Botherations, You’ll need a Microsoft account to set up future versions of Windows 11 Pro

[GhostRoadieBL]

And this is why I have a spam proton mail account so I can sign up for all this trash and never look at it again.

[mecarry30]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

Good thing it's their os, their rules right?

Oh wait, sorry that's only in some circumstances,  my bad.

Correct. It is their rules, because it is their OS. And I'm sure there'll be workarounds - like downloading older versions of Windows and whatnot.

Just like with other circumstances, if there's a will, there's a way. Doesn't mean the way has to be easy to find.

[suicidalfranco]

Their platform, their rules.

Amiright?

[Akolyte]

Are you really all that surprised?  I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but I thought this was blatantly where Microsoft was headed - not only with Windows but with their other products as well. 

 

Like Amazon and Google, they have become a cloud (or at least SaaS) company.  They're no longer a company who produces and licenses software for computers - although they may still do this with some products, it's being sunset over time (just like Windows is slowly becoming more and more of a subscription-oriented, cloud-first OS). 

 

I get the feeling the enthusiast community is just sticking to Windows like a frog slowly boiling in a pot, and you're going to continue being disappointed with the direction Microsoft is taking with Windows - Microsoft might cave into gamer demands, but it's just a temporary armistice, they still have goals. 

 

No doubt that still includes gaming, but think of gaming as a service rather than a gaming PC.  As Microsoft builds more low-latency edge zones around the globe they'll try to offer services that offload the bulk of game crunch onto their cloud platforms.  It's not by chance they are purchasing game studios, not only do they want to control a huge portion of the gaming industry - but they want to create a viable gaming as a service offering. 

 

I don't mind their new approach honestly, I'm just saying I think it's worth asking yourself as an enthusiast if you really still want to support Microsoft if you don't support their direction.  

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, justpoet said:

Complaints ≠ lawsuits

Not sure what posts you have made, but a lot of users on this forum use the argument that "it's their platform" is made even without lawsuits being mentioned.

 

"I don't like this change because X" is met with "they own the platform so they can do whatever they want".

Check out this conversation regarding the LTT forum change if you want an example:

Quote

On 2/10/2022 at 9:29 PM, LogicalDrm said:

this is LMG forum and essentially for their self-promotion. If you don't have need to read forums in that section, you can minimize it.

On 2/11/2022 at 6:17 AM, dizmo said:

Haha, really? You're complaining that you have to select a little icon on the corner of a heading to have it basically back to normal? Why?

Seems awfully petty.

I imagine they have it set up like this for numerous reasons, one being that it's an LTT forum and they do what they want to self promote, and another is probably to cut down on people making threads related to those forums that constantly have to be dealt with by the mods.

On 2/11/2022 at 4:38 PM, pas008 said:

its ltt forum leave it people cant scroll seriously its like going to any other website and complaining their stuff is up top

All of these are essentially "their platform, their rules" as a response to valid criticism.

I absolutely hate this logic and argument because it is just dismissive. Instead of responding to the arguments being made it's essentially like sticking fingers in your ear and going "lalala I can't hear you".

 

 

 

Anyway, regarding this change, I think it's bad.

I criticise Microsoft when they introduced this change to the home version and I will criticise them even more now that it's in the Pro version. Have they even justified this change anywhere? I don't get the reasoning for requiring it in the home version either. 

You don't need this on MacOS, iOS or Android, so why on Windows? Hell, I am fairly sure you don't even need a Google account to use a Chromebook.

 

Is this just an attempt to make more people sign up for Microsoft accounts? My first guess is that it is, and that they want to link data gathered from your usage to your account. That is a bit harder to do with local accounts (although far from impossible).

 

Does anyone know if Windows still has that annoying limitation/bug that if you run the setup with your Microsoft account, your user folder gets assigned the first 5 letters in your Microsoft email address?

The workaround that I see everywhere (I am fairly sure I've even see Microsoft employees suggest it) is "run the setup with a local account, and then bind that account to your Microsoft account afterwards". With this change, that workaround will no longer work.

Even if I wanted to use a Microsoft account on my PC, I wouldn't want my user folder to be messed up and only part of my name.

 

Might not sound like a big deal to some, but not only is it ridiculous that a trillion dollar company like Microsoft can't figure out that some people have longer names than 5 letters, but it also causes issues when you have custom email addresses as your Microsoft account, such as in the reddit thread where someone use the email address "admin@companyname.com", because it means the user folder name becomes admin and that can conflict with other things.

