Krishty’s Sim Forums

Just don't...

Oh no! Anything concerting TFXplorer specifically?!

Windows 11 was forced on me on my work laptop, and I still have to test my projects there …

heh, nothing specific, just the general experience.
There's a limit to what I can do on my Win10 work laptop. Raw data processing is fine, but running games is not.
So, I bought a comparatively cheap Acer laptop with Win11 Home installed+Norton etc.
I couldn't set it up without going online and using a MS account. Once that was done I could switch to a local account and repartition the SSD and install Linux for dual boot.
The plan is never to let Win11 see the internet again, or if so, with a LAN cable only. I can download stuff using Linux, then copy into the Windows file system if necessary.

Really, go download the Windows Server 2019 trial, set yourself up a non-admin user, and tweak the Group Policy Editor for two days. No Cortana, no antivirus, no forced updates, no weather bars I never asked for. All applications run, just for some old games I had to install the DirectX run-time libraries like in 1998.

You can make it run for four years or something like that with an official, non-shady trial expansion command. After that, you can just upgrade to Server 2022 and start anew.

I never regretted taking a few days to do that. It paid off with the first patch day. It’s mostly like Windows 2000 with more eye candy.

Thanks! I might try that if I reinstall this machine. I'll keep Win11 in its prison for now though. I may get to like it if I can keep it offline.

It seems Server 2019 isn't available for trial now, but I assume the same thing can be done for Server 2022.

Anyway, I'm just going to use this thread for a bit of therapeutic whinging about computers in general.

So, I have this Macbook Air which thanks to its silent operation and long battery life makes a great 'sofa surfing' machine.
I used it to book a couple of flights on an airline website, then received a confirmation email with a receipt in pdf form.
At some point in this process, the OS got involved and made some entries in the Calendar for these flights. WTF!!!!
Unfortunately, most people would see this sort of thing as a feature.

Wow, that’s spooky.

My bank’s web portal has an option to upload invoices (as PDFs). It’s supposed to fill out all transfer details for the payment for you. So far, I only tried it once with pretty useless results. Seems like Apple uses an advanced version 😆