Using Windows with a Microsoft account introduces all sorts of issues that only power users tend to come across, and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles.
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
> For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult.
I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
I am convinced Power Users are not the target market for Windows 11 (or maybe even windows). I mistakenly updated to it and have regretted it. Did you know they turned off animations when using Virtual Desktops [1]? A power-user feature on all the other OS' that took Microsoft till 2019 to adopt was crippled in little over 2 years after release.
The main problem with a MS account is if you have alot of documents and you log onto a new machine, you better have good internet speed otherwise you will be waiting hours for the documents to come down. Its not so noticeable with windows server (at least since server 2000) and workstations because office network speeds are good but if you also had exchange, then local copies of exchange mailboxes also tied up office networks for ages especially if users had exchange/outlook mailboxes in excess of a several Gb in size. Usually at least 10/100 speed but usually faster, you dont get that over the internet hardly anywhere.
> Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
This is exactly what happened to me. I just had enough with all the anti-patterns emerging for each larger update or Windows iteration. I now do all work which require windows in a VM, and using PopOS as host and couldn't be happier.
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
Wow, this comment just crossed 50 replies. I think the fundamental issue is that Microsoft platforms have never maintained the invariant that knowing your username and password is enough to log in.
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
The RDP issue is only a problem because the UI doesn't make it clear that you need to have password sign-in enabled to RDP, when setting up a PIN during initial setup disables password sign-in.
> and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
Never again windows with Microsoft accounts. I have two windows 10 licenses, one home and one pro. I made the mistake of associating the licenses to my Microsoft account and now there is no way to move the pro license from the old PC to the new one. The Microsoft support site is a complete joke of unpaid chatterers that send you on wild goose chase, the web is full of SEO bullshit site that keyword-dance around the issue... Windows 11 for me is Windows Never, and I am well under to way to ensure that the 100 odd laptops at $company run Ubuntu next thank you very much.
This is not true at all, you can transfer the license. Unless it was an OEM license and is tied to the hardware. It has nothing to do with your MS account. I've done this many times when upgrading hardware for myself and my family using different combinations of Home/Pro licenses.
Abou nine years ago I bought a Windows 8 Pro license that was upgraded to 10 and now 11 for free. It was transfered between 4 or 5 machines including one virtual machine.
Can't you just deactivate the Home license and then install Pro? Or just try installing Pro then deactivating the Home license? I only have Pro keys attached to my account but I've shuffled them about between different computers.
Congratulations, you've just created an IT nightmare. By forgoing the easy configurability of Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory, you've added an untold amount to the TCO of your laptop fleet and IT infrastructure! You've also created problems down the line as it's more difficult to procure endpoint security and whitelisting solutions for Linux than for Mac or Windows. There's a reason why enterprises choose Microsoft time and time again: it works, it's easy to configure and administer at scale.
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues, but I run them in a virtual machine not connected to the Internet where I need things like iTunes and MS Office. Some games don't run in a VM very well because of the overhead and abstraction (unless they're lightweight or not resource intensive). I have a separate Alienware laptop for gaming on Windows however.
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
For gaming? Ditch virtualbox and migrate your VMs to libvirt/KVM/qemu.
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
>Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
I hate it, not because it requires an account, but because Microsoft is nightmarishly bad at account management and has been since I was a little kid in the 90s. They somehow make it possible to have multiple different unsynced accounts across different services, so you constantly forget which is which, and resetting or gaining access is always an incredible hassle. I find myself having to reset my password literally anytime I want to log in to something owned by Microsoft.
If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
Ah we never saw that one coming. What really bugs me is why people keep defending these companies: this is straight up abusive, and we - all of us - should not accept these tricks. Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
Most people using Windows probably already have an MS account. Those that don't may flee to Linux. But honestly I subscribe to Office 365, use OneDrive even on my iPhone, and enjoy Game Pass. It just doesn't matter that much. If anything having 2 factor auth for my computers is a benefit.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
Can someone explain to me why Microsoft migrating my Minecraft account to my Microsoft account is not a huge security anti-pattern, given that this is the same account I use to access my high-importance Azure account? Do we really believe that the Minecraft launcher presents no additional attack surface and handles authentication material with the same rigor as the Azure login process?
