Windows 11's default mail client will show ads starting 2024
techcommunity.microsoft.com
techcommunity.microsoft.com
I would often run Windows on a second machine or at work though, I felt equally productive in both Linux and Windows.
Fast-forward a decade and the Linux desktop situation has improved and the Windows situation has gotten worse, such that switching to Windows 11 is a total non-starter for me.
I dual-boot Windows 10 w/ Ubuntu because of the odd game or two that is beyond Proton's reach, but that happens less and less each day. I'd be willing to bet that I won't need that Windows partition at all soon.
However recently I started working for a company that provides Linux laptops. I was curious how much things had improved in 20 years. My conclusion is: not much.
Here are some of the issues I've had:
* Linux memory management is still really bad. On OOM it kills a completely random process and 90% of the time for me that means it hard-reboots my laptop. Maybe this is partly because they didn't set it up with any swap for some reason, but I'm unsure that would help (in 2003 it didn't; the system would just grind to an unresponsive halt... but we didn't have SSDs then).
* If you set a WiFi network to automatically connect to a VPN, then delete that VPN, it means the WiFi connection will always just instantly fail with no error message. Even dmesg didn't help. You can imagine how fun that was to figure out.
* For some reason half of the network settings are not in the network settings. They're in some third party app you have to run from the console. It isn't even linked via an "advanced" button in the gnome settings.
* Gnome's desktop notifications are hilariously subtle. We're talking dark grey window that disappears if you touch it with the mouse and there's no notification history. I ended up fixing the colour to make it red by hacking some CSS. It was a simple 27 step process. Couldn't fix the other issues though.
* Somewhat hilariously if you click a truncated link in a notification, the URL it takes you to will also be truncated!
* Screen capture doesn't work in Wayland. Not that I regularly need to share my screen with coworkers or anything... Fortunately switching to X was easy and doesn't seem to have any downsides at all.
* I haven't done this but multiple coworkers have accidentally uninstalled Gnome while trying to upgrade Python. HN mentality will be to blame them but that is the unthinking response.
* It takes ages to wake up. I sometimes have to absolutely mash escape for about 10 seconds.
* Battery life is of course hilarious.
Never had issues like this with Mac or Windows (though I haven't used Windows laptops really).
I still would hardly say that not much has changed, nor that the Desktop experience on many popular distros is bad.
It's also important to note that while the UX problems between Windows and Linux aren't the same in number and nature, the root of these problems are relevant imho.
With Linux distros, it's just lack of resources. They can address them with enough man hours.
With Windows, many of the user-hostile aspects of the UX are part of the product map, and I don't anticipate that getting any better.
I'm long on Linux on the desktop, which I know is a punch-line, but it's working for plenty of people of various technical stripes.
Back in 2003 I tried to install a Linux distro on my personal machine (Mandrake if memory serves) and it was an atrocious experience. Couldn't even get my mouse to work.
Sometime around 2015 I decided to give it a second chance. I worked for a company where we could work on Linux machines and I decided to give it ago. Ubuntu this time around. I had a pleasant experience, for development it proved to be a solid option, but I couldn't switch my personal machine to Linux because I would lose access to my gaming library.
Earlier this year I decided to give another go. Replaced Windows with Linux Mint, and couldn't be happier. It's an absolute joy to use, and thanks to Proton, I can play the vast majority of my PC games there. Most work right off the bat through Steam or Lutris. Some required minor tinkering.
I had none the issues you described.
I decided to try it out and during setup of the new free Outlook I got asked how I want to see my ads: As a banner above the mail window or in my inbox.
This took my by surprise since it essentially means, that the default mail client for Windows now will start serving ads.
Tweet for reference: https://twitter.com/Farbklex91/status/1716847430510023000
I use Evolution.
I will say, however, a proper email client is nice for archival purposes.
(note: not the person you're replying to, just a random passerby)
To me, the question isn't "why use my browser", it's "why use something else when I already have a browser and it's always open"?
