5 ms·

At this point, every ms customer should stop complaining. MS knows what you think about it, and ignores you. Look at your options rationally: You can chose

At this point, every ms customer should stop complaining. MS knows what you think about it, and ignores you. Look at your options rationally: You can chose to live with it and bitch. Sorry, dont expect anyone to care, you preferred it over the alternatives. You can mess with the registry/ group policy/ whatever. It will take you a few hours, and in a few weeks you'll have to do it again. You'll never be in the lead. If that's your choice, so be it, but be honest: you wanted this more than any alternative. You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect, and there will be an uncomfortable learning curve of a few weeks. Bonus points if you reclaim the money for the license. More bonus points if you give some money to the linux ecosystem. You can go to OSX, and deal with the walled garden. Life will be good, as long as you can live with whatever apple thinks is best. You can contact local politicians, consumer groups, etc... You can sue microsoft. Really. Especially in the EU, if you thoroughly do your homework, you have a reasonable chance of winning. Somebody complained about seeing the license only after having paid for windows, sued and won. After that ms printed the url to the license on all their EU windows boxes. You can contact ms support and complain. They will notice if their decisions make their support costs raise. Each non ms option causes some short term discomfort, but each small drop eventually wears down a mountain. Make your choice and live with it.

agent3bood 6y ago
> You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect A lot of people say Linux is not perfect or it is not as good as windows or mac. I have used all three operating systems and all of them are not perfect, Linux may be the best among them for a software engineer.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  With Linux, at least it's easy to fix things myself. Doubly so for NixOS which is especially hackable. The UX is atrocious and you don't get the network effects of the mainstream though.
  - YetAnotherNick 6y ago
    It's because you are programmer and worked with command line. I had seen many technical minded people completely mess up their linux installation.
    - whateveracct 6y ago
      That's why I like NixOS! If I ruin everything, I can just reboot & pick the last known working config since it's all immutable.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  I've been running suse/red hat/ubuntu/debian since 2000 and I'm very happy with it. KDE mostly. I'm a software engineer, so it makes sense. Sometimes I have a hickup, but I can fix it. People drop random hardware at my house, and it generally works. I recently started some casual gaming, and wine works great most of the time, but not always. Now I am free tech support for quite a few people in the neighbourhood, so I know what goes on in the windows world. I mean it when I say linux isnt perfect, but windows is worse. My wife and parents got linux. A local school got 20 debian PCs for corona remote classes. If you want my free support and you have to call me once to much, you'll get linux or no more free support. And it works. Normal people can do as much or more with linux as with windows, gaming being the major hold out. Power users complain, but then they son't get support from me anymore. There's a lot less trouble with my linux users as with the windows club.
pseudosavant 6y ago
Amen. Windows 10 is now >5 years old. It isn't like this is new. There are more valid OS choices now than ever before: iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows, OS X, Linux. And you can get them at any store regular people shop at like Costco, BestBuy, Amazon, or Dell.com. And there are more cross-platform options for software than ever before: native multi-platform, native-ish (ReactNative/Electron), PWAs (Twitter's Windows client is just a PWA), web (Office 365, Google Apps), etc. Most of the core apps I use every day (Outlook, Office, web browser, Teams, Skype, Netflix, Prime Video, etc) are available 5+ platforms (Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or web). 10+ years ago you'd be lucky if something was on Windows AND Mac. If you don't like Windows, quit bitching and switch. It is your fault if you are somehow surprised by Microsoft's Windows 10 telemetry behavior for the 20th time.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Most of the core apps I use every day (Outlook, Office, web browser, Teams, Skype, Netflix, Prime Video, etc) are available 5+ platforms That's nice for you, but not everyone is so lucky. It's definitely becoming more viable to move off Windows, but there are still many useful applications that are native to Windows and not available on most or all other platforms. Pretending that simply migrating off Windows is a practical option for everyone isn't going to solve this kind of problem. I write this as someone whose businesses really have so far refused to adopt Windows 10, other than for specific testing purposes. But again, we recognise that we were able to make choices that newer businesses who are buying their hardware and software today don't have any more. What we do would also be impractical for larger businesses where realistically you need a consistent desktop deployment across many users, whereas just about all of us here are technically literate and have a customised system anyway so we already use a diverse range of hardware and software.
sdiq 6y ago
If only there was a great alternative to Excel in Linux, I would have moved. Not just good enough but as good as or better than Excel.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I don’t use Excel, but what’s wrong with LibreOffice Calc?
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    Its (unfortunately) missing 90% of the functionality of Excel. It’s somewhat like saying “I don’t use Java, but what’s wrong with JavaScript”. One of these days either Excel for Windows will work with Wine or they’ll get it working in a browser. Then I’ll go to Ubuntu and be happy with it.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      What functionality do you use that’s missing from the Office 365 web app? I didn’t use it for a few years, then had to again recently, and was surprised how well it worked (in Firefox even!)
      - jedieaston 6y ago
        Namely, Power Query and some of the formula stuff (the entirety of the formula ribbon is just missing). I guess I could just start using pandas more, but its super handy to just click Excel, tell it where the CSV file is and start messing with something.

