Same experience just recently: installing Windows for both of my kids. I got insanely frustrated with it.
Forget the Family Safety. I honestly don't see it working at all. I created Microsoft accounts for my kids and set their ages. This changes nothing I can see. Search menu shows VERY explicit news. It asks my kid to sign in to her Microsoft account every now and then, even though she's signed in since it was installed in the first place. It asks to add payment methods, because why not?, and this is for a 10-year-old! Edge resets the homepage to edgeservices.bing.com, shows some tabloid news on it and refreshes this page every 30 seconds or so. Ads EVERYWHERE. I'll stop here, but only to keep this short. The bottom line is: it is unfriendly and sometimes unsafe for kids, not by my standards anyway, and I am a pretty tolerant parent.
Lots of posts here mention the "debloat" apps. No way. I already paid for the OS. And I cannot just go and check my kids’ computers every now and then to see if Microsoft decided to roll out another dark pattern.
Anyway, just yesterday I placed two orders for reconditioned MacBooks, and will be selling the two PCs as soon as those get delivered.
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Please excuse me if you are a Windows user and the following sounds strong, I don't want to be mean, but to raise awareness. My guess is just like frogs get boiled slowly, Windows users got tolerant to the progressive decrease in the quality and don’t even notice it anymore. In my experience, when you switch from Linux or Mac, you can't help but see all that is outright wrong with Windows.
That's terrifying. The child protection stuff sounds like a total mess, but it bleeds way beyond that.
After leaving Windows behind in 2007 (Mac or Linux machines only), I switched back to Windows to do game development. I can't believe how much of a piece of crap these Windows machines are. All the apps that are preinstalled is one issue. Another is the stupid stuff they add to the search bar to make it look more like the Google landing page. The news, the ads, the weather, the notifications...and don't get me started on how you can't disable the use of the Edge browser when clicking on web search results from the search bar. It constantly feels like I am slogging through crap that they forced into onto the machines. It sucks because these are not productivity and work machines. They are built to get you to consume while pretending to allow you to work. I gave it a few years time and I'm still stuck with the same response. Working on a Mac or Linux is insanely more productive and enjoyable that dealing with Windows.
Forget the Family Safety. I honestly don't see it working at all. I created Microsoft accounts for my kids and set their ages. This changes nothing I can see. Search menu shows VERY explicit news. It asks my kid to sign in to her Microsoft account every now and then, even though she's signed in since it was installed in the first place. It asks to add payment methods, because why not?, and this is for a 10-year-old! Edge resets the homepage to edgeservices.bing.com, shows some tabloid news on it and refreshes this page every 30 seconds or so. Ads EVERYWHERE. I'll stop here, but only to keep this short. The bottom line is: it is unfriendly and sometimes unsafe for kids, not by my standards anyway, and I am a pretty tolerant parent.
Lots of posts here mention the "debloat" apps. No way. I already paid for the OS. And I cannot just go and check my kids’ computers every now and then to see if Microsoft decided to roll out another dark pattern.
Anyway, just yesterday I placed two orders for reconditioned MacBooks, and will be selling the two PCs as soon as those get delivered.
--
Please excuse me if you are a Windows user and the following sounds strong, I don't want to be mean, but to raise awareness. My guess is just like frogs get boiled slowly, Windows users got tolerant to the progressive decrease in the quality and don’t even notice it anymore. In my experience, when you switch from Linux or Mac, you can't help but see all that is outright wrong with Windows.