As well as being able to choose my client based on the interface I prefer, rather than whatever UI the webmail provider decides to give me. And my mail client is also always open. And it uses less memory than a typical browser tab.
Indeed, but it's not an option if you have more than one email account on the same service.
Keep it for gaming if you need. But give Proton a try first.
My almost 75yo dad switched recently. I swear I'm telling the truth: his main complaint was, after buying a new printer, he couldn't find the matching drivers. I told him just to print, and that was that.
> Just switch to Linux already.
> It's really there. Some compromises required, sure, but they are already far and between.
There are a lot of compromises:
- The Linux desktop is far flakier and far less elegant than Windows and especially macOS. KDE's a little less flakey than GNOME, I suppose.
- A lot of the apps you love don't exist on Linux.
- The Linux replacements for the apps you love are way less functional.
- Keyboard shortcuts are chaotic unless you spend a lot of time deep diving on how to configure them coherently across applications.
- Odd behaviors with snap/flatpak apps, but those will get worked out with time.
Pluses:
- The underlying Linux OS is rock stable with compatible hardware.
- You can customize your desktop pretty much infinitely, if that's your thing.
- Everything is free.
- Logging is, compared to macOS and Windows, excellent.
- If you're a developer, everything is more compatible on Linux.
Anyways, after a year, I went crawling back to my Mac. I still have a Linux desktop SSD in the PC, ready to go, but I rarely pop in anymore.
That said, if you live the terminals plus browser lifestyle, you won't miss much switching to Linux desktop.
Edit: for context, I used UNIX and Linux way before I ever used Windows or DOS. I have, in the past, done deep dives on Windows, Windows kernel, Windows and .net programming, etc. I just prefer *NIX.
I had tons of apps on Windows, and all alternatives on Linux are better to me (IntelliJ vs. Visual Studio, VS Code the same, CodeLion). I had a MacOS stint in the middle of the transition, so maybe that's a difference.
But still: I'm not you, you are not me, and that's okay. I'm just proof that it is probably subjective, and not objective, what you describe.
And regarding the desktop OS experience: couldn't disagree more. But, as already said, probably taste :)
E-Mail me at glitch@qygge.com, if you like.
¹ our (sub-orga-wide) UX crew uses MacOS, almost all Devs use Linux, and both of them use Figma
When I switched to a Mac, it wasn't that MacOS got vastly better. It was that Windows has been getting dramatically worse.
I that being said, Resolve and Blender on Linux can nicely serve subsets of the creative community. We just need more.
A lot of the apps that I love don't exist on windows. Unix vs windows is like a very large and well stocked toolbox versus a set of nail clippers and a bent hairpin.
At some point in the next year or two, I plan to re-dogfood Linux desktop with i3 or Sway, as I effectively work in a tiled arrangement and it's far more stable than GNOME.
I don't really use Windows, but when I do, I'm pretty much in a web browser or WSL. I don't have much interest in the rest of it anymore, especially with the ruination Microsoft is committing.
While I've done a lot of Windows programming and PowerShell and whatnot, I'm a UNIX native, I'm old, and I'm sticking with some variant of it until EOL.
About this point, I switched to Ubuntu in 2009 after I realized that all the apps I was using in Windows XP were open source and available on Linux too. Some of them were actually Linux native and were much faster there, example: Gimp.
Battery life, display scaling, sleep & wake up issues, trackpad gestures, sound output, GPU-accelerated video playback... Just to name a couple of problems I hope not to encounter every time I decide to give Linux another chance, but I still do.
To fix them, you need to run some arcane commands, edit some config files, compile your own kernel, ... I don't know. I'll have something that "just works". I'll keep using Linux headless on a server, where it really shines.
YMMV. Just yesterday, I discovered that the Debian installer doesn't include support for UFS drives, which have been available in laptops for 3+ years now.
