After 'Copilot Price Hike' for Microsoft 365, It's Ending Its Free VPN (windowscentral.com) 73
In 2023, Microsoft began including a free VPN feature in its "Microsoft Defender" security app for all Microsoft 365 subscribers ("Personal" and "Family"). Originally Microsoft had "called it a privacy protection feature," writes the blog Windows Central, "designed to let you access sensitive data on the web via a VPN tunnel." But....
Unfortunately, Microsoft has now announced that it's killing the feature later this month, only a couple of years after it first debuted...
To add insult to injury, this announcement comes just days after Microsoft increased subscription prices across the board. Both Personal and Family subscriptions went up by three dollars a month, which the company says is the first price hike Microsoft 365 has seen in over a decade. The increased price does now include Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds AI features to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others.
However, it also comes with the removal of the free VPN in Microsoft Defender, which I've found to be much more useful so far.
To add insult to injury, this announcement comes just days after Microsoft increased subscription prices across the board. Both Personal and Family subscriptions went up by three dollars a month, which the company says is the first price hike Microsoft 365 has seen in over a decade. The increased price does now include Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds AI features to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others.
However, it also comes with the removal of the free VPN in Microsoft Defender, which I've found to be much more useful so far.
Who wants their useless AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to the price hike, meh, it's bad software, from a company who doesn't and will never care about customers, security, integrity, or customer value. If you need Office, LibreOffice, if you want security, while, start by removing Windows, then build your own tool stack, or just grab one of the excellent open and free offerings. I can't recommend a single stack for security, but many great options exist if you use DuckDuckGo to search them up.
After careful consideration and consultation with our higher management team, we regret to inform you that our current systems do not support PGP encryption. Despite our best efforts to explore this option, we are unable to provide this service at this time.
That's part of an email Microsoft sent me last week, they don't support PGP? PGP is the global open standard for identity validation, and email security. Microsoft loves to double down on not caring about important security features, and waxes poetic about being careless, it's mind-boggling. That's one in a long series of emails, going over the course of years. There was much more to the email, but the summary is they don't, won't, and can't support the global standard identity validation and email security. Microsoft doesn't and won't care, so fuck them.
Re:Who wants their useless AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a use for AI, specifically OpenAI's. I have a ton of legacy code written in (of all languages) Forth. This is for embedded devices and it's complicated by control loops that are written in machine language in order to keep the performance up on these controllers with low cost industrial grade CPU's. The code is pretty slick all things considered, but it's a really hard to maintain mess mostly because I'm not a Forth programmer, and especially with the machine language stuff in there it's complicated.
About a month ago I embarked on a journey to re-code all our software in C. ChatGPT (paid) has been incredibly useful in both helping me understand what's going on in the Forth code, and helping to translate it into C. The new code usually isn't compile-ready but it's close enough that it just takes a few changes and I can compile and burn to the controller. Yes, I actually can have it translate the code directly into a compile-ready version but learning the process and learning how the code translates has been incredibly useful in helping me with the old Forth code and has also helped me find fixes and optimizations that mean the new C code runs better on the same hardware than the Forth stuff did.
So yeah... one good use for AI. There ARE good uses for it but it's a tool like any other. It's also great for help with writing, especially formal writing.
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For general AI, I'm n
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Re: Who wants their useless AI? (Score:2)
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There was no other legitimate argument to anything, Microsoft is still a terrible company, that isn't con
Re: Who wants their useless AI? (Score:2)
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Re: Who wants their useless AI? (Score:2)
Microsoft sucks, Remember Office95 upgrade to 97 (Score:2)
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I.e. "First fix is free", so just offer people the bait and threaten them with end of support of Windows 10.
Tariffs = Boycott (Score:5, Informative)
I was already going to drop O365 due to the price hike and their dark patterns to âoedowngradeâ to the package I signed up for, but now I will also be boycotting all US companies due to the orange idiot tariffs on Canada.
70% of US citizens let this happen. Fuck you guys.
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:2)
70%? Not even 50% of voters who went to the polls voted for the new administration...
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The problem will migrate so that it won't just be because of the current alleged administration. Now countries are going consider that maybe the problem isn't that significant pop. of Americans voted for that moron as a one-off, it will be that a significant pop. of Americans cannot be depended upon to support democracy.
