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Comment by RexM | Hacker News Reader

I have Windows 10 Pro and haven't ever seen an ad.

I'm genuinely curious what the difference is between my install and yours.

Windows 10 Pro has advertisements in the Login screen background, and the Start Menu -- by default, on every fresh install.

Yes, you can turn these advertisements off easily. But considering how much we pay for Pro (~$200), there shouldn't be any advertisements anywhere.

To be clear though, these "ads" are solely for Microsoft/Windows features, the most third party they get is being "suggested" apps on the Windows Store. Some people may not perceive them as "ads" (and Microsoft claims they aren't, as laughable as that is), because they are connected to Windows features, you'll never get sent to a third party webpage from these things.

And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game studio.

They put "suggestions" for 3rd party apps right in the start menu. There's no way they're intelligently suggesting those apps either because they pop up almost immediately after a fresh install, and are often about games.

> And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game studio.

So you're saying MS doesn't profit if you buy a Surface or something from the Windows Store?

No, nor I didn't suggest otherwise.

I just clicked on the start menu, and halfway down the list of apps is "Suggested: Fitbit Coach. Up your fitness level".

That's an advertisement. My computer has never had anything related to Fitbit on it. Ever.

I was the same (win10 pro as well, immediately customized options), then I saw a fresh install on a customer laptop to setup, and oh my god what a mess.

Thankfully for now there are still settings to turn off most of it, and removing all squares/tiles form the menu makes the Start menu look like the classic clean concise style, but it's frustrating that most people get stuck with the subpar experience.

Windows 10 pro on my desktop that I built

Windows 10 home on my hp laptop

Both are in insider branches

Never seen an ad. Never had it update without me telling it to. I never modified anything in Windows to get rid of telemetry.

I have a suspicion that Windows actually gets more strange the more you "fix" it

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