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Microsoft starts bundling Windows 11 with its 'PC optimizer' app in some regions (www.neowin.net)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

PC optimizers are not a new concept, and they have been around for quite a while. Nowadays, many consider them unnecessary, but having an official program made by Microsoft that is capable of (allegedly) speeding up your PC may sound quite appealing.

However, Microsoft's PC Manager has already raised quite a few eyebrows when customers caught it recommending some questionable optimizing techniques, injecting affiliate links, and shamelessly claiming your PC needs repair if Bing is not set as the default search engine. Yikes.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

This is the same kind of thing I'd expect when a once nice android app gets bought out by a company like tencent.
Bundle a battery manager and RAM optimizer bs in the file browser or something, fill it with ads, maybe they could have microtransactions for some of the "features".

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

When Oxygen Not Included was purchased by Tencent, they added some data-mining functionality (as far as I know, opt-in for in-game content, so not the worst, but still). I'd have been less-willing to buy a copy if I'd known that it'd wind up down the road having that happen to it.

I'm a little concerned about the broader prospect of software from one entity being sold to someone, then down the line, that entity going under, and in an always-online world, being a conduit for new updates with less-desirable software with the access granted the earlier one. This wasn't historically a problem when software was sold offline on physical media.

For Android, at least there's some level of app isolation, but on the PC, apps aren't isolated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Only possible with anti-libre software, never nice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yea, I'm still stuck on Windows at work for the foreseeable future as I don't control that too much.
Otherwise, for personal stuff that I do control, they really can get fucked.

My wife had never used any desktop OS other than Windows before, but I switched her to Pop!_OS and it's gone fine. Certainly not any worse than between 2 Windows versions, but at least now there's no bullshit and things are actually customizable. (Her words)