* Posts by 43300

1467 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2021

You know something's wrong when Clippy fills you with nostalgia for simpler times

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Copilot is MUCH worse than Clippy - he only appeared in specific contexts rather than everywhere, and so far as I recall you could turn him off, which is pretty much impossible with Copilot.

Want Intel in your Surface? That’ll be $400 extra, says Microsoft

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Re: Why would anyone want any Microsoft Surface?

"You might be interested in Surface laptops if you need the touch screen, pen input and other accessories. For an average business use they might be too expensive, but that's true for Apple as well."

Touch screens are an option with a lot of Dell models now too.

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Re: Why would anyone want any Microsoft Surface?

I can sort of see it with the tablets - I wouldn't buy them, but I can see that they are one of the main offerings in that niche, if you need that sort of thing.

But I really can't see why anyone would buy the laptops. They are overpriced, under-specced (unless you pay a fortune), and don't seem to have a great reputation for reliability. I can get something better from Dell, of an equivalent size and probably at a lower price (and quite probably similarly from Lenovo / HP as well - I've not checked recently what they offer in this sort of area).

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

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"Perhaps recognizing there might be a latent problem, the government says it will set up a dedicated "AI Energy Council" chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries. This will work with energy companies "to understand the energy demands and challenges" of its AI plans."

Ah yes, set up another talking shop! That'll resolve the issues in no time...

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

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Re: Why?

I'm sure your right, but being Microsoft they can't even stick with that consistent approach - there are a number of differences between OWA and 'New Outlook'.

China's homebrew Bluetooth alternative is on the march as Beijing pushes universal remotes

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Sure, the US and UK are as bad in some ways, but at least there is sometimes a way for the people to push back a bit - in a one-party state like China there isn't even that option without considerable risk to anyone trying it.

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The risks of this new technology being used for spying on ordinary citizens is greatest for those in China. Like all authoritarian regimes ever, the CCP will be very keen to know what its country's citizens are doing and thinking, so that it can clamp down on any dissent quickly and early.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

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Some of the recent Dell Latitudes have a hold on them at the moment (not clear why - we've tested clean installing them and not encountered any issues)

Outlook is poor for those still on Windows Mail, Calendar, People apps by end of year

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Re: Why are MS even bundling a mail client with Windows?

New Outlook is unfortunately going to replace proper Outlook entirely over the next few years.

And as regards integration with the OS, proper Outlook does that already in the way that matter.

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I don't really see the retirement of the Windows Mail app as a significant issue. It's a home-user program and has always been crap. New Outlook certainly isn't sparkling it's a bit better than Windows Mail.

What is more of a problem is the intention to phase out proper Outlook over the next few years. New Outlook is generally tolerable for basic home use, but it's hopeless in a business setting because lots of functionality which businesses do need is simply missing.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

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Re: By the way

I appear to have a downvote stalker - everything I post gets one, no matter how non-controversial. I assume it's someone I disagreed with in a thread on here at some point. It's really quite sad that some people have nothing better to do than engage in this sort of infantile behaviour.

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Re: By the way

With the Pro version you can do it easily, although they don't make it obvious - click the domain join option, which actually goes through the local account creation process and doesn't join it to the domain!

Home version is a bit more complicated, but still doable - don't connect it to the internet, then on the region selection screen, Shift-F10 to get a command prompt and type oobe\bypassnro - the computer will reboot itself. Make sure it still doesn't get connected to the internet, and tell it you don't have internet when it asks. It will then prompt to create a local account. Tried it with 24H2 and it still works.

Microsoft preps big guns to shift Copilot software and PCs

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Re: AI PC and CoPilot

"Does Micros~1 even offer a version of Office and Copilot that works locally on the PC instead of doing everything in the cloud?"

There are the three-yearly releases, but most of them require signing into a Microsoft account. The sort-of exception is the LTSC one, which I think is only available through volume licensing channels. Technically this works entirely locally, but it will try to get you to sign in at every opportunity - and if you add an email account to Outlook which is either Microsoft consumer or a business tenant on Exhange Online, that will then sign you into all the other apps too. And if you avoid Outlook use, and don't sign in, but open a Word / Excel file saved on Onedrive, it will show a warning message across the top prompting you to sign in - every single time.

