I've been a Windows user since Win98 and I'm not going anywhere soon, even with the recent blunders.

But back in my college days, my girlfriend of the time convinced me to buy an iPad to take class notes. She was part of the Apple ecosystem: phone, watch, mac, you name it... it was the first time I decided to give apple products a try, I followed up with an iPhone and I even ended up with her old MacBook after gifting her a new one.

Nowadays I shelved all my Apple stuff because I could never get used to MacOS or IpadOS, Windows is just better and less restrictive... but for that brief time it was really nice to have everything connected. I could access all my stuff from anywhere, it felt like all my devices were extensions of each other.

Now, I'm old enough to remember the disaster of the Microsoft Phone, but that was years ago... with Microsoft's market share, capital and influence, I don't understand why they aren't giving it another go.

It's almost like they don't want to compete with Apple's line of interconnected devices. Is there any hope of a Microsoft ecosystem in the future?

Dear Microsoft Executives,

I have been using Windows since Windows 3.0. I have installed and used just about every edition of Windows that has ever existed, and I have defended it in the face of naysayers for decades. However, you are following a worrying path with your OS and have been for quite some time, and I am extremely disappointed. My voice is but one voice, but I am sure that I am not alone.

We (myself and those who think like me) do not want nor need the following things in Windows; they do not make our experience easier nor do they make it safer or better in any way:

1. We do not want nor need Windows to spy on us, collect our telemetry and user data, and exploit it either internally or by selling it to other companies.

2. We do not want nor need Windows to advertise to us anywhere in the OS.

3. We do not want nor need Windows to decide for us what the "best" or "safest" default apps are.

4. We do not want nor need Windows to have "AI" built-in. See #1 for more information.

5. We do not want nor need Windows to run "on the cloud" as opposed to on our local hardware.

These just scratch the surface. All of these things should be OPT-IN, only installed and/or used if you consent to them. They should not be forced on us or OPT-OUT with hidden or obfuscated ways to do so.

AI is particularly egregious because the concept of having an AI assistant in our computers is one that many of us have dreamed about for DECADES. However, corporate America can't let it just be an optional component and can't let it be 100% local and private; they HAVE to be able to monetize the data it collects.

I worry for the future of technology of all breeds; will prosthetics and implants sell our usage data and force subscription fees and ads on us? Our cars already are allowed to prevent us from using features already installed unless we pay extra money.. corporations don't want us to own anything or have any rights whatsoever with the products and services we pay for. This dystopia is in many ways worse than the cyberpunk dystopias we grew up reading about.

Anyway, I know no one important will read this and it will just collect ephemeral dust on reddit servers, but it is important. I hope many more people will read this and add to this list, and that it somehow makes it to someone who needs to see it.

Thank you for your time,

TheRogueX

(Edited to add emphasis and context for those people who seem to have trouble in picking it up naturally)

I'm sure there are some people from MSFT here. I've tried to raise defects in the past but no one gives a shit unless you whine about it in public. So here I am. All my papercuts.

Outlook desktop on O365 (matches 2013 office installation)

• It no longer works. It hangs on startup 80% of the time at the loading dialog. I've reinstalled Office twice, entirely deleted my PST/OST files and even rebuilt the PC. It does this on two entirely separate systems. One HP Z620 with Windows 8.1 pro. One Lenovo X250 with Windows 8.1 pro. These are very well managed systems with good hardware with no crapware installed.

• About once every 2-3 days it entirely and silently stops receiving email entirely and you have to close it and reopen it. This is great because you develop a habit of just restarting it once an hour just in case it has shat itself again. Thanks for taking up another chunk of my head with unnecessary rituals to keep your stuff alive.

• Occasionally if I leave it open overnight, when I get up in the morning, the moment I touch it, it crashes entirely, complaining about registry problems and tells me to reinstall it.

• Periodically it just deletes all my drafts.

• I had to turn off all the people's ugly mugs and all the social crap to make it usable. The UI lags so badly it's unreal.

