If it's true that Windows 11 (home or pro) requires me to create an online account, then I'm finally done with Windows at home. I really hope that it isn't, but it does seem like this has been coming since Windows 10.
I can understand from a company perspective that this kind of thing reduces piracy (and losses for a $2tn company), potentially improves the Windows upgrade route in future, and has minor benefits to some customers (cloud storage + 'take your account anywhere').
But there's exactly zero technical reasons to push this onto customers.
I mostly use Linux all the time now so it won't be a problem to completely ditch Windows, but it's a shame that it's come to this.
Do Microsoft care about piracy of Windows at the home level?
It feels like they just want that sweet recurring Office 365 and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate revenue, and they'll effectively give you Windows to get it.
Last I checked, you can still use an old used Windows 7 key to activate 10 on a brand new motherboard. They could stop it, but they don't make more than a token effort.
That's kind of my point. A $2tn company can probably just write off what little piracy there is left, even more so now that everything is "webby". So why they feel the need to add this to a platform they're now effectively giving away for free for the reasons you state is even more bizarre.
I guess data is the next billion dollar department in Microsoft, and this is them harvesting even more of it.
My reading of it is, it makes signing up to 365 and XBGPU as frictionless as possible. If you're already identified and authenticated by the time you're presented with the options...
If you force people to do it early in the process, you won't struggle to through that objection and difficulty when you want them to metaphorically pull out their wallets.
And to make advertising more targetted, again it's recurring revenue.
Well, I grabbed the current dev ISO and installed it in a VM. I could not find a way to login without an MS account.. however, I will admit I didn't try the "incorrect password for a windows account" to force it. Maybe I'll try that and see..
I can understand from a company perspective that this kind of thing reduces piracy (and losses for a $2tn company), potentially improves the Windows upgrade route in future, and has minor benefits to some customers (cloud storage + 'take your account anywhere').
But there's exactly zero technical reasons to push this onto customers.
I mostly use Linux all the time now so it won't be a problem to completely ditch Windows, but it's a shame that it's come to this.