And any foreign country will now consider a trade deal with the U.S. as being ephemeral and subject to change given the zephyrs wafting through a president's head. That will also extend to d
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when trump travels to China next time, and suddenly becomes ill, I guess China can just blame it on a food allergy
He probably takes his own supply of hamberders with him. Even in this country he reportedly ate fast food out of fear of poisoning.
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I'm still a bit confused on how we can tariff Mex/Can. Didn't we sign NAFTA?
By declaring fentanyl an "emergency", Trump can override USMCA (nee NAFTA) by executive order.
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still a bit confused on how we can tariff Mex/Can. Didn't we sign NAFTA?
As I understand it, Trump used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, despite the USMCA (NAFTA's replacement, although it pretty much is just NAFTA2.0). Canada and Mexico have already promised to retaliate, and depending on what they do farmers in the Midwest could take a double hit as gas prices go up and they lose Canadian markets for their goods.
And weirdly to me, China is getting a better deal than our friends. Could it be musk wants to hurt gm/F since they use more of Mex/Can parts than leon? Could leon be planning on importing Beijing cars? Inquiring minds.
The 10% is on top of existing tariffs.
Or is trump just bat shit crazy attacking friends (democratic) and sucking up to dictators out of envy?
Panama, probably one of our best allies in Central America, has already said if the US tries to retake the canal or impose penalties to get a better deal they may just stop trying to prevent migrants from crossing their border on the way to the US.
I suspect, once the full impact is felt, the administration will first rail against the evil other countries for retaliating and eventually cave. He reminds of businessmen wh screw and shout to try to get a better deal and then quietly cut a deal or fold if you push back.
He already limited oil and gas tariffs to 10%, if Canada wanted to play hardball they could put an export tax on it to drive gas prices up in the US.
Mr. Shrink the Government also wants to set up a new office in the Treasury called Export Revenue Service.
Once people see prices going up, the administration will come under fire but at some point blaming Biden, Obama, Democrats and the rest of the usual subjects won't fly. They won't be able to doge pries going up up because of their new tax, err tariff. I'm not sure what exactly Trump wants but I suspect he thinks CAN/MEX/CHI will fold like other countries did and may be in for an unpleasant surprise. If they don't, it will embolden other countries to push back and say "Fuck you."
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Gasoline could go to $20 a gallon overnight and it would get blamed on Obama, Biden, or the latest false crisis, DEI. Just like the latest aviation disaster. https://apnews.com/article/pla... [apnews.com]
We’re dealing with a literal cult here. He could mail everyone the poison Kool Aid and they’d happily drink it to get back at the libs.
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That's entirely true of the hardcore Trumpists, but believe it or not there are quite a few millions who voted Trump who are not in that category, and will blame him (and likely claim they never voted for him) if they get hit hard in the pocket. As to whether that will actually have any effect - well, he's in now, so not directly, but maybe the Reps. will suffer for his actions in future elections.
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That's entirely true of the hardcore Trumpists, but believe it or not there are quite a few millions who voted Trump who are not in that category, and will blame him (and likely claim they never voted for him) if they get hit hard in the pocket. As to whether that will actually have any effect - well, he's in now, so not directly, but maybe the Reps. will suffer for his actions in future elections.
That's thing, I think. People voted with their pocketbook and if things are not perceived as better then it will be bad for incumbents, especially R's, at the midterms. Trump? He's not eligible to run again so it will have no impact on him; otherwise than to blame others.
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Trump? He's not eligible to run again so it will have no impact on him; otherwise than to blame others.
He arguably wasn't supposed to be eligible this time
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:4, Insightful)
The question is what percentage of those millions you're talking about will refuse to hear the facts because of cognitive dissonance.
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
If the orange turd does something illegal or unconstitutional who would stop him or let alone even say anything? Checks and balances only work if others in power operate in good faith, which they do not. If laws are not enforced then they don’t exist.
Republicans would have had a collective aneurysm if Biden had invented George Soros to the White House and handed him the keys. But an unelected immigrant is there right now meddling with the Treasury system and they’re still happily jerking each other off. This is an actual national security breach.
