Reply to post: Re: I'm surprised that it's not appeared on more ordinary people's machines

Re: I'm surprised that it's not appeared on more ordinary people's machines

So my new PC finally arrived, complete with Win11. Even included the OS on DVD!

(while spec'ng the PC, it was interesting to note the number of cases now that don't include any slots for DVDs, flash cards, or even antique 3.5" floppys. It does include copious amounts of LEDs though, even on the memory DIMMS. Which now 'need' an app to change the RAM color. Yey! Progress!)

So the setup did nag me to create an MS account. Luckily I ignored it and was prepared with instructions to create a local account. Main gripe about that was it's pretty deceptive, ie MS very much steers you towards becoming an extension of their cloud, and doesn't make the 'offline' option at all obvious.

Once set up, I've not noticed much in the way of nagware. There's an occasional login splash that wants me to 'finish setting up' my PC, which I suspect is really nagging me to participate more fully in MS's data rape. Again seems rather deceptive, especially as the only options are 'Bend me over' and 'Later'. I'd like an option of 'When Hell Freezes Over' because if I want to get more personal with MS, I could choose to do that later.

T'other thing is the MS Store doesn't work. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Nor do the 'widgets', or OneDrive. Shame. It also does the usual trick of having zombie apps running in background with no obvious way to tell them to FOAD. At least with Win11, it seemed easier to terminate it's Xbox junk with extreme prejudice. I don't have an Xbox. If I did, and connected it to a LAN, I know MS loves to probe people's personals, so should be able to discover an Xpox and ask me if I want to let it play on my network.

But there's still cruft like 'PhoneLink' and 'YourPhone'. Yes, it's my phone. Not MS's phone. So kindly fork off because I'm not letting you access it. Task Mangler lets me kill the process, but like any good zombie or vampire, it keeps coming back. There's some other annoyances, like the animated wallpaper and ribbon color changes, which are rather distracting and make me think my monitor might be packing up. Plus presumably sucks up resources that could be used for better things.

On which point, recommendations for apps that'll allow me to configure WIn11 the way MS doesn't want me to are welcome.