I’ve joined the migration away from Windows 11 specifically and Microsoft (MS) generally. The last few posts on this site were written from a Linux Ubuntu system. Whereas my Windows 11 machine became incompatible with the WordPress editor used to write this blog, my switch to Linux has gotten around this. It is unlikely that the issue was not a Windows 11 problem per se so much as a setting being changed somehow. I was unable to find such a setting.

In short, MS has gotten increasingly greedy not just in cash flow but also in their built-in machinations for automatic scraping of data from users. Its insistence on cloud storage and AI features seems to be based on a business model intent on monetizing every facet of a user’s activity. Superficially, monetization of features the customers value is just normal business strategy. What MS has been doing over time might be called creeping featurism. Product improvement is a competitive act by a manufacturer but also justifies price increases when a revised product is released, if the market allows it.

Alas. Microsoft’s cash cow is dying. Without planned obsolescence, whatever will Microsoft do? Poor miserable buggers.

MS has forced users to deal with Co-Pilot and to upgrade their older computers due to equipment upgrades required by Windows 11. In the past MS users have complied with the requirements of Windows (n+1) for the most part. But the jump to Windows 11 is different.

World wide, there is backlash to MS Windows 11 and data security is no small part of it. South Korea has banned it outright for government use. China, Brazil, the EU, and even Japan are backing off of Windows 11. US corporations are reevaluating going forward with Windows.

My main beef with Windows 11 is that decades of my muscle memory accumulated using Windows OS and MS Office apps has been disrupted. Familiar features, especially in Outlook, continue to trip me up because the menus have been changed to where my keyboard habits refined over many years now work differently.

Windows now requires annual payments for continued use and access to records and documents.

I wish I could reciprocate with a similar inconvenience to MS.