Copilot Vision on Windows 11 sends data to Microsoft servers Microsoft is again throwing AI at Windows 11 to see what sticks, releasing features including the even more eyebrow-raising successor to its controversial Recall, a screen-streaming remotely processed backseat driver dubbed Copilot Vision. "AI is changing the way we use our PCs," Microsoft claims, and while some may agree, not …
Use Windoze at your peril from this moment forward.
Your information will be monetized and you won't see a dime as it is sold onto multiple corporations. Your info will be used against you in the form of higher insurance payments because you have a "riskier lifestyle." Your movements will be tracked 24 / 7 / 365 and all activity on your PC logged. You'll be blasted with ads based on your email, web and online activity. Your social connections will be tracked which may impede getting a job because you "hang around with the wrong people" or spend too much time thumb tapping during the day.
Just because you can't imagine the depths of your own info being used against you, does not mean it won't happen.
Many of us warned you a decade ago, but the majority wanted their FaceTube and TwitTok to watch funny cat videos. Today, here we are. Feed the machine that will rule your life.
Wholly agree with Mentat74 and Microsoft I have changed my computer usage, two machines already migrated to Linux Mint a third with an additional M2 drive added preparing to hit it with a dual boot stripped Win 10 and Mint once support ends and the danger of unwanted additions ends. The insistance on adding more unwanted features (AI driven) was the final straw along with the disingenuous removal options which just like a stage magician hides the object in his other hand.
Curious, what OS did you land on?
**WARNING: POSSIBLE FANBOY RAVING AHEAD ABOUT A LINUX DISTRIBUTION**
Been using Linux since you could get the install CD's in magazines, but I would not consider myself any kind of Linux guru.
"Mostly competent" would probably be a good description of my skills and I often have to look things up to do them as I'm not in the machinery as much as I used to be. Pewdiepie would kick my ass at Linux, he made may jaw drop a bit with what he has done with Arch.
Anyway I had moved a lot of the day-to-day and work things to an install of QubesOS, but was unable to step away from my Windows 10 gaming box. This meant it was dual boot for me depending on what I wanted to do, which is not really that big of a deal as I have been doing that forever anyway toy try out new distros.
That is until I stumbled across a Youtube about the new SteamOS; I had played with the older one years ago, and had run Steam on Ubuntu for a while, but the capability wasn't quite there yet, so I didn't keep using it.
After digging some more about the new SteamOS, I randomly picked Bazzite from the bunch of similar ones, and it is, and I don't want to oversell it, kind of amazing,
It works for all the Steam games I play; all the EA games using Bottles, BattleNet games using Steam, and Epic games using Heroic. Note: I don't play any massive online ones with the anti cheats so there is a definitely a gap there for a lot of folks.
I can run most of the apps I used on Windows, which to be fair is somewhat limited and often Open Source, such as; putty, OBS, Remmina ( instead of Windows RDP), filezilla, LiberOffice, Chrome (work), Firefox (work) and Brave (personal).
The only ones I haven't tried to set up yet are Davinci Resolve and DVDFab, though DVDFab had a Linux port at one point, not sure if its still around. Guess these will be future evening puzzles to try and solve.
For me Bazzite was the tipping point for not booting back into Windows. The partition is still there in case I run into something, but I haven't booted it in two weeks so far.
In a way I would consider it a bit of a Windows replacement appliance vs the standard type of distros I am used to as I don't seem to drop to the terminal to do anything in it, at least so far.
Sorry this is a bit long winded, but I haven't been this excited about a Linux distro in a long time and thought I'd share.
I had a play with Bazzite last year and quite liked it. My gaming desktop is soon to switch from Windows 10 to either Kubuntu or Linux Mint once W10 goes EOL. Probably dual boot at first.
The biggest issue I ran into with Bazzite was it using the Steam Flatpak, which didn't play at all well with the seperate games SSD on my system, refusing to remember it existed after closing the steam client. It appears that due to the way Flatpaks get sandboxed, a fair bit of tweaking is needed to allow it persistent access to other drives on a system.
However the .deb version available from their website works exactly like the Windows client - and runs perfectly on a Ubuntu-based distro.It's now just a case of making sure everything I have works on it properly....
Yeah, I ended up using my games drive for both games and the Bazzite install as Windows still has the original OS drive. I figured eventually when I fill the drive up I can just do some mount trickery to put the other drive under my Home folder.
