I have a side gig helping old people with technology and my last job was helping a guy set up his new computer.

His old computer ended up in a boot loop so he bought a new one.

And this is an older guy, so he accesses his emails on his computer and his phone is just for making phone calls.

You need to have a Microsoft account to use Windows 11, and this guy was stuck at the login step for his new computer. He’d been without a computer for a week so he really wanted someone to help him out.

He had tried to login to his Microsoft account too many times, so Microsoft sent him an email to verify it was him. But he didn’t have a computer to access his emails on. Microsoft is making some big assumptions about the number of devices people have and their availability when setting up a new computer.

Buying a new computer is a quite expensive and not very exciting endeavor for most people, so they’re only going to do it when they really need to. Which for this guy is when Windows 10 stopped working on his old computer.

So people could be down a device when they go to set up their new Windows 11 PC.

It frustrates me because it adds an extra layer of shit people need to deal with, and it means you can’t use a perfectly good computer because Microsoft wants to populate your device details against your contact record in their CRM.

Fortunately this guy has all his passwords written down, and I was able to access his emails from his phone to get the Microsoft code. As a quick aside, I also had to deal with a bit of authentication hell, needing to receive an SMS from his email provider to access his inbox to get the code Microsoft had sent. I was trying to explain to him what each code was for, so I can see how it would be easy for someone to get lost in these side quests of codes when you’re trying to do one specific thing.

If I had a USB drive with Mint on it, I almost would have just switched him over. He wasn’t a power user from his own admission so he would barely notice the difference, aside from the lack of popups and extortion Microsoft does to its users.

It made me think of how different the setup process was when I installed Bazzite on an old work laptop. I was creating the password for the root user, Bazzite recommended 8 characters for the password but I put in the regular 4 digit PIN I use for some things.

Bazzite comes up with a notice saying something like ‘We recommend a password of 8 characters. Your password is less than recommended, so you’ll have to press ENTER twice to confirm’.

Bazzite knows what a good minimum length password is, but also acknowledges it’s your computer and you can use it how you want.

I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone here, but it pisses me off how user hostile Microsoft is. Requiring an account feels like marketing or the board getting in on the software design process. Windows has muscled itself into being the go-to OS for consumer electronics. More consideration needs to be made for that 5% of users that don’t have a computer, phone, and tablet all talking to each other. Especially when you expect less tech savvy people to use your shitty software because you’ve done so much to block any competition.

Oh, and I find it galling you hand over your contact details to Microsoft for a paid OS and it still doesn’t come with office software. Open Word on a fresh install of 11 and you’re met with a pop-up to buy a subscription to Office 365. One of the first things I did for this guy was install Libreoffice and SumatraPDF, setting both of them as defaults.

Sometimes the big software vendors are the biggest ads for their FOSS alternatives.