Microsoft Plans To Bring Its AI Copilot To 1 Billion Windows 10 Users – Slashdot

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Just make a lean OS, any add on functionality can be handled by user installed programs and extensions.

Just make a lean OS, any add on functionality can be handled by user installed programs and extensions.
Maybe they could do this revolutionary thing that they had back in the 95/NT days and offer you options at install time? Maybe one of the options could be, “Don’t rape my data every second of every day?” Wouldn’t that be nice. Yeah. That’d be nice.
I feel like this is verging on that lucid dreaming story from earlier though.
Laughs in Windows LTSC.
Oh, good. Now I know I’ll be spending some time trying to dig this out at the roots. Perhaps that’ll work, or perhaps I can just toggle it to an “off” state. And perhaps my choice will be utterly ignored in future updates. In any case: DO. NOT. WANT.

Oh, good. Now I know I’ll be spending some time trying to dig this out at the roots. Perhaps that’ll work, or perhaps I can just toggle it to an “off” state. And perhaps my choice will be utterly ignored in future updates. In any case: DO. NOT. WANT.
As of yesterday, my understanding is that you must use a Microsoft account login to get copilot functionality. Local login and you’ll never see it.
Expect this to change without notice or documentation update … whenever.
For now, this *should* do the trick if MS documentation isn’t outdated or just plain lying again.
# Disallow login via MS account, require local login
# 1 = can’t add MS account, 3 = can’t add or log in with MS account
reg add HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem /v NoConnectedUser /t reg_dword /d 3
# Disallow switching from local to MS account
reg add HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftPolicyManagerdefaultSettingsAllowYourAccount /v Value /t reg_dword /d 0
# Disable MS account sign-in assistant
reg add HKLMystemCurrentControlSetServiceswlidsvc /v Start /t reg_dword /d 4
Reboot after.
I’ve seen this installed, and I only have local logins. Microsoft is ignoring the customer’s wishes anyway – I had to uninstall Edge from my mom’s computer (which was confusing her greatly) and she does not even have an admin account and thus no way to ever have installed it herself. The half assed half wits in Redmond all claim that they know more than you do about what’s good for their bottom line.

I’ve seen this installed, and I only have local logins. Microsoft is ignoring the customer’s wishes anyway – I had to uninstall Edge from my mom’s computer (which was confusing her greatly) and she does not even have an admin account and thus no way to ever have installed it herself. The half assed half wits in Redmond all claim that they know more than you do about what’s good for their bottom line.
Grrreat… thanks again, Microsoft. Any rate, now that I’ve had a minute to look further, there’s a per-user toggle to disable in gpedit.
gpedit -> User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Copilot > Disable Windows Copilot
and the associated reg key,
reg add HKCUSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsCopilot /v TurnOffWindowsCopilot /t reg_dword /d 1
(key via via https://learn.microsoft.com/en… [microsoft.com])
Per link, it would apparently be asking FAR too much for an
Thank you for this and the previous post. You’d better believe I appreciate these, and the knowledge and effort they represent.
Chrome can be installed by non-admin users. (Dont know about edge)
I’ve been battling this for years../
Microsoft support team will soon claim that It is an integral part of the OS and cannot be separated. The same reason you can’t get rid of Edge without a lot of effort and even then it leaves large parts behind that are claimed to be vital to Windows.

Just like Windows 11, this update to Windows 10 will place a Copilot button directly on the Windows 10 taskbar, …
I imagine millions of people will unselect “Show Copilot button” — just like for Cortana, the Search box, etc… I know I will and did.

I imagine millions of people will unselect “Show Copilot button” — just like for Cortana, the Search box, etc… I know I will and did.
I am so tired of all the crap I have to shut off in Windows. Having to work around the BS requirement for a Microsoft account. I moved all my personal stuff over to Linux years ago, but still need to support Windows at work.
The latest was trying to turn on drive encryption (required at work) and Win 11 telling me I had to have a Microsoft account to enable encryption. (Local account used on the machine, Win 11 pro) I did find a way to enable it, but it looks like Microsoft testing out the next phase of pi

I am so tired of all the crap I have to shut off in Windows.
I sometimes have that thought about Firefox. My “user.js” file has a *bunch* of things I’ve disabled.