(Explaining to my wife why I was returning the laptop I'd just bought wouldn't have been a great endorsement for "Linux runs out of the box".)
Coincidental bug report from mail list last week: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o...
Did you see the follow up comments by the way? Compared to trying to get support from a commercial vendor the FOSS world never ceases to amaze me with the degree of effort people are willing to make to get other people on the way again.
So, let's strike 'a couple of years old' and add 'anything mainstream that is a couple of years old'. We're going to end up with a very long definition if we have to add all of the possible exceptions but I suspect there are more devices capable of running Linux by now than there are of running Windows!
And yes, the support was good! I expect the installer will be fixed within a few months, or whenever the next Debian release happens, given how easy the fix looks to be.
At least you can fix them.
Also, sorry can't help the cheap shot: how is typing "arcane commands" any different than clicking on "gnostic glyphs"? Anything can sound complex if you want it to :)
I'm not disputing your experiences but it's so surprising to me. I exclusively use Linux on the desktop on numerous devices, some of which seem like prime candidates for the types of issues you mention, but I've not had any major problems in literal years, especially since switching to the zen kernel.
It's always a shame when people don't like the things you do I guess.
Oh and if you're lucky you have the option to hover for a second to find what the icons mean through a tooltip. Having to do that with every icon until you find the right one is not pleasant.
I just find typing "help" or "man" a lot more intuitive than the random clicking on icons.
I'm sure that I'm a rare specimen and most people would prefer clicking to reading, but personally I find discoverability a bad user experience.
Having a row of icons with vague meanings, or endlessly nested/badly categories menus isn't intuitive or easy.
Conversely, there are a plethora of terminal-based programs with absolutely excellent UX.
Anyone can edit a well-documented template/example config file, and a good CLI program is almost like an interactive conversation, which again is an extremely intuitive experience. It's not the fault of whether the interface is graphical or not in most cases, it's just mediocre/bad software.
And for myself, I'd rather pay for O365 than use Linux on the desktop. It is just so so so broken. High DPI is a mess, half the apps are only 60% complete, weird ass bugs (LibreOffice won't open spreadsheets it created half the time for example) and on top of that things break all the time on routine upgrades from power management to GPU drivers.
I say this as someone who actually spends most of the day SSH'ed into Linux boxes.
I've been trying for 25 years to get it on my desktop and it's nowhere near any commercial product in any way.
¹ both on Wayland and X11, so maybe we're really being lucky.
² mostly Dell Laptops, but also Lenovo
Dell? I have a cupboard full of ones I've murdered and a limping one. No thanks.
I use Remote Desktop to log into my home PC when I'm at work or away. No need to have a powerful laptop and no need to worry about laptop getting stolen.
Tried all the Linux alternatives (latest round was last year). Yes there are functional remote desktop solutions, where functional means it actually works. But they're not really usable on a day-to-day basis and none of them are anywhere near the RDP experience.
I see some developments on the horizon which make me a bit hopeful though.
Is it though? A friend of mine bought AMD RX 7800. He went with AMD specifically to make sure Linux compatibility is top notch given that AMD drivers are included in the kernel and developed by AMD developers. The result is that he cannot boot his Arch machine with it until he disconnects his monitor. Seriously. It just hangs forever [0]. Everything is up to date. Tried with NixOS and got same result. That's on top of other performance related problems he's encountered (mostly in Blender). Tried Windows to make sure the card is not at fault and voilà everything works correctly with no issues.
It's absurd of them to even imply that anyone wants to see the ads at all. They clearly know that given the option, pretty much everyone would answer the question "where do you want to see your ads in your mail client" with "nowhere". There are certainly products where I grudgingly recognize that ads are the only way they're able to provide the product at all, but I can't see how they possibly could claim that here when they're literally going out of their way to move people towards using it.
So apparently I missed some time period where it was called "Mail" instead. But now it'll be Outlook again. Full circle!
The Windows Mail client was on its way to becoming a close analogue to Mail.app but I guess those days are over.