So far performance is fine and I have lots of space as I've only installed games I'm still playing
Looking at windows alternatives for gaming, so I looked up Bazzite.
Top hit: Linux Gaming Distro Bazzite is Looking at its Demise Due to Fedora’s Latest Move! https://news.itsfoss.com/fedora-could-kill-bazzite/
And there's the alternative / FOSS problem in a nutshell. An enthusiast can make something great, useful, helpful... only to have it all burn up because the distro they used gets b0rked.
That resulted from Fedora planning to remove 32-bit support, which has since been rescinded. Doesn't invalidate your point though - not the first or last time a downstream distro has arrived at issues due to those happenings.
GNOME 3 and Linux Mint developing Cinnamon is a good example of how this can sometimes spin into a good thing however.
Been using Linux since you could get the install CD's in magazines
Ha! N00b! *real* linux early adopters had to download it floppy by floppy (with the inevitable re-download when floppy 5 proves too be unreadable - and I didn't have decent internet at home or work so my friend did it at work. Unfortunately, either his or my floppy drive was out of calibration so it was hit or miss whether mine could read them..).
"Mostly competent" would probably be a good description of my skills
Mine were good enough to blag my way into a Unix/network sysadmin job (I'd never used Solaris or Cisco but gave a good impression of knowing what I was talking about!)
Nowadays I mostly use MacOS for desktop (laptop?) use and either FreeBSD or Devuan for server VM use (hosted on TrueNAS which also does stuff like Apple Time Machine)
Actually, I think I may have downloaded RedHat and a bunch of others back in the stone age like that from the University sites, but I think it was during the early CD burner era.
I should have pushed harder to find UNIX admin jobs, but they were rare where I had my contacts.
Yeah, I've run a bunch of Linux and Unix servers for years for my own stuff.
I currently use Ubuntu and Debian for most of my servers on top of Proxmox, though I am planning on moving to OpenBSD for most of the VM's, including my email server which I want to move to OpenSMTPD.
For storage, I used the free Solaris with ZFS then moved to Nexenta, then OmniOS commercial, then migrated that install to OmniOS community with Napp-it (running on a USB stick), which is a rock as a general NAS server that is also provisioned as NFS to my Proxmox boxes.
Always a huge pain with the OmniOS install though, I usually have to burn a CD/DVD to get it to install for whatever reason , but once its on, it just works and works and works.
I never got on with MacOS for whatever reason, though I'm sure it is a solid OS.
I did the jump almost 2 years ago. Mint for myself, although only as I was already familiar with it.
I'm on a home built desktop, with multiple M.2 NVME drives, so I left Windows 10 on Drive 0, cleared off all the files on Drive 1 and wiped it, and popped Mint on there, along with GRUB. So not touching the Windows boot drive at all. I then just told the system to boot from Drive 1 by default instead of Drive 0, and GRUB automatically noticed Windows and gave me a selection menu. This has the advantage that when Windows updates itself, it doesn't touch the GRUB installed on the other drive (or at least has never done so far, and I switch over once a month just to patch everything).
I switched backwards and forwards initially, but was using Windows less and less, and as Proton (Valves gaming focused WINE) improved, I used Windows less. Now I use Windows so little, I'm planning on wiping it.
I had a look at Bazzite recently (in a KVM) and have to say it looks quite nice. I'm considering installing Bazzite onto Drive 0, replacing Windows, as I'm just not using Windows now (plus I've got Win 10 in a KVM anyway if needs be). But I'm also keeping an eye out on Steam OS.
One note of warning for gaming on Linux, be aware that some (not all) multiplayer games have Kernel level anti-cheat, and these don't work via Proton (by the dev/publisher choice, as there are non Kernel options). So check on the Proton DB web site if you play these games, and see if they work okay in Linux or not. This doesn't impact myself, as the only multiplayer game I play is War Thunder, and that's native Linux anyway!
LOL, to be honest, not often. :-)
It's mostly there for reference, as I've still got family/friends who use Windows, and I'm basically the family tech support (like many of us I would guess!). Easy to boot up the VM and check something, than switch over to the alt boot OS.
The only software installed is Firefox, Shut-up 10 and Winaero Tweaker. I don't use the VM for running any actual software, and if I was going to test something for someone else, I'd take a snapshot, and then revert once done anyway.
I'm more likely to try and run a Windows app via WINE/Proton, that I am to boot up the VM, and so far (other than games) I think I've done this maybe once in two years, and that was just an experiment.
