We’re a mere €124 away from the first incentive during our fundraiser: making me use stock Windows 11 for a month. Since the writing appears to be on the wall, and the donation pulling us across the line can come in any moment, I figured I’d better take a peek at how things stand with Windows. I came across a story about Yusuf Mehdi, an executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, who apparently became the face of Microsoft’s “AI” push. After 35 years, he’s leaving the company, but not after pledging to continue pushing “AI” deeper into Windows 11.
Despite this intense backlash, Mehdi is doubling down on the AI vision during his final months at the company. In his LinkedIn announcement, he stated: “I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life.”
Microsoft has recently scaled back on some intrusive Copilot features in Notepad, Snipping Tool, and Photos, but the executive leadership team still views AI agents as the inevitable future of the Windows desktop experience.
↫ Abhijith M B at Windows Latest
The numbers for Microsoft and every other software company who dove head-first into “AI” are clear: it’s one of the biggest bottomless pits of all time, and they’re all throwing money down the pit hoping it’ll eventually fill up and overflow. Meanwhile, 100 metres down in the pit, a dude in a leather jacket is holding out a bucket and collecting some of the money before it disappears into the void below. For Microsoft, “AI” represents a $235 billion loss (so far!), so the company had to do something – anything – to stop the bleeding.
They tried shoving Copilot buttons in every nook and cranny of its products, but users rightfully and understandably revolted. They’re toning it down in Windows, and recently, they’ve also had to tone it down in Office as users were horrified to discover a floating Copilot button in Word, Excel, and so on. People really do not want this shit, which puts these companies in a hugely precarious position: just how badly can they abuse the geese?
We’ll see just how much Microsoft will actually roll back its force-feeding practices, and I’m not excited to be partaking in the Windows 11 experiment soon.
Thom Holwerda,
Can you clarify if you’re going to use stock windows or are you going to try and mod everything to remove it’s anti features? I kind of feel that, in the spirit of the challenge, you should stick to windows as a normal user would and as microsoft intended.
Thoughts…?
Edit: Maybe spend two weeks with defaults, and then two weeks trying to tweak things.
Fully stock, so no debloat tools. I am, however, allowed to remove stock applications since we get that ability in the EU. Office is part of this effort – I will use Outlook, too.
Thom Holwerda,
Would be an interesting experiment. I don’t use Windows 11 outside of gaming, and if I had the choice, I would stay on Windows 10 for those tasks.
Let us know how it goes
I use 11 on my gaming rig and don’t see a lot of the crap that people complain about. My guess as to why is because I’m using the Pro version instead of Home. So maybe try that version, if you can.