I assume they must do that on purpose, right? Make their IMAP implementation bad so people will use their clients with ads? I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.
what? it's supported IMAP IDLE for longer than some of the posters in HN have been alive.
> I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.
... you chose to use some random company's domain for your email address, that's been an obvious problem for thirty years now.
there's jillions of things to criticise google about, this is absolutely not one of them.
> ... you chose to use some random company's domain for your email address, that's been an obvious problem for thirty years now.
I was 13 when I made the account. I obviously wouldn't have tied so many things to it if I knew what I know now back then. I'll try to be born earlier next time, and then maybe I can buy a house before 2008 and some 90s Apple stocks while I'm at it.
Regulators won't ever save you.
* buy a domain name on namecheap
* setup a proton mail account (think you'll wind up paying some for it, but its worth it)
* link your domain name to your proton mail account and setup an alias
* forward your gmail to the new alias on the domain name that you control
* slowly start converting all the references to your old gmail to the new account
https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/
(The URL is /win32/, but there are 64-bit builds there too)
I sent the same email from the same address to the same recipient once with Thunderbird on Windows, once with Apple Mail on iOS. The one with Thunderbird was silently dropped (not even reaching the spam folder), the one sent with Apple Mail reached the inbox without issue. I've had that same issue with 2 different recipient companies.
And yes, my address passes SPF, DKIM, has a strict DMARC, and isn't in any blacklist (uses iCloud+ as host).
Going to have to figure out what to switch to... Yikes!
https://www.dell.com/nl-nl/shop/dell-laptops-en-notebooks/sr...
Other distros have other advantages - I'm a happy NixOS user now - but Mint makes an excellent first Linux.
My main desktop went out of support earlier this year, but it has been so stable I can't be bothered to rebuild it. I have apps for everything I need from photo and video editing and management, to gaming, to productivity and development. My newer laptops have more recent builds and likewise have worked without issue. Really the only speedbump I have are a couple of Windows only things like a Dymo label printer and some automotive tuning software, so I run a dual boot on one XPS 15.
Unfortunately at work I can't run Linux so I use a MBP as it's far better than Windows, however it still infuriates me regularly and I don't use any other Apple products. I've previously contributed to Mint and was recently thinking I need to send some more money, so thanks for the reminder!
Recently I switched to Ubuntu because I’d switched to a laptop, and I thought it would handle things more nicely for me. I regret it. It does too much.
I’d recommend the first two steps I took, though.
M$FT have used the Office monopoly to push teams and AD to push Azure, both of which are subpar products. It is hard to find one good product they have made in the last 20 years (and yes VSCode is not it).
(yeah, yeah, knee-jerk reaction, but the trend on Windows becoming user-hostile can be seen at this point from the other side of the Milky Way)
I tried the New Outlook after having issues with the default mail app. I was greeted with a message "To add your iCloud account to Outlook, we need to sync your emails, contacts, and events to the Microsoft Cloud."
I'm sorry WHAT?!? You're telling me that to use a local email service I need to sync with Microsoft servers?
Someone here please tell me that this is just because it was in beta and all of the features didn't exist yet? Otherwise what the hell is Microsoft thinking?
For the record I just did not do this and any chance of using Windows for productivity tasks went completely out the Window. Windows was always just primarily for gaming but having email there would have been nice.
It sort of sounds like maybe the same infrastructure was borrowed here to set up the iCloud account in the local Outlook app. Presumably the local app is now based on the prior Acompli infrastructure.
That said… it really doesn’t pass the sniff test, it feels like Microsoft wants your contacts the same way LinkedIn (also Microsoft) wants your contacts. Personally, I wish I hadn’t trusted Google, Meta and LinkedIn as much with my contacts as I did in the past. Live and learn, I suppose.
Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two. That's speaking of my (medium sized) org of >15k Emps worldwide.