We've got a small number of standalone machines with local accounts which needed to open some basic Office files, and I bought a few Office 2021 LSTC licenses for them, but it basically proved too risky as all the prompts would sooner or later lead to someone signing in and we wanted to avoid that risk. I removed it and put Libre Office on instead.

Microsoft goes thin client with $349 Windows 365 Link mini PC

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I now know that it doesn't support AVD or DevBox - it's Windows 365 only. Response to a specific question on one of the Ignite sessions last week.

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Re: But but but

"WTF is it for?"

Making more profit for Microsoft! Sell them an overpriced thin client, and lock them into a subscription for a cloudy VM as their shiny new device is completely useless without that. Win-win! (for Microsoft).

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Do these allow access to Azure Virtual Desktop (which can use session based VMs with multiple users)? It's not clear from what I've read. They seem primarily for Windows 365, which is of course preferable from Microsoft's perspective as those are per-user VMs so more profitable.

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

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Re: Win11 easy when it is, and impossible other times

We've done it - all computers now on W11 (all on supported hardware, which nearly all of the laptops were anyway as a result of a move from desktops to laptops in 2020-21; the few which were't were kept on W10 until they were due for replacement). Really wasn't difficult, nor is it really any worse than W10.

I'm no fan of the hardware requirements, but those are actually more of an issue for home users who tend to keep hardware for longer. I also don't think it offers anything over W10 (but equally, it's not really worse, especially after running some scripts to remove crap and apply some sensible settings).

There does seem to be an element on here of exaggerating how much of a problem it is. While any new OS version is going to pose some challenges, we've not encountered anything major, and none of the software we use has given any trouble either. The main reason why companies haven't bothered is probably a combination of it not offering any compelling reason to move, and waiting until all their hardware is supported (which with a 5-year cycle, it now will be). Time will tell what happens over the next 11 months!

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

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Oh look, a downvote!

Perhaps Mr / Ms Downvoter could explain what they are disagreeing with - this is a purely factual post which anyone could confirm for themselves. What is there to disagree with?

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Re: "the excitement of installing Windows 95 for the first time"

The NT product line (NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000, XP and everything after that) was a lot more stable and less prone to needing repeated reinstalls than the Win 3.1 'consumer' product line - i.e. 95, 98, 98SE and finally the worst of the lot, Millennium Edition. They killed it off after that and everything moved to the NT line.

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They also rarely update the installer GUI - every client and server version since Vista had pretty much the same one, complete with Vista-style window icons, right up until W11 24H2 / Server 2025 which has a new design.

On the subject of installers, I recall that the Dell Poweredge setup CD / DVD (which was booted first, before giving it the Windows install media) was based on NT4 at one point many years ago. They subsequently moved to Linux, and later again came the appearance of the iDRAC controllers with a remote console (which I assume are also Linux-based).

Apple hit with £3 billion claim of ripping off 40 million UK iCloud users

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Re: CMA

"Can you think of more useless government body than CMA?"

Yes - Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman. So useless that it may as well not exist. I assume that it only does exist because governments like to pretend that there is a body which will hold them and the sainted NHS to account.

Microsoft 'resolves' and 'mitigates' Windows Server 2025 update whoopsie

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Asking who though? It's impossible to actually contact any one at Microsoft who is senior enough to make decisions!

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No, they've not offered Windows Server versions through Windows Update before or as a Feature Update, and it's an utterly shit idea.

I've done plenty of in-place upgrades of Windows Server, and it's not difficult - arrange a maintenance window, take a backup, download the ISO and copy it to the machine to be upgraded (or alternatively run it off a USB if it's a physical server and you have access / attach it via the hypervisor if it's a VM), then run the installer and click through the steps, and wait for it to complete. Then carry out reasonable steps to test it (will vary depending what the server is used for), and keep the backup for at least a few weeks in case there are any issues. Never do an in-place upgrade of a DC (supported but risky) or an Exchange server (not supported and will break it).

This isn't difficult, and absolutely cannot happen by accident. There is no need to make it available through Windows Update, with the inevitable risk of someone inadvertently installing it, or M$ fucking up and installing it automatically.

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Re: Any reg readers affected?

Yes.

I have about 40 2022 installs, mostly VMs but a few bare-metal installs. All are updated by WSUS except for one standalone server (i.e. bare-metal install), which updates direct from Windows Update. It's not domain joined and just has local accounts. There is no third-party update management software.

