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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Could Cram More Ads Into Windows 11 - This Time in the Settings App (techradar.com) 151

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Windows 11's Settings panel has been seen with a number of adverts in test builds of the OS, in what's becoming a sadly familiar theme for preview builds of late. From a report: As spotted by German tech site Deskmodder, this was flagged up by a respected source for Microsoft leaks, Albacore, on Twitter. Albacore shared some screenshots of the new home page for the Settings app, as uncovered by digging into a Windows 11 preview from the Canary channel (the earliest test builds). The first screen grab (on the left in the above tweet) shows an ad for Microsoft 365 at the top of the panel, telling users what they get with the service and that they can try it for free (for a trial period). Under that, there's a prompt to 'finish setting up your account,' which refers to completing the setup of your Microsoft Account. The other screenshots also have prompts relating to the Microsoft Account, this time urging users to sign into the account, one of which is shown on the Settings home page and another in the Accounts section. In the latter, users are told to 'Sign in to get the most out of Windows.'
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Microsoft Could Cram More Ads Into Windows 11 - This Time in the Settings App More

Microsoft Could Cram More Ads Into Windows 11 - This Time in the Settings App

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  • Idiocracy (Score:5, Funny)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @01:48PM (#63507093)
    Dammit, I just want to watch "Ow my balls"
    • ow my balls is browt to u by carls Jjr., fu, im eating coz its got elektrolites and thats wot plants crave

      Man, I'm so glad I don't have to use Windows.

  • Just proof that you own nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @01:51PM (#63507099) Homepage Journal

    This just proves that you don't own your copy of windows. You just paid microshaft for their permission to use it. And since you don't own it, they are using it for their own gain.

    You should start thinking of windows like a cable box. You are renting it and they control the content.

  • Future (Score:3, Informative)

    by W1ndRider ( 3989295 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @01:51PM (#63507101)

    We can consume up to 80% of screen space in ads without triggering seizures .... Windows 13 Team

  • You've had 30 years to migrate to Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:01PM (#63507119)
    If more people publicly shamed companies that didn't support Linux we wouldn't be forced into using Windows. It's surprising all those laid off developers aren't boosting their resumes by going through all the issue trackers and actually make Linux a drop in replacement for Windows. They are too busy arguing about making yet another dialect of rust rather than fixing issues that haven't been fixed for decades. Gnome's thumbnailer is still buggy despite some basic thumbnail support added recently, meanwhile Windows 2000 has better thumbnail support.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vyvepe ( 809573 )
      It is likely that the knowledgeable developers are not laid off. It they are laid off then they can find another paying job quickly. Well, it is possible they do not look for another job and maybe even want to scratch an itch and actually fix something. But it is likely they use a command line and some broken thumbnailer is not concerning them.

    • Re:You've had 30 years to migrate to Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:27PM (#63507187)
      The thing is that Windows is still a better desktop than Linux, Linux is still too fragmented and problematic to use once you get out of the most basic use cases (Linux desktop has improved in the last years, but still not enough for a trouble-free change).

      But that said, the new generation of Microsoft managers seems so intent on sabotaging Windows that probably in two or three years years Linux will actually become a better desktop than Windows 11/12 by W.O.

      • Re:You've had 30 years to migrate to Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:48PM (#63507241)

        Linux will actually become a better desktop than Windows 11/12 by W.O.

        As much as we would like that to be true it won't because the issues with Linux desktop are systemic. If they could be solved by just time and trying to outwait Microsoft it would have won already. The solution to desktop linux is going to be a concerted commercial effort to actually take a distro and make it as close to a drop-in Windows replacement as possible and that as we see from past expereince thats hasn't worked out as trying to commercialize Linux earns you the scorn of the very community you need to jumpstart the project. I'm convinced Linux desktop users don't actually want Linux desktop for the masses, it just makes for easy dunks on Microsoft and virtue signalling (and that's ok but let's just honest here)

        Despite all the grief it gets (and a bunch of it is deserved to be sure) at the end of the day even Windows 11 still gets the job done relatively trouble free pretty much the same as Win10 did for the vast majority of you average Windows users, and for anyone with a bit of know-how and experience you can make 11 work and look pretty much the same as 10.