Ads, Forced Edge, Bing, Ultra-Slow file system compared to any other OS, Shady "Driver"-Sites, could go on forever. I agree this comment sounds a bit flamey, if it wasn't just describing the reality. Even MS recommends switching to Linux by now as a replacement for the Win 8 -> Win 10 / 11 upgrade.
I have the option and ability to use whatever OS I want, and I like and enjoy Windows. I use Windows for gaming and .NET development, macOS as my daily desktop (RDP to my Windows dev box), Android on my phone, iPadOS and ChromeOS around the house, and Debian on my servers.
I detest ads, but the portions of Windows I object to involve only some cleanup on install. I find the unblockable ads in Android/i(Pad)OS/ChromeOS (e.g. the ads in all of their app stores) far more objectionable than the ones I never see in Windows.
(Tried Linux on the desktop every year for the previous 20-something, always hit some deal-breaker within a day or so. This time it's looking good.)
I actually switched to GNU/Linux in college because I wanted to play video games less. This happened right before Proton was released in 2018. Let's just say that I was very unsuccessful in my goal when switching.
However gaming is still very much an excuse. On my Steam Deck I even primarily use Windows after not being able to use Game Pass, issues with Kingdom Hearts, and anything through Epic game launcher being a mixed bag.
Proton is great but it really isn't a silver bullet and you may need to go to Windows if you want to play a specific game.
Proton is also no complete, perhaps one day it'll be, it's not quite there yet. I've stumbled on some games that don't work (Obscure 1, Resident Evil 0, Dark Messiah, etc) and games that didn't work in the past but now works, with some flaws that are hard to distinguish between Windows' and Linux's fault (Thief: Deadly Shadows).
[1]: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/comet-is-an-open-sourc...
MAYBE give the option if for some reason I want to do it. But for it to be the default is a stupid idea. You cannot convince me there is a valid reason for this to be a thing.
I wouldn't have microsoft read my email either, of course. Thankfully in windows you have dozens of clients to choose from.
Thats what my phone does. I could have seen the value of this 10-15 years ago but I don’t see the point now.
It isn’t like this would magically get rid of the delay either, their servers still have to poll before they can send you that notification.
Never mind that every update will try and reset defaults and it shoves Edge down your throat at every possible opportunity, and you can't change the search engine for a lot of things away from Bing. Who exactly owns my hardware, Microsoft?
It feels like windows is being managed by inexperienced MBAs who are desperate to use their heavily entrenched OS as an ad platform.
I stopped using the built-in Mail app though because it was pretty buggy. Search was useless.
Priorities straight.
Maybe 2024 will be the year of Linux on my desktop.
Maybe they’ll see the light with Windows 12
I am paying for O365 family so none of my family get that. And I think I paid £59 for it last time with some voucher scamming. That gives everyone, 6 people in my case, 1TB storage, all the office desktop apps. I don't think that's a bad deal, especially compared to the shafting you get from Apple these days for icloud.
Stuff isn't free!
If that's the case, Microsoft's strategy is that one way or another it wants some money from you: either the subscription, or the ad revenue. I'd be concerned if I had to see ads while being a paying customer.
Maybe I was dumb and missed the "no thank you" button, but it looked like there was no option. Want to create a user, has to be managed online. Thanks and fuck you.
I had to unplug internet, click next, wait 2min for the thing to time out and say "oh well let's create a local user for now we'll try again later". I haven't seen another"try" since but who knows. It probably happened automatically one day as a background task.
It's one small text ad, formatted to look like an email message card. I quickly learned to ignore it.
And no one is forcing anyone to use this app. You can use webmail, Thunderbird, etc...
I still prefer this app with the ad to opening gmail in the browser.
I consider it a small price to pay for a nice app.
Having ad free software should be the norm.
Can anyone find how much revenue is generated in ads from Windows?
All I can find is revenue for Bing.
I'm curious to know if the revenue Windows ads are generating is even worth the reduction in UX and consumer sentiment.
