8 ms·
Making Every Windows 11 PC an AI PC
- herbst 1y agoHow can anyone at Microsoft really think this title is not sounding like a threat to any of their serious users?
- PaulHoule 1y agoThey had "Hey Cortana" a few years back and gave up on it because it didn't really work.
- candiddevmike 1y agoBetween Cortana and all of the post-Bungie games, it's almost like they were hellbent on destroying the Halo IP and all of the goodwill associated with it.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoFor the past few decades, I've assumed that they don't really have serious users in any numbers that matter to their bottom line; what they care about are their serious buyers, who are large corporations who are basically locked into Windows, and who will continue buying Windows desktops & laptops for their employees to use.
- ytch 1y agoRemember when they suppose "touch screen UI" is everything, and remove the start menu?
- PaulHoule 1y agoA better strategy than slapping an "Copilot+ PC" label on trash laptops with trash silicon from Qualcomm [1] [2]. [1] Take a hint. Maybe someday Qualcomm silicon won't be trash. Often you see companies change their name for no good reason but Qualcomm is never going to be able to sell laptops until they change their name to something else or at the very least change their branding so nobody draws a line between the terrible past and a possible future. They should ask Copilot for a better name. [2] Personally I think "Plus" is a bad smell in branding, right up there with "One". Sure, Purina One is a premium product but all XBOX ONE does is prove that nobody gets a game console bought by their mom anymore because how could you explain to your mom that an XBOX ONE > XBOX 360?
- nxobject 1y agoNumbering product lines is hard: when Nvidia reaches GeForce 70xx series, we'll be in an awkward situation where, numerically, my 2006 Apple TV with a GeForce 7300 > hypothetical GeForce 7090.
- baal80spam 1y agoI distinctively remember having NVIDIA GeForce 6800 back in the day... Great GPU, btw!
- Evil_Saint 1y agoIt's not hard. They make it hard for dumb reasons.
- recursive 1y agoIt's not that hard. I have no idea how to interpret Nvidia model numbers. PlayStation seems to have figured out a good system though.
- bitwize 1y ago> Personally I think "Plus" is a bad smell in branding, right up there with "One". But the OnePlus One was a pretty good phone...
- ReptileMan 1y agoThey still are decent
- theothertimcook 1y agoI wish there was a way to buy windows 11 LTSC with a version of MSOffice stripped of copilot, OneDrive, and all the modern windows fluff. It’s wild how unreliable and complex windows has become, how can it be that Dropbox from 10 years ago was better than MS baked in cloud “backup”. On the other hand, even though SharePoint is hot garbage the browser based Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook are getting better all the time and increasingly can work from the browser so maybe it will be a non issue and Debian or something becomes and option.
- iAMkenough 1y agoIf only! My organization doesn't have Copilot access, but there is no way to remove the empty Copilot menu from the Outlook app. You can customize the rest of the toolbar, but Copilot gets special screen real estate even if it isn't usable.
- nxobject 1y agoI actually did look into buying an Office 2014 LTSC lifetime key a while ago from a reseller – but I decided against it because I wipe my PC annually, and the activation process did seem a little fiddly. It's been long since the days of "punch in the key on first startup and wait for internet verification".
- benjiro 1y ago> I wish there was a way to buy windows 11 LTSC with a version of MSOffice stripped of copilot, OneDrive, and all the modern windows fluff. Its called Windows 10 LTSC + cleanup script + any old office ... I am still using Office 2007 + pdf plugin. Thing uses no resources, still works perfectly. Do you really have a reason to upgrade? Probably not... So unless Microsoft start forcing people with DX13 or whatever, there is no reason to give up on Windows 10. > the browser based Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook are getting better all the time Again, why? Same privacy issues anyway and AI will get pushed in those also, you can bet on it. Just find a old version of Office, and use that. Or LibreOffice or whatever. Word, Excel etc are things that really did not change in the last 20 years beyond a ton of corporate fluff and spyware/"cloud". > It’s wild how unreliable and complex windows has become Because Microsoft wants to keep all the users locked into their eco system. So the more used you are to their products, the harder it is for the average person to jump ship (for any product, not just windows).
- overgard 1y agoI do not want an AI PC, and I sure as hell don't want my PC unwittingly turned into one.
- Sabinus 1y agoI do want an AI PC, but I want to be able to use my own AI with custom instructions. Copilot only with Microsoft features only is not going to cut it.
- KORraN 1y agoI'm not going to lie, seeing all these comments complaining about W11, people not wanting to upgrade from W10, exploring possibility to migrate to Linux and then THIS title, I laughed. Well played, Microsoft, well played...
