It's an insanely tiny very low power thing that was almost as cheap as I could get. I just needed a Windows PC around and it fit my needs. Totally fine for basic stuff.
But wow. I’ve seen articles about how it was getting worse, new things MS has done, pulled back on, and put in later.
I was used to all the stupid advertisement stickers that have been there forever. Bing desktop images I’ve seen before and is a nice default IMO.
But the big ads in the start menu? And the thing of the day on the search bar? Candy Crush and other crap? CONSTANT OneDrive and Office 365 nagging? Are you sure you didn’t mean Edge this time? Really?
I’d heard of it all but it’s so comically over the top in person. And takes a while to find out how to disable.
My last personal PC was XP Pro in the early 2000s. I’ve used a number of work PCs with newer versions but they were all locked down with group policy so none of that appeared.
Windows is a self parody at this point. I know it’s a very good OS technically. But wow they found out how to ruin it.
There were system settings for the start menu things and the search bar. All the preloaded crud like Candy Crush, which I got the impression was more of a placeholder(?), was removed easily enough through the add/remove software panel. There was a preference somewhere to get Edge to shut up too.
I think I might’ve had to Google something to find one setting. None of it was really too bad. It’s just a bunch of wasted time that I shouldn’t have had to deal with.
And it feels like the OneDrive pop-up comes back every once in a while after a system update. But that’s easily dismissed too.
Nothing came from my OEM, it was just a bog standard Windows install. All the junk comes with windows. As the user, none of this was for me.
I view some of the stuff Apple does as an attempt to help me by selling me something, though not all of it. I don’t want it to happen. It’s annoying. But it somehow feels more appropriate than what Windows does.
Preloading Candy Crush? I mean come on.
