the best laptop I’ve used so far. Everything (including bluetooth and wifi) works, no butterfly keyboard shenanigans, still decent performance, lots of ports (including hdmi and usb 3), the touchpad works perfectly (with all multitouch gestures).

I don't suppose you have a link to a write up or guide you followed?

Here: https://github.com/wmchris/DellXPS15-9550-OSX

By the way, it doesn’t support discrete GPU, but Nvidia GPU performace in the XPS 15 is horrible due to heavy throttling anyway.

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

#737

Post by klodolph »

Silhouette wrote: post #712
klodolph wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Administered”. If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally. I’m not talking about people who happen to use Windows in a professional setting. I’m talking specifically about people whose main job responsibilities include Windows administration.

If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally. Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition. They might not have dedicated IT staff, but they still need to be able to administer their systems and in many cases a designated person will still be responsible for doing so. Th…

I am answering the question,

> Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means?

And the answer is, “IT specialists supporting Windows in corporate environments.” Generally speaking. I honestly cannot understand the motive or purpose for the rest of your comment, which seems to be about the needs of small businesses, which is not germane.

> Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition.

Right, because I am specifically talking about IT specialists, who “administer Windows professionally”. This is the usual definition of “professionally”, that you “profess” to do something. If I talk about people who “write professionally”, this also does not include people who happen to write emails, memos, and other ordinary correspondence at work.

But this doesn’t really exclude small business, since it’s common for small businesses (and medium) to contract IT services.

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

#738

Post by a_imho »

cwojno wrote: post #203

I've switched to Linux + Mint in part because I don't want to be using Windows any more. Many of my games work with Steam on Linux now, actually. With Google's docs/drive, everything works cross platform. I really have no productivity loss by not using Windows any more.

With Google's docs/drive

Have you tried Libre Office? I'm not a power docs user but it gets the job done for me. Opting for Google to replace MS on principles is out of the frying pan into the fire.

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

#739

Post by anoncake »

klodolph wrote: post #705
anoncake wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not expect home users to know That's why MS renamed the button. > or care They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns.

> They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns. No, typical end users do not care what “domain join” means. They only care about creating offline accounts. “Domain join” isn’t supposed to mean “create offline account”, it’s supposed to let you join the computer to an AD domain. Or at least, that’s what I’d expect.

End users don't care about the expected meaning of "domain join", right. But they do care about the meaning MS uses here.

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

#740

Post by a_imho »

michaelmrose wrote: post #19

This seems like it is preparatory to removing it entirely. It wouldn't be shocking if in 10 years you need a Microsoft account to use windows on a computer you don't have root access to that isn't allowed to run a non ms os or to distribute software that ms gets a 30% cut. If it isn't so it will be because they don't think they can get away with it.

Isn't this basically Android?
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