My grandfather's Windows 10 is constantly switching his default browser to Edge after updates. The poor bastard is very aware and anxious of his own cognitive decline, so when his computer starts behaving differently for no reason, he thinks he is to blame. Microsoft is literally making my grandfather doubt his mental capacity. I realise they're not doing this deliberately, but when companies behave unethically, it has unexpected consequences.
It's a similar story with his Antivirus software, which is constantly trying to convince him he needs to upgrade his subscription with useless browser extensions and other unnecessary features.
Windows is a fucking minefield for old people man.
And don't even get me started on how insanely impossible internet banking is for old people. His bank's idea of two factor authentication is to send him a TXT with a code, which he has to reply to with said code, as well as another code on his computer screen. He's got a flip phone for crying out loud! You know, one of those phones where you have to keep tapping 1 to get an A? His bank has literally made internet banking impossible for him. What's he supposed to do, get a taxi to the bank every time he needs to pay a bill? I realise protecting old people from bank fraud is extremely important, but did they ever test this crap with old people to see if it's workable??
That is called a T-9 phone. I have one and people can pry it from my cold dead hands. I paid $12 for it. It can do voice, text and simple jpg pictures. I would prefer it could only do voice and text. It can idle off the charger for weeks on end. Malware? It doesn't even know what to do with it. Just shows up as garbled text. Spam? Default ring and message tone is silent. Phone is registered to a fictional movie character.
I empathize with your grandfather. I hope Microsoft see your message and consider reflecting inward. The pessimist in me does not believe they will however.
You could upgrade him to Windows 10 Pro. I haven't had any issues of things changing. And you can get an upgrade code on ebay for $10. I believe they are usually licenses that came with a pc that has been disposed of or where a different OS was installed.
Some people claim these are fraudulent. But some sellers have years and many thousands of sales under their belt. I have had my $10 license for windows 10 pro for 4 years now without so much as a blip.
I have a Surface Pro (2017), which comes with W10 Pro by default, and I can confidently say that Windows 10 Pro still nags the user.
The most prominent example is the full screen nags that, although can be skipped, use dark patterns to trick the user into changing settings.
Since I use windows with a local user account, instead of a Microsoft account, it often nags me to switch. Even when using a Microsoft account to sign in it still nags to set a pin to log in, instead of just using a password. I haven't found any setting to disable these permanently.
Windows 10 LTSC is probably the best option, although I haven't tried it personally.
I just installed Windows Pro on a new machine the other day with a key given to me by a friend. During the install process it asks if you want to use a personal account or domain account to log in. My guess would be you’d have to pick the domain account for the machine to be remotely administered. I’d be surprised if an existing windows install could be taken over merely by putting in an upgrade key.
I had a similar experience the other day with my dad. He forgot his Amazon password and they sent him a link to his flip phone which can't open links. I had to get him to send me the message so I could open the link on my phone and give him the number.
Just now? When you search for Firefox or Chrome on Bing (the default search engine on Edge), the first result in large font and contrasting background is "Microsoft Recommends You Keep Using This Browser" (referring to Edge). When you visit the Settings to change your default browser to something else, Edge has the line "Recommended for Windows 10" below it in bright letters, and switching it to anything but Edge pops open a confirmation window that reads "Before You Switch: Try Microsoft Edge" with the primary action being to do that, and the actual switch option below it in small gray lettering. OS updates spontaneously reset your default browser back to Edge, and every once in a while the OS will decide to send you a notification helpfully reminding you that Edge just got an update (it didn't) and you should check it out.
This is unrelated to Edge, but among the most despicable things I've seen Microsoft do was to promote their "Your Phone" app by popping up a notification that reads "You Got A Message". I didn't just get a message, and there's no way they could know that because I hadn't even installed their crap on my phone! Its like they're just pretending its all connected and displaying message notifications on your PC to get people to click it, then go through the setup.
Microsoft is a big company, with many divisions that are doing really great work. Their Windows division is so unimaginably the opposite of this, and has been for near a decade, that I'm beginning to think their push toward services and the cloud is only to hedge against this division, like leadership knows left to their own devices they'll crash into the ground and take Microsoft with them and no one can stop it.
>Microsoft is a big company, with many divisions that are doing really great work.
