Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat lately, but I don’t really play in the Windows World anymore so it’s just been an entertaining memefest while cruising the socials.
That was until today – today I had to configure a new Windows laptop for the biometrics department…
Good grief…
The laptop in question is a new, high-end Lenovo Legion gaming rig that will be used in the biometrics department to test [redacted] on [redacted] hardware… The laptop is actually pretty nice – good build quality, descent hardware spec, and I appreciate the half-sized number pad.
The problem is Windows.
As always, Microsoft is insistent on creating a Microsoft account – which instantly renders company-owned hardware into a paperweight because it’s not being used by “a user”… It’s test equipment – so the MS Account thing is a bit like requiring a username and password on an oscilloscope.
The old way of getting around this was patched out a while ago, but there’s always a workaround – it just adds frustration to the process. I guess this is because Microsoft’s design goal now is to create as much user friction as possible.
Anyway, mandatory fun / account creation bypassed I now get to wait for updates… This is where the update process advertises at me for fifteen minutes or so, then the system reboots twice, and I’m eventually placed at the desktop – where I can commence removing all of the shovelware and then disabling all of the “telemetry” (read: spyware)… See, this machine will be exposed to PII for biometrics testing, and we simply can’t have Microsoft ‘accidentally’ ingesting that data.
So I need to basically break the OS to make it secure.
All in all it’s about a half an hour to get from unboxing to desktop, and another half an hour to clean up the bloat, then another hour to secure the OS for testing.
Yay.
Leave a Reply