When I logged into it yesterday afternoon to check something it was perfectly normal. I was already wary of the 2025 upgrade and checked the updates in settings to check that it wasn't showing as pending - which it wasn't, and neither was it showing as optional. This morning I logged into the server again, and overnight it had updated to Server 2025, so is now not activated. I have checked with the supplier of the main software used on it, and that does not yet officially support Server 2025 (I've done some basic testing and found no issues so far). Still debating what to do - I could reinstall it (we don't have backups of the OS drive as there's no data on there other than the OS and software) - but it seems fairly likely that if I did that, it would just upgrade again.

The WSUS-managed ones are not affected (checked them all) - let's hope that remains the case!

Apple unveils M4 chip with neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and some other kit

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I see you've got some downvotes (presumably from the Apple faithful?!)

I do agree with your point - given the price and hardware capabiities of these things, they should have MacOS (this is Apple, so it's not going to be anyone else's OS).

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Re: Thinnest

Thin and 13" doesn't sound like a good combination in terms of strength!

Who actually wants a 13" tablet anyway? One that size is unwieldy - beyond a screen size of about 11" a laptop is generally a better option.

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

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Re: I took the plunge into Win 11

A good demonstration of why it's best to only install Insider builds on test machines / VMs, then! They are never a good idea if you want a stable system.

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Re: not a serious question

I think you missed the point that I was taking the piss...

Copilot is utterly pointless. One of the first things I did when it appeared as a taskbar icon in W11 was to work out how to deploy a policy to remove it (the icon and the desktop program) from all our machines.

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Re: I took the plunge into Win 11

W11 won't generally install the feature updates unless the hardware is compliant, so I doubt if the next feature update will break anything - they'll just stop updating once security updates for 23H2 end.

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"In a thread full of people whining about the continuing enshittification of Windows it is perfectly rational to present the possibility and benefits of a freely available alternative."

There are problems with all OSs. What gets irritating is that whenever any Microsoft problem is raised, the fanbois pop up to smugly tell us how they've moved to Linux and it's fantastic. Believe it or not, most of us on here know about Linux. We might well use it day to day as well as Windows (especially on servers). But many of us work in business IT departments, and in the majority of cases it is not a "possibility" to move wholesale to Linux.

And the fanbois normally don't actually "present the possibility and benefits of a freely available alternative" - they just smugly tell us that they now use Linux / it's fantastic / they have no intention of going back, etc, etc. They don't usually present any 'benefits', nor any of the issues (yes fanbois - Linux isn't perfect either!). Plus, they are also almost always telling us about a single home computer (or a handful of home computers), which is pretty much irrelevant to business IT (which is what this site is geared towards). If, of course, they had been involved in a project to roll out Linux to client machines at scale, and reported on the approach, the pros and cons, that may well be of relevance and interest. But a home user isntalling Ubuntu / Mint / whatever on a single computer in their spare bedroom isn't. We don't need to know.

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Re: Those numbers are clearly wrong

I rather doubt if enough people do that to make any noticeable difference to the starts - each percentage-point change in Windows users is going to be millions of computers.

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Good point, and it might work with laptops, but how do you tell whether a desktop is an AI PC given that the keyboard can be replaced? Does having a new keyboard with a Copilot key make it an AI PC? Questions, questions!

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Not sure what point you are making?

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I realise that this is probably an unrealistic hope, but is there any chance we could have a thread on Windows which doesn't consist of a load of people telling us 'just use Linux' / 'I moved to Linux and it's fantastic' / 'I installed Linux on my 105 year old great-aunt's 20 year old computer and she thinks it's great', etc, etc.

The Linux fanboyism on here gets utterly tiresome, Everyone on here knows about Linux. Many of us do use it (especially on the server side), but the reality of working in IT departments is that it's likely to have a heavy Microsoft component. This is not going to change, and as an IT department we cannot tell the organisation 'you're all using Linux now'. This is a site mainly aimed at IT Pros, who will be working with a variety of systems on a day to day basis and need to know about all of them.

If you want to go and congratulate yourselves on your fantastic decisions to move to Linux then no doubt there are Linux-specific forums where you can do that.

The Linux fanbois seem to be have become even more repetitive and predictable than the Apple ones...

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Re: "what happens next?"