agent3bood 6y ago

> You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect A lot of people say Linux is not perfect or it is not as good as windows or mac. I have used all three operating systems and all of them are not perfect, Linux may be the best among them for a software engineer.

whateveracct 6y ago
With Linux, at least it's easy to fix things myself. Doubly so for NixOS which is especially hackable. The UX is atrocious and you don't get the network effects of the mainstream though.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  It's because you are programmer and worked with command line. I had seen many technical minded people completely mess up their linux installation.
  - whateveracct 6y ago
    That's why I like NixOS! If I ruin everything, I can just reboot & pick the last known working config since it's all immutable.
hyperman1 6y ago
I've been running suse/red hat/ubuntu/debian since 2000 and I'm very happy with it. KDE mostly. I'm a software engineer, so it makes sense. Sometimes I have a hickup, but I can fix it. People drop random hardware at my house, and it generally works. I recently started some casual gaming, and wine works great most of the time, but not always. Now I am free tech support for quite a few people in the neighbourhood, so I know what goes on in the windows world. I mean it when I say linux isnt perfect, but windows is worse. My wife and parents got linux. A local school got 20 debian PCs for corona remote classes. If you want my free support and you have to call me once to much, you'll get linux or no more free support. And it works. Normal people can do as much or more with linux as with windows, gaming being the major hold out. Power users complain, but then they son't get support from me anymore. There's a lot less trouble with my linux users as with the windows club.

pseudosavant 6y ago

Amen. Windows 10 is now >5 years old. It isn't like this is new. There are more valid OS choices now than ever before: iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows, OS X, Linux. And you can get them at any store regular people shop at like Costco, BestBuy, Amazon, or Dell.com. And there are more cross-platform options for software than ever before: native multi-platform, native-ish (ReactNative/Electron), PWAs (Twitter's Windows client is just a PWA), web (Office 365, Google Apps), etc. Most of the core apps I use every day (Outlook, Office, web browser, Teams, Skype, Netflix, Prime Video, etc) are available 5+ platforms (Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or web). 10+ years ago you'd be lucky if something was on Windows AND Mac. If you don't like Windows, quit bitching and switch. It is your fault if you are somehow surprised by Microsoft's Windows 10 telemetry behavior for the 20th time.

Silhouette 6y ago
Most of the core apps I use every day (Outlook, Office, web browser, Teams, Skype, Netflix, Prime Video, etc) are available 5+ platforms That's nice for you, but not everyone is so lucky. It's definitely becoming more viable to move off Windows, but there are still many useful applications that are native to Windows and not available on most or all other platforms. Pretending that simply migrating off Windows is a practical option for everyone isn't going to solve this kind of problem. I write this as someone whose businesses really have so far refused to adopt Windows 10, other than for specific testing purposes. But again, we recognise that we were able to make choices that newer businesses who are buying their hardware and software today don't have any more. What we do would also be impractical for larger businesses where realistically you need a consistent desktop deployment across many users, whereas just about all of us here are technically literate and have a customised system anyway so we already use a diverse range of hardware and software.

sdiq 6y ago

If only there was a great alternative to Excel in Linux, I would have moved. Not just good enough but as good as or better than Excel.

colejohnson66 6y ago
I don’t use Excel, but what’s wrong with LibreOffice Calc?
- jedieaston 6y ago
  Its (unfortunately) missing 90% of the functionality of Excel. It’s somewhat like saying “I don’t use Java, but what’s wrong with JavaScript”. One of these days either Excel for Windows will work with Wine or they’ll get it working in a browser. Then I’ll go to Ubuntu and be happy with it.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    What functionality do you use that’s missing from the Office 365 web app? I didn’t use it for a few years, then had to again recently, and was surprised how well it worked (in Firefox even!)
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      Namely, Power Query and some of the formula stuff (the entirety of the formula ribbon is just missing). I guess I could just start using pandas more, but its super handy to just click Excel, tell it where the CSV file is and start messing with something.