[Lightwreather]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Their platform, their rules.

Amiright?

Too late, someone already joked on that

[Akolyte]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Not sure what posts you have made, but a lot of users on this forum use the argument that "it's their platform" is made even without lawsuits being mentioned.

 

"I don't like this change because X" is met with "they own the platform so they can do whatever they want".

Check out this conversation regarding the LTT forum change if you want an example:

All of these are essentially "their platform, their rules" as a response to valid criticism.

I absolutely hate this logic and argument because it is just dismissive. Instead of responding to the arguments being made it's essentially like sticking fingers in your ear and going "lalala I can't hear you".

 

 

 

Anyway, regarding this change, I think it's bad.

I criticise Microsoft when they introduced this change to the home version and I will criticise them even more now that it's in the Pro version. Have they even justified this change anywhere? I don't get the reasoning for requiring it in the home version either. 

You don't need this on MacOS, iOS or Android, so why on Windows? Hell, I am fairly sure you don't even need a Google account to use a Chromebook.

 

Is this just an attempt to make more people sign up for Microsoft accounts? My first guess is that it is, and that they want to link data gathered from your usage to your account. That is a bit harder to do with local accounts (although far from impossible).

 

Does anyone know if Windows still has that annoying limitation/bug that if you run the setup with your Microsoft account, your user folder gets assigned the first 5 letters in your Microsoft email address?

The workaround that I see everywhere (I am fairly sure I've even see Microsoft employees suggest it) is "run the setup with a local account, and then bind that account to your Microsoft account afterwards". With this change, that workaround will no longer work.

Even if I wanted to use a Microsoft account on my PC, I wouldn't want my user folder to be messed up and only part of my name.

 

Might not sound like a big deal to some, but not only is it ridiculous that a trillion dollar company like Microsoft can't figure out that some people have longer names than 5 letters, but it also causes issues when you have custom email addresses as your Microsoft account, such as in the reddit thread where someone use the email address "admin@companyname.com", because it means the user folder name becomes admin and that can conflict with other things.

Yes, Windows still has that issue. 

 

I reinstalled Windows on my old machine about a month ago and signed in with an MS account.  Yes, my home folder has been cut to 5 characters. 

 

Do Microsoft care?  Nah probably not.  In the end it's probably ingrained somewhere stupid in the code and who knows if there is a limitation somewhere else that means they must keep it down to 5 characters. 

 

You probably already know this - but with big projects like Windows.  They might work ok, but they are a chaotic mess once you look at the code, perhaps some schmo wrote a method that uses some crappy library written 2 years by an intern that only works with 5 character strings.  And dev teams really do often just leave that alone because who can be bothered?  If we change it now, we have to change all this other stuff? Project deadline gonna suffer?

 

And yes again, I agree this change is bad.  But I also expect it completely.  I think people forget Microsoft is first and foremost a company, and even if on the outside they seem like a Google, they are an Oracle on the inside. 

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Their platform, their rules.

Amiright?

Wait, suddenly all the whining about monopoly doesn't apply here, yet you all apply it to Apple with their 17% global market share whose products are actually entirely theirs through and through where Microsoft's only thing is the OS and nothing else. Hm. Consistency isn't yo lot's best trait isn't it?

[darknessblade]

12 hours ago, justpoet said:

It is their OS and their rules.  Doesn't mean I have to like it or continue to use it.

Well tell that to the European government/anti-trust regulators.

Who most likely will force Microsoft to allow EU users with a PRO key to still use a local account

 

They did it with Internet explorer, and will most likely also do it with account mechanics

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
 

[Akolyte]

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Wait, suddenly all the whining about monopoly doesn't apply here, yet you all apply it to Apple with their 17% global market share whose products are actually entirely theirs through and through where Microsoft's only thing is the OS and nothing else. Hm. Consistency isn't yo lot's best trait isn't it?

It's just because it hasn't got bad enough yet.  Microsoft is slowly boiling the pot, and eventually as these changes are accepted it will eventually go too far.