Are they really though? Github is slowly becoming less and less endearing with export regulations ICE contracts and lock-ins like github client. Minecraft was a confusing four-billion dollar purchase that left people scratching their heads in 2014. analysts said it would help get newer younger users into Microsoft products, but youtube and google trend data since 2015 shows interest had peaked by the time Redmond bought it. They tried shoehorning it into code camps for whatever that was worth. They bought Linkedin, a sterile wasteland of spearphishing and recruiter spam that (surprise) is export restricted as well.
Azure and office365 target the same locked in old-news customers: corporate and mega corporate IT shops that deploy COTS and do whatever their rep tells them to do when its time to pay the piper for the OS and server licenses. Neither of these services can seem to stay online for more than a few months at a time before a crippling outage.
and now they fold the edge browser into their competitors engine and flog it mercilessly like the '91 browser wars never ended. hardly "great work" from the company thats desperately trying to clean up Ballmers spiraling mess of myopic war drumming against the OS that clearly and definitively won.
I guess you could say "Xbox" is doing "great work." the console is fun, the games are fun, and the division in charge seems to genuinely care about and do things the customers want.
Their Windows division is so unimaginably the opposite of this, and has been for near a decade
I think there's still lots of great low-level developers there working on things like the kernel, but it's mainly the UI/UX people who give the whole division a bad reputation.
I never had Windows Update switch the default browser (nor change any other setting for that matter), but otherwise agree with you.
The "Your Phone" app is truly idiotic; you can't uninstall it from the regular place (you need a PowerShell script to get rid of it) and it otherwise takes up ~2Mb of RAM all the time for absolutely no reason (I don't even have an Android phone to use it) - there are a couple of other unremovable apps, but at least they don't start at boot and use resources for no reason.
> OS updates spontaneously reset your default browser back to Edge
I've never seen this happen, and I have Chrome as default. I noticed the other issues you point out, but this never happened to me the years I've been dual-booting with Windows 10.
I suspect they are A/B testing it. A relative’s computer I help maintain did not replace Firefox as a default, but it did replace a PDF reader default (SumatraPDF iirc) with Edge, and on the next PDF double click - when Edge opened - it did a bunch of other things like logging in to Microsoft.
The word "recommended" has been used so much and in such a subversive fashion for so long that I have an instinctive repulsion whenever I see it used now. I believe it was first used by adware many years ago. The smarmy messaging and that style of flat-cutesy blandness in the marketing material has also become equally repulsive to me.
I have the same reflex when companies use the words "your data"... that data lives in a server owned/rented by them, in a database/source code I have no access to.
This "new-PC tunnel" is full of deceptive wording and UI tricks to make you click at the wrong place. This is a minefield even for a careful engineer: I just went through it two weeks ago refreshing a used laptop for my daughter.
Google's Android "new-phone tunnel" is certainly no better.
I would have never upgraded from Windows 7. That OS is the best version of Windows ever. Unfortunately the hardware manufacturers have stopped making drivers (especially for laptops).
The good news is such shenanigans are forcing more and more users to move to Linux which has improved so darn much in the recent years (especially Linux Mint) that the experience is far better than Windows.
Unfortunately a lot of games and programs like Photoshop still require Windows so I'm stuck with it (play on linux never worked for me), otherwise I would be happily get rid of Widnows forever.
I use Windows for gaming but spend majority of my time in Linux now. Windows 10 is far and beyond better than Windows 7.
What I don't get is people complain about nagging to convert to Edge, yet every time I open google related stuff on my phone, I'm nagged for Chrome.
On iOS, if you click a link on YouTube, it doesn't open in Safari, or ask to open in Safari, its like "hey, look at this great first option of Chrome which you don't have installed so I'll take you to the app store." For every...single...link.
Then on my desktop, every google service I use, "wanna use chrome instead"?
People forget the times before Chrome existed where google would sneak in the google-toolbar adware in internet explorer wherever they could (by paying everyone to default include it in other applications installers, among other sketchy avenues). It is amazing that they could uphold the image as the good guys at the time.
And apple sneaking in applications on windows when updating quicktime (if I remember correctly).
They all suck.
But it is even worse to do this on their own desktop operating system. It is another level of insanity that I just don't accept. And it's not like one can throw some money at the problem either, they are just ruining their platform.
I hated the sneaky QuickTime on Windows so much that I avoided it like the plague when I finally got a Mac, even though it's the default player for most of its users.