I imagine millions of people will unselect “Show Copilot button” — just like for Cortana, the Search box, etc… I know I will and did.
I am so tired of all the crap I have to shut off in Windows. Having to work around the BS requirement for a Microsoft account. I moved all my personal stuff over to Linux years ago, but still need to support Windows at work. The latest was trying to turn on drive encryption (required at work) and Win 11 telling me I had to have a Microsoft account to enable encryption. (Local account used on the machine, Win 11 pro) I did find a way to enable it, but it looks like Microsoft testing out the next phase of pissing off their users.
That sounds suspiciously like them wanting to be sure they have the encryption keys to your encrypted drive, which kinda seems to defeat the purpose for encrypting the drive. “It’s secure from everybody but Microsoft” is *NOT AT ALL SECURE*.

That sounds suspiciously like them wanting to be sure they have the encryption keys to your encrypted drive, which kinda seems to defeat the purpose for encrypting the drive. “It’s secure from everybody but Microsoft” is *NOT AT ALL SECURE*.
That is what I thought when I saw it. That is a definitive “FUCK NO!” from me.
It took many years, but we’re about there now.

It took many years, but we’re about there now.
You have the patience of a saint – or at least that’s the charitable interpretation I’ve chosen to go with. 😉 Microsoft pushed me to Linux on the desktop circa 15 years ago.
I worked for MSFT for about 5 years, so there is that. Like a lot of downmodders of things criticizing MSFT around here, I owned a fairly large block of MSFT stock due to company grants. Now that it’s gone, no longer constrained by financial interest.
to completely ignore/disable/remove. Windows Update Blocker is a godsend.
Fuck off microsoft, i want LESS nagging/potential for nagging from my OS. In fact I want the OS be as transparent as possible — not insert itself or other products/services without being explicitly asked. By analogy it’s a bit like getting unsolicited advice from a cabbie.
>hello user, i see you’re trying to install chrome. why don’t you try edge instead? it’s really good
No, fuck you very much MS.
I don’t want a shitty, halfbaked chatbot on my computer. it’s irritating that this absolute garbage is continually being shoved down our throats. Hard pass on being a guinea pig for training their language models.
I’m starting to believe every ‘technology’ fad just serves to make life worse and worse; and i doubt ‘AI’ will be any exception.
Hm. Maybe. I have 11 running on a laptop on which I do regular work, and it’s ok. They made some silly changes, but it’s not the earth shattering stupidity that was 8. I think it’s more likely that people are sticking with 10 because they were burned so badly by 8, just as they stuck with XP after being burned by Vista. I can get behind that sentiment. (And if I’m just restating what you meant, my apologies.)

… I have 11 running on a laptop …
My IT department decided to upgrade 5 year-old laptops to Windows 11. It is noticeably slower, no, not the software, the Windows kernel: The keyboard and mouse are either ignored (USB hubs are effectively disallowed), or about 3 seconds behind what I’m typing.
Remember that more older hardware than ever before is just “good enough”, including for gaming. People do not want to invest $1000 in a new gaming PC when the old one works just fine and Win11 has no significant improvements and some drawbacks like worse performance.
If I understand what you’re saying, I’m not proposing upgrading an existing machine to 11. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Just use it as is to the end of its lifespan. The laptop running 11 is a new laptop that came with 11, and presumably has enough resources. Just sayin’, 11 doesn’t appear to be the disaster that was 8.
I guess I should have said, my desktop runs 10 and will probably run 10 for the rest of its life. If I decide to keep it in service after 10 is no longer viable, I’ll switch it to
Well, yes. The thing is, before you actually always got things like more memory support, faster CPU support, more core support, faster networking support, newer GFX support, etc. with anew version of Windows. Hence it made a real difference in many cases and getting new hardware made sense. After Win 7 this effect declined and with Win11, it is basically gone. PC hardware has reached a level of maturity where in many cases you just replace it when it breaks because there is no need before that. And Microsof
I am a heavy user of Adobe Creative Cloud, and many components use GPU for acceleration, so having reasonably current hardware is important. That said, the video cards commonly available now are more than what the software can use. So I’m good with anything substantial made after 2014 or so. My current workstation, a Dell T3610, was introduced in 2013. The video is a gforce 2060, which is overqualified for Lightroom and Photoshop.
The point being, anything better than Intel built-in graphics and anything