• The whole inline email reply/editing in the main window is broken because about 50% of the ribbon controls used to format and modify stuff only appear when you pop it up. It's like using mail on a SunOS machine in 1995 again.

So as it was unusable so I've had to switch to OWA to get some shit done, which incidentally didn't work.

• It is unusable on a mobile device. Constant "you need to sign in again" right in the middle of something, shitting on the email I'm tapping out. It's also so slow it's unusable on a quad 1.4GHz android 6 handset with 2Gb of RAM on both Chrome and Firefox. What the hell is it doing underneath?

• 50% of the time when I open a thread, I see the last thread for about 20 seconds before I actually see the new one leading to much confusion.

• It is so slow on any desktop browser even on a 3GHz Xeon E5. I've tried IE, Firefox, Chrome. All of them hang periodically.

• The quality control is off terribly. UK locale at least has "Forwardss" (note two S's) on it for the last three months instead of forward in the "reply" context menu on an email.

• The editor it uses is unusable. Sometimes I can't delete stuff, sometimes it won't let me type an M after a number, sometimes if I Ctrl+C/V, it doesn't do anything. It's a mess.

• All the helpful little things like massive banners every time I paste a link in an email poke me in the eye. Just get rid of it.

• I don't want to sign into lync (or whatever it's called this week) randomly.

I've had enough. I'm out. I've gone back to an IMAP box and thunderbird with lightning as a calendar.

It is totally unacceptable to charge for this as a premium service. As a one man software outfit, you can shove your MSDN sub renewal this year. Long tail projects will stay on .Net but new projects are wx+python / flask+python.

Hello,

I have a feeling that in the last few years the product quality strongly decreased.

I've got so many update errors since Windows 11. All the time inplace upgrades to fix it. New Windows 11 24h2 breaks my whole dolby surround system, which I only fixed by downgrade to 23h2.

Visual studio is buggy and I've bugs all the time which lead to other problems. Debugger stopping to work. Live changes don't apply. Can't input texts in editor. Generating duplicates files, which breaks the whole production. I need to build my software and don't have time to handle bugs of visual studio!?

Outlook is slow as hell. The new interface is really bad. Office is also buggy.

Edge browser has also lots of bugs. Like copying pasting passwords pastes two times. Strange thing: Chrome works properly, although same engine?

I'm using Microsoft since 1995. And I really feel like that there is no more effort to guarantee software quality in their products. And I'm really disappointed.

Regards

For one of the most widely used and what used to be a very stable desktop application, now it has become an internet-based 'app' that is perma-linked to your Microsoft account, is full of bugs and is unstable to the point of being almost unusable.

It constantly crashes or freezes up randomly and while trying to do the most simple tasks like copy and paste.

Thanks Microsoft for making everyone's life difficult and ruining what used to be a good software.

So Microsoft's main complaint in this advertising campaign is that Google steals your data to advertise to you. Here's the deal: Yes, Google does use your data to advertise to you. But they don't "steal" it; I knowingly give it to them because they say to me, "Hey, we got this shit hot service that you can use absolutely free, but we're going to track some of your user habits for xyz purpose." And they're not dicks about their ads - I actually don't even notice the text ads they use on the sites I visit. It's like they're not even there. Google is transparent about their business practices, so you're not telling me anything I don't already know. Right off the bat, this whole ad campaign is just pointless.

Microsoft, on the other hand, DOES steal your data without you knowing. Remember Skype? All that shit we've found out about NSA backdoors? The backtracking MS did when there was public worry over the new XBone "always watching" Kinect camera? You guys are the epitome of selling data for a quick buck. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

And here's the real kicker: I decided out of curiosity to visit Scroogled.com. I wasn't going to at first, because I don't believe in giving adclicks to sites that I know are just click bait. But whatever. So I go to the site. And the first thing I see in the upper right hand corner is "thanks for submitting your email address." But I didn't, Microsoft. I didn't give you my email address.

Oh wait. Are you telling me you...you just took my email address? On the website whose sole purpose is to bitch about another company stealing my data, you stole my data? Who woulda thought. A++ solid work guys.

Here's what I'm talking about.