I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token. So everyone is actually authenticating through the same secure interface, and even if one application's credentials get leaked, all they would give access to would be your Minecraft profile, and nothing else. Hopefully.
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
To be fair, I've found that Microsoft have the best security for their accounts - much better than Apple ID or Google Accounts. Excellent 2FA support and if you have it set up with the Authenticator app, you will almost never need to type in your Microsoft account password. Unlike Apple or Google where I find that I often need to type in those passwords which forces me to pick easier passwords.
If you can spare the expense ($5/mo/user and a domain) you really should be putting Azure resources in a Microsoft 365 tenant instead of using MSA/live.com accounts. Microsoft will act as a 'processor' instead of a 'controller' of your data in this configuration.
Dialing up the annoyance level to a 11. Microsoft has spent the last 6 years or more glacially gravitating its OS-developer features towards Ubuntu. Because they couldn't do better - VSCode being the one crowning glory - and not an insignificant one. The side annoyances of a barely functional Cortana & Edge, were things I looked past, now add one more, a required account - we'll be led into unknown realms of integration (not of tools) but of 'marketing identity' and SSO .
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
“The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup.”
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
My last round of Windows 11 installs, I just created a new MS account for the install, created a local admin user, and then deleted the MS account from the machine and built local accounts out normally.
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
I don't understand Microsoft's product strategy. The push for WSL, PowerToys, a new powerful Terminal, was obviously a ploy to attract developers after Apple's hardware (2016-2019) and software (2011-) decline.
Now what? More telemetry, more cloud-as-default, required Microsoft accounts, Edge sabotaging Firefox and constantly making itself the default browser. I actually like Windows, I understand its flaws and how to configure it to get out of my way. But this is plain creepy. Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff? With VSCode? Their strategy makes no sense. I know they don't care about making money from Windows anymore, but surely they want to keep/attract power users and devs?
May the stars, the galaxy and all forces of nature combined push me away from any Windows OS from now on and, at the same time, pull me towards Debian and its likes.
My opinion stays unchanged: run from Microsoft like you're fighting for your life. They want nothing but to ensnare you into a web of proprietary languages and services until you can't do anything in your computer that is not controlled by them.
For the last few years I've been trying to change the billing address of my Microsoft and Office 365 account and it's still wrong. Microsoft account management is so feckin' stupid that I feel sorry for all Windows 11 users who will be forced to use it.
BTW before people come and try to tell me how to change my billing address, I know how to do it. I did it everywhere. It shows correctly everywhere on the websites, but as soon as Microsoft creates the PDF invoice that I need to send to my accountant it has the old address on it, despite it being updated EVERYWHERE. I gave up on it. I basically doctor the address myself and then take a screenshot of the pdf with the corrected address and send the image to my accountant so he stops annoying me that the billing address is wrong.
The referenced blog post is still not clarifying whether this requirement will only apply to current and future "Window Insider flights" (which require a M$ account anyway to join the program in the first place), or be released to public builds as well. Everyone is kinda assuming that this requirement is going to apply to actual Windows 11 Pro releases, but the way they're phrasing this does not seem to imply that at all.
I feel like I see this exact article every year or two and then it always comes out that you can easily get around this with some type of easy loophole. Of course that might still get the majority of people switching to an online account but..... if you are practically giving away an OS for free is that really so bad?
Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?
For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.
LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029
LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)
Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.
LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.
LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.
If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.
LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).
Can you use Apple products without an account? If not*, what version of Linux should I get setup with. Casual web development. I mostly use my personal machine for gaming.
This past summer I bought a copy of Windows 10 Pro when I built a new PC. Prior to that, I used Linux on my personal machines for 10 years. Though I knew I'd eventually regret it, I didn't think it'd be so soon. I've been very content with it, and then these idiots go and do this. It's a complete show stopper.
I still have to use Windows and other MS stuff for work, but I have work-supplied machines for that. For personal use, no more MS anything, not even VS Code or .NET, I'm done with them.
As a Microsoft-focused developer since 1999, I feel so badly for the developer division. They make quality tools and have extremely smart people working for them--people that do care about open source and philanthropy. To be part of the same company that makes Windows is sad. The profit-seeking areas of Microsoft give the rest of the company a bad name.
