college students in the US can score 12 months free of Microsoft 365 Premium and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the purchase of an eligible PC, plus a free custom Xbox controller.
Wow. A controller for the gaming ecosystem they’re letting die, and temporary access to their online (worse) office programs along with Game Pass access (also temporary)… Where do I sign up!?
Lmao thanks for saving me a read. That’s so trash
Microsoft is unaware that students need a reliable device, this also means a stable OS which they can’t offer.
Windows is remarkably stable. Has been for many years.
I sincerely hope you’re trolling.
I teach computer science and windows has been the biggest source of problems I’ve had in the last five years: I’ve seen defender delete their programs when compiling them, I’ve seen it delete gcc because it thought it was malware, I’ve seen it do forced updates in the middle of a test, I’ve seen updates break tools like compilers and servers that needed to be reinstalled on a daily basis, I’ve seen onedrive make some of their files inaccessible, I’ve seen updates break their wifi, I’ve seen it take upwards of 10 minutes to log into our AD domain, the list of problems goes on.
These days windows is a piece of shit, especially if you’re a developer. I’m basically forced to have them either install linux or do all their development in wsl, and it fucking sucks.
You are using GNU development tools, largely targeting non-windows operating systems, on Windows. Just use Linux
Again none of those things are the actual OS. They’re all optional features and programs. Every one of those problems can be turned off. Most with simple settings toggles.
I’d expect that kind of thing to be first semester computer science stuff; Setting up your machine as a proper development platform.
I sincerely hope you’re trolling.
He is, it’s painfully obvious. If not from his original comment, then at the very least from his follow-ups to the replies he got
When fucking File Explorer freezes a CAD machine for several minutes at a time resulting in explorer.exe crashing and restarting multiple times a day I’d say it’s not as stable as I got used to. Several of us at the place I work at have been dealing with this, although it has been getting better, it never should have happened in the first place.
That’s not the OS really.
Explorer restarting is no different than any app.Becides, It depends on the specifics, but good chance it’s the CAD software doing something it shouldn’t. Specific small market industry software is notoriously quirky and troublesome.
Nope, it happens with literally just a couple explorer windows, outlook, and teams open. The CAD box comment was just to make clear that it is not on underpowered hardware by any means. And I’ve managed to trigger it with nothing but explorer windows open.
Okay. I don’t know what it could be. I’m not gonna troubleshoot your specific company issue blind from a distance . But still not the OS.
I don’t expect troubleshooting, but it’s not isolated to just my company, my home computer did it too, not nearly as often, and it’s been a while since it’s happened there (probably since I only leave file explorer open for 30 seconds at a time).
And even if it’s not technically part of the OS, will Windows even be in a useable state without it? Most things I see call it a “Core part of the OS,” although those are also specific to Windows 10 so if 11 changed it, that’s news to me. I dont see a difference. To most people (myself included), explorer.exe crashing and restarting looks just like Windows shitting itself, and since it’s packaged with every Windows install, that perception really is hard to argue against despite what some technicality of it being an executable says.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think my wife’s laptop had the explorer issue. Every computer that did had multiple monitors attached, her laptop always operates single screen. Or it’s somehow specific to enterprise Windows 11, I forget why my home machine is running enterprise, but that’s what I installed on it for some reason.
Lmao what in the world
it was stable, up until a few years ago. But starting when MS scaled back their QA department (Windows 10 era IIRC) - and worsening when they went all-in on AI (Windows 11 era), stability and reliability has fallen off a cliff. I started tracking crashes and problems that required manual intervention, and over the last two years I’ve spent more hours debugging and fixing Windows 11 than Xubuntu. This is the first time in my life where Linux has required less maintenance than a stock Windows installation. It’s bad enough that I advised all my non-technical family members to stay on Windows 10 instead of upgrading to Windows 11, despite the lack of support.
That may be.
I’ve always disabled all that stuff immediately. Even applied ReviOS to permanently remove it all 6ish months ago.I think a majority of people would consider needing to disable multiple parts of the default installed system to not encounter potentially breaking bugs to be a pretty big indicator that the platform is not as stable as it used to be.
