The Evil That Is MicroSoft

I bought a new laptop a couple of weeks ago. The old one is still working fine, and I have no particular problems with it (I have many problems with the company that built its operating system), but I use my laptop a lot, and feel that I should always have two in working condition, in case one goes kaput, as they can do without warning.

For example, the old one I am still using was purchased because the power input on the one I had been using previously disintegrated one day, out of the blue. Geek Squad told me they could not repair that, which meant I had just the amount of time left on the battery charge to get a new one and transfer important shit to it. Fortunately, I keep all of my files for this blog and everything else I care about on memory sticks, which I back up from time to time on an external hard drive.

The other reason I bought this second laptop was that I am a hopeless multi-tasker. I have no cable TV, so if I am watching videos or sports streamed from a laptop to my TV, I like to have a second laptop on which I can read and write and travel the web while I am watching the stream.

That all being said, I hated the idea of buying a new laptop. Although I bought one made by the same company as the one I have, I expect all kinds of unpleasant surprises with any new computer, no matter how many deeply perceptive questions about it I ask the salesman.

So far the new laptop has not been as much of a pain as I expected. I told the guys who set it up to remove any whiff of AI from it, and they did what they could, and I have since managed to remove/supress whatever they missed without too much trouble.

My first really irritating feature on this computer just arose today, some two weeks after I started using it.

I started it up, and before it would let me do anything, I got an invitation to backup all my files. These would of course be put on MicroSoft’s cloud, which MS calls OneDrive.

I could not just shut this invitation down and move on to using my laptop. No, instead I was given exactly two options.

‘Continue’

…meaning ‘continue on to backing up all your files on our cloud’

or

‘opt out of backup’

I clicked on the second one, but that did not mean I could just move on. Not a chance. Instead I got another immovable screen with another two options:

‘Backup files’

or

‘opt out for now’

I did not wish to opt out for now, I wished to opt out forever, but that was not an option I was given. I clicked on that, and was finally allowed to use my laptop, but having clicked on that I know that every few days I will have to go through the same process, at no point being given the opportunity to click on ‘stop bothering me about this forever, assholes’.

MicroSoft figures if they confront you with this Hobson’s choice often enough, the odds are that eventually you will click on ‘backup files’ or ‘continue’, out of sheer exasperation, if not simple clumsiness. It’s probably a good bet for them.

As far as MS Evil is concerned, the operating system they put on every non-Apple computer is a device that they use to extract money and/or information from you. That is their business model. What the computer manufacturer pays them for the Windows OS, which of course you pay for when you buy the device, is just the down payment.

It’s the same with all their products. I am writing this post on my old laptop using Microsoft Word, for which I pay a yearly subscription fee. I can set Word to automatically back up everything I write periodically while I am writing it. That’s useful, it means there is always a very recent copy available of whatever you are doing, in case some glitch erases all your work. However, MS Evil will only let me do that if I back up everything I write onto OneDrive. No, thanks, MS. I have developed the habit of saving everything I write onto memory disks, as I noted. I simply try to remember to manually click on ‘Save’ often while I’m working.

If you believe that MS would never acquire or record or use in any way what you save on OneDrive, then I have some  really great swampland to sell you at a fabulous price.

To be clear, I don’t really believe that MS Evil does not anyway have access to everything that I write in Word on this laptop, even though I never save it to their cloud. In fact, I suspect they would know everything I write even were I to go offline while writing, which I did consider making my routine at one point.

This belief in the ubiquity of MS Evil’s surveillance of me (yes, and you) is based on the following observation.

When I fire up this old laptop, it requires me to put in a four-number PIN. I did not ask for this feature, it was forced on me. Before I type in that PIN, the screen contains info about the weather in my hometown and various news headlines from around the world, as well as stock index numbers. Again, not my choice to see this shit, but I get it anyways.

But I do not have my laptops set to connect to my wi-fi automatically. I have to manually make that hook-up every time I start my computer, after I have put in the damned PIN, and it has booted up. (It takes me six seconds to log onto my wi-fi manually at that point.)

So how the hell is my laptop giving me all this info about the world before I have connected it to the internet?

I see only two possible answers to that question.

One, that info I see on the laptop screen before I input my PIN is pure bullshit, made up out of nothing by some program MS embedded in my laptop,

or

Two, my laptop is indeed connected to the internet as soon as I turn it on, even though I have not manually connected it. To put it differently, I can decide whether or not I connect to the internet, but I cannot choose whether or not my laptop is.

And note that even if possibility one is true, from whence comes this bullshit? The hypothesized program has to get it from somewhere, some time.

I conclude I am connected to the internet and MS Evil at all times, whether I want to be or not.

That, in turn, means that MS Evil knows and makes use of everything we do on every PC, no matter how we set those devices up. And there is not a thing we can do about it. As I said, we don’t buy these devices, MS Evil just lets us use them so we can provide them with money and info (which to them is even better than cash…..)