Windows 11 adding ads to Start Menu | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 adding ads to Start Menu

theregister.com

55 pointscactikiller40 comments

The ads themselves are also particularly egregious masquerading often as news.

Very many times I’ve seen “BREAKING NEWS” only to click in and see something about some celebrity getting divorced or some other tabloid garbage like that.

Can’t believe this is the flagship product of a $3T business sometimes. And it’s such an easy fix too.

> And it’s such an easy fix too.

Yep, Steam Deck for games and PopOS for real work. Windows was already a pain in the ass before becoming infested with ads, I no longer choose to subject myself to it.

Didn't they already? IIRC they also installed Candy Crush and Spotify without my consent. Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry used most of my disk i/o for an hour every day, seemingly cataloguing everything I have installed. I will never ever use Windows for professional purposes, they are dead to me except for use as a glorified Steam launcher.

It wasn't that long ago I was using tools like Spybot and Ad-aware to remove things that were considered malicious. Now it's built right into the OS and browsers.

"Progress"

Shout out to StartAllBack, the replacement Start menu. It started back when Microsoft had abandoned the Start menu altogether. These days Windows 11 Start is more or less OK but shoving ads into it definitely is user hostile.

$5 per machine gets you a nice third party Start menu. It's more flexible too; these days I mostly use it because it lets you move the taskbar to the left edge where it belongs on an ultrawidescreen monitor.

The problem is that windows has a lot of unremoveable stuff built into it (which could probably be removed with some effort) , that’s why spending 5 dollars is like putting lipstick on a pig. The OS is hostile to the user, why would I spend any time in that land?

If you have no choice - like if it's what your employer uses exclusively - it's an option for making it more palatable.

Microsoft has also been attempting to block StartAllBack and similar programs: https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/01/microsoft_windows_11_...

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste." — Steve Jobs

Still true now and probably forever.

The whole snippet, for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KdlJlHAAbQ

(It's great vintage Steve Jobs. He's trying to sound high-minded for a documentary-interview, but he really can't resist getting some digs in.)

That’s Steve’s greatest interview, when he was in the wilderness between Apple and … well Apple. My favourite part is his whole conversation about the printers Apple started when he was there. He waxes poetics about how innovative they were at making laser printers for the Mac. When he just stuffed a Canon printing engine in a plastic shell, and had Canon do it for them. But to him, the focus is on the innovation of desktop publishing, and he’s not wrong.

There are a handful of times when the stars and planets aligned and the Microsoft desktop experience was consistent, coherent, and I dare say, pleasant:

* 1999: Windows 98 + Office 97 + Internet Explorer 5.5 + Visual Studio 6.0

* 2005: Windows XP (with Themes disabled) + Office 2003 + Internet Explorer 6 + Visual Studio 2005 (and Windows Media Player 9 gets an honourable mention)

* 2010: Windows 7 + Office 2010 + Visual Studio 2008 (but using Chrome instead of IE)

But between 2012 and 2019 (i.e. the Windows 8, Metro, and UWP kool-aid in Windows 10) it was naught but an incoherent mess - and since 2013, all releases of Office have been mildly grating.

I'll concede that, as far as superficial aesthetics are concerned, Office 2023 on Windows 11 looks nice, but that's honestly the only improvement I can cite; Windows 11 is a no-go for me so long as it has a lobotomized taskbar and start-menu - and I really don't think I'm missing out on anything except crows-feet on my face from constant frowning...

Lol, Apple is so anti-consumer the invented some of the most anti-consumer practices in use today.

Discussion 3 days ago:[0] (190 points, 189 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40018948

The solution is obvious: pin Steam to the taskbar, not to the start menu, as well as Chrome. Put a shortcut on desktop to shutdown the computer, then never use the OS for anything else.

I recently put Kubuntu on my desktop and I've been way happier.

What a depressing ending for that OS

https://universal-blue.org

Using the Bazzite image has replaced Windows for me. Basically everything works.

Already seen that in Windows 10.

They also installed an 8KB "PC Manager" without any notification.

I wonder, who is even making these decisions?

Who is windows for? Is it for gamers? Is it for office workers that were raised on windows at school? Do people just use it because it comes preinstalled on their computer?

Why would anyone with a modicum of self respect use this system any longer? Gone are the days when you had to be a nerd to want to use something else, when dislike of windows was about how Microsoft behaved in their commercial dealings, when it was an ideological decision. It is a practical matter now, people wholly uninterested in tinkering with their computer are getting sick of it at this point.

An operating system is supposed to get out of your way and let you operate the machine.

An upgrade to windows 11 is a big downgrade. Whatever systems I have windows 10 (just one) I’ll keep at that. Will steer clear of anything Windows or Microsoft in the future.

> An upgrade to windows 11 is a big downgrade.

I've heard a similar refrain about every windows release since XP.

Not saying it was or is wrong.

Vista -> 7 generally didn't get such complaints either.

The same can be said for Windows 8 -> Windows 10. But that's mostly because Vista and 8 were exceptional low points.

You can even empirically show that by how abysmally bad their sales were. According to [1], Vista peaked at 25% market share (of Windows installations), when XP still had >70% and Windows 7 was just releasing. Windows 8 (including 8.1) similarly peaked at around 25% right before the release of Windows 10, at a time where Windows 7 held 65% market share, with the rest going to XP.

Statista tells a similar story [2] [3]

1: https://windowsreport.com/windows-market-share-history/

2: https://www.statista.com/chart/4225/windows-market-share-by-...

3: https://www.statista.com/statistics/993868/worldwide-windows...

XP was good for its time.

Vista was garbage but necessary.

Windows 7 was actively good.

Windows 8 was a dumpster fire.

Windows 10 would be good if it wasn't riddled with all the dark patterns which make it merely adequate.

Windows 11 is going to make the Windows 8 dumpster fire look good by comparison.

Vista was fine too. I ran it for years, never had a single issue. I've seen it said that the problem with Vista was the system requirements were way too low, which I guess makes sense but I can't really confirm or deny. I built a machine well above the minimum specs so I never noticed any issues.

If you stuck with 98 SE instead of using ME, XP was likely a worse experience on the hardware you had as well.

If you had ME, all bets were off.

Edit: On the right machine, ME was fine though. Much like Vista after SP2 and really late in it's lifetime.

I used ME for a while. I must say it was extremely performant, shaved off about 15-20 seconds of boot time (compared to 98 SE) off my Athlon XP 2000+ machine. A cold boot in about 25 seconds. Which was a real time saver because it crashed every 2-3 hours.

> Which was a real time saver because it crashed every 2-3 hours.

That's exactly how I started my career as an engineer. As a 10-year-old boy, I had to learn how to fix it if I want to play games.

And it is the first time I know that what "Any Key" is.

I thought XP was a downgrade from Windows 2000.

[dupe]

Lots of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40018948

Windows is going to become a subscription service.

Spyware as a service?

Subscribe to get bombarded with ads seems like a terrible business model, but who knows with all the enshittification going on these days.

I mean... it worked for cable TV (somehow).

Because the alternative was four local channels with poor programming and poor reception, which were also full of ads. You paid for better programs and better video quality.

Counting down the days for the official nvidia driver to finish so I can switch to Linux & Proton for most of my gaming.

Malware built-in, just like mom used to make

Your mom used to make malware? Never heard that one

Why was the post flagged? Can we not un-flag it?

This is where I get off the Windows train…

I already got off the Windows train as soon as Microsoft put ads into Explorer. As the article says they backed it out, but it didn't take a genius to see that they were going to keep trying to put ads into the OS after that. I switched to Linux, with the only reason I keep Windows installed being for games that won't work in Proton.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com