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Comment by eps | Hacker News Reader

For some reason, an operating system that I paid money for and installed on my very personal computer that I also bought for my own buckazoids insists that I create an online account to be able to log in locally.

I'm going to repeat that: in order to use my super-duper computer I had to create an account with Microsoft.

How ridiculous is that?

* Yes, I know I could've faked the machine being offline, then clicked through some gray-on-gray links in 3px font and I'd be granted a reprieve. But, please, as much as I like reading about Windows quirks on Raymond's blog, he is not exactly in position to complain about a device needing an online account to operate.

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> as much as I like reading about Windows quirks on Raymond's blog, he is not exactly in position to complain about a device needing an online account to operate.

Raymond Chen complains about Microsoft products often. He even has a response to people who say that he is the man in a glass house throwing stones: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060713-12/?p=30...

And while you can say "he works on Windows too, not another Microsoft product", he doesn't work on or review all the business plans, technical designs, or pull requests for all of Windows either. He does serve on an internal Windows API review board, though.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on products including Windows. However, I have only interacted with Raymond Chen in a couple of email threads. Regrettably but perhaps understandably, he was curt in both.

A single article from July 2006, at the peak of the XP era. This was months before the November 8th release of Windows Vista to manufacturing.

AAaaaaa, all the links from articles that far back don't work :(

...And they're not in the web archive either :S

Yeah, they really did a bad job the last time they migrated these devblogs. It's really a shame. Raymond's stuff is popular enough that a lot of it is archived and indexed if you go searching for it, but there were all kinds of other old Microsoft employee blogs that just sort of vanished into the aether, with all the odd bits of knowledge they contained.

And they killed all the comments that also held an incredible wealth of information and anecdata.

Based on his blog I get the impression that he probably totally agrees with you, this post could be one diplomatic way of saying it.

The clock may not have actually ever existed, not that it matters.

I just did a new online install of Windows 10 professional and the offline account option was still there.

Professional might be different. I can personally confirm this issue on Home, version 1903-v2.

I did an install of Windows 10 Home (or whatever it's called) about six months ago and the offline account option was there then (albeit hard to spot, the page is designed to look like it's mandatory but there was a skip option). Unless they've removed it in the past six months it should be there.

Edit: As a cousin post mentions, this option may only be available if the computer is not connected to the internet. Which is annoying as heck.

Nope, installed Windows 10 Pro two weeks ago on a PC connected to the Internet and the skip option was there. Done that on dozens of builds in the past couple years...

I actually thought the post was going to be a metaphor at first. Especially the part about the barely-functional clusterfuck of a UX.

It's not ridiculous. It makes complete sense that in 2019 Microsoft would want its customers to have Microsoft accounts that you log into with to run the operating system on your hardware. Nearly everyone has internet connections, and Microsoft surely seems to think enough of its customers do.

Apple's mobile devices run an operating system that has this same requirement with the same bypass. MacOS also prompts for a password during set up. Android phones prompt for a Google account on set up.

>It's not ridiculous.

Its not ridiculous if you think of an operating system as a tool for generating profit for microsoft.

It is ridiculous if you view an operating system as a tool to serve only the users needs and not suck all of your data up for advertising.

How is this justified except in the "everyone does it" sense?

The OP isn't justifying the policy (you can decide whether it's justified), merely explaining one reason why a vendor would want to do it. Then providing examples of other vendors doing it.

The OP is attempting to justify the policy when they say "it's not ridiculous". Obviously, it is ridiculous.

Oh, I can think of many reasons why vendors would want to do it. But that doesn't make it less ridiculous from the perspective of everyone else.

Please post this in every thread about Apple and Google.

I agree, so we should rag on them.

Android isn't as bad as windows. There is no requirement to sign in to a google account for android. I simply installed f-droid and continued using my phone. There are some improvements that could be made, the calendar app requires a google account which is annoying and arguably the play store should allow installing free apps without an account.

"in 2019" is not a valid argument.

Highway robberies also make complete sense when rationalized from the robbers' perspective, but it doesn't make them any less ridiculous from everyone else'.

I think the issue is mostly that you, in the eyes of Microsoft, did not pay enough. This entire online account thing is just a precursor to transitioning Windows from one-off purchase to a monthly subscription.

No, the offline account button was simply renamed, don't need to be offline, and didn't changed place.

There is only 2 issue:

   The link have the same size than the rest of the text.  

   The text mean nothing to an user.

Latest 1903-v2 "Home" version does not have offline account button without being offline. I had displeasure of configuring it two days ago.

See screenshot here: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295445-microsoft-reall...

Last time I seen news on this, I was factory resetting a PC and could create an offline account. I need to setup another windows this week's, I will see.

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