And for the record, no, Google isn't breaking wiretapping laws. The NSA probably is because THEY'RE the one's snooping on Google data, but hey, they're the NSA - they apparently can do whatever the hell they want.

TL:DR Microsoft took a product I own and wouldn’t refund me, how can I file a complaint ?

Hey all,

I bought 2016 Microsoft office in 2016, every year i format my computer and reinstall office and all is good.

This year it didn’t work, i contact their agent through online chat, they tried to help but the couldn’t so they scheduled a call back with someone else who told me the product is obsolete and they can’t help me.

I asked for a refund since its a one time purchase product and they essentially took it from me, he said no because I’ve deleted and reinstalled it multiple times, I said there’s nothing about that in the terms and conditions

He said there is, I asked him to point it out he said sure and proceeded to leave me hanging for 10 minutes. When he came back he said I’ll try to help you (I assumed he made it up)

All he did afterwards is leave me hanging for another 10 minutes then hang up.

I looked for ways to file a complaint but Microsoft makes it impossible, their costumer service is incompetent they couldn’t tell me how to file a complaint.

Anyone know how I can file a complaint ?

I’m surprised it’s the most valuable company on the planet

EDIT:

it suddenly started working, thanks to everyone that tried to help.

And for those defending a 3 trillion dollar company on their bad customer service. I hope word stops working for you

I just got hired by Microsoft at the Seattle office.

Is this a good company to work for still? Thanks in advance.

Im on windows 11, this 4th windows update that results in some issues, now my issue is MY GRAPHICS CARD ISN'T DETECTED.. mind you my output is through my gpu, but no graphics card, its using my input, my gpu isn't even showing up in task manager, really starting to piss me off, so they don't test out updates or whut?

I was testing AI services against each other. Gemini ChatGPT Co-Pilot

I asked Gemini to find me landmarks in my area. It gave me precise information. (Expected)

I asked chatGPT, it said it didn't know.

I asked Gemini. It got my general location and proceeded to give me landmarks around me. Since then, I cleared all data in privacy settings of Microsoft, clear chat history etc of Co-Pilot. Turned location permissions off in Co-Pilot. I then asked the same question. It gave me the same answer. So I asked how did it know. It gave me a statement back saying it is built with privacy in mind and it got my location from timezone? and our chat context and then said let's move on to something else and closed the chat.

My whole country is in the same timezone so that's lies and I never mentioned my location once. Where is it pulling this info? Why isn't it explicit.

Old Microsoft Passwords Never Die — They Just Keep Logging In via RDP.

This sounds like the beginning of a joke, but unfortunately, it’s a real security concern confirmed by Microsoft.

Security researcher Daniel Wade recently discovered a bizarre behavior in Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP): if you connect to a machine using a Microsoft or Azure account, and then change your password (either for security or routine hygiene), your old password still works — even after the change.

Yes, you read that right. Your “retired” password still grants RDP access.

Wade, along with other security professionals like Will Dormann (Analygence), flagged this not just as a bug, but as a serious breach of trust. After all, the whole point of changing a password is to revoke access — not keep it alive in the shadows.

So how does this happen? Turns out, when you authenticate with a Microsoft or Azure account via RDP for the first time, Windows performs an online check and then locally caches encrypted credentials. From that point on, RDP reuses the cached credentials to validate access — even if the password was changed in the cloud. In some cases, multiple old passwords may continue to work, while the new one may not yet propagate immediately.

This mechanism sidesteps:

Cloud authentication checks

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Conditional Access Policies

And Microsoft’s response? The twist: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” According to them, this is a design decision intended to ensure at least one account can always access the machine, even if it’s offline for extended periods. They confirmed the behavior and updated their documentation — but offered no fix, only a vague suggestion to limit RDP to local accounts, which isn’t very helpful for those relying on Azure/Microsoft accounts.

TL;DR: Changing your Microsoft password doesn’t necessarily lock out RDP access with the old one — it lingers, cached and still functional. That “safety feature” might just be a hidden backdoor.

So next time you change your password and think you’re secure… think again.

Microsoft?