"Who would fancy the job of going to the beancounters to tell them they have to budget for replacing a fleet of PCs in good shape and working well before the H/W hits physical EoL just because Microsoft says so?"

That ain't going to happen assuming the computers are mostly going to be on 3 to 5 year replacement cycles (as will be the case in most medium and large organisations) - computers which are five years old now will nearly all be capable of running W11, and there is still 18 months to go yet until W10 hits end of support.

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Re: The flagship OS and its hardware requirements

We buy Dells, and never use the stadard image - too much shite, even on the business machines. Best policy is a wipe and reinstall / reimage with generic MS install media (or an image built from generic MS Install media).

The Pro OEM licenses of Windows allow downgrade so buying them with W11 Pro then wiping them and putting W10 Pro on is perfectly within the rules.

We are nearly entirely W11 now (last few W10 machines expected to be withdrawn within the next few weeks). Does it offer any major advantages? No, not really, but it's not horrendous, and as much of our hardware supported it we decided to go for it - managed in place upgrades with a lot of the machines (which worked with no issues in most cases), and replaced the remaining W10 machines which didn't meet the hardware requirements as they reached end of life. This did give a much longer overlap than I would have liked (in the past we've done OS switchovers within three months or so - this was over a year), but it's not given any major problems.

Basic reason for the lack of interest seems to be that W11 doesn't offer any major feature advances. I doubt if the hardware requirements are much of an issue in businesses now as most will be on a maximum of five years in the renewal cycle, and anything which doesn't meet the requirements is likely to be a fair bit beyond that now. It is going to be more of an issue with home users, though, who tend to keep computers much longer and use them less.

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"However, businesses not caught up in the hype are also all too aware that buying an AI PC is a risky prospect right now."

Sorry, I don't agree. An 'AI PC' is just a reasonably-specced PC using modern components. It's going to be perfectly capable of all the things you might want to use a computer for, even if (as is likely) the AI hype isn't on your radar.

Palantir's CEO calls 'woke' a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world'

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Why don't you actually engage in an articulate discussion rather than throwing petty insults around?

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Re: Hope he goes broke for not being woke

It's not "our" NHS - that's just a government propaganda term. The NHS exists largely to serve itself, as tends to happen with massive state bodies.

Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of good staff within it - there are - but the organisation itself is bloated, inefficient and largely unaccountable (as anyone who has been through the dispiriting complaints processes, with their interminable delays and eventual fob-offs which contradict the facts, will know!).

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Re: What is “woke”

Ok, I'm looking from a UK perspective but I really don't see why Trump inspires so much hatred on one side, and so much adulation on the other. If you look objectively at his first term as president, it's fairly unremarkable. He wasn't a great president, but neither was he an especially awful one. He didn't start any major conflicts, for a start!

Is it mainly just because he's regarded by many as having an extremely abrasive personality?

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Re: What is “woke”

As regards separation of races / ethnicicities / sexual orientations - that's exactly what I was referring to. The woke define people by one charaterisitic (that person is black, that person is gay, etc) and group them based on this single charateristic, then assume that they automatically have a lot in common with others who share that single characteristic (which they may not), and then put these groups into hierarchies, and sets them against each other. It's ignorant and simplistic - and this is especially so in the UK with concepts imported from the US where politics and social dynamics are very different. Thus we have talk of 'white privilege' as if it's a universal - when in fact, in the UK, young white blokes from working-class backgrounds are one of the least privileged of all groups by most measures. Or the assumption that women are under-represented in a particular sector and need special treatment (courses only open to female staff, etc) even when a look at the actual employment stats for the sector show that this is not the case and women are actually the majority, including at senior level. But the woke don't look at specifics or see nuance - everything is seen in terms of hierarchies based on simplistic categories and labelling of people.

The equality movement started out with the admirable aim of providing equality of opportunity for all. That isn't what wokery (and it's relative, EDI) is about at all - they seek equality of outcome, measured solely on the basis of which arbitrary groups they have assigned people to. Actual equality is regarding these things as irrelvant for most purposes - e.g. when interviewing for a job, choose the best candidate in terms of meeting the job criteria. Male/female, black/white, gay/straight, etc - they shouldn't be a consideration in making the decision.

Attaining a better level of actual equality across society is not going to be achieved by dividing people, and wokery is all about creating division.

