…reason not to install the latest “upgrade” from Windoze: here it is.
Microsoft will soon begin pushing adverts into the Start Menu of Windows 11 with the inclusion of ‘recommended’ apps.
And why not? It’s where users are at their most vulnerable, so to speak: right at the beginning of the process. It’s like starting your car, but before the engine fires, you first have to listen to a 15-second advert for “recommended” tires, Bud Lite or windshield washer fluid. But of course, it’s being pushed as a helpful benefit:
Microsoft says the ads are aimed to enable users to find ‘some of the great apps that are available’.
That’s Microsoft all over: just trying to be helpful, as is someone who will pass you a bucket of lighter fluid instead of water when you’re trying to put out a house fire.
Although the update [KB5036980] is currently optional, it will soon roll out to all Windows devices within the coming weeks.
Of course it will — coercion is one of Microsoft’s major strengths. But:
Luckily, there is an easy way to turn off the pesky adverts with a simple change to your device settings.
Luckily. Until that feature too is disabled in future “updates”, depending on how much blast-back Microsoft gets from customers — not that they’ve ever paid much heed to that in the past, unless the storm of protest was overwhelming.
I have generally made it my personal policy to skip generations of Windows OS — I never used Win 9, for example, going from 8 to 10, and then only because someone I trusted not only chided me but actually forced me to make that change, having to do it himself because I flatly refused to do so. (Thanks, Dan.) And I was only able to have him do that because I was a house guest at the time. Unfortunately, he lives about two states away from me so I won’t be able to do that again this time.
And in any event, I’m going to get this fucking “feature” when I get my replacement PC* later in the year. Let’s hope there really is an “easy way” to turn the thing off, or else the laptop’s durability will be sorely tested as it slams into the opposite wall. (My new apartment doesn’t overlook the pool this time, so the laptop’s waterproofing will not be called upon.)
*In response to my earlier woes, several Readers sent me their older laptops to try to help me out — and thank you, every one — but I was never able to make them work for me, even with considerable input from Daughter, who is a pro at this kind of thing. Sadly, it’s a new one I’ll be getting, or else I’ll just go back to using my older Dell which, although slower than a carthorse on downers, is at least still capable of closing without needing engineering manipulation of the Rubik Cube degree.
I’m certainly no tech genius, and am mired in PC world, and I wouldn’t buy a MAC if that was all that was available. But wife is a teacher and her school runs everything on Chromebooks and they’re quit good, actually. They used to be considered not really computers, but the latest models are very good, and Google has all the apps you need, documents, spreadsheet, presentation, etc. No local storage, but Google cloud is reliable and cheap. Free even, up to a certain size.
The machines are simple, reliable, update themselves. Not strongly suggesting you get one, but suggesting you look into one, they are quite economical. And if you toss it in the pool you lose nothing. When you calm down and get a replacement, it’s like you have your machine back.
Just a thought.
There was no Windows 9. You didn’t skip anything.
And the only reason for Windows 11’s release was that MS saw that Apple had left Mac OS X behind with macOS 11. Originally, Windows 10 was going to be the “last version” of Windows, with perpetual feature upgrades and bug fixes and security patches.
2 tower computers on my 8′ desk, a silly Win 10 for web stuff, and a serious XP for business stuff. The latter gets stuff done exactly as I need it to, and the former mostly just pisses me off.
My experience goes back to the DOS days of the 80’s (even to the BASIC days of the late 70’s) and this Win 10 OS is the worst nightmare I have ever seen. It’s like MS intentionally did everything they could to make it as uncooperative as possible.
I’ve been fighting with computers the past week or so since my main Windows 10 machine crashed so thoroughly that I had to completely reinstall the damned operating system. I did save at least some of the files from it, but not all. I am currently trying out Linux for about the fifth time. It may take this time as I no longer need any of the work related software that brought me back to Windows in the past. I’m not really a computer guy, but I am a DIY sort and learn what I need to fix a problem every few years. I’m currently playing with Linux Mint which seems to be as user friendly as the commercial products, but without the Microsoft/Apple/Google consumer indoctrination and control features.
Linux is still not for everyone. I don’t have anyone else helping me with computer stuff. If I did, I would take that person’s advice on what sort of computer and software to run.
Strongly recommend Trinity Desktop Environment, in the Ubuntu flavor.
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I’m getting my wife a new, smaller, lighter computer for her to write on. (It arrived yesterday, so I suppose “getting” should’ve been “gotten.”) Her old one is a consumer-grade HP most likely purchased from some mass-market retailer; the new one is a Framework Laptop 13, configured more-or-less the same way as mine. I spent yesterday evening getting it up and running with Debian, with a KDE desktop. It should be easier to keep updated than the Gentoo installations on my computers. It’ll keep her home directory synced with my Nextcloud server (so I can then send encrypted backups offsite), getting it talking to my printers and scanner was pretty simple, and LibreOffice should be more than sufficient for what she wants to do.
