And yet when I reboot my computer windows has shown me an entirely new place I can see ads - this week it was my lock screen.
So I left - I am willing to do more work to be spied on less, to be used as a product less, and to fight with my computer about who owns it less.
> and to fight with my computer about who owns it less.
This is a great way of saying it and expresses the uneasy feeling windows has given me recently. I use Linux machines but I have 1 windows machine in my home as a media PC; and for the last several years windows has made me feel like I don’t own that computer but I’m just lucky to be along for the ride. Ramming ads on the task bar and start menu, forcing updates on me, forcing me to make a Microsoft account before I can login (or just having a dark UI pattern so I can’t figure out how to avoid it, for the pedantic).
With Linux I feel like the machine is a turing complete wonderbox of assistance and possibility, with windows it feels like Microsoft have forced their way into my home and are obnoxiously telling me they know best, while condescendingly telling me I’m lucky to be here at all. It’s a very different feeling.
Yeah, "Weather and More" is such a joke. I like the idea of Weather on my lock screen in theory, and I sometimes miss Windows 8's great support for Lock Screen live data, but I have huge problems with almost everything else in the "and More" (news, no thanks, ads, definitely no thanks, tips, maybe not). Thankfully it is still really easy to turn off "Weather and More", but I wish they'd give us a "Weather and Nothing Else". (Same reason one of the first things I do is disable the "Widgets" display on the taskbar in Windows 11. Weather is great, everything else I don't want and/or actively hate.)
Yeah this is what pisses me off the most about windows. Telemetry that can't be turned off normally. Ads everywhere. Microsoft deciding when I must restart for updates. Microsoft trying to manage my behaviour telling me to try new features. Screw that. My computer is my own and must do what I choose.
This feature thing is really one of their strategies. At work they send us "adoption managers" that run reports to check whether people use feature xyz enough and set up stupid comms campaigns to push them to do so.
I really hate that. I decide how I use my computer. Not a vendor.