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If the orange turd does something illegal or unconstitutional who would stop him or let alone even say anything?
We're only a bit over a week in and we already have seen Trump try to do unconstitutional things which have been struck down (birthright citizenship order) by the courts. The constitution still stands.
But an unelected immigrant is there right now meddling with the Treasury system and they’re still happily jerking each other off. This is an actual national security breach.
Scary words, but Elon Musk is an American citizen, and he's not in any position that would require an elected role.
Unfortunately it is not yet unconstitutional nor does it fall afoul of national security laws simply to be a piece of shit.
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Elon Musk is an American citizen
Not legally. He is well-known to have violated the terms under which he came here. By Trump's own stated rules, he should have been deported already.
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oh please. People believed America was as feckless as it was fickle going back to the moment they watched people fall to their deaths clinging to airplane landing gear in Afghanistan.
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Total turnout in 2024 was 63.7%. Trump won 49.8% of those votes. I believe the OP's point is that 70% (to be precise 68%) of the voters that could've voted against Trump didn't.
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People voted?
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:1)
But do we still Stand with Ukraine? I really need to know, my democracy is threatened!
Re: Tariffs = Boycott (Score:2)
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It’s the equivalent of eating a shit sandwich in the hopes of someone having to smell your breath.
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I don't think its reasonable boycott the USA just on fact their leader is an idiot. They may not support him, and even if they did vote for him it doesn't mean the support everything he does, they may just support him more than Harris. To me this the root of discrimination, judging a whole group based on the actions of some within it. Everyone deserves to be judged on their merits. Note: I am NOT American.
Also I agree with boycotting Microsoft as a company, not because they a US company but because of the c
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5% of the world's population but they want 100% of the profits.
Hey I can make personal choices like NOT drinking Coke or Pepsi, not eating at a global franchise of McDonald's, buying Samsung and Lenovo over Apple, Dell, HP and Google Pixel, not buying a Tesla and checking food labeling at the supermarket to see this product is owned an American conglomerate. Oh and paying in cash instead of my transaction being skimmed by Mastercard or Visa.
Now any textiles these days are likely manufactured in Vietnam or B
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Useful VPN? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "free VPN" is available in a small number of countries, none of them being the ones where you really want a VPN, doesn't let you specify the exit point (presumably in the same country), is limited to 50 GB/month, and doesn't work with the most popular streaming services. It is designed *not* to be useful for what most people use personal VPNs for.
And it is not like what they offer is special, there are already plenty of free VPN options with less restrictions.
The only thing it is supposed to do is (partially) protect you when on unsecured networks, like public Wi-Fi, for which https and other encrypted protocols already do a good job. It is useless against state censorship and geographic restrictions, and it is explicitly not for work, where you should use your company VPN instead. The only use case I can think of is something like watching porn on a school network, the fact it is first party software makes the circumvention attempt less obvious. There are, of course, plenty of other ways of achieving that goal.
By comparison I find Copilot much more useful. Unlike that joke of a VPN, it is not *designed* to be useless.
Re: Useful VPN? (Score:2)
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It's 2025. Don't most people just use the app that came with their router for VPN from public wifi?
I'm honestly curious what you're talking about.
App that came with my router? I don't have any.
A VPN app that comes with a router? Wouldn't that be one designed to connect to your home network while you are off network?
VPN from public wifi? Using a VPN while on the coffee shop WiFi is normal use case for VPN, but if you're on public wifi, what does that have to do with your home router?
Do you VPN into your home network router and back out to the net while on public WiFi? I know that's doable, but sounds like
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An app that lets your router act as VPN server sounds great, then people could once again password share on netflix.
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An app that lets your router act as VPN server sounds great, then people could once again password share on netflix.
FWIW, most of them support this functionality, but, AFAIK, it's not really an app thing. For example, here's how to setup an OpenVPN server on a TP-Link router:
https://www.tp-link.com/us/sup... [tp-link.com]
And here's how to do a PPTP VPN Server on TP-Link:
https://www.tp-link.com/us/sup... [tp-link.com]
The OpenVPN one has an option to allow the connections to access just the home network, or the home network as well as the internet from your home router. I don't know if the PPTP one supports going back out to the net or not. Either wa
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none of them being the ones where you really want a VPN,
Q: Where is it that I don't want a VPN? A: My home country. See for the most part that is the only key requirements. You can wax poetic about America's Freedoms (TM) and Russia's / China's / whatever shithole country's oppression, but the reality is they can't oppress you, you're not there.