- tester756 1y agoIt happens every time there's new Windows release. Sometimes there are reasonable concerns, sometimes people just dont like to change, that's it. If Windows has 1.4 bilion users, then 100 of them complaining on HN will make you think that a lot of people hate windows, but in reality... :D
- zokier 1y agoWindows 11 has significantly worse adoption rates than 10 or 7, more comparable to the notoriously poor Vista. It is not just few HNers complaining here. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/windows-11s-adoption-continues-to-lag-windows-10s-but-its-hard-to-compare/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/windows-11s-adoption...
- tester756 1y agoI'd bet thats because of HW requirements.
- dzikimarian 1y agoI use Windows for well over 20 years. I never had serious complaints - even Vista and 8 were pretty ok IMO. Right now I seriously consider moving to Linux. Thing is, main issue before were either unfamiliar UI or bad performance. Windows 10/11 has fair share of these too with aggressive push for control panel replacements. But that's honestly minor obstacle. There are lots of pluses on functional front too like windows Terminal, winget, wsl. Actual problem is Microsoft simply stopped understanding word "No". Always pushing some links that open Edge for no reason. Enabling click bait news I spend a while to get rid of. Randomly switching default save location to one drive. Full screen ads for O365 & One Drive every few updates. I simply need OS to get out of my way and stay there.
- skywhopper 1y agoThis all sounds like a nightmare of confusion. Especially for my parents and in-laws. Not to mention all of this is gated by a subscription fee and usage limits. It’s so depressing to see this rush to destroy anything useful about computers.
- lo0sr 1y agoFor anyone that has a need for Windows (I dual boot for gaming), but hates most of the "features" like myself, look into installing with a autounattend.xml file, that worked for me like a charm. I generated one using the following page: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
- franczesko 1y agoWindows isn't a must for gaming nowadays
- jonathantf2 1y agoFor some games it is
- dijit 1y agoVote with your wallet. Yeah, I know this sounds stupid, but I mean, the majority of games are there now. The signal is all that's needed, I work in AAA games and we shifted heaven and earth to make Stadia work. Which means somewhere in Ubisoft there is a fully functioning version of Watch Dogs Legion and The Division that run natively on Linux. And the answer was the same when I asked why we didn't release it: we don't see a market, and we don't want to maintain another channel of support. Right now it's not costing them any meaningful sales, so why would they put the investment in?
- josu 1y agoI know what 99% of the people in HN are thinking while reading this post, and I agree, so I would like to hear the contrarian views: Who is this useful for? What is the strategy behind this?
- mcmcmc 1y agoTheir investors and investments. Artificially increasing the demand for AI by ramming it down users’ throats is great for the bottom line. Edit: To give an actual contrarian view, this could be useful for people who are completely computer illiterate, but need to use a computer for work/school etc and have no desire to learn the basics of using a desktop OS.
- nofunsir 1y ago>people who are completely computer illiterate, but need to use a computer for work/school etc and have no desire to learn the basics of using a desktop OS. basically gen zalpha.
- ReptileMan 1y ago>Who is this useful for? Middle manager careers >What is the strategy behind this? We must do something, this is something, so we do it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- altairprime 1y agoThis is useful for corporations that want to reduce their workforce’s mean skill level in order to lower wages without impacting growth in revenue growth year-over-year. Such firms are the majority of Microsoft’s revenue, I expect.
- Eisenstein 1y agoIt amazes me that corporations think that employees making a decent wage and revenue are not correlated. What happens when everyone is making subsistence wages? Who is buying consumer goods at that point?
- grigio 1y ago2025 is the year of Linux on the Desktop and the merit goes to M$
- chakintosh 1y agono.
- Findecanor 1y agoI'm starting to think that the only proper way to run Windows these days is in a VM under Linux. Run it with a very restrictive firewall, and be sure to take snapshots regularly so that you could revert unwanted changes that slip through.
- supertrope 1y agoI switched to dual booting. I only boot Windows for Steam. I wish there was a way to disable the pop-up asking to format the unknown (ext4) partition.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoI used to do that, but more than once Windows trashed the boot of Linux on some update. I still have one dual boot machine, but they are on separate drives. So far no issues with that setup.
- Findecanor 1y agoIf you can get "GPU passthrough" to work then you wouldn't have to dual-boot even for games. I used to do the same in the past, before IOMMU existed.