Adobe’s typical answer, that the Linux community is too fragmented, is a crap answer. Just pick a version, any version, and we will come to you.
Indeed. That is management and marketing and probably bribes talking. There is a lot of complex software like, say, web-browsers that run just fine on a lot of different versions of Linux and they are free, so support cost cannot in any way be prohibitive.
It’s a couple if registry keys to allow Win11 to install without TPM or on an older CPU.
Lowest effort solution there is to download Win11 ISO from MS and use Rufus [ https://rufus.ie/ [rufus.ie] ] to make an installer thumb drive.
I’ve got a spare 2012-vintage ThinkPad x230 here that handles Win11 just fine. (i7-3520M, 16 GB DDR3, SATA SSD).
Let’s hope so. Microsoft urgently needs some vicious kicks in the gut.
And perhaps the thing we really really want is for Microsoft to stop “re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”, slathering on a “fresh coat of paint”, or dropping new eye candy to “please the peasants” and actually do things like dump the NT kernel and use a Linux or FreeBSD core, make it more difficult to “pierce the veil” or offer better anti-virus solutions, and to provide a basic OS that is an OS, not a service in the cloud that makes for a distracting user-stupifying experience, that performs on the level of Linux or BSD. That just f***ing works. For more than 45 days between reboots. But no, “We’ll give you another Clippy and you’ll like it.”
Indeed. That nicely sums it up.
That refusal to fix fundamental problems with Windows makes me wonder whether MS maybe cannot fix larger things anymore because they have so much technological debt piled up by now that fixing one thing breaks 10 others. The behavior and delays on some security fixes points rather strongly in that direction and security fixes should always do changes as small as possible. If they struggle to even make those small changes…
Is there a way to turn it the hell off?
I didn’t want you damn search bar the first time, the second time, and a couple of weeks the third time. I don’t want you crappy Al either.
I guess they’re going to force us to have Cortana one way or another. Silly bastids. :
I found one good use for the Bing “AI”: Help you craft lies by misdirection!
Just ask it for things like “How do I say insecure in a positive way?” or “How do I say end-of-life in a positive way?”
Quite the eye-opener.
When have (non-porn) Bing results ever been useful?
Google’s getting worse, but it’s still leagues ahead of Bing.

All you have to do is to remove artificial CPU limitation.
And the TPM (v2.0) “requirement”.

And the TPM (v2.0) “requirement”.
No, please dear god, leave the TPM requirement. The first thing I do is disable TPM in the bios. It’s a sure fire way I stop Microsoft from installing Win11 on my machines “by accident”. It would not be the first time they’ve backdoor whole OS upgrades people didn’t want.
My guess is Microsoft is heading for a well-deserved shipwreck with planning to stop Win10 support: https://store.steampowered.com… [steampowered.com]
1. Can it be uninstalled?
2. Can it at least be disabled?
3. How to check whether some update reinstalled the crap?
All I have seen this being good so far is generating lies, sometimes even when the user does not request them.
I just tried:
“Increase screen brightness by 10%”
It replied “I’m sorry, I can’t do that directly.” It then listed steps you could follow to do it yourself.
So nothing better than what you could find by going to the Bing Chat web site and asking the question. Other than the button being prominent on the taskbar, I don’t get it.
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The degree of technical confidence is inversely proportional to the level of management.

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