        Things like program compatibility, general desktop layout and day-in-day-out workflow and tools of Windows are probably never going to change because the real customers are always the enterprises and that's whats they demand and consumers get the tail end of that process.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Windows 11 doesn't support a lot of perfectly good computers. It will be interesting to see what happens when Windows 10 supports ends in a couple of years. Will people upgrade, will they just keep using it, will Windows 12 be out and supporting older machines?

          • Will people upgrade, will they just keep using it, will Windows 12 be out and supporting older machines?

            If anything, I'd imagine that more people will just transition to "phone-only" if Windows 12 doesn't support their existing machines. Most of what 90% of computer users need is provided for on a phone. The rest is either gaming* or business. Neither of which is going away. It should also be noted that Microsoft gave away Windows 10 and 11, and still managed to get people to abandon the platform entirely. Or to maintain their existing systems as long as possible without upgrading. Those who already transiti

      • No its not its just different and for most users they don't care they start a browser and browse the internet. The problem is compatibility they want to run the app/game they want. They don't care about Microsoft owning their machine, they never go to the settings and change them. Hell a lot of users don't even get the concept of a directory. I am not just talking old people here either. They just want what ever application they run just to work, no looking up instructions.

        In truth Linux doesn't provide tha

        • You nailed it.

          The world is brimming with people who are NOT computer people in any way, shape, or form. And they never will be. But they MUST use a computer because that is the way the world works now. They have exactly zero patience for learning anything technical, even the slightest detail, and they never will. Every single piece of technical information they must learn to get their windows machine working is something they hate and only do because there is no escaping it.

          They will never touch Linux w

        • Most people run a web browser and games, and that's about it. Maybe they run Office, but more likely they do that in a browser now too. So they could use Linux, and it's not even hard, except that getting the information is hard. A lot of this is Google's fault, because when you search for howtos they show you reams of ancient crap by default. Yes, you can put the year in your search and so on, but people shouldn't have to figure out how to hack Google Search in order to find basic stuff.

          People who need to

      • Not picking a fight here. I haven't used windows in over 15 years.

        I don't see how the *desktop* is 'fragmented'.

        I do understand only too well that the Linux ecosystem does suffer significantly from fragmentation, which is mostly called "choice" in these parts. However, I respect peoples need to run certain software, and therefore, their need to run Windows, Apple, whatever your software application runs on. Again a reality.

        This much I understand. If you want to run certain games, you must use Windows. I als
        • Fragmented in the sense that every distro you pick up will do things differently. Every application you pick up uses a different GUI pattern (Gnome, KDE, Wxwidgets, etc), copy and paste varies wildly from one application to another, only really well-known applications have simple to use installers (and only recently), games will work well on a specific distro, more or less on another and not at all on the others. Despite all its flaws Windows offers a common environment where all these things just work.
        • I kept a virtual machine around and reasonably current because from time to time I had to deal with other people's Excel spreadsheets that used less common things like Solver, so needed to be bug-for-bug compatible with the Windows version of Office.

          But I'm an oldster, and cut some of my computing teeth on early UNIX at Bell Labs. I've had a Linux box of some sort around since the early MCC interim release days. I gave up on Macs after 15 years because writing hobby code in my language(s) of choice no

      • The thing is that Windows is still a better desktop than Linux, Linux is still too fragmented and problematic to use once you get out of the most basic use cases

        Linux is better as a desktop environment than Windows. Pretty near all software you need can run on Wine now. Cinnamon is smooth and easier than Windows.

        The only thing missing is the 3D eye candy like Compiz/Luminosity used to have. Oh wait no, that's back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] It looks better than anything Microsoft has produced.

        • Pretty near [none of the] software you need can run on Wine now.

          There, fixed that for you. I've been a rabid Linux user since 1993, and Wine runs approximately 10% of the Windows software I've ever thrown at it. That rises to about 80% when limited to games (Steam bumps that up to about 97%), but down to about 10% for random Windows software I might want.

          • I've been a rabid Linux user since 1993, and Wine runs approximately 10% of the Windows software I've ever thrown at it.

            Ok well things have changed since 1993, grandpa.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Octorian ( 14086 )

              So how about that random label-maker software for which no Linux-compatible equivalent exists?