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Re: What is “woke”

"Woke is treating your fellow humans as if they're, you know, human."

It's not - it's categorizing people into groups, normally based on a single characteristic, then forming a hierarchy of groups and setting various of those groups against one another. While claiming to be about being 'kind', 'inclusive', etc. And spitting hatred at anyone who questions any of the woke dogma, of course.

It's an utterly corrosive ideology which claims to be about fairness and unity but actually causes division and hostility.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

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Re: Stupid

"Remove the punctation from the data base but retain it on the printed road signs. A bit of common sense, or is that asking too much from the council mind?"

That would confuse poscode and delivery systems!

Just keep the apostrophes everywhere. It's not hard to design systems which can cope with it - CRM databases have to cope with it as there are plenty of surnames wich contain an apostrophe.

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Re: Tail wags dog

"Consider yourself lucky. At least your metropolitan council is named after a place within it. I live in Kirklees, the council area, not the actual Kirklees which is in Calderdale."

It actually hard to see the logic with the naming of either of those. All of the West and South Yorkshire unitary authorities have one place in them which is by a considerable margin the largest, and with most of them the authority is named after that place - Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford. Logically, the other two should have been Huddersfield and Halifax rather than Kirkless and Calderdale.

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Re: Tail wags dog

"I have to put up with being governed by the Bradford Metropolitan District Council..Jumped up fucking pricks who spend taxpayers money into oblivion."

Doesn't that apply to pretty much all local authorities?

I do remember that on crossing the border into BMDC territory in 2020, all the pavements had one-way arrows tied to their lamp posts - wonder how much that cost? In N Yorks we somehow coped without those.

I wasn't aware of the fuckwittery with apostrophes in road names though - their policy simply suggests that they are illiterate. Things have been going downhill in North Yorkshire since all the district councils were merged into one unitary authority - North Yorkshire is large (the largest English county) and has several distinct regions which have little in common with each other. From one of the places on the far west to one on the coast is a bit over a hundred miles; in much of England that would take you through several counties.

Meta, Spotify break Apple's device fingerprinting rules – new claim

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"Google is worth at least a couple billion in revenue for Apple with the default search engine deal and probably some other things. Facebook also likely pays Apple some kickbacks to make sure Facebook always appears at the top of curated lists on the App Store, and Spotify also has to be worth a decent chunk of change from the cut of subscription fees Apple takes."

Google and Arsebook - yeah, agreed. Wouldn't expect them to be so keen on Spotify though as that's a direct competitor to Apple Music,

Dating apps kiss'n'tell all sorts of sensitive personal info

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Yes, and the concept of not collecting data unless there's a good reason which can be clearly explained (and especially so when it's special category information such as medical data) is often one which is hard to get people to understand!

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Indeed. The ICO seems to mostly go after some little bloke / woman who did something they probably shouldn't do with some data, frequently just through ignorance of the rules rather than any ill-intent, and which caused nobody any issues.

They ignore the blatant way in which large companies fail to comply. In particular, the 'legitimate interet' justification for data processing which gets stretched well beyond breaking point on a regular basis and rarely does any company get pulled up for it.

AWS promotes itself as alternative to its own VMware service

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"Amazon Web Services is doing something rather odd – promoting itself as a migration target for users of its own VMware Cloud on AWS service."

Not sure why it's odd - the Broadcom takeover of VMWare has made everyone wary. Plus by hosting direct on AWS, Amazon then controls and owns the whole stack without any of the customer payments going to a third party hypervisor provider.

Ten years ago Microsoft bought Nokia's phone unit – then killed it as a tax write-off

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Re: Software updates

"With the exception of my very very first mobile back in the mid-90s (which wasn't available SIM-free), every phone I've ever bought was paid for outright. Rolling the costs into a monthly subscription was, and is, a mug's game; you inevitably ended up paying more that way."

Yep, always the same whenever I price it up. Same with business contracts too - I deal with those at work and every time I review it when the contract's up for renewal, the basic SIM-only contract (and buy the handsets outright from Ebyuer, etc) always works out cheaper - usually by a fair amount too.

People do seem willing to spend a lot on phones (mostly via contracts) though. Over the years I've seen a number of colleagues who won't be earning large salaries but have top-end iPhones. A fair chunk of their income must be going on that mobile contract!