 

Wait until Microsoft makes Windows Home free but charges a $30/month for the "gaming" extension pack to the next version of Windows that allows you to use a discrete GPU with over 4GB of memory on all your computers, and also provides you with a cloud gaming service that allows you to stream games from Azure.  Or a one-time full license fee of $350 to use GPU's with over 4GB of memory without the gaming service which is only valid on one computer.

 

It terrifies me a bit that I don't think that's far from where MS is heading. 

[Master Disaster]

Well played MS, well played.

 

This change won't affect larger businesses at all, they generally use Windows enterprise or the sysops just use Windows deployment which can bypass all the OOBE nonsense entirely and create an offline/domain account just fine.

 

Its only home users of Pro that will care and their voice isn't big enough for MS to care about.

 

I'm glad I ditched Windows almost entirely, outside of a dual boot for games that don't run well on Linux I never use Windows these days.

 

8 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

Well tell that to the European government/anti-trust regulators.

Who most likely will force Microsoft to allow EU users with a PRO key to still use a local account

 

They did it with Internet explorer, and will most likely also do it with account mechanics

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

I'm not sure forcing a user to sign in is quite the same as forcing the user to use your software in order to kill the competition.

 

8 minutes ago, Akolyte said:

It's just because it hasn't got bad enough yet.  Microsoft is slowly boiling the pot, and eventually as these changes are accepted it will eventually go too far.

 

Wait until Microsoft makes Windows Home free but charges a $30/month for the "gaming" extension pack to the next version of Windows that allows you to use a discrete GPU with over 4GB of memory on all your computers, and also provides you with a cloud gaming service that allows you to stream games from Azure.  Or a one-time full license fee of $350 to use GPU's with over 4GB of memory without the gaming service which is only valid on one computer.

 

It terrifies me a bit that I don't think that's far from where MS is heading. 

This is where everyone is heading. Subscriptions are like the new sliced bread except they're not the best for anyone except the companies.

[Akolyte]

7 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Well played MS, well played.

 

This change won't affect larger businesses at all, they generally use Windows enterprise or the sysops just use Windows deployment which can bypass all the OOBE nonsense entirely and create an offline/domain account just fine.

 

Its only home users of Pro that will care and their voice isn't big enough for MS to care about.

 

I'm glad I ditched Windows almost entirely, outside of a dual boot for games that don't run well on Linux I never use Windows these days.

That's a good idea right now. 

[Akolyte]

17 hours ago, Elijah Kamski said:

I really can't wait for gaming to be available on Linux.

After that, cya Windows.

Yeah I'm sure the studios that Microsoft has purchased will make games for Linux.  They are getting a firmer hold, so that time may not ever come. 

 

Linux is a great OS to use for everything else though.  You can already play most games on Linux effectively, you just need monster hardware and a good knowledge of KVM. 

[pythonmegapixel]

The people I am most annoyed with now are OEMs and software companies who refuse to support Linux. The number of people in this thread who are saying they want to ditch Windows but are hamstrung by the lack of proper alternatives is astounding.

[jagdtigger]

10 minutes ago, Akolyte said:

 You can already play most games on Linux effectively, you just need monster hardware and a good knowledge of KVM. 

Same can be said about proton, and you dont need windows or kvm to do it.... (not to mention the lack of a requirement for a beast machine)

 

 

/ON

Just confirms the malware classification of MS products....

[Franck]

18 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

nor will it affect people who use a workplace-provided username and password

Why would you install windows pro if you are not planning to connect to a domain ?

[pythonmegapixel]

34 minutes ago, Franck said:

Why would you install windows pro if you are not planning to connect to a domain ?

Often I think people do it because they plan to leave it unactivated anyway so they might as well use the high end version

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Not sure what posts you have made, but a lot of users on this forum use the argument that "it's their platform" is made even without lawsuits being mentioned.

 

"I don't like this change because X" is met with "they own the platform so they can do whatever they want".

Check out this conversation regarding the LTT forum change if you want an example:

All of these are essentially "their platform, their rules" as a response to valid criticism.

I absolutely hate this logic and argument because it is just dismissive. Instead of responding to the arguments being made it's essentially like sticking fingers in your ear and going "lalala I can't hear you".

 

 

 

Anyway, regarding this change, I think it's bad.

I criticise Microsoft when they introduced this change to the home version and I will criticise them even more now that it's in the Pro version. Have they even justified this change anywhere? I don't get the reasoning for requiring it in the home version either. 