              006c:err:ntoskrnl:ZwLoadDriver failed to create driver L"\\Registry\\Machine\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\wineusb": c0000142
              0054:err:ntoskrnl:ZwLoadDriver failed to create driver L"\\Registry\\Machine\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\nsiproxy": c0000142
              wine: Call from 7B010BE6 to unimplemented function concrt140.dll.??0_TaskCollection@details@Concurrency@@QAE@XZ, aborting
              wine: Unimplemented function c

              • What device is that?

                The world isn't composed entire of a select group of games with hand-coded workarounds.

                The world isn't composed of people with weird random label-makers.

                • I also have a label maker. Zebra S4M. ZebraDesigner pro is Windows only and doesn't work right on wine. My "solution" is a NUC sitting by the label maker running windows, unfortunately.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Octorian ( 14086 )

                    Yeah, the above dump was from the Brother p-Touch software.
                    I have both Brother p-Touch label printers and a Zebra label printer. The software for the former runs on Windows/MacOS, whereas the latter is only Windows.

                    The Brother really needs dedicated software that understands its features and media sizes.
                    Fortunately the Zebra can also behave like a normal printer, which is great for printing things like shipping labels. But a lot of the time I actually do still want traditional label-design software to use

                  • Put Windows in a KVM, use one of the USB solutions to pass the USB through to the device, et voila. At least, in theory. I have not yet explored the USB stuff, but it allegedly works pretty well. Maybe I'll look at that today so I can tell you which one to use, I've been meaning to check it out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Octorian ( 14086 )

            And the "random Windows software you might want" quite often includes a lot of things that never make anybody's list of "obvious apps to build F/OSS replacements for" or has random bespoke vendor apps that will never be ported. Its a very long tail.

            It also includes more obvious big-name items, where there are viable alternatives. But those alternatives are neither drop-in replacements, nor do they offer the same level of functionality. They might be good enough for "most users", but are never good enough

      • the new generation of Microsoft managers seems so intent on sabotaging Windows that probably in two or three years years Linux will actually become a better desktop than Windows 11/12 by W.O.

        This is spot on. At the rate of decline in usability of Window's UI, it will arguably help bridge the gap by getting worse and meeting Linux in the middle.

      • The thing is that Windows is still a better desktop than Linux

        If Windows were still wearing Windows 7's face, then I would agree with you. That was the last time Windows was coherent. Now there are multiple interfaces, some of them are just there to get between you and the system, and none of them (except perhaps the overly wordy PowerShell) actually lets you do everything.

        If we can put aside things like application compatibility for a second and just talk about the desktop, I think it's clear that both KDE Plasma and MATE are more usable and present a more logical and cohesive desktop than does Windows of today. Windows' performance is acceptable, its reliability is tolerable, and its backwards compatibility is excellent, but its UI has gone right into the toilet. It dove in there for Windows 8, and it has really never recovered. Vestiges of all of those bad decisions remain in Windows 11, and it takes Group Policy to conveniently shut some of them off. I've recently begun running Samba for AD just to feed my VMs...

        There are still pain points with KDE, and I've read the bugs and they don't seem to have a good plan to fix all of them. And MATE feels a little elderly out of the box. Windows does have a very sleek and modern look. But once you start trying to mess with it, the irritations mount up rapidly. The new interfaces are provably worse than the old ones, though 8 was even worse than 10 or 11 so it does mess up the graph a bit. And honestly, I thought 7 really looked great, very professional but still attractive. And I'm one of those guys who used to have a dozen window managers installed and configured at a time.

        • It's because windows is trying to be mac OSX I couldn't believe it when I installed Windows 11 and they something called finder. They also moved the UI so it looks pretty close to what Mac OS x looks like

          • Yes, one of the first things I did to Windows 11 was move the taskbar back to the left side where it belongs on Windows. With KDE I have it on the right side of the screen where it makes sense, but KDE has much better window management than Windows so that actually works well.

      • The mess that was Windows 8 wasn't enough to push people to Linux... and 8 wasn't even a free upgrade.

        Call me crazy, but I believe a hell of a lot more sabotage can be done without consequence. It'll be interesting to see when this boiling frog finally explodes, but it won't be within the next few years, and the end victor won't be Linux.