- im3w1l 1y agoAs someone who disabled cortana first thing I did and am hesitant about win 11, I do feel like AI on the desktop is an idea whose time has come. I'm not so sure about pushing people into using voice though. But having AI that can analyze whats on your screen (on request) seems useful.
- focusedone 1y agoI work in a fairly quiet cube office. The nosiest thing is all of the mechanical keyboards (gloriously clicky). The thought of people yammering to their computers in an office environment is deeply disturbing. Imagine listening to someone trying to format a word document by dictating commands to their AI.
- Rhedox 1y agoThis makes me glad I'm using Linux.
- d3Xt3r 1y agoSame here, but unfortunately I'm forced to use (and support) Windows at work. Linux jobs where I live are almost non-existent...
- SteveNuts 1y agoIf you absolutely cannot live without running Windows for your home/work compute needs, consider Windows 11 LTSC. It at least claims to have a lot of the bloatware disabled... but IMO it's only a matter of time until they "accidentally" enable some of this.
- orphea 1y ago> IMO it's only a matter of time until they "accidentally" enable some of this. Yep, cleanup has to be scripted/automated, and this script has to check periodically that the crap is still disabled.
- tsimionescu 1y agoHopefully in the EU this will be part of all of the "essential" services that I can just uninstall. It's been so nice running Windows 11 with things like Edge and the nagging it would occasionally do completely removed.
- solsane 1y agoBy all means I’m pro AI - but I feel like Microsoft has no idea what they’re doing with Copilot. I have to use the windows shitstack for work and I was open to trying some of this stuff out. Truly a hammer looking for nails scenario. Sounds like they’re focused on being able to interact with Windows solely with text / voice… because someone asked for that, I guess. Findings summarized: They added a chat window with a half-rate model and access to OneDrive and sharepoint. Obviously useful integrations like setting up meetings based on a thread or creating tasks are not present. I don’t care about email summaries or drafts. I talk with developers and our emails are precise. Github copilot: The shared naming is confusing. There’s not even a shared UI language between the two. I use it because I don’t have Claude code at work. They’ve added some little things like pulling errors from the terminal but it’s mostly just a chat window. Meh. Also if I edit the file outside the editor (maybe stash some changes with git) before approving edits things get broken and the LLM will start adding in old changes and it becomes part of the context and it’s kind of a mess. Copilot (browser): -separate ‘work’ and ‘web’ mode for some reason. As far as I can tell it can see my web page in ‘web’ mode but I lose my OneDrive and sharepoint junk. Minimal utility. ChatGPT is better. Outlook/teams: It’s totally inconsistent and missing integrations. Long email thread? Let’s use Copilot to avoid having to draft a meeting invite with everyone on the thread! There’s a context menu option to do this! Oh, ok. They removed that in the past week. Oh ok. It has no context of what I have open. I have to describe the email I’m currently in to their sidebar. This is already not worth my time. Hmm. It made zero attempt to schedule a time where everyone is available. This goes on, and I wanted to try because scheduling with our big wigs is a pain. No dice. Post meeting. We’ve got takeaways. Convert these to MS Todo tasks? No dice! No integration. Want to find teams messages or schedule from teams? Also no. Excel: neat for making formulas. But sometimes I want to do LLM classification or structured response on a tabular level. That’s the next thing. Also includes a useless chat window. Powerpoint: also useless. Strangely, I can’t use another powerpoint as a reference for a powerpoint. I want to create clipart. Make a theme. They have ‘make a slide with copilot’ that I actually like, if I could use what it generates as a theme and apply it for all slides. Generating a slide deck based on a bunch of input is actually pretty cool - but the generic ‘synergy business’ lingo and clip art it uses is so cringe.
- d3Xt3r 1y ago
- pjmlp 1y agoAh, this is another attempt to make people upgrade from Windows 10, as the CoPilot+ PC sales aren't delivering. > There’s never been a better time to upgrade to a Windows 11 PC Bob, Clippy, Cortana and now CoPilot.
- firecall 1y agoCan you imagine how awful open plan offices would be if everyone was talking to their computer! Similarly how odd it would be to be in a closed office talking to a computer… at least until we got to startrek levels of AI. Finally, in my experience, I cannot talk and perform complex thinking at the same time. I can type and mouse around and stay on a flow state, where I can hold a conceptual model of something in my head and write code for it. But as soon as I begin talking that flow state begins to decay. The longer I talk the harder it is to get back into that state. I’m happy to ask my phone questions in other circumstances, but I don’t feel it’s something I need on my computer. Happy for history to prove me wrong!