This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
Paying Microsoft is like paying a ransomware scammer
No amount will ever be enough to satiate their depraved lust for money
Microsoft threatened me with $140 to reactivate windows because I changed my motherboard, and since this is my 2nd time doing so without reinstalling windows, I can no longer do so for free. I just typed 2 lines into powershell and then it became activated.
At risk of sounding like an insufferable individual, I've completely had my fill of Microsoft. I'll have to still use it at work, but I'm transitioning everything into Linux.
What finally made me make this decision is when I read about Microsoft's vision to make the Windows OS completely cloud-based.
I've also had to fight with Windows 10 so much just not to be redirected into Edge, show me unwanted promotions, or, worst of all, restart my machine without my deliberate consent and in spite of making registry edits (If I leave my computer on overnight, there's a reason, I don't care if it's "inactive hours" or whatever they want to call it.)
Whatever I miss out on by using Linux just isn't worth the hassle anymore.
For when you have to use windows, run Aveyo's edge remover and install msedgeredirect.
I use MSEdgeRedirect!
I love it!
I have roughly 30 computers and I’ve migrated all but one over to Linux. Never been happier!
Also I’m able to run 10 year old hardware and thoroughly spank brand new stuff that’s got Windoze11.
It’s it’s a feature not a bug.
Payed to get your data leached.
Shit like this is why I switched to OpenOffice and then LibreOffice all those years ago. LibreOffice is just as good for my personal purposes and I'm never going back to MS Office. Unless your work specifically requires something only Microsoft's product can do, I highly recommend LibreOffice, I use it every single day.
I switched to OpenOffice, and hated it. But it was free, so i used it. Then tried Libre, it was better... But it will was not Microsoft office. Then years later i had to use Microsoft office for work (it was Alli was allowed to install on the work computers) and realized how much i enjoyed using Libre over Microsoft.
and if the work required it, THEY should pay for it
Bill Gates thanks you for your donation to his meaningful mission to enrich himself and his shareholders 🙏
Debian + KDE + LibreOffice = chef kiss
Unfortunately thats what you paid for. These are 2023 legal scams.
I literally just cancelled my McAfee subscription because of annoying constant pop-ups like this. At least this one from Microsoft is a legal notice. McAfee constantly spams you to turn on unnecessary features, and even changes settings periodically to turn things on like "browser monitoring". Literally worse than old school pop-up viruses.
More importantly, it also never caught a single thing. Windows Defender does fine. My buddy in cyber security suggested them for safety despite how bad they are, but I can honestly recommend you should never, ever, get it. Just keep backups and be prepared to nuke your system if needed, and save yourself a pop-up every other day.
Who the heck still uses McAfee! Wow.
The US intelligence community, or a subset thereof, apparently.
I have no idea his personal skill level or knowledge, but without putting him on blast I know his company has been involved in big stuff. He could theoretically focus more on a different aspect of security and have got this part wrong, I don't know the details of his job very much by design.
It’s wild to me that anyone uses Norton or McAfee anymore.
Only if ~~that person was~~ the persons pc's OEM was paid big bucks.
Lol, I would like to have words with your friend in cybersecurity
Just one
no
Your buddy must be very bad at his job
Sounds like some people I’ve encountered who really don’t know shit, and have just survived on the ignorance and impressionability of others they con into paying/employing them. Then they just Google every problem they’re tasked with fixing.
I recently made the mistake of installing Avast, and it does the same annoying garbage. The actual settings are buried under a metric shit ton of "Did you know that...?" pop-ups that appear every single time no matter how often you select "do not show me this again", and it constantly urges you to buy the "premium" version for extra features that are literally useless to me.
And it was a pain to uninstall as well. Some files survived the official Avast uninstall AND separate uninstall from the Task Manager, and messed with the Windows Defender, which was unable to recieve updates for a while until I found and nuked the hidden residue of Avast.
Avast, avg, McAfee, Norton is all just garbage to try get you to pay.
are you able to get your work done on other suites like LibreOffice / OnlyOffice, or does it require MS specific functionality?
I can't speak for everyone but I rely heavily on VBA scripts, dozens of macros, PowerQuery for ETL, connection to azure SQL data, etc. If you work with big data excel is basically a must.
Given that OP posted a Mac screenshot, Pages and Numbers would likely work just as well for the files themselves.
screenshot, Pages and Numbers would likely work
Terrible app names to be honest
Hadn't noticed! Keen eye!
Design convergence across platforms has me fooled 😅
I'll never forgive Microsoft for LOCKING me out of my own computer, during a recent update. I was FURIOUS. Something to do with Bitlocker or some bullshit.
it happened to me, the computer had a firmware (BIOS) update and it reset the TPM holding the decryption key was wiped.
But anyway you had a backup of the decryption key, right? Right?
(The reason microsoft insists so much on having everyone login with microsoft accounts is that bitlocker encryption keys are uploaded in the cloud so you if you follow the link on the boot error message, you can unlock your drive)
(a "side effect" of this automatic encryption key upload on the cloud is that your drive is not encrypted for law enforcement)
Is there a way to sign in with Microsoft account and not upload your key to the cloud?
This also makes me wonder if Android does the same thing with its device encryption, since you must login with a Google account.
Yes, you have to opt in.
I use a Microsoft account for my user profile, and recently reinstalled windows. I didn't choose the account backup and so despite signing back into the same account, the encrypted partitions on my non-boot drives could only be unlocked by pasting the key in directly, there wasn't an option to restore it.