VLC is better anyway, especially on older, slower Macs. I started using it over QT because by default it dropped frames instead of slowing playback to wait for the processor to catch up (like QT does/did).
I have another take on this. While I normally would agree with those sentiments, I usually don’t mind suggestions when I agree with them. I think Edge is objectively a better choice for most users than Chrome. Better privacy, built for Windows by the folks that build Windows, with all the advantages in power and efficiencies that come with being the only native browser. They’re just getting started but it’s always going to be first class on Windows. Given it also has the underpinnings of the browser with 70% market share, it really has it all. Microsoft in this case, is truly doing their users a service. All this said by a Firefox diehard.
Suggestions I don't mind, but this is not suggestions, it is ads.
More like the telemarketer calling you at the most inappropriate times or pestering your grandparents to trick them into something they don't want nor need.
There is no silver lining to this. It is despicable behavior that should not be rewarded.
This behaviour doesn't become ethical just because you agree with what they are pushing for. What they're doing is wrong, even if their end goal isn't a state which is in and of itself wrong.
I don't really view that sort of thing as ethical or unethical. Of all the evils in the world... I wouldn't even call that an evil at all, not even on the list.
I genuinely agree and believe that Edge is in the best interests of Windows users, and while less so because it's non-native, also users on most platforms that they support. When they say, "the internet is better with Edge", it's actually true this time.
Just because others do it doesn't make it okay; however a service is something you can decide to stop using, switch to a different one or block with an ad-blocker. Having it built into the OS is a whole different matter. I don't typically rely on YouTube for my work so the nagging is at best annoying, however if during a presentation a link click launched Edge instead of my default browser I'd be pretty pissed off.
I'm still on the first Win 10 free update version from 3-4 years ago. Never updated. The OS begs, threatens and finally just attempts to download an update without my permission but fails everytime as Ive taken great pains to keep my disk space at less than 5gigs. Works fine except everyfew hours i get blasted witg a fullscreen "windows could not update"
I get that Mac is a dodgy OS. Windows is pure gangsterism.
> Unfortunately a lot of games and programs like Photoshop still require Windows so I'm stuck with it...
This was a growing annoyance I had with Windows: more and more of my computing could be done (and done pleasantly) in Linux, but as long as there existed just one application I couldn't replace and/or emulate, I'd be stuck with using Windows 100% of the time.
So this past year I invested some time and money into setting up a Linux-first workstation where Windows lives in a virtual machine with gpu passthrough, usb passthrough, etc. Now I can run games, proprietary applications, VR, etc. without issue and at full speed in the Windows VM, but otherwise stay in the Linux world as much as possible.
The results are fantastic now, but it did admittedly take a ton of time to get everything working. Search for 'VFIO' and read through https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ if you're interested in something similar.
I switched to Linux for work six years ago. I switched to Linux for home at the beginning of this year just prior to Windows 7 going EOL.
I'm never looking back.
For games: the only game that doesn't work is Planetside 2. But everything on Steam works -- if maybe with some massaging. Blizzard's games work. I don't do Photoshop but it seems like "some" versions work alright [0].
Get rid of Windows and seriously try out Linux maybe with Wine.
World of Warcraft works well in Wine. Cursebreaker (or Twitch + Wine) allows to keep addons updated. Easy to set up in Lutris. I got some latency issues though. Input seems OK, its something with video.
It doesn’t have Store though. Store is sometimes very useful, there is software that is only on Store. There are some shady weird scripts to enable Store on LTSC though, I use them
I've been using Windows 10 LTSB and now LTSC for 3 years now. Absolutely, it's not for everyone. But for me, I tend to dislike the kinds of applications that are exclusive to Windows Store anyway.
You have to have a Microsoft account for the store. I've never seen an application being store exclusive, and if I do I will never consider it (I might consider side loading it if it is possible and and the app is outstanding).
So sounds like yet another win for LTSC to me. Too bad you can't buy it.
Unfortunately the hardware manufacturers have stopped making drivers (especially for laptops).
I'm not sure if it's been done for Win7, and there's the whole driver-signing mess to deal with, but the community has been writing its own drivers for much older OSs (DOS/3.x/9x).
