Over the years Microsoft has continued to turn it’s flagship operating system into a bloatware nightmare. I still like Windows, despite being one of the biggest advocates for IBM’s adoption of Linux some 25-years ago, yes really. That said, Microsoft are making it too hard to continue.
I recently read Andrew Cunningham’s article on Windows 11, which should have been called “Windows Elev(enshittification)”. I whole heartedly agree. [Link to Arttechnica.com]
Microsoft while making steady advances in reliability jumps on every fad or new technology and does it’s best to hold it’s users hostage by embedding that tech’ into Windows, either through Edge or base operating system functions. The best and most recent failure in this strategy is Cortana, the Microsoft attempt to mimic “Alexa”, “Siri” et al. The main problem being while most of us use a desktop or laptop for Windows we don’t have an enabled Microphone, where as phones do. Also, I’m rarely walking around or driving while using Windows, unlike my phone.
Cortana wasn’t a good idea to start with on PC’s and is joining a loads of other unused features that have go the way of the Dodo. It’s taken almost 14-years to kill Cortana, a bad idea from the start.
Of course, Microsoft isn’t the only company top kill features and functions, arguably Google is worse. The difference is the disrespect that Microsoft holds it’s users to, Windows 11 now forces you to sign-in with a valid Microsoft ID and Windows and Edge are continuously prompting the user to try/buy new features… 100GB of OneDrive, shopping on Edge etc. It’s exhausting.
While there are some benefits from logging in to Windows as a user, almost all of them do not apply if you have a single user system. The only reason for mandating the use of a Windows userid it it gives Microsoft somewhere to hang all the marketing and licensing features. Nothing more.
The difference between Microsoft and Google is that Google has so far avoiding infecting every component and feature with prompts and pop-ups encouraging use of new features. I use Google Workspace primarily because I never forgave Microsoft for moving Office to the cloud.
That said, all hail Hyper-V. It proves Microsoft can and still does write good code. When my old laptop died this year, I removed the SSD Drive, plugged it into a “Windows Workhorse computer“, enabled Hyper-V, set-up a virtual machine and job done. I login to my old laptop using the same login screen, password and Windows-10 system, with all the files and apps that were there previously. See below.
