Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

I'm definitely not one of those people who thinks Windows should stay frozen forever as Windows XP, I appreciate we're finally getting 15-20 year old features like search filtering in the task manager.

But whoever's bonus metric is tricking people to sign in with MS accounts is really making it a gross experience. I managed to finally get my new machines install on a local account using "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" although none of the instructions I found online worked for some reason, eventually found the script find myself. Then when trying to eventually register Windows it tricked me into converting to a MS account because the license troubleshooter forces you to login to do anything.

Next time I boot my machine its asking for my MS password instead of my local password... So that's taught me to never enter my MS account into anything on the desktop because there is a risk it will silently do that.

You have a "Home" and a "Pro" version, really just wish for a world where they do this silly scammy behavior in the Home version and let the Pro version just be an actual tool to use hardware. I'm not using Windows because it's a great operating system I'm only using it because it's the only OS in the Venn diagram of "Supports Nvidia GPUs" and "Runs Adobe CC", can't they just be happy I use it at all.

> You have a "Home" and a "Pro" version, really just wish for a world where they do this silly scammy behavior in the Home version and let the Pro version just be an actual tool to use hardware.

This "it's fine if they scam other people as long as they leave me alone" attitude is really bizarre to me. If they keep showing you that they can't be trusted… maybe believe them?

I think OPs sentiment translates to "I'm fine with them charging more money for a version that works without a Microsoft account, so long as it exists."

I was a user of several microsoft services that worked relatively well. On computer I used to have onenote and onedrive. On phone I also had the outlook app to manage all emails.

For exactly the very same reason you stated, I have stopped using them. Whilst I can still use them on my android phone, there is no point if they dont sync to my computer, and they don't sync to my computer because I am afraid of putting my microsoft password in anything that is not firefox.

Hence, I already moved out from onenote to Joplin (still synced via onedrive), (I am not happy with the move) and I stopped syncing with Onedrive, and will have to move soon to something else. On my phone I stopped having outlook, and I am back to use each app for each email.

As you, I am also trap on windows (tried fedora, it simply didn't work).

Sad times for people who want just a computer that works.

It's not for everyone, but I have been having great success with Thunderbird for a mail client. Maybe give it a try and see if you like it.

Thunderbird is great until you receive Teams invites. It removes/hides the links in the calendar entry so you need to keep the email in order to be able to click on the meeting link.

Weird, I join teams meetings every wednesday from Thunderbird. I can either use the Today/Events Pane (f11 to toggle), the calendar tab (Alt+3), or find the email. To find the link in calendar view or from the events pane, all you have to do is double click on the event. The link, Meedting ID, passcode are all in the description box.

Maybe it was a previous issue that they fixed, but, for me, it's been working for months without a hitch.

Why not the opposite? Track the Pro users all you want since these are people willing to spend more money on MS features and possibly also using their devices as a work device where the company pays for it. Leave the Home users (kids, parents, grandparents, etc.) alone and not get them into forcing signups, misclicking random shit, etc.

This is a pretty good step by step:

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

According to the Windows 11 system requirements[1],

Windows 11 Home edition requires internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account to complete device setup on first use.

So can't you just tell Windows 11 Pro you don't have an Internet connection, given that it's officially optional?

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-syste...

How do you get "optional" from "requires"?

jasomill's question/assumption is about PRO version.

Internet connection and Microsoft account are explicitly required for HOME version.

There's no mention of such requirements for PRO version. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that they are optional in PRO version.

Pirate it next time!

It comes with free root kits as well

It comes with free root kits as well

Yes, but. We're talking about Microsoft here, we've known about their embedded rootkits since the NSAKEY[1] days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

Will pirating it actually solve the issue? MS is not after one-time cash payment (heck, they even offered the upgrade for free), what they want is long-term user milking in various ways, some of them looking pretty grey to me.

Depends on which 'distro' you pirate, ghostsceptre removes a lot of the asshole-ness.

Never thought that I will see the return of third-party repackagings ala "Joe Shmo's Super Hyper Windows" in any somewhat popular capacity.

I expected it even less in a recomendation for an actual problem.

Time is a flat circle.

Although I agree with the sentiment of voting with your wallet, but building the foundation of my GPU workstation that could cost me a lot in electricity if a bad actor took control of it on pirated software is ill advised.

You can download official ISOs of all of the Windows versions for free directly from Microsoft's servers. Then you just need to activate it and there are plenty of methods to do that without risk of malware. Microsoft seems to care about this so little that one of the most starred repositories in github(MAS) has provided easy one click activation solution for years at this point.

[*] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

>and let the Pro version just be an actual tool to use hardware.

Pro has Group Policy, among which is an option to block Microsoft account logins at the OS level. It kind of breaks Microsoft 365 subscriptions if you need Office 365, but that's obvious.

Other Group Policies include ones to turn off Windows Autoupdates, block OneDrive, block Copilot, and more.

Any good resources on flipping these switches?

Yes: Open Group Policy Editor and play around.

There are so many policies you can configure to your heart's content that it's better to learn by doing than hearing.

There's an official spreadsheet of Group Policies that's typically updated alongside major feature releases: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=105...

Search for Microsoft account or local account and you'll find several relevant policies.

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