Microsoft tests 'upsells' of its products in Windows 11 sign-out menu | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft tests 'upsells' of its products in Windows 11 sign-out menu

theregister.com

43 pointsBrajeshwar32 comments

So much of Windows 11 is great, but then they keep doing things like this. I don't understand it. Why are people pushing things like this still employed? Do they not see the negative press every single time? It's not like Windows is on the position it was 20 years ago.

Microsoft appears to be transitioning to a cloud services company, but they have lots of legacy products that still have too much value to abandon. My guess is that the all-stars in the company are working on cloud products while the lesser skilled are relegated to legacy products. This is probably some ambitious product manager trying hard to push a cloud revenue advertising product into Windows so they can leverage it to get moved into the growing cloud services side of the company and out of the decaying legacy side.

There's probably also a good bit of internal pressure on the managers of these legacy products to find ways to make them fund themselves. When looking at what Microsoft has been doing with dotnet over the past half a decade, helping to support legacy Window's place in the world doesn't appear to be one of their goals. Everything is going cross-platform with a distinct push towards cloud deployment, which supports the cloud services goals.

Same complaint about the uncloseable, unminimizable Win 11 advert that I woke up to on my Win10 box this morning. Who thinks this is a good way to push upgrades? Do they not understand how much that pisses people off?

If their focus is on the cloud, getting people to not use Windows may be a feature not a bug. How much revenue relative to Azure does Windows deliver?

Microsoft isn't going to intentionally kill their OS. Windows is still a billion dollar+ business. It's just sheer incompetence.

My guess is that they're working to condition you to accept ads and accept the idea that MS can do whatever they want on your(?) computer because eventually they want everything in the cloud so they have more more control over what you can/can't do, they can more easily access/mine all your data, and they can charge you a monthly fee to access windows (and by extension your files). There's a ton of money to made from it even before they start to paywall off common OS features you've always had access to (like Solitaire)

Who gives a shit about press when you have a quasi monopoly and people are dependent on your products.

Likewise, the new Microsoft Edge (Edgium) started strong, but they keep adding more and more feature bloat.

And now website notifications from Edge are integrated at the OS level. While I like the web as a platform, I am already dreading the amount of notification spam that is likely to happen.

Alongside all the other strange features and extra toolbars. Why is there a new vertical sidebar? Who asked for this?

> So much of Windows 11 is great, but then they keep doing things like this.

What positives do you have in mind?

My impression of windows 11 is "WSL GUI plus a bunch of obnoxious UI changes".

And GUI for WSL is super niche and was originally announced and developed as a windows 10 feature.

Edit: Oh I think explorer tabs made it into mainline. But you can't pop them out or drag them between windows?

Oh, I remembered a second notable feature.

Windows 11 supports 6GHz wifi networks.

And by that I mean: there is an old intel driver for windows 10 that supported them too. But that feature got removed in later versions, and the official answer is to change OS if you want it.

The way they hijacked the documents folder to sync with a limited space onedrive in a non revertable manner is despicable. The fact that we get only 5Gbs for an OS at this price is a disgusting anti-consumer practice. The way Microsoft keeps pushing this "feature" truly shows how little they care about their users.

I hope NIX platforms finish eating the market share Microsoft has acquired through lock-in and terrible entreprise deals.

I see it now, first force you to use a Microsoft account to sign into your computer, then push the limited storage OneDrive sync as a 'safety'-'backup feature', bonus points for using fear of file loss. Third, once it syncs and there isn't enough space, because of course there isn't, then you push a storage upgrade subscription, and have badges appear all over the whole OS pushing the upsell.

Perpetual revenue stream from your OS install base.

Yes, just one of many schemes laid bare. Always about trapping customers and holding them captive.

You left this out:

Revise the UX so that anywhere the user chooses an option like "Save As.." they are initially presented with the involuntary OneDrive option(s) and then they are forced to click-through several times to get to the option that will allow saving to local storage.

True, the flow currently redirects the user folder to sync to with OneDrive, including Desktop, Documents, Pictures and Videos folders.

I'm not looking forward to a future of absolutely everything being a subscription, feels like indentured servitude.

NIX is not making any strong gains of market share with desktops and laptops. Windows still at around 75%. Looks like it's going to stay that way for years to come.

Arguably, the true challenger is Google, and leveraging Android and their smartphone dominance, to gain market share on laptops. Which would allow Linux to come along for a free ride. But, Google seems to have got sidetracked with Chrome OS and Fuchsia, which are non-threats to Microsoft. Not to mention any deals about "territory" that they may also have with Microsoft.

Apple takes bites at Windows dominance on desktops and laptops, but they are too niche and "elitist" to become common nor can they break Microsoft's hold on businesses and Office product use.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that switching to Linux in late 2021 has since provided me with a meaningful amount of peace in my life that I don't think I would have experienced if I were still using Windows.

This. I have to use Windows at work, and watching the user experience degrade like this just makes me even happier every time I boot my Linux pc at home and it does exactly what I tell it to and absolutely nothing else.

No nag toast, no updates force restarting and losing my work. It doesn't crash, there's no evil bloatware I can't remove, and everything just works.

My experience on windows in 2022 is significantly worse than Linux in 2005. Things have completely flipped, and Linux is easier to install, easier to use, and more stable than windows.

"peaceful" is absolutely the correct way to describe it. Windows is hostile by comparison.

I've used Windows LTSC for a few years now and it is basically the exact opposite of what you are describing. No extra crap, just Windows. It never restarts randomly, and I've only had it have a restart update once.

Signing out of my computer is exactly when I’m most likely to have time or patience to stop and learn more…

When you have no time you are more likely to accidently press that button.

that’s not going to make anyone feel better about buying more Microsoft software is it?

What a dystopian feature, microtransactions everywhere, continuous rent seeking during a recession no less. I hate where tech is heading...

Plus total dependence from being connected because apps and data are all stored or accessed on demand from somewhere else, which in itself makes also a huge single point of failure, ready to be exploited by bad actors. Say goodbye to personal computing.

I don't even want the regular versions of their software. It's already gross enough to have to upgrade to the most recent version of windows 10 to even get any drivers from nvidia or amd to install or to have ads in the start menu or to have settings menus switched around and scattered in every version. This seems like more in a treadmill of forced upgrades that are hostile to their customers.

Windows is very satisfactory from a technical perspective, if they would only recognise that they do not own our computers...

If Linux gets gaming support, Microsoft will finally be dead to me.

Go valve!

This is an "ad" in the same way the MS Teams icon, or OneDrive icon in my system tray is an "ad". IMHO these are not ads in the traditional sense and this concern and outrage is completely unwarranted.

When my iPhone tells me to upgrade/pay for iCloud is that an ad?

When I ask my Alexa to play a specific song and it tells me I need to upgrade to Amazon Music, is that an ad?

Eeeeh… yes?

Of course those are ads.

It’s asking that you pay for a service. Is that not an ad? If I open Music and there’s a “SUBSCRIBE TO APPLE MUSIC!” banner… that’s an ad.

I consider the "preinstalled" MS teams and onedrive ads as well. Or at minimum, bloatware.

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