I will likely get rid of all Windows installations in my house (about six at last count) and replace them with Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution as soon as Windows 10 goes out of support. If I'm still writing code at that time, and assuming the developer division at Microsoft are not corrupted, I'll switch to Rider to be rid of the commercial Visual Studio and Windows dependencies.
No way in hell am I logging in to my operating system with a cloud account.
Since it's not clear from the article: will this affect people who already setup Windows 11 with a local account? Will I one day be confronted with a "Create a Microsoft account to continue using your computer" screen?
Guys, Microsoft doesn't give two shits about home users. Their bread and butter is businesses. And M365 is amazing for business.
If you think M$ suxors, you're not the target demographic. I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.
[+] [-] amanzi|4 years ago|reply
For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
[+] [-] ryan29|4 years ago|reply
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
[+] [-] vel0city|4 years ago|reply
I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
[+] [-] neighborlynook|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/windo...
[+] [-] Terry_Roll|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freeflight|4 years ago|reply
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
[+] [-] gilrain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asabla|4 years ago|reply
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
[+] [-] hedora|4 years ago|reply
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
[+] [-] 55873445216111|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lasereyes136|4 years ago|reply
Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
[+] [-] polotics|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightski|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hu3|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps your license is OEM?
[+] [-] jjoonathan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salamandersauce|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MangoCoffee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|4 years ago|reply
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
[+] [-] legrande|4 years ago|reply
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
[0] https://www.neverware.com/freedownload
[1] https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Neverware-is-no...
[2] https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/products/chromebooks/chro...
[+] [-] scarygliders|4 years ago|reply
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
[+] [-] yyyk|4 years ago|reply
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MrStonedOne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerovistae|4 years ago|reply
If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
[+] [-] jacquesm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptonector|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drbawb|4 years ago|reply
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
[+] [-] newbamboo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightski|4 years ago|reply
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
[+] [-] jl6|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|4 years ago|reply
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
[+] [-] amanzi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vjust|4 years ago|reply
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
[+] [-] Egoist|4 years ago|reply
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
[+] [-] ethbr0|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
[+] [-] concinds|4 years ago|reply
Now what? More telemetry, more cloud-as-default, required Microsoft accounts, Edge sabotaging Firefox and constantly making itself the default browser. I actually like Windows, I understand its flaws and how to configure it to get out of my way. But this is plain creepy. Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff? With VSCode? Their strategy makes no sense. I know they don't care about making money from Windows anymore, but surely they want to keep/attract power users and devs?
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coliveira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinmoris|4 years ago|reply
BTW before people come and try to tell me how to change my billing address, I know how to do it. I did it everywhere. It shows correctly everywhere on the websites, but as soon as Microsoft creates the PDF invoice that I need to send to my accountant it has the old address on it, despite it being updated EVERYWHERE. I gave up on it. I basically doctor the address myself and then take a screenshot of the pdf with the corrected address and send the image to my accountant so he stops annoying me that the billing address is wrong.
[+] [-] sundvor|4 years ago|reply
From a purely practical point of view, I just hate that using a MA auto generates your local username (typically into something painful) this way.
So if your name is "Jonathan Smith" and you like to use "jsmith", bad luck, here's your "jonat"!
If you could specify that at least, it wouldn't be so much of an issue to myself.
A local account that I later link up has given me this control. Now I'll need a throw away, new local account, then link to my real one. What a PITA.
(If anyone from MS is reading this, would love if you could fix this. Just add a username field to the online account please).
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Melatonic|4 years ago|reply
Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?
For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.
LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029
LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)
Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.
LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.
LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.
If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.
LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).
[+] [-] nemacol|4 years ago|reply
Edit - Typo
[+] [-] kgwxd|4 years ago|reply
I still have to use Windows and other MS stuff for work, but I have work-supplied machines for that. For personal use, no more MS anything, not even VS Code or .NET, I'm done with them.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|4 years ago|reply
I will likely get rid of all Windows installations in my house (about six at last count) and replace them with Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution as soon as Windows 10 goes out of support. If I'm still writing code at that time, and assuming the developer division at Microsoft are not corrupted, I'll switch to Rider to be rid of the commercial Visual Studio and Windows dependencies.
No way in hell am I logging in to my operating system with a cloud account.
[+] [-] pfist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Khelavaster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alar44|4 years ago|reply
If you think M$ suxors, you're not the target demographic. I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.