I switched to using LibreOffice years ago (and before that Open Office), and I don't use tools like Adobe or CAD software. So Linux fits my use case.
I did have a Win 7 VM as well for a long time (no network), for playing legacy games that didn't like newer versions of Windows (or ran but were a bit crash happy!), such as 'Sword of the Stars'. C&C Generals, KotoR 1 & 2 etc, but these play fine under Proton these days, so the Win 7 VM was retired a while back now.
> The only ones I haven't tried to set up yet are Davinci Resolve and
Last time I looked into it, Davinci For Linux is... functional, in the same sense as an "In-Game" game compatibility rating on an emulation website. It works, and you can edit and render things, but it's crippled by - surprise - codec licensing bull$$$hit. I haven't actually had a chance to test it myself, but as long as it can ingest MKV/MP3/PNG and shit out MP4, and that I can do my usual PNG pan-arounds and other editing effects, I'll be fine with it.
The main thing keeping me as a content creator locked to Win10 is... PaintDotNet. As the ".NET" in the name implies, a native Linux build does not and never can exist. And apparently, Wine really doesn't like it. Like, going back to the emulator analogy, PDN's rating on Wine is "forget Intro, it kernel panics the host system". I've tried Gimp, and the problem is it's too feature-packed, to the point that Gimp is literally not capable of the simple image edit features that are trivial for PDN to do...
I'd say it's more Microsoft is forcing this change on how we use OUR PC's.
After all, that's MY computer, not Microsoft's, and I do NOT want AI forced on me, let alone it copying anything from my PC and sending it elsewhere. That could be my online banking details, my healthcare records, my home finances, personal online purchases...
Okay, I don't do home banking or shopping or healthcare from my PC (that's for gaming so... meh) but Google is pushing their idea of AI onto everything, so is Apple... And while I'd hope Linux doesn't go that route, there's then the question of the software we're using: That's also getting 'AI' and could also start slurping data...
While we might have GDPR in Europe, that's not going to stop these corporations from grabbing everything they can and pretending it's all fine and dandy, even when it's leaking to every hacker and scammer on the planet due to badly coded AI systems (or even systems where the AI is a bunch of people in an office being paid peanuts to do the work so aren't going to care about privacy or a person's rights)...
For any of the "secure" activities like banking, working customers infrastructure etc I have a QubesOS machine (or a dual boot on other machines) where you can spin up a VM at the click of a button (on TOR if you like), do you tasks and click another button destroying the VM when you are done.
Its a bit of a different mind set to use, but I had it as my daily driver for quite a while, unless I wanted to game, then it was Win 10.
After all, that's MY computer, not Microsoft's
I'm afraid it hasn't been yours for a long time if you are running Windows.
If you have an administrator account on a machine and you can't kill any process you like, it's not your computer.
If you can't chose what software to install on a machine and when (without it coming back every update), it's not your computer.
If you can't permanently disable unwanted features such as AI and advertising, it's not your computer.
To be honest, it was Win 8 that did it for me. It deprecated a very expensive film scanner and an expensive large format drawing office printer. MS response at the time was to suggest I "just" replace them with hardware which was "Win 8 compatible" - about £3k even then; vastly more today. I was then astonished to discover that all this hardware still worked perfectly under Ubuntu. Guess what I did
It is fair to say that MS FORCED me to move to Linux. This article is simply the latest example of the same thing. Are MS so desperate to "succeed" with their concept of AI that they have lost all focus on their customers? And will therefore lose them because of this "obsession"? If so, they deserve what they get.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson back in April, users' data will not be stored long-term
Microsofts T&Cs go on to state "long term" is defined solely by Microsoft and is 'subject to change'.
So long-term could be "more than 10,000 years" if they wanted.
Recall is STILL a nightmare. Broken encryption system that can be bypassed by a small child with an abacus was used deliberately. This is Microsoft basically hoovering up data so they can blackmail future politicians and presidents into doing whatever Microsoft wants.
The recall system can be remotely re-enabled by microsoft update "hotfixes" which install silently in the background and cannot be skipped even on Enterprise-level systems. So they'll just wait til the heats off, Win10 has passed out of support and the number of windows 11 installs goes up THEN they'll 'accidentally' and quietly re-enable Recall and copilot vision in full
Microsoft has even been 'testing' how many users will put up with features constantly turning themselves on/off after being enabled or disabled. Telemetry, Sound settings (Loudness Equalization) etc etc, all 'randomly' re-enable/disable themselves at unpredictable intervals, so they can work out how far they can push re-enabling the software after it's disabled.
