Microsoft announces a new threat to push people to Windows 11

Seems like the "push" is directed at business users, not us little guys.
Wishful thinking. A link in that document leads to another with the following statement.

The brand recently announced plans to charge regular users for Extended Security Updates (ESU) who intend to continue using Windows 10 beyond the October 14, 2025 support date.

That means "us little guys" but, at this stage at least, they have not announced any prices. Fortunately, all my Windows devices are now running Windows 11 but I can see that when Windows 12 comes out (rumour has it in 2026) the same will apply to Windows 11 users.

Understandable. I cannot remember the last time that I actually paid to install a version of Windows (perhaps it was as far back as Windows NT). All my installs since then have been "free" upgrades or came with the new computer (which probably means the price was included in the computer purchase). Creating, testing, distributing and maintaining version updates and security patches must be expensive.
 
C'mon guys.....give us a Linux version so that I can ditch Windows again. I did w/o Win for 8 years until I discovered Trainz and had to get Win back. Trainz is the ONLY program that I use in Win. Even this forum post is being done in Linux.
 
Looks like Linux or another OS is the way to go.
Each to their own and I am all in favour of choice but I have to disagree. Support for Linux (and other boutique) OS's varies widely (and that includes between the many different Linux distros). I have tried various flavours of Linux over the years but I have always come back to Windows because of its greater support base. My opinions and others will differ.
 
So did you have any trouble transitioning to 11 as far as Trainz, software, and any other games are concerned?
None what-so ever. One machine kept failing the Windows 11 upgrade "test" so I simply installed the OS anyway and it has not had any problems. All of my programs, which were already on the various HDs worked without any issues, all my settings also transferred across. It was totally seamless on all machines.
 
Pretty seamless Dave, other than the normal windows right-click context menus get shunted to a secondary set of options (like rename and some of that stuff), but you can fix it with a quick hack that is out there on the internet.
 
For the most part, it isn't going to be a major change, other than Taskbar buttons and Start button location, and few little things. But, everything else you did since Windows 7 and 10 is just going to work about the same.
 
I won't worry too much about it. By the time it's mandatory for me, I'll have built my new mobo up, and will be ready to switch up 😊

Rico
 
So did you have any trouble transitioning to 11 as far as Trainz, software, and any other games are concerned?
Mine all went smoothly. I have a couple of old laptops that won't upgrade but they're dedicated machines that only do one task and are not used to browse the internet.

Task bar settings moves the search box to the left and gets ride of lots of junk, Settings privacy and security gets rid of the pretty picture in the search box.

Cheerio John
 
I'm not worried either. I have an ancient All-in-one, a laptop and a desktop running Windows 10. The laptop will be retired soon along with the All-in-one. The desktop runs a dedicated program for my digital piano. I've only browsed the website to download drivers and updates for the program and nothing else.

My transition to Windows 11 was pretty much painless. I had one very, very, old printer/scanner from Lexmark that didn't play nice but I found some drivers for it and it works fine for what I use it for which is for the scanner only. After moving the taskbar to the left and disabling the annoying in-your-face widgets and other who really cares type of notifications. Windows 11 is pretty much like Windows 10 with the usual Windows annoyances.

The biggest complaint I do have with Microsoft though is the push to put everything on their One Drive. I have ill feelings with companies wanting to put all my data on the cloud anyway. I use the cloud for file and picture sharing on my own and not at the behest of some company in control. Granted for a small tablet or other device with a single tiny SSD inside this is a good option but this still should be optional rather than automatically move data to the cloud.
 
OMG John, when I first bought my current aurora, I thought I had everything set up nicely, but within a few days I had a message that my OneDrive was full. Huh? I did not put anything on the OneDrive. Microsoft all by itself decided it should put all of my documents, photos, and videos up on the tiny 5gb OneDrive. Well, I'm sorry, but I have some 60GB of documents, around 200GB of family photos, and even more than that in videos. Not going to happen! I was going to go out there and delete everything when I read online that since Microsoft is "syncing" the one drive, anything I delete off there will be deleted of my hard drive! So the first thing I had to do with my new computer was back everything up. Delete everything from the one drive, Disconnect and disable OneDrive, then restore my hard drive. The arrogance of those idiots in Redmond sometimes just amazes me, they cause more grief than they think about, and I feel sorry for anyone who deleted stuff from their OneDrive only to find it gone from their hard drive as well! I would love to have 5GB of cloud storage, but I want to pick what I need there thank you very much, and they have made it so I won't use it at all. /MicrosoftRant
 
@JCitron - Isn't there a way to turn off One-Drive syncing in win 11?

I was able to do that in Win 10, not had any One-Drive uploads in a long time

Rico
 
@JCitron - Isn't there a way to turn off One-Drive syncing in win 11?

I was able to do that in Win 10, not had any One-Drive uploads in a long time

Rico
Not without going through hoops, meaning Microsoft has made this difficult for the unknowing users who are unaware of these changes and wonder why it takes forever to load data. In earlier versions of Windows 10 it was easy but in later ones it's not. In Pro you need to use the Group Policy settings just like Windows 11, but in Home you can uninstall the applet. The problem is MS makes that location the default and then you need to switch your data locations because the local One Drive folders are still on your hard drive. I have found that even though I point my data to a local drive, located on another hard drive, there are some applications that will still use the default One Drive folder even after changing the settings.

How to remove One-drive from File Explorer.pdf
 
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