I hope this is on topic for this category. It’s borne out of frustration, but I am honestly curious to read opinions on why Windows is increasingly becoming unuseable.
My best experience with Windows was with 2000pro, and with every iteration of Windows since then there seems to be more clutter, confusion, and crap that has somehow been deemed an “improvement”. I’m not an IT professional, but I prefer straight-forward settings. My opinions may miss the mark for the exact problems, but it seems Windows is going out of its way to make experiences with Windows increasingly more painful.
What set me off this morning is CoPilot, which should not be on my system. Yet, after Wendall mentioned in a recent episode of L1T with Friends that Copilot was now on Notepad, I opened up Notepad and discovered Copilot is installed and on. Maybe two months ago, I was gaming and discovered hidden within the gaming system with my controller was CoPilot - again installed and on. In neither of these cases did I installed Copilot. In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to keep it off my system and the settings themselves report Copilot is not installed, yet it’s been installed and discovered to be running on my system.
Aside from moving away from Windows, which is likely the only real way to stop their BS, I would love to hear how I can stop these installations from happening again. But this is only provided to exemplify one of the many issues of Windows.
So putting my specific issues with CoPilot aside, does it not seem that Microsoft is making it harder to trust Windows? It’s almost as if Microbrain is purposefully making Windows more confusing. (eg., Idiotic simplifying tools that still require access to the control panel and various other GUIs to set many settings.) But why? Is it self-sabotage or the mistaken belief that people will welcome Copilot to help them navigate the abyss of settings locations that Microsoft has created? Or do Microbrain execs actually think that what they’re doing is winning our hearts and minds?
I think part of this is just the every-other-Windows-being-bad phenomenon. The odd man out versions of Windows always push experimental or bad features that no one wants (I still remember when they took away the start menu and tried to force feed us the touchscreen centric start screen instead).
And Windows 8 actually had some decent feature improvements over Windows 7 so it made the choice between them difficult. For Windows 11, I can’t actually think of any improvements over Windows 10.
The good news is that as of right now, Windows 10 has update support going out after the end of support for the newest version of Windows 11 by about 2 and a half years, so even from a longevity point of view, Windows 10 is the winner.
Microsoft used to charge $ for major OS version upgrades, but now they are free. So we pay for it with annoyance, upsells, ads, etc instead.
They’ve seen how much money Google makes from ads and web services, and they want in!
I guess as long as the annoyance cost is just under what would cause a mass switch to macOS, MSFT deems it worth it.
p.s. A lot of “normal” people don’t really mind the Copilot and ads stuff, from what I’ve seen. Sometimes I see their desktops and they haven’t disabled any of the worst ads junk that is so easy to disable. I suggest they can disable some things and they’re like “huh but why?”
Microsoft makes more money from ads and subscriptions than they ever did selling Windows licenses to consumers, and they want to grow that even more. People have accepted ads in every part of their life including all over their phone, so Microsoft thinks people will easily accept it on PC, and for the most part they have. People like on forums like this are not the average user and dont want ads and are willing to modify Windows to get rid of them as much as possible or just switch to linux, but this is like .01% at best of their userbase.
Okay, so Microsoft is really pushing CoPilot, right? Honestly, the smartest thing to do might be to block it using Group Policy, or just ditch Windows and go with Linux to avoid all the hassle.
They still charge for W11 licenses, it is not free which they will have you believe by providing a “free” upgrade from 10 to 11. All the new hardware with 11 on has some deal with the OEMs and is incorporated in the cost of a W11 license.
That is why it is extra infuriating because the end user does pay, then pays again in the form of ads incorporated into the OS.
MS is pushing AI like mad, it is very unlikely they would give you an easy or well known option to uninstall their main platform for potential monetisation of their AI.
Yes, it is annoying, but it is definitely here to stay in Windows. There must be a significant backlash like with what happened with Recall for MS to backtrack and provide a quick removal for CoPilot.
You can always switch to alternative softwares such as Notepad++ or LibreOffice or the whole OS like Linux or macOS or even stay on 10 where the copilot implementation is alot less but still present.
When I swetiched to Linux recently I did it as a spur of the moment thing. I had little issues with Windows. I use windows either on an AD or a local account so the AI and copoilet is off by default and I just individually login with my MS account to the services I want.
Last week I had a client bring in a machine for repair with a MS account and the newest build of Windows. He set it to use a pin while it was here so I didn’t need his password.
And now I get it! All the intrusion, the cloud services you turn off to speed up the machine, then it updates and turns it services back on!
That being said 11 Pro on a AD or local account is night and day different when using a cloud account. Pro and Enterprise verions can also skip or prolong updates.
They can’t completely kill local accounts on Pro. They keep closing holes on home. But all the configuration for AD has to be done from a desktop, you can’t join an AD from the OOBE. So windows Pro had to keep local accounts, even if it’s just a temporary step to join a AD, you just never join the AD and leave it a local account. When you choose “join an AD instead” at set up, it doesn’t promt you for AD credentials it creates a local account for you to join from the desktop.
As far as why updates break more stuff. That was long documented that back in the windows 8 era, MS essentially killed the windows testing and QA teams. Opting to test stuff “virtually” now instead of real techs using real hardware. If an update breaks something it’s home users first, so by the time the update makes it to pro, any issues have been worked out. Home users are the new testing environment.
They still still charge for license yes, but they also don’t close work around and loopholes like they used to. They don’t combat piracy like they used to. Back in the windows XP days and I was a registered OEM system builder and Partner Program Member and MS would send out pamphlets “Look what your competition as been up to” and send a list of other OEMs and Partners they are suing for licensing violations. Small independent mom and pops would get the Microsoft wrath.