Unfortunately a lot of games and programs like Photoshop still require Windows so I'm stuck with it
I’m still on Windows 7 and probably won’t move off unless my computer dies. I don’t engage in high risk behavior so my chances of getting a virus through web sites is low but I am a little worried about malware through ads. But I would rather risk it than switch
These ads and craps on Windows 10 is very annoying but it won't be a deal breaker to use Windows because I can just close it. I still think Windows is the best for desktop experience.
Indeed users can close it, but by not complaining they're sending MS the message that it's ok to continue that way, possibly adding even more crap. And we already know where it will lead: "pay us $N/year and nags will disappear".
In my opinion that would be very far from the best desktop experience.
Trying to use WIN10 as developer is made considerably more tedious due to these interruptions from advertisements or "recommendations" to switch from Coke (Chrome) to Pepsi (Edge).
My mother in law drove 20km to get me to fix one of these full screen problems on her laptop (something to do with logging in with an email account). Only with her example, there was no "Skip for now option", and she thought she had been locked out of her account.
I just hit ctrl+alt+del and manually closed the program. She was already logged in. I don't understand what happened, but yeah, it was weird.
Windows is increasingly incorporating these web-style nudges every day. If you open the Start menu, you get animated ads; if you search in it you get popups pushing you to join Microsoft rewards [1]. What a distressing shift.
The ads and websearch in the windows menu are infuriating. I disable them ASAP. Although it doesn’t show ads, it’s also extremely annoying to paste a path to the file explorer and have it pop up a webpage if the path was wrong. There is not a single time on earth when that would be my desired result.
Except you don't have to. I don't know what I did, I'm not running any third party software, but my start menu does not have any tiles. It's just a list of apps installed on my system
Like, why does Microsoft even care? Windows is the product for which its users (theoretically) paid, not Edge. If people want to run Chrome or Firefox or fucking NCSA Mosaic on Windows, then that's their problem, not Microsoft's. Microsoft got their money; they should mind their own business instead of bitching and moaning about "but but but the user doesn't want our shiny new browser!".
Microsoft's insistence on what seems to be a deliberate attempt to make Windows as horrible of a user experience and product as possible is precisely why I switched to Linux-exclusivity in 2012 and haven't looked back. I would much rather put up with the broken dumpster fire that is the Linux desktop experience than even pirate (let alone buy) an operating system that by every indication hates me and wants me to suffer.
And it's baffling because pretty much every other part of Microsoft seems to be figuring out how to make decent (or at least mediocre) products; it's just their flagship product line that they seem to have been actively sabotaging since it peaked as Windows 2000.
True, so many people on HN give google a pass on too much. Apple and MS are fav targets, google not so much. Subjective yes, but I am not going to spend time doing the analysis.
Yes. I don't want to sign up to Youtube to watch a video and definitely I'm still not a robot whether they ask me one or a thousand times, but apparently they keep using these dirty tactics (nagging for login and endless captchas) because they think I'm bending over if asked enough times.
Well, thankyou for the consideration, but no is no. The last Google related thing I use is email, which I'm already planning to ditch as I already did most of the times with their search engine and completely with Android phones.
Don't get me wrong, that is not a Google only thing, but rather modern businesses attitude to monetize everything to the smallest detail. All those companies are turning the Internet/Mobile/Desktop experience into crap in which users spend more time filtering out things they don't want. That is not going to end, until users won't send a strong message by ditching software that treats them like idiots.
“The mafia have been murdering people for decades, why would the police react now?”
(I’m not speaking of any particular current or past event, or trying to assign any moral values one way or another, I’m just attempting to show that your reasoning is unsound. In this particular case I don’t like what either party is doing.)
The common knowledge is that Microsoft doesn’t need to be worried about antitrust action because they don’t have a monopoly on the OS anymore. But on the other hand, a lot of people are talking about antitrust against the other tech giants that also don’t have monopolies, because they have so much power within their share of the market. Interesting that Microsoft apparently isn’t afraid of that.
I set my dad up with Firefox + ublock origin. Next time I visit he's changed to Edge and 85% of his screen is covered in blinking adverts on some news site he looks at.
If MS are going to essentially force the switch on people who aren't able to - or don't want to take time to - understand the choice they should at the very least bring over your extensions (where possible) along with your bookmarks etc.
Obviously this is easier said than done, but if Microsoft wants me to use Edge, they should actually make it better or differentiated from Chrome to persuade me.
I've tried Edge and it's totally fine and feels more or less the same as Chrome. So why would I bother switching? Give me a reason!