NEVER forget recall is designed to hide itself when task manager is opened (reducing cpu cycles taken/memory footprint so its not top of the list), the process list is interrogated etc, and has code to check if packet-sniffing software is installed locally, then it goes quiet for a bit until the connection is idling. It's unlikely most people have a 2nd PC JUST to run packet sniffing software.
MS didn't spend $50 BILLION USD on a gigantic storage datacentre thats hooked directly to recall for nothing. Hell to comply with EU laws, they've started construction on "local" data/storage/blackmail data centres in EU countries.
Nobody will care, just keep pumping "news" every week about how the enemies of the day (China, Russia, Iran, Eurasia, Eastasia, Oceania, etc.) are hacking our systems and stealing our data, and nobody will care that we are stealing a lot more, by design. Nothing like a good misdirection.
The recall system can be remotely re-enabled by microsoft update "hotfixes" which install silently in the background and cannot be skipped even on Enterprise-level systems.
You must not work in the enterprise space because if I want a machine, or machines, to not reach the internet, or microsoft in particular, it won't.
Unplug the network cable and not install wireless?
Yup: Air gap firewalls are the real hard core way to block unwanted network traffic. Just have to be able to handle the OS trying to call 'home' to verify it's a legit install.
But if you do connect to the internet, then it's a lot harder: That call 'home' can be to a server that doesn't show as being Microsoft, but does the licence verification. That server could also be used as a pass-through for data slurping. 'cause for every brilliant idea we have as to how to beat the greedy barstewards, those barstewards will find an alternative to get what they want.
"Hell to comply with EU laws, they've started construction on "local" data/storage/blackmail data centres in EU countries."
..and if I remember correctly a Microsoft lackey has stated under oath in a French senate hearing that there is no guarantee that information hosted on these "EU" servers will not get passed onto the US TLAs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/
There will be a segment of the population that will happily embrace anything with "AI" written on it, just the same way some people do with "Apple" and the letter "i" (lower case only, please).
Let them have it. After their personal data get sold, pwned and recycled on the dark interwebs, it'll only give us something to sneer about. Watching the world burn is turning into a joyful spectator sport, if you keep your sense of humour about it.
I've given up trying to explain to my sheeple friends. They use their phone for everything and gawp at crap like Love Island. So these sheep wander around, tracked, monitored and sedated by screens of all sizes. I told them not to leave all their money in pensions schemes because they don't own them. I showed them what is happening with Bitcoin and precious metals because the currency is being inflated away to nothing. I told them to enjoy their overseas holidays because they will be stopped in a few years. That how they spend their money will be controlled down to nth degree with CBDC. How the politicans they see are actors on a stage while the directors remain hidden. I tell them their "trusted news sources" are lies and deception. They believe Putin just woke up one morning and decided to invade Ukraine for no reason because he is Hitler. They believe the wars and attacks in the middle east are for democracy to help the people. They think HTS are liberators. They believe the reason they got Covid 5+ times and numerous colds and I didn't is luck. Of course they think I'm insane, but I'm well & my savings have gone up >100%.
You just can't tell people, they are hypnotised by the control grid and the worst part is, because they are in the majority, they are causing this to happen to all of us. There couldn't be more evidence of where we are being taken. Now they will have Big Brother anaylysing every touch of they're keyboard, every flick & click of the mouse and probably their facial expressions and viewing habits. All analysed and used to "guide" & nudge them.
I don't know how effective it is but I use Linux & VPN on PC. Graphene and VPN on phone. I don't watch TV. I use cash a lot. So it wont stop the Mossad/CIA/MI6 from spying on me but they are unlikely to be interested, so I reduce my footprint as a kind of protest. It's a minor protest unless others join.
Apparently you can earn $1million (legitimately) by signing up to spend 100 days in isolation. No phone, no internet, no talking to people (other than one person who brings you meals). Go only 30 days and you can get $200k. (that's what was being offered, at least)
It's getting tempting to see if that offer is real and still available and where I have to go. I know it's an experiment into how we handle isolation - just not sure where it's based at. (it's a converted Boing they're using, which does look interesting)
“A true companion" - that’s one way to rebrand your own personal Stasi liaison officer. Always present. Always helpful. Just quietly observing, cataloguing, and nudging you back into line if your digital behaviour shows signs of ideological drift.
