Paying Microsoft is like paying a ransomware scammer
No amount will ever be enough to satiate their depraved lust for money
Microsoft threatened me with $140 to reactivate windows because I changed my motherboard, and since this is my 2nd time doing so without reinstalling windows, I can no longer do so for free. I just typed 2 lines into powershell and then it became activated.
At risk of sounding like an insufferable individual, I’ve completely had my fill of Microsoft. I’ll have to still use it at work, but I’m transitioning everything into Linux.
What finally made me make this decision is when I read about Microsoft’s vision to make the Windows OS completely cloud-based.
I’ve also had to fight with Windows 10 so much just not to be redirected into Edge, show me unwanted promotions, or, worst of all, restart my machine without my deliberate consent and in spite of making registry edits (If I leave my computer on overnight, there’s a reason, I don’t care if it’s “inactive hours” or whatever they want to call it.)
Whatever I miss out on by using Linux just isn’t worth the hassle anymore.
I have roughly 30 computers and I’ve migrated all but one over to Linux. Never been happier!
Also I’m able to run 10 year old hardware and thoroughly spank brand new stuff that’s got Windoze11.
For when you have to use windows, run Aveyo’s edge remover and install msedgeredirect.
I juuuuust pyr8ed the latest MSO, it went mega smoothly (and had a rad 90s style warez crack tool with music and scrolling graphics)
Works perfectly and no data pop ups like this.
Shit like this is why I switched to OpenOffice and then LibreOffice all those years ago. LibreOffice is just as good for my personal purposes and I’m never going back to MS Office. Unless your work specifically requires something only Microsoft’s product can do, I highly recommend LibreOffice, I use it every single day.
I switched to OpenOffice, and hated it. But it was free, so i used it. Then tried Libre, it was better… But it will was not Microsoft office. Then years later i had to use Microsoft office for work (it was Alli was allowed to install on the work computers) and realized how much i enjoyed using Libre over Microsoft.
are you able to get your work done on other suites like LibreOffice / OnlyOffice, or does it require MS specific functionality?
I can’t speak for everyone but I rely heavily on VBA scripts, dozens of macros, PowerQuery for ETL, connection to azure SQL data, etc. If you work with big data excel is basically a must.
Given that OP posted a Mac screenshot, Pages and Numbers would likely work just as well for the files themselves.
screenshot, Pages and Numbers would likely work
Terrible app names to be honest
I literally just cancelled my McAfee subscription because of annoying constant pop-ups like this. At least this one from Microsoft is a legal notice. McAfee constantly spams you to turn on unnecessary features, and even changes settings periodically to turn things on like “browser monitoring”. Literally worse than old school pop-up viruses.
More importantly, it also never caught a single thing. Windows Defender does fine. My buddy in cyber security suggested them for safety despite how bad they are, but I can honestly recommend you should never, ever, get it. Just keep backups and be prepared to nuke your system if needed, and save yourself a pop-up every other day.
Does your buddy in cybersecurity solve most of his problems by reinstalling Adobe Acrobat and restarting, and if that doesn’t work, muttering about hackers and walking away? Because John McAfee himself didn’t recommend using what the software bearing his name became and was more likely to put a bullet through his PC than install that shit.
Okay, but isn’t he also more likely to put a bullet through another human being than anything?
Present tense? No, he’s dead.
While he was living, I don’t think his bullets were most likely to go through another human, but I do believe he was living on a boat because he had to flee Belize (I think?) because we was wanted for murder and couldn’t return to the US because he was wanted for various things there, too (probably including that murder because it was an American).
His advice is only relevant here because his name is on the software, not because he was a good role model. Fascinating guy, but not one to look up to.
The US intelligence community, or a subset thereof, apparently.
I have no idea his personal skill level or knowledge, but without putting him on blast I know his company has been involved in big stuff. He could theoretically focus more on a different aspect of security and have got this part wrong, I don’t know the details of his job very much by design.
I promised in this thread I’d update, then forgot to do so. But thankfully someone reminded me: https://lemmy.world/comment/4948293
Total fail on timely response, but here: https://lemmy.world/comment/4948293
He’s in the IC (and so is the other guy who recommended it), so less “sysadmin best practices” and more “stopping state actors” practices, so maybe that has something to do with it. I’ll tell him the Internet thinks he’s wrong and see what he says. He definitely wasn’t saying it was great at the time, just that it was needed in addition to Defender and was way safer than Kaspersky which is basically spyware.
Could be. I had the same objections, and brought up how I thought Norton and McAfee were supposed to be garbage. His take was that McAfee had cleaned their act up and was best in class in addition to Windows Defender. I mentioned elsewhere but he’s in the Intelligence Community so he may have reasons he can’t tell me, or just looking at different attack vectors than your average sysadmin. I’ll ask him.
I recently made the mistake of installing Avast, and it does the same annoying garbage. The actual settings are buried under a metric shit ton of “Did you know that…?” pop-ups that appear every single time no matter how often you select “do not show me this again”, and it constantly urges you to buy the “premium” version for extra features that are literally useless to me.
And it was a pain to uninstall as well. Some files survived the official Avast uninstall AND separate uninstall from the Task Manager, and messed with the Windows Defender, which was unable to recieve updates for a while until I found and nuked the hidden residue of Avast.
Unfortunately thats what you paid for. These are 2023 legal scams.