You don't need this on MacOS, iOS or Android, so why on Windows? Hell, I am fairly sure you don't even need a Google account to use a Chromebook.

 

Is this just an attempt to make more people sign up for Microsoft accounts? My first guess is that it is, and that they want to link data gathered from your usage to your account. That is a bit harder to do with local accounts (although far from impossible).

 

Does anyone know if Windows still has that annoying limitation/bug that if you run the setup with your Microsoft account, your user folder gets assigned the first 5 letters in your Microsoft email address?

The workaround that I see everywhere (I am fairly sure I've even see Microsoft employees suggest it) is "run the setup with a local account, and then bind that account to your Microsoft account afterwards". With this change, that workaround will no longer work.

Even if I wanted to use a Microsoft account on my PC, I wouldn't want my user folder to be messed up and only part of my name.

 

Might not sound like a big deal to some, but not only is it ridiculous that a trillion dollar company like Microsoft can't figure out that some people have longer names than 5 letters, but it also causes issues when you have custom email addresses as your Microsoft account, such as in the reddit thread where someone use the email address "admin@companyname.com", because it means the user folder name becomes admin and that can conflict with other things.

Except that what I said was backed up with reasons, not simply "it's their platform, they can do what they want." 

[Sauron]

38 minutes ago, Franck said:

Why would you install windows pro if you are not planning to connect to a domain ?

Bitlocker support for instance.

 

Also there is no real reason connecting to a domain should require an internet activated microsoft account - it definitely didn't use to a few years ago. That's just an arbitrary (and quite annoying) restriction.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Akolyte said:

It's just because it hasn't got bad enough yet.  Microsoft is slowly boiling the pot, and eventually as these changes are accepted it will eventually go too far.

 

Wait until Microsoft makes Windows Home free but charges a $30/month for the "gaming" extension pack to the next version of Windows that allows you to use a discrete GPU with over 4GB of memory on all your computers, and also provides you with a cloud gaming service that allows you to stream games from Azure.  Or a one-time full license fee of $350 to use GPU's with over 4GB of memory without the gaming service which is only valid on one computer.

 

It terrifies me a bit that I don't think that's far from where MS is heading. 

Take that down right now! Don't give them ideas, they are bad even without them!

[Dreckssackblase]

I don't see an issue with this tbh. All I want from the pro version of windows is for all the sponsored crap apps to dissapear.

It was only a matter of time until windows went from machine to user license and I honestly prefer that anyways.

[GoodBytes]

I am confused... most people complaining here, I am sure, if I spent the time, I can find a post saying that will switch to Linux... why haven't they?

 

To me, this is a non issue. You need a Microsoft linked account to do most things. To me it makes life easier for IT support to people, when reinstall are required. If Bitlocker is enabled for some reason, they don't need to hunt for the recovery code (which you can bet ignore to do the backup), bookmark/favorites are sync, do no need to deal with that, no need to setup OneDrive, Mail/Calendar if they use it, and more password to reset as they forgot it.. As for diy systems, well, when they make their account the first time on reinstall, it will activate. Plus, you need an account to use the Store in any case.

 

I am just surprised... people have 0 problem making Google/Apple account (which you can also use for MS account) for their phone (which I reminded you, does automatic backup of all your contacts to their service), Chrome web browser, YouTube, Steam, Epic game store, and the such. But, for their PC, it is the end of the world!!!! Google can track my online activity even in incognito mode, see who I call/message, how often I do, read my SMS/MMS, access to my contact...  That is all ok with you guys. Easy to make mass profiles, associate you with what your friends like to know more about you.. all good. But Microsoft might know what app you have installed if acquired through the Store.. Too much info right there...

 

So switch to Linux then, and make link your account their instead. All fine there.

 

 

Microsoft is going/pushing password-less (All Win11 OEM laptops have Windows Hello), and sync between systems, and easy getting setup for new computers and reinstall's, to get started as soon as possible. Simple as that. 

[Guest -Senku-]

I uninstall edge widgets gamebar onedrive what would i need Microsoft account for ?

[Dracarris]

15 hours ago, Arika S said:

No you don't understand, it's their rules, that means you're not allowed to complain about it at allllllllll.

Please watch your water intake. With that amount of salt, you'll run the risk of dehydration.

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Please watch your water intake. With that amount of salt, you'll run the risk of dehydration.