No need for secret police when you’ve got Copilot Vision. It captures your screen, analyses it, and sends it off to HQ - sorry, I mean Microsoft servers - for your convenience, of course. And while they promise it’s not used for training or ads, nothing stops that data from being repackaged for 'national security' purposes.
They cannot make a usable OS. Like one where you can just find how to change screen resolution because it is in a logical place.
So they instead add an unstructured natural-language command line thingy (let's call it what it is). Which does not even behave deterministically. But on the plus side, it spies on you!
And people still complain Linux is complicated…
Aside from moving the resolution app in nearly every iteration of thier OS, what proportion of the population understand the numbers in "change my screen resolution to 1920 x 1080" ?
When fed a diet of dramas where infinite resolution is available from the grainiest of surveillance cameras, and TV re-runs are stretched horizontally from 4:3 to fit 16:9, why bother with precise numbers or even whether a wheel should be round or elliptical ?
The nice Mr Starmer has promised that the UK will be the global leader in applying AI to its economy. Apparently, AI and 'economic growth', whatever the latter means when 'externalities' are factored in, are inextricably linked.
True to his word, Mr Starmer has initiated preparations to create many AI data centres across the three kingdoms and N. Ireland. The matter is of wartime urgency, hence planning permission laws are set aside. Also, the draw upon clean water shall be immense; the population is to be forewarned of constant shortages in domestic settings; furthermore the price of water will rise considerably, but this is under the pretence of rectifying sewage leaks consequent upon reckless 'profit maximisation' by unscrupulous companies. Added to the mix of joys is the prospect of higher electricity prices resulting from an increased market without corresponding increases in supply; there will be planned rotating power cuts to protect AI centres and other industries favoured by the government's financial sponsors (not ordinary household taxpayers).
Against this backdrop, stands the realisation of 'favoured nation status' bestowed by the USA: a catamitical relationship. US industry and commerce, and their products, will have easy entry into the UK unhindered by restrictive labour laws and safety standards (especially food) which were previously imposed by membership of the EU.
This last, offers rosy prospects for the UK's budding 'National Socialist' state. Starmer, Bad Enoch, and would-be interlopers like Farage, and Yaxley-Lennon, are champing at the bit.
Microsoft and Apple are set to be big winners. The latter because it is poised to be awarded a monopoly over the market in mobile phones, each of which will comply with surveillance requirements. Microsoft has most to gain because it will have total control over the distribution of the only legally permissible operating system for personal devices; some institutions, those where activity vital to national security depends upon efficient software, may have exemptions. Thus, the context is set for 'productive', in MI5/6 and NCA terminology, deployment of Windows E, the 'E' an abbreviation of 'Eternal'. This is because part of the quid pro quo in the arrangements between the US government & Microsoft with the UK government, the latter, by then, to be known as 'The New National Socialist' government (a coalition of 'born again' Labourites and Tories, these anticipating either 'The Second Coming' or 'The First Coming', both with a jolly Armageddon). It is destined to thrive for 1000 years.
The forgoing is a simple update to the Book of the Apocalypse: one could not expect its author to be au fait with fine detail.
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users' data will not be stored long-term, aside from transcripts of the conversation with the Copilot assistant itself, and "are not used for model training or ads personalisation ... Oh thats ok then, spy away Microsoft
NO you retards just FOAD with all this AI spy sh!t, we don't want it, soon Sovereign Cloud/Linux/etc gets its ass in gear the better and Microsoft can get kicked out and can only play in cesspool that in USA.
So I've been using Windows for decades, since Windows 3.0 for me.
Now I use another machine running Linux KDE as my daily driver - My Windows machine a couple of hours a week max mainy for gaming and the graphics my Linux machine doesn't have.
So MS have a vast amount of data of my daily usage over the years and suddenly there is very little in terms of Windows usage. I wonder if they will be letting the NSA (who really benefit from Recall and the like) that I'm an escapee and not toeing the line? - Should I run for the hills? Hide in a caravan in Scarborough (hiding with a sea view in the UK is always a better option).
Oddly the UK government is very very quiet on all this intrusion into our lives. I don't see anything in the Reg about any country saying WTF? Either.
