Technology

59421 readers

2915 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

261

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Cool idea MS. If only you had access to the OS itself to prevent it from gradually slowing down and littering the system with junk. Since we can't fix Windows (Only the maker of Windows can do that!), let's make a dedicated band-aid app to fix Windows.

Maybe whoever is working on Windows will get the message and fix those problems that your tool was built to fix.

Funny thing that my Android phone and Linux desktop don't need antivirus, don't accumulate junk in registries or system folders, and don't require dedicated optimization tools.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Although I agree in general, the antivirus complaint isn't really fair. Windows was by and large the largest install base, especially in the corporate sector. It only makes sense it became the most targeted. Scam apps and that's do exist on Android and Linux, they're just mitigated other ways. For now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I see it more as a distribution problem. It’s unrealistic to expect users to download software and verify that the sources are trustworthy. Having some kind of store with developer accountability goes a long way to preventing malware. That, and sandboxing.

It’s always possible to write malware for any platform. It’s not entirely a fair comparison.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Windows has a store. Most people just choose not to use it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Microsoft tries to offer one, but there’s not a lot of incentive for developers to use it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

'Antivirus' is a cope. Anti-libre software bans us from removing malicous source code.