      • But that said, the new generation of Microsoft managers seems so intent on sabotaging Windows that probably in two or three years years Linux will actually become a better desktop than Windows 11/12 by W.O.

        This was the plan from 1997 onwards, this is the end of piracy with trusted computing and copyright enforcement built into the hardware, they are backporting console security chips into new PC's.

        Read the paper here:

        https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja1... [cam.ac.uk]

        TCPA:

        https://www.notcpa.org/about.h... [notcpa.org]

        Trusted computing faq.

        https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja1... [cam.ac.uk]

    • Re:You've had 30 years to migrate to Linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:30PM (#63507193)

      What if the software I use on windows has no linux equivalent?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        Then you locked yourself into that ecosystem but chances are there are options or other providers.

        • Then you locked yourself into that ecosystem but chances are there are options or other providers.

          Not when it comes to CAD.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rastos1 ( 601318 )
        In late '90-ies I worked for a company developing CAD system for textile industry (autocad is not the only CAD in the universe). The software was running on HP-UX and used X11 and "Starbase". (Funny that Google does not really give much useful links for "starbase".) Then the company noticed that everyone is moving to windows. Guess what? They bought a NutCracker SDK [itprotoday.com] and got the software running on windows. Two decades later they are so much on windows, that the software does does not run on anything that is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

      It's surprising all those laid off developers aren't boosting their resumes by going through all the issue trackers and actually make Linux a drop in replacement for Windows.

      If they are laid off they are probably trying to find another job. How awful of them to prioritize putting food on their table vs fixing your issues with Linux.

    • without anti-trust law enforcement it's toothless. Companies don't have shame, they have shareholders.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      ChromeOS doesn't support a lot of hardware either, but it's done very well in certain markets.

    • Well, to be fair, this is a recent development on my Linux box:

      $ sudo apt update
      [snip]
      Calculating upgrade... Done
      Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro with 'esm-apps' enabled:
      [snip]
      Learn more about Ubuntu Pro at https://ubuntu.com/pro
      ...

      What is that? It looks a little bit like an ad in the system admin tools.

    • Most things are Linux now. Azure is Linux. Windows has a subsystem for Linux because that's what developers crave. Linux may not be on the desktop, but it is on the servers, and the desktop is dying and being replaced by a browser.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Octorian ( 14086 )

      If more people publicly shamed companies that didn't support Linux we wouldn't be forced into using Windows.

      Instead, just enough people shame them that they all put this in their FAQ:

      Q: When do you plan to support Linux?
      A: Here at FooCorp, we all really live Linux. Honest! We use it as much as we can and think its great! But for the time being, we've decided to focus all of our user-facing effort exclusively on our Windows and MacOS product offerings.

    • Yes, we all have. But you know who hasn't had 30 years to migrate for Linux? Your grandma. Linux is an environment for programmers. Don't get me wrong I love Linux but programmers write software for programmers. Nobody takes time to streamline the UI, or to make it nice and pretty and seamless like MAC OSX. And until somebody actually takes the time to make Linux for people who don't know how to program it will be an operating system that is solely used by programmers.

  • Look, at some point, everyone who is going to subscribe to Office365 will have done so, or at least gotten to the point where the profit from the subscriptions is exceeded by the development cost to implement more places to cram ads for the service. Doubly so for when the ads become so intolerable that one subscription costs three people who said "enough" and got a Mac or a Chromebook.

    This leaves us with the revenue stream Microsoft is likely to be eyeballing, and that's data mining in the way Google does. Okay fine...except none of this ad space so far seems to be used for third party advertisers...so what's the data mining going to earn them if advertisers can't leverage it?

    Ultimately, Microsoft isn't doing anybody any favors - including their shareholders - by making Windows more ad-laden than it was for most people back in the Kazaa and Limewire days.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Microsoft has been expanding their revenue over the past couple years by turning paid-for products into services requiring renewal, and then 'value adding' their older services by removing features from those products and introducing them as new 'add-ons' costing more. They've got quite a bit of runway to go before they can't do this anymore. The product lock-in is strong.

  • Stupid settings (Score:3)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:13PM (#63507145)

    I haven't touched Windows 11. Are there still two sets of settings for everything? The new useless settings and then the classic settings panels that actually work? Like the one for ethernet settings. It gives me an on/off switch and the mac address. Really fucking helpful there.