It is 100x easier to support your own software. If the default browser breaks for some reason, it often just feels like the OS broke to the end user!
Microsoft would love to remove the option to choose a system default browser entirely, but they can't, so tactics like these are the next best thing. That's just how big the difference is in supporting foreign software vs. a first-class package you can hook into.
Then they should issue a Windows Edge Edition that boots directly into Edge. Honestly, today everything runs in the web, so you might as well use just the browser.
What does Microsoft hope to accomplish with Edge? Two competing ideas:
1. Edge means giving up: Edge is rebranded Chrome, MS merely hopes to reap seigniorage from Bing as the default homepage
2. Edge means doubling down: MS wants to focus its efforts on differentiating features like privacy or Windows integration, where Google is at a disadvantage
They are pushing Edge hard so #1 doesn't seem plausible, but #2 would be a coup, and inevitably lead to a fork, like WebKit/Blink.
Sounds right to me. With the direction Windows 10 has been/is taking, the suggestion of 'differentiating features like privacy' (unfortunately) make me laugh. Microsoft hit that sweet, sweet data vein and can't turn away.
While this might be crappy of them, I'm welcoming of MS making Edge easy to install on my system. I haven't installed Windows in a while, but I'm guessing Edge ships with the OS. I recall being in a situation where I had to use IE to download a workable browser and it was a nightmare. Not sure what situation would have required that. Maybe it was an early install of Win 10.
Okay, that must have been the situation then. New install with only IE available. IE was barely usable then, I imagine it could be worse now. The only way I could see a typical user getting to a usable browser would be to copy browser install (or portable) files from another location.
That's the part in finding really weird. Why would you try to force people to change the browser this way if you're not willing to install it by default? (Or the other way around)
It's just different priorities. When they launched Windows 10, they didn't have Edge. Now, a lot of users are familiar with IE 11. They're most concerned with their corporate customers. Earlier this year, they have announced that they will only support IE 11 until next year, giving time to their corporate customers an year to make the transition.
How is this any different from Google? Every time I go to google.com with any browser other than Chrome I get bombarded with "Don't you want to use Chrome instead?". I said No many times and they still send the pop up.
Both are annoying as hell.
Drop IE11 or GTFO. It’s shit software, it’s old and unsupported, and since MS won’t drop support for it, neither will corporate clients, so neither can I.
IE11 browser usage in my country finally dropped below 1% so we're dropping it from all our standard support policies. Clients can still get IE11 support if they want, but it will cost them.
Which is ironically how Google got its entire user-base for Chrome: subversive/lying popups on Google sites saying “upgrade your browser” and drive-by installations bundled with third party installers.
This is just Google getting to taste it’s own medicine.
Absolutely. The substantial majority of the people I’ve seen with Chrome installed never consciously installed it; some followed Google’s underhanded and misleading promptings, others installed something unrelated and got Chrome drive-by installed (which should be illegal).
> It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s rival Google is also aggressively pushing Chrome to users accessing Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome Store, and other services via Microsoft Edge.
Seems like Microsoft's behavior is in line with the other platform vendors such as Apple and Google.
You're giving me evil ideas for a new "feature" in qutebrowser for the next April's Fools.
(Though it has too many users nowadays to do those kinds of shenanigans - a couple of years back with only a handful of users, I added some code to rotate all websites by 2 degrees or so on April 1st... fun times.)
If you are already using Windows, there's little reason to continue using Chrome or IE.
Instead of your Google account, you can sync the profile to a Microsoft account. If you use profile management features, I find that it works much better on Edge.
The Android version is not bad either. And now that there's a version for Linux, I don't see myself ever switching back to Chrome.
It's a similar story with his Antivirus software, which is constantly trying to convince him he needs to upgrade his subscription with useless browser extensions and other unnecessary features.
Windows is a fucking minefield for old people man.
And don't even get me started on how insanely impossible internet banking is for old people. His bank's idea of two factor authentication is to send him a TXT with a code, which he has to reply to with said code, as well as another code on his computer screen. He's got a flip phone for crying out loud! You know, one of those phones where you have to keep tapping 1 to get an A? His bank has literally made internet banking impossible for him. What's he supposed to do, get a taxi to the bank every time he needs to pay a bill? I realise protecting old people from bank fraud is extremely important, but did they ever test this crap with old people to see if it's workable??