I remember the day when you had to buy Windows separate, and pay full retail. Later, you got a massive discount if you bought the disks with your computer. Then, it came preinstalled. Then, it started to get crappy and more buggy.
I’m still salty my current laptop is sold at a discount in the EU without a pre-installed OS due to laws in place–but where I am, I had no choice but to pay a Microsoft tax & immediately wipe it. I used to not connect to WiFi & just look around for a few minutes out of curiosity before wiping, but since 11 moved to Microsoft Account + WiFi required & all the telemetry on by default, I don’t even bother with that anymore.
I find it funny, actually. For years, I used DOS, exclusively command line-based, on a 286 and when I got a new 486 computer in the early 90s I was so excited to get Windows 3.1 on it. Decades later, I find myself hating Windows and going back to Linux and often a command line. As far as I’m concerned, the closest thing to the last usable version of Windows was 7, and it still kinda sucked.
Honestly I think many consumers go buy “computer” & have no concept that it has an operating system or that you can change it.
If you know there is an alternative, then yeah… wtf
100% true, I should have acknowledged that!
I remember the day when you had to buy Windows separate, and pay full retail. Later, you got a massive discount if you bought the disks with your computer. Then, it came preinstalled. Then, it started to get crappy and more buggy.
I’m still salty my current laptop is sold at a discount in the EU without a pre-installed OS due to laws in place–but where I am, I had no choice but to pay a Microsoft tax & immediately wipe it. I used to not connect to WiFi & just look around for a few minutes out of curiosity before wiping, but since 11 moved to Microsoft Account + WiFi required & all the telemetry on by default, I don’t even bother with that anymore.
I find it funny, actually. For years, I used DOS, exclusively command line-based, on a 286 and when I got a new 486 computer in the early 90s I was so excited to get Windows 3.1 on it. Decades later, I find myself hating Windows and going back to Linux and often a command line. As far as I’m concerned, the closest thing to the last usable version of Windows was 7, and it still kinda sucked.
cd c:\oregontr
start .com
Good times. Good times…
(Edit. Added space in command, so it’s not a website)