Personally, I never had to disable anything, perform any specific actions, or disable a particular part of Windows XP, Window 7, or Windows 10 LTSC to achieve a very stable system, and new updates generally didn’t introduce any bugs either since MS had a pretty big QA team.
There are now regularly reports of major or critical components of a windows system failing or even becoming unbootable due to updates or bugs in new features in Windows 11, which is very much a change from the norm.
It is likely these bugs are being introduced far more frequently due to MS laying off the majority of their QA team, and instead relying on regular users to report bugs after they have already been shipped.
Wow. I had full blue-screen system crashes every couple months at least, even daily at times, with XP and 7. I haven’t seen any with 10 or 11. But I’ve always kept them both pretty clean.
Then why do they keep having to roll back what seems like every update they release due to some major bug?
“Seems like” is doing a lot of work here.
But to answer the question: To be sure it stays stable. Rolling back buggy updates is a good thing. You don’t want to leave them.The severity of the bugs that they’re having to roll back for does not scream “stable OS” to me.
Of course not. It whispers. You have to lean in closely, and know what you’re listening for. From a distance all you hear is BUG!
“has been” is right, lol
This is an idiotic counter to the Neo. Microsoft is in a position it’s not faced before: Macs are cheaper than PCs. Offering a year of “free services” doesn’t change the fact that Surfaces start at more than twice what Apple has on offer.
college students in the US can score 12 months free of Microsoft 365 Premium and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the purchase of an eligible PC, plus a free custom Xbox controller.
Saved you a click
Which is really funny because most (all?) students get 365 free from their school already
Ok, so students can select either:
- A computer that they can study, work, (light) game, edit photos, and do much more on, without a digital use by date.
- An admittedly excellent office suite, a collection of games, for a limited time, and an Xbox controller, but only if they buy a specific computer.
Yeah, nah Microsoft, nah.
An admittedly excellent office suite
Every time some colleague uses office and I’m forced to hop on as well it feels like my whole workflow just grinds to a halt and there’s nothing that I’d want more than to throw my laptop out the window… There’s not much else that I hate with the same passion like ms Office. “Admittedly excellent”? What?
without a digital use by date
What? Apple just drops devices at some point.
Regarding the second point… the offer from Microsoft is good for 12 months. The Apple software does not expire. Sure, the support will end in about 7 years, but that’s a completely different story
That was exactly my point.
You must have a pretty specific workflow that fails so completely using Microsoft Office.
The second point is that as has already been mentioned, you can keep using the computer after the software support ends, that doesn’t really work for most subscription software.
You must have a pretty specific workflow that fails so completely using Microsoft Office.
My company provides latex templates, so I’m using those. They also provide a gitlab instance, so working collaboratively is easy and reliable.
The second point is that as has already been mentioned, you can keep using the computer after the software support ends, that doesn’t really work for most subscription software.
Fair point.
The subscriptions are only available to new subscribers.
Or just a Framework and install Linux, skip Microslop
To be fair, Frameworks are way more expensive.
I have one, and love it, but I’m pretty sure it’s the most I’ve ever spent on a piece of tech.
But you also own the device, can upgrade and repair it, and you arent the product.
Totally worth that up front cost imo
Definitely. Part of the reason I got it. I also didn’t need 64 gigs of RAM, but I don’t regret it given how much it costs now
The only thing is that the 8GB Framework 12 is a bit more expensive than the (8GB) MacBook Neo, and if you get it to 16GB it starts getting close to MacBook Air territory. But if you can sacrifice the nice build quality and nice screen plus spend some extra £, you can get Linux and a repairable laptop.
In any case: Windows is just not a value proposition anymore. Why pay extra to deal with Intel, MS and Copilot?
To be fair to Framework, the 12 is a 2-in-1 with a touchscreen, which is not something that’s currently offered on any of Apple’s laptops and at least partially accounts for the extra cost. Of course, economies of scale play a part, as well.
