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Comment by alexmcc81 | Hacker News Reader

Mandatory Microsoft accounts also mean a concrete, cross platform identity for advertising/tracking and an account to drive One Drive/Office/cloud services purchases (already heavily advertised throughout the OS in the case of One Drive).

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My "ah ha" moment for why they're shitting up their OS with ads was when I discovered my uncle had managed to follow their prompts to the point of paying for One Drive, but had no idea what it was or how to use it (in fact, he was confused how some of his files were becoming "lost"). He just thought it was "something he needed".

[EDIT] which is to say, they're joining Google (ads inline with results—watch a non-geek use Google some time) and Amazon (just... the whole store) with a scamming-the-unsaavy business model.

I've had to set aside several hours to set up family members Windows laptops for that reason. It's crazy to have to jump through hoops to get an offline account, battle the OS to use their browser of choice (possibly reverted by future updates) and download random scripts from GitHub to remove advertising, confusing trialware and random games from the default install - and that's before you get to the laptop vendor software.

Buying a Windows laptop is a horrible decision.

I always recommend people to buy either a Windows desktop or a Mac laptop.

Yet everyone wants a "gaming laptop" for some reason. Possibly the worst option you could buy.

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