But one question that has not been asked is; how much of this AI Slop (Linux term) is in the Enterprise edition and IoT devices? of windows, I be interested to know if all the MS spyware can be turned off in both versions. - and what can be turned on by MS :-)
I guess I'll be finding out the answer to your question soon. When I return to work from my vacation, a new laptop will be waiting for me with a managed installation of Win11 installed on it. My employer has decided, based on their auditors saying that "Linux is not secure because it does not run Micros~1 endpoint protection", to forbid me from using Linux on my work laptop.
So now I have hour long update installations to look forward to and probably even more corporate spyware watching over my shoulder while I work.
It's not as clever as it thinks.
I asked CoPilot how to "Disable CoPilot on Windows 11" and it didn't know the answer. So it's either stupid, or has selective hearing, a bit like Google Review not allowing you to leave a review for Google.
Always remember the AI in AI stands for Artificial - it's not real intelligence, it's just pretend.
so all my win 10 pc's. have been replaced with raspberry pi, or new PC's Lenovo PC bought OS free (saving £110 Microsoft tax)
a few niggles in the migration, but mostly resolved now, but I do use some fairly niche software which involve multiple USB sound interfaces and multiple serial over USB for ham radio
basic browsing, Libre office etc worked seamlessly out of thee box
now working on getting my work to replace win11 with apple, as a number of the team have MacBooks, fewer windows laptops are being bought, mainly only if people object to Macs
no more AI slop, snooping from M$'s latest snooping / advertising / user monetisation platform that can do some desktop tasks
Once data starts leaking out and people start losing everything, important rich people, not us worthless scum you understand and they start being exposed for what they are, then it'll be removed and then put back in again a few months later. Then it'll happen again and again until all the bugs are wiped out and no more leaks from highly important rich people happens again. It won't matter if us poor wretches data is used and abused, if we lose everything so long as the rich are safely ring fenced from this. After all, they're important.
Thanks to redhat (and fedora) and now Ubuntu, our CAD tools run on Linux workstations. For generic blah blah we get MacBooks.
Nary a windows box in sight except for the Excel jockeys in finance.
But I’m guessing the corporate versions of 11 will have sysadmin settings to turn this stuff off?
Your intranet absolutely cannot connect to the public internet, or all of your data will be exfiltrated by MS and you will have broken every rule in the book on data privacy, including GDPR.
Surely now we will see intranets secured from all threats - ransomware and Microsoft. Two systems on a desk, one connected to the internet with no access to internal data, and one connected to your intranet, a human user filling the air gap.
Instead of saving you cash with AI, MS have doubled your tech spend and require you to have human operators to avoid privacy breaches.
I can't believe that governments are happy with everything that they do on a computer being lifted and sent to US servers.
What sort of a wake-up call will it take for our governments to act on this?
Maybe the only way to stop this is for someone with cash to file charges against companies that allow it to happen. If they allow that data to leave their PCs, they will have broken the law.
Christina Rossetti describes this perfectly (from “Despised and Rejected”, 1904):
Then I cried out upon him: Cease,
Leave me in peace;
Fear not that I should crave
Aught thou mayst have.
Leave me in peace, yea trouble me no more,
Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.
What, shall I not be let
Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?
Well, Microsoft ceased to "vex me" (as far as I can tell) in 1999...............
I used to think being online the whole time was a cool thing. I still do, to a large extent.
But I wish we could go back to the the days when if you wanted Windows, you paid once, and perhaps again for the next major version. I don't like the fact Windows is free because Microsoft still wants to make money from it. As a result, far too much of Windows is now dedicated to tracking you and sending various data on you to Microsoft..
I know about Linux, and I do use it on various machines, but I also do need access to Windows, and, TBH would happily pay to use it, if I could guarantee that paying would disable any telemetry that isn't for reliabilty or safety.
Today: Yeah, we're going to need to collect them in our systems after all.
Future: All Windows 11 systems (AI or not) have been sending us snapshots, as the sparse AI uptake didn't get us the amount of data we promised the agencies we could harvest. And, we are retaining them much longer than we initially promised. You'll belatedly understand it has been done for your benefit.
I went rummaging around the car park underneath the building and found the e-waste bin, and lo and behold here's one of those Dell laptops like they give us plebs to work on, and it's got Win11 recall that's recording everything we do. So I rescued this discard, nothing wrong with it actually, so I put Linux Mint on there (and no Recall) and if I want to surf ebay or play solitaire, I just use that one instead.
It looks the same, because it's the exact same one like IT gave me! Except this one... he he.... is fully under my control.