Now you can use the same key a million times if you use phone activation. They are not doing take down request to github hosting workarounds and software for self hosting activation servers. They no longer region lock keys so now you see key sites blow up. until recently you could use any key from Windows 7 or 8 to activate 10 and 11. They just now killed 7 keys from working a few months back. They don’t care where you get Windows now as long as you have it. The previous policy they would litterally sue teenagers for piracy. Not free no, but not policed at all compared to MS of the past.
It comes down to the license they sell you for the operating system is actually less valuable to them now than your personal data is and recurring subscription revenue.
Copilot is not only a part of Windows which can be disabled.
But it is also implemented into other MS platform applications like Office 365 etc.
And it is also present in edge as well.
So if you use any of those applications or services you likely will get Copilot be default.
Still yeah you could argue but MS also want´s a slice of the AI cake.
Just like Google with Gemini and Meta Ai.
So whatever device, browsers, apps or services you are using you will likely get involved,
with any of them either way.
I have 4 kids with gaming PCs and Local accounts, copoilet is there, but wont run without it tied to an MS acount. On boot up copoilet might suggedt you login, but if you disable notifications for it, that also goes away. But that’s also only in Pro, home users are stuck.
@Quoddity The plans Microsoft has for us are a lot worse than everyone thinks. Warning, a tin hat is being put on. Conspiracy theory coming up. The goals Bill Gates (Hitler) and his friends, with the help of most of the world’s governments, have in store for the world are very Nerfarious. This group of men wants to turn the world into a world described in two books by the English writer George Orwell. The two books I am referring to are 1984 and Animal Farm. Welcome to the new world order, where a few people enslave the rest.
Yeah that is a little bit annoying with Home versions of Windows basically.
It´s always better to get a pro license in that regards.
Because that gives you allot more control of the OS with group policies.
a local account fixes allot of those problems with copilot.
However copilot is not the only Ai tool you have to deal with.
There are many more and those are all over the interwebs.
I don’t mind AI when I know it’s running and I’m in control. I self-host a lot of my own AI. On my website I host the hacked driver for Nvidia mining cards. I did it so you can use cuda and use them as an AI card in Windows server, instead of the landfill. (I just send Nvidia takedown request to spam, I’ll take it seriously when they mail me something physically, instead of automated emails)
I even have a self-trained self hosted AI voice assistant I used in a lot of my YouTube videos that has spot on inflection. I trained it to the point where now I insert my script with my lines and his lines and he can read the entire script and determine how he’s supposed to feel and react. The type of inflection he is supposed to use in his speech. Even adding ums, and lip smacking to make it sound more real and natural when he is supposed to be frustrated. AI is kind of polarizing. However my channel had 700 subscribers in April, and since using the AI to help with narration and another character to have a little banter with, I am gaining over 1k a month in new subs (13.3k currently). So I think when AI is done correctly and not for random crap it’s a good tool.
I only have an issue when the controls are taken away from me, and I have no idea who else is reading my prompts.
The main reason Microsoft is Microsoft is it’s so wealthy it can afford to ignore the kind of customer dissatisfaction which puts less entrenched companies with lower profit margins out of business. As a result, particularly with Windows, changes which get pushed to end users are often the result of internal political battles between upper managers. From what I can tell the even-odd version thing resulted from Gates and Ballmer being engineers enough to keep resetting Windows management’s priorities back to something at least vaguely related to customer satisfaction. Nadella seems less effective in this, well, um, essentially parenting sort of role.
A corollary way of looking at it is Windows’ culture was in large measure built on Gates being a petulant man-child who’d have screaming meltdowns about building software that didn’t totally suck. So it’s essentially a dysfunctional family that’s moved on to its next generation and is struggling to function without its abusive authoritarian.
In my experience it’s not uncommon software folks conclude dissatisfied users are defective, not their software. One Microsoft exec has done so quite publicly.
Dayforce recently found execs use LLMs more and are more satisfied with them than frontline workers. As others have pointed out, this is reasonably interpreted as evidence supporting longstanding questions over the value of executive work and poor upper management understanding how other kinds of jobs are done.
Probably the most dramatic evidence for an alternate reality bubble is execs mandating AI use top down rather than realizing people would readily adopt it on their own if it was actually helping them do their jobs.
To expand on this a little, the underlying point is Microsoft has many Copilots. While often referred to and seen as such, it’s not one monolithic thing. For example, at work we have a bunch of policy complications because GitHub Copilot doesn’t run on our data protected Office 365 Copilot instance.
Windows is shifting to a subscription service primarily because of ad reveneu.
The os you install basically functions like a limited customizeable dumb terminal.
Considering all the adware and malware strippers out there in the wild.
Subscription service removes that control.
Switching to thier software store is exactly the same as apple.
Granted the apps are 100 percent compatible, they are also a tool to track your usage and trends…
Its precisely the telemetry they use in any cellphone.
There are far too many variables in linux format and installation choices to make a blanket intrusive without it being easily detected. And if you have encrypted or hardened installation the difficulty for malware increases exponentially.
Hence the only times you see ads are on websites.
Unfortunately, this seem to be a zeitgeist thing. We are increasingly being forced to load bloatware, and over time, simple, fast applications are turning into real monsters. Just think of Acrobat Reader. Supposedly, every company is competing for customers, and supposedly they want more and more features. Of course, that’s only half the truth, because they also want to collect more and more customer data and exercise more and more control…
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
You can also set a schedule so it executes silently(must be done as admin) every time your children log in to their OS. This way, it will monitor for any changes introduced by an update. All you need to do is create a config file of your choice.
