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Comment by daemin | Hacker News Reader

You can actually have Windows logged in with a local account (normal old school account) and use the store with a different Live account.

But yes, I am quite annoyed by them requiring that I use online credentials to log in to a physical computer. I prefer to separate the two authentication mechanisms.

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I seem to remember having a problem with a new Win8 computer and trying to use Skype (I hate Skype but lots of customers of mine use it). It insisted I use a Microsoft live account , which I don't have, to install it. Eventually I somehow managed to get an old version of Skype which stopped asking me.

There's a difference between Skype and Skype for Desktop, the second version is what you should install, and is the classic Skype. The first one is a Metro app.

Probably new Skype vs the "classic" Win32 one.

Pushing the MS Account for installing software is plain bad and it definitely won't help with user adoption like a non mandatory account would.

That would be great - when I most recently tried to use it I was told by the dialog box that entering my Live credentials would convert my local account to the Live account, and I'd need to log in with the Live password not the local one.

I'm not sure who's correct in this particular thread, but sometimes they hide the "unfavoured" approach so well that they convince people to use the new method.

In one case, I unsuccessfully tried to create just a local account in Win 8, because they had hidden it behind 3+ layers of "sign in here with your live account". I was sure that there must be a way to create a local one, but just couldn't find the right path.

Yeah, it's called dark patterns, and Microsoft makes full use of them in Windows 10. And it seems to only get worse with the recent changes they've made in the Anniversary Update, like how they hide how you could disable Cortana in searches (they turned it into a very technical option, that no "normal" person would figure out), and so on.

I for one am glad that the French Data Protection Authority is going after Microsoft, but it remains to be seen if it can lead to major changes in Windows 10 (for the benefit of the users):

https://www.cnil.fr/en/windows-10-cnil-publicly-serves-forma...

Migrated my Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 10 Home last week (pressurized by the free update ultimatum... so their strategy works !) and my local account stayed a local account and I could use the Microsoft Store with an independent account without converting my local account.

Local accounts were not available in Windows 8 or 8.1, they only got reintroduced in Windows 10.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my login credentials to my physical PC to be different than for my online accounts.

Scott Hanselman had a guide on how to actually create an offline account in Win 8 (see: [1]).

It involves navigating to a "Create a Microsoft Account" screen, and then clicking the well-hidden "Sign in without a Microsoft Account" at the bottom. Quite a well thought out dark pattern, confused me at the time.

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToSignIntoWindows8Or81Witho...

That's false:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13951/windows-creat...

(I had a Windows 8 VM for compiling some software and used a local account.)

OK, I stand corrected. I recall that I had to use a Live account for a preview version of Windows 8 I installed on a test machine. Maybe my memory is off, I hadn't used it in ages.

I remember that happening a while back and it definitely forced me to log in with my Live account credentials from then on. I was rather miffed, but didn't bother trying to do anything about it then.

I have seen that and it's a dark pattern, if you close the window you will still use your live credentials without changing your logon account.

I am quite annoyed by them requiring that I use online credentials to log in to a physical computer

Is that substantially different from every corporate domain login credential system?

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