    • Re:Stupid settings (Score:5, Informative)

      by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:33PM (#63507211)

      I haven't touched Windows 11.

      Lucky you. I am wiping yet another laptop right now that updated to Win11 despite target version group policy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XMode ( 252740 )

        I've had to go around and disable TPM on all our physical machines to stop them trying to auto update. This is despite me specifically setting all the group policies that are supposed to prevent it AND not pushing the update via WSUS. Making the machine fail compatibility seems to be the only way to stop it. I'm almost positive that in some future windows update Microsoft will try to start flipping on bios features to push their garbage.

      • What worked here was to disable TPM support in the BIOS.

    • Yes. I have barely touched Windows 11 but I know that much. I installed it just to see what it was like, and I don't like it. Shock, amazement, but then I never expected to like Windows 7, and I did. I liked it so much I paid for it on purpose, and bought a completely legit license and not even one of those bullshit ones.

      Now I'm gaming on Linux, and if it won't run either natively or in Proton[-GE] then I'm not buying it. I really wasn't in a hurry to run games that require kernel-based DRM anyway, and prac

    • Yes there are still two sets of settings, but they are working on cluttering the new set and making it harder to find what you want to do. They have completed work on the change to restrict the task bar to the bottom.

  • I just revert to Windows 10 and call it good?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Blocker of Ads (Score:5, Informative)

    by Generic User Account ( 6782004 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:31PM (#63507199)

    https://www.linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com]
    https://www.winehq.org/ [winehq.org]

  • Is more creap like this. A Windows license is $100+ Adware. That you can't remove!

  • Microsoft! Makes me smile! (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:50PM (#63507251)
    I dumped all Microsoft products after Windows 7. And still have not had any reasons to regret it.

  • What kind of idiot would want to RENT a word processor? That is just stupid!

    Sigh, so many idiots in this world. And they are happy with advertisements too.

    Long live Windows 95. I don't need any stinking remote account to log in to my local computer.

  • Log in here! (Score:3)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @03:01PM (#63507293)

    Yes, Microsoft. Yes. Train the users to enter their login credentials in unexpected places. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!

  • Kiosks, robots, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Monday May 08, 2023 @03:33PM (#63507357) Homepage
    Microsoft has already almost fatally sabotaged their own OS for anybody doing remote automation. Once a month every computer I own boots to a screen advertising Windows online services instead of to the desktop and my auto-starting apps. Microsoft has provided ways to disable this and then sabotaged those ways several times. (I'm still on Win10 on all my boxes, but some of my customers have Win11). I haven't moved to Linux mainly because I have software tools and hardware that aren't supported on Linux or in emulation there. Most of my customers also still want Windows because it 's what they understand. But it's getting very annoying, and tides can change.
  • So one screen somewhere in an entire OS suggests office/onedrive subscriptionâ¦. How about apple which forces you to create icloud account and spam you to upgrade. Or major linux distributions like Ubuntu advertising ubuntu one in the console. Imagine how brain dead you have to be to be so susceptible to this that you have a social media melty about it.

    • Ubuntu 22.04 does show that message when a new terminal session is opened. However, it is shown only once and if you don't close that session, it will not appear again anymore. That message is not shown when you use the operating system's GUI. Only when starting a new console session.

      Ads in Microsoft Windows keep returning. That is a big difference.

      For now, Microsoft is showing ads for their own products. That is bound to change when there is more money to be made that way.

      But if we are honest, the text in

  • More deminishing returns. They need to go back to advertising 101 because they missed the part where they say "pissing off your potential customers is a very bad idea".

  • I think many gamers, as myself, will run Win10 in to the ground. And probably a bit longer. And only then switch to Linux. Steam is going.. well.. full steam ahead on their Linux ports. It's great. Gaming on Linux is hopefully practically usable by the time Windows isn't.

  • There's so much innovation coming out of Redmond that I can barely stand it.

  • I'm hoping for the day (Score:3)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @12:23AM (#63508065)
    When the ad market collapses
  • Installing office and leaving onedrive running significantly slows down my mac. I keep it around for work purposes, but wonder id it is because of the phoning home

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