That and a large part of VPN use is to get around geoblocks so most people don't give a shit that Putin is watching.
I stopped using M$Office years ago (Score:2)
I've been using Libreoffice happily and haven't felt the need to consume any Microsoft products for quite some time. One of these days, one would hope that my employer clues in and does the same.
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I've been using Libreoffice happily and haven't felt the need to consume any Microsoft products for quite some time. One of these days, one would hope that my employer clues in and does the same.
I used to recommend open office suites to friends who had kids heading to college since they did everything most students needed, unless it was some MSOffice only thing, usually in Excel. Now, many schools include MSOffice as part of the tuition so people just go with it.
I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that. so they are no goes. MSOffice has won the business use battle, all that's left are guerrilla ac
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I've been using Libreoffice happily and haven't felt the need to consume any Microsoft products for quite some time. One of these days, one would hope that my employer clues in and does the same.
I used to recommend open office suites to friends who had kids heading to college since they did everything most students needed, unless it was some MSOffice only thing, usually in Excel. Now, many schools include MSOffice as part of the tuition so people just go with it.
I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that. so they are no goes. MSOffice has won the business use battle, all that's left are guerrilla actions...
I really love Microsoft office for Linux. 100 percent compatible among all operating systems. My Linux customers just can't say enough about how great it is.
Anyhow, You will accept whatever Microsoft says you will accept, and you will be happy with it.
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I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that. so they are no goes.
I hate this argument.
It's based on the assumption that "MSOffice" has 100% compatibility between versions and releases - IT DOES NOT.
I get using it with clients that use it, simply because lazy often wins. Even if there were an equal number of quirks/incompatibilities between your MSOffice version and theirs versus LibreOffice and their MSOffice, you can lazily shrug off the MSOffice<->MSOffice issues cause what more can you do[^1]? Had you and your client used office software from two different vendo
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I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that. so they are no goes.
I hate this argument.
It's based on the assumption that "MSOffice" has 100% compatibility between versions and releases - IT DOES NOT.
I get using it with clients that use it, simply because lazy often wins. Even if there were an equal number of quirks/incompatibilities between your MSOffice version and theirs versus LibreOffice and their MSOffice, you can lazily shrug off the MSOffice<->MSOffice issues cause what more can you do[^1]? Had you and your client used office software from two different vendors and there was an issue, the "customer is always right" so you might need to eat crow.
Exactly, and the few times I have had some issue it was an easy quick fix. You can hate the argument but it is a reality for a lot of the business world.
[^1] You could put less complicated bullshit in your doc.
Right. I can't deliver per the contract because I put less complicated bullshit in your doc... See how well that flies when you ask to get paid
You could agree on an open format for data exchange. You could both use open tools. You could use a document format that avoids these issues!!
Dear big company, I need you to change your office software because I don't use MS Office. Yea, that's a winner.
You could QA your docs before publishing, testing them on various office releases (that one is a bit far fetched, but appropriate for some cases).
I do, in versions of Office. There is no need to introduce another complexity when for a hundred or
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... and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that ...
So stop using that dishonest "100% compatibility" excuse. You wanna use it to avoid blame, go for it, but there's no need to drag others in the mud when the compatibility is (AFAIK) as good or better than between disparate versions of MS Office. The part of the argument I hate is the blatant lie it implies.
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... and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that ...
So stop using that dishonest "100% compatibility" excuse. You wanna use it to avoid blame, go for it, but there's no need to drag others in the mud when the compatibility is (AFAIK) as good or better than between disparate versions of MS Office. The part of the argument I hate is the blatant lie it implies.
You keep ignoring the part about using the version the client has; which is 100% compatible; and frankly, unless you are on a very old version there are very few times you'll encounter issues with between recent versions of Office.
This whole open source office suites are more compatible than MS Office with MS Office is just gaslighting and dishonest. There is nothing wrong with using an open source tool, I use quite a few, but you need to know their limitations in a business environment.