I mean they don’t even care if you are paying.
And subjectively the UI of a Mac is worse than Window's. I liked the menu at the top only on the original Mac with the builtin 9" screen. It started to be a bad choice on the next models with a larger separate monitor. And Windows' UI is worse than the customized Gnome desktop I've been using since 2009.
All Windows really has is a long tail of legacy apps (many of which are very good, and people don't want to give up) and games, and that has to look like a dying business model. (Unfortunately, games are pretty sticky, because they own a game console, and everyone wants access to the console. So if Microsoft says "if you port your game to Linux, you can't be on Xbox", Windows is on indefinite life support.)
(Games might not even be a thing for them for much longer. Mobile games are the most accessible, and again Microsoft is not in any position to get revenue from that trend. People that buy consoles or $1900 graphics cards are not nearly as numerous.)
I am surprised that more corporate IT departments haven't switched to Linux. They can still supply the same $300 laptops, lock them down to the point of unusability, and everyone can use Word in the cloud. I'd be scared if I were Microsoft, and wouldn't want to make switching away look attractive to anyone. No ad revenue from untargeted ads in an email client could possibly be worth losing Windows as the "default" OS.
Have you been living under a rock that you missed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, owners of Candy Crush, one of the most popular mobile games?
Microsoft isn't stupid, it knows the future revenue makers are software subscription services and IP and not hardware, which is why it's buying up all the IP it can and building a SW service ecosystem around the likes of Azure and ChatGPT based copilots.
Thankfully Proton exists, so technically developers don't have to go out of their way to 'port' to linux :)
Its great that Valve started investing in Linux for gaming, as they are nowhere as misguided by greed like Microsoft is.
That said, I know they probably did it because of the threat of the windows store vs steam, but we've really benefited.
Weird decision by Microsoft in my opinion. It seems like the only people that'd bother to setup Windows mail in the first place are power users, and that's the last people you want to piss off with annoying ads.
That said, 9,999 other people are about to reply that they use GMail or something like that. Maybe 99,999.
The first one is extremely developer-friendly, and regularly pushes out superb, high-quality tools and frameworks—many of which are free of charge and open-source—and gives nice deep dives into tech. They also develop pretty interesting alternatives to the UNIX ecosystem. Some examples:
- the .NET ecosystem and languages (VB.NET, C#, F#);
- PowerShell (technically this is also a .NET language, but it has made Windows scripting so easy that it deserves a mention on its own);
- ASP.NET Core (again, part of the .NET ecosystem, but it is very far ahead of almost all other web backends (in terms of functionality, performance, and ease-of-development) that it also deserves a separate mention)
- TypeScript;
- Visual Studio Code;
- Visual Studio Community, the MSVC C++ STL, and the MSVC compiler, `cl.exe`;
- Direct3D and DirectXMath;
- WSL
- the Windows API, the Windows driver model, and the Windows ACL model.
Many more that I can't recall off the top of my head.
And there's the pain-in-the-arse, bean-counting Microsoft that justifies adding advertisements, crapware, and generally enshittifying what used to be a superb OS, pushing for software-as-a-service, changing the UX of Office programs every version, not being able to settle on and develop one nice unified UI toolkit for Windows, and (probably therefore) pushing laggy Electron apps like the XBox store, Teams, etc over well-programmed native/.NET ones.
I use and develop on Windows because I grew up on it. I don't want 'an OS as an IDE'. I want an IDE that does an IDE's job well, and I haven't found anything better than Visual Studio's debugger and profiler.
I am torn. Linux is still broken for even slightly edge-case use cases (laptop + monitor of very different pixel densities, and hence different scaling ratios; both X and Wayland fail horribly at this whereas Windows eats it up in a heartbeat). I game regularly and am not keen on virtualising or using Wine/Proton (I am convinced there is a performance drop in the general case), and MacOS is a non-starter for me.
MSFT-ActivisionBlizzard also shouldn't happen.