Paul Thurrott (134:58)
New line minimum $100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence data 1H 2025 visit t mobile.com so last week the big controversy was that Microsoft had was in the process of removing some of the more common workarounds to installing Windows 11 with the local account. And look, I've made this argument for years, I mean for most people, and I mean like 99% of people like signing in with an online account, whether it's a Microsoft account or a Microsoft Word or school account is the right choice. It's the right thing to do for all kinds of reasons. But I get it. I know people want this, but I got ripped to shreds on my own site from people. Everyone has their little use case, whatever. I get it. Okay, fine. Thing is, you knew this was never really going away, right? There were always going to be other workarounds. And yeah, I identified I think seven of them and then documented two because how many do you need? Right? And the two I documented are the two that work are two of the ones that work in both home and pro and presumably other Windows 11 versions. Right? So one of the famous workarounds that actually still exists today is the domain workaround where you choose the work or school thing and Then you're like, just kidding, I don't have an account. And it's like, oh, you can make a local account that still works, but you need to have Pro, right? And so I can't read this out loud. One of them literally is a command line for adding a Registry key that is literally adding back the old bypass in a row workaround that existed up until two seconds ago. But the short version is, in both cases, you start Windows setup. So that white screen comes up. Maybe it's a new computer, maybe you reset it. Shift F10 to bring up a command line in one case, and then a couple of commands and then you reboot and it goes. There's actually one that's. It's a JavaScript console that appears as an overlay over the thing. It's kind of interesting. This is actually the shorter one, and it doesn't require you to reboot, which is kind of nice. And same thing, just. You just do an offline install. So it just works. So, yep, all that. All that anger and noise over nothing. But, you know, like I said, I feel like we have kind of an unspoken contract with Microsoft. Like, as power users with whatever needs we have, we sort of respect the fact that what we're doing is a little unusual. It's not what most people need or want. But Microsoft will always give us these workarounds or at least allow them to exist. So they still are. There are many of them. Right. So, but anyway, I've documented too. So you want to see that it's up on the site. You can go see it. It's not hard, people. You know, it's just. I don't know what that was all about. Last week I mentioned, because Microsoft announced it, that there was a new OneDrive app coming for Windows. And they said it's coming next year. And I was like, okay, that's curious, because at the time before the announcement, this had leaked and I had downloaded the new version of the app. But it was just like the OneDrive experience that you get in Windows through the taskbar, etc. I didn't see an app, but as it turns out, this app is probably on your computer right now. So if you go into your. There's actually a couple ways to find it, but the easiest one is just to navigate into your user account. And then this is hidden. So you append the app data single word folder, and then from there it's local. I'm just doing it now, as I say this in Microsoft and then OneDrive and then in there you will see OneDrive EXE, which is the OneDrive experience of this that's built into the operating system. But there's a second app there called OneDrive App EXE and that's the new OneDrive App. So you can actually experience it right now. It's basically a front end to the new OneDrive site actually. But it's pretty. And if you. The file experience is terrible and pointless, but the photo experience is actually really nice and that's the reason they're doing it. If you don't see it there, I've also been told, actually let me look on this computer, see if I see it here. You can also just go into Program files and then OneDrive should be. No, maybe let me just look on this one. It was x86. Yeah, I