*That* is how you keep Microsoft from snooping on you, pushing ads to you, etc.
The change you are talking about is a windows 11 change, not windows 10. I’ve been dealing with Win 11 for a couple of months, ever since I upgraded to a new system because my old “White Box” system was finally so old that some of the software I use finally refused to work unless I upgraded. The fix to turn off suggested apps is simple to do and I never noticed the ads in the first place since I don’t normally pay any attention to that part of the new start menu.
The article didn’t point it out, but WIN 11 has a NEW start menu system, It only takes a couple of weeks to get used to it. But That’s OK because it took me a couple of weeks to unscramble the mess made porting my system over to the new system via the cloud. Had to fully reinstall a couple of the more obscure apps,
My wife’s system is an Apple system, so I can do either and I can’t say it’s better, just different. Pick your poison. I was and guess I still am Microsoft Certified but no longer playing with computers professionally and I’m being outdated rapidly. In that business it is essential to keep up to date.
……. and I go back to the days of punch card decks in Fortran on a Main frame IBM 360.
Ah, the glory days of Big Iron! I started my career on S360s, first on a mod 40 and later on a pair of mod 65s. My first language was Assembler; yes, on punch cards.
My Dell laptop ran well until it picked up some weird virus/Trojan horse that started replicating itself a couple of thousand times during every start-up. I’d run the anti-virus, and it would tell me how many copies it had gotten rid of, but never all of them. It eventually started to infect my boot sector, so I completely scragged the hard disc. Wiped it, re-formatted it, and then got Dell to send me a disc of the WindowsXP OS that had originally been installed (it was a bear to get them to send it to me, but they did).
When I started from the BIOS and re-installed I never connected that machine to the ‘net again. I was amazed at how fast it would boot up from unpowered, since the OS disc had NONE of the junk software on it that had originally been installed. It goes from zero to running in about 20 seconds.
I used it for MS Excel and Word since our new (2022) iMac won’t run my old Office software anymore, and it’s a back-up for my photographs. Start-up and shut-down are still just as fast, but the screen itself is starting to dim a little bit (or maybe it’s just the difference between the iMac and the Dell). I dread the day when it finally croaks and I’ve got to use the asinine (really…only one “s”) “Numbers” and “Pages” built into the Mac.
Ah, for the good ol’ days when I could put the chip-doubler with built-in fan on my old ‘386 machine…
Ah, for the good ol’ days when I could…..
…get the MK 2 Mod 6 Mardan make the multispeed repeaters run backwards…
I had an older desktop that got infected.
I set up the BIOS to boot from the CD drive first, then the hard drive.
Then, from a cold boot, I ran a disk with DBAN (Derek’s Boot and Nuke) on it and wiped the hard drive completely clean. It’s what the DOD uses to wipe their data. It writes a “1” in every memory address then a “0” in every address and will go through as many iterations of that as you want. I think 7 is the default.
After that I installed Linux MINT (I think my last version was Sylvia) and it came with Libre Office and a bunch of other open source software. Libre will read and write all the MSOffice file formats.
However, MINT won’t run any .exe files.
If you have an older machine that’s a bit dodgy. Try it. You may like it.
If you are fighting with installing/re-installing a Windoze setup, it’s a good time to separate your data files onto a new D: partition.
Effectively you move C:\Documents and Settings\kim\My Documents (in XP) or C:\Users\kima\Documents (in Vista, etc) to D:…. etc.
And this means that you can re-install to the C: partition without touching the D: partition.
OR you can install a separate hard drive (or SSD) to store your data.
You may have to shrink your present C: partition to provide space for ‘D:’. Lots of tutorials online. And tutorials on how to move your data files and make the move a permanent transparent feature. (Although some programs are kinda dumb about that and you may have to set the ‘save’ point every time… Windoze…)
Ohh yes. Punch cards. Fortran. IBM 360. I spent so much time at the computing centre that the high priests let me do stuff directly from a console (late at night only: batch processing in daylight hours!).
If memory serves, Microsoft have tried this before. They were roundly excoriated and backed down. I wonder if the same thing will happen this time?
I have little interest in learning new computer systems. I don’t know what system this computer running right now. as long as I can buy my crap online, read some sites and transmit email I think that’s about all I need. Oh and a decent word processor and itunes to sync my podcasts. The way that MS Word keeps “updating” by circling the drain, the more interest I have in a manual type writer.