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I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that.
All of my customers use MS Office, but I've used LibreOffice for many years. No one has noticed.
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I use MSOffice simply because that's what clients use and I need to ensure 100% compatibility and unfortunately no open office suite has that.
All of my customers use MS Office, but I've used LibreOffice for many years. No one has noticed.
That's great, but when you have macros, VBA, embedded graphs it gets complicated enough with MS Office
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All of my customers use MS Office, but I've used LibreOffice for many years. No one has noticed.
Your customers are basic.
Which, ironically, means they aren't using basic... VBA that is.
If you had to open documents with macros, you'd have to open them in MS Office.
That's not the only point of incompatibility, though. There are a bunch of Excel functions which don't exist or even have a suitable analogue in Calc. Excel has a number of text manipulation functions which don't exist in Calc for example, you're expected to do the same things with a regexp. That is an unreasonable ask.
Is this only really a p
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I've been using Libreoffice happily and haven't felt the need to consume any Microsoft products for quite some time. One of these days, one would hope that my employer clues in and does the same.
Cue the people who bring up some never used feature of Microsoft office and complain, But LibreOffice doesn't have something something, something.
Now cue me up asking what the Microsoft office does to handle identical results across Windows Mac, and Linux?
Crickets, or the never clever "Well, don't let people use Linux! "Don't worry about the Mac Version not being 100 percent compatible!"
Ive designed systems that use all three. One of the Open suites (I lean toward Libre) is it.
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excel is vastly better able to handle anything more than a handful of rows than Libreoffice. Libreoffice will slow to an absolute crawl, if it's usable at all, with just a few hundred to a few thousand rows of data.
Re: I stopped using M$Office years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Calc also completely lacks live pivot tables. This is bananas. You can generate them but then if you want a different one you have to generate another one, you can't just change it.
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excel is vastly better able to handle anything more than a handful of rows than Libreoffice. Libreoffice will slow to an absolute crawl, if it's usable at all, with just a few hundred to a few thousand rows of data.
I have not had that experience. Do you run on a 386?
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Cue the people who bring up some never used feature of Microsoft office and complain, But LibreOffice doesn't have something something, something.
Now cue me up asking what the Microsoft office does to handle identical results across Windows Mac, and Linux?
Like the ability to work live on a spreadsheet with multiple people at once on a Sharepoint server? Something that is done in companies the world over? Something that works just fine in Windows, Mac, and Linux (and iOS and Android)?
If you're a home user using word to spell check a Christmas email yeah LibreOffice will be fine. But in any corporate setting it is definitely over a decade behind on par with features of Office 2013. The world hasn't used office applications in that way for a long time. Heck Goo
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Like the ability to work live on a spreadsheet with multiple people at once on a Sharepoint server?
The cloud version does that (I guess usually on Nextcloud servers). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://help.collaboraoffice.c... [collaboraoffice.com]
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Cue the people who bring up some never used feature of Microsoft office and complain, But LibreOffice doesn't have something something, something.
Now cue me up asking what the Microsoft office does to handle identical results across Windows Mac, and Linux?
Like the ability to work live on a spreadsheet with multiple people at once on a Sharepoint server? Something that is done in companies the world over? Something that works just fine in Windows, Mac, and Linux (and iOS and Android)?
If you're a home user using word to spell check a Christmas email yeah LibreOffice will be fine. But in any corporate setting it is definitely over a decade behind on par with features of Office 2013. The world hasn't used office applications in that way for a long time. Heck Google's suite would be a better option than LibreOffice in a business setting even though on paper it lacks many options LibreOffice has.
Se test321's answer. In the meantime, enjoy doing whatever Microsoft says you will do.
AI (Score:1)
That VPN was intended for one thing (Score:2)
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You'll get what we tell you you want. (Score:2)
Profit-price spiral (Score:2)
Is there legal recourse? (Score:2)
I am not a personal Microsoft subscriber. We have it at the office, and there are folks in management that are so high on the AI trail of vapor that they're essentially floating around the office, so they were giddy about paying more to get Copilot shoved into everything. However...
For those who don't really want to see their daily driver office suit be inundated with AI, is there any legal recourse to a company taking a subscription product, increasing the price with the justification that they are handing