I know I’m late to the game but I went to setup Windows 11 for the first time yesterday. I assumed it would be kind of like Windows 10. I’ve installed Windows 10 hundreds of times. But this time I was greeted with forced internet connections and online accounts. It was awful.
My wife’s family approached me and asked me to setup a Laptop for her uncle. He is going to be in the hospital for a while and they wanted him to have something to do. I agreed and took the laptop. It was a new Asus Vivobook and came with Windows 11. In my head I was thinking maybe 30 mins to do the basic setup for him so that he could get on the internet. But after 2 hours of fighting it I decided I’d never go back to Windows.
Forced Online Connection
The first thing I seen when I booted up the laptop was a screen requiring an internet connection. I looked around for a while but could not find anyway to continue without it. So I gave in and give it my wifi information.
Forced to use Online Microsoft Account
After that I did a few more setup steps and ran into a screen saying I had to log into a Microsoft account. I know from Windows 10 this was optional and I could skip it. I also do not know any of this guys information who I’m setting up this laptop for so I decided I wanted to do a local account.
Local account is not an option.
To my surprise there was no way to skip this step and setup a local account. At least not that I could see. So I did some searching and went down the rabbit hole. I tried SHIFT-FN-F10 to get a command prompt up but that did not work. So I kept looking around and I ended up spending hours trying suggestions online. But it seemed like Microsoft had patched all the workarounds out.
I was frustrated so I finally said heck with it I will make a throw away junk Microsoft account. Then when I went to do that I got a message that they detected unusual activity and making a new account was blocked. What the heck!!
So I tried it on another computer I had and got the same message. Its like my IP was flagged or something and they were trying to strong arm me into using a real account.
Linux
At this point I was frustrated and wanted it to be done. So I put in an old Windows 10 USB I had and figured I’d just install that. But the laptop would not even see that drive for some reason. So I said heck with it and I put in a Linux Mint USB I had and I installed that.
I Will Never Go Back To Windows
Windows 11 is a giant piece of spyware and an invasion of privacy. Even more so with Copilot watching and recording everything you do. This experience was the final nail in the coffin for me. I have a few windows 10 computers but I will never go to Windows 11 at this point. I will switch everything to Linux before I do that. And from now on my family is getting Linux if they ask me for help. Something Like PopOS, Ubuntu, or Mint. I think those 3 would be easier to use for someone coming over from Windows.
Rant Over
It’s sad because Windows really was a nice OS back in its prime. It seems like starting with 10 they decided to try to turn it into more of a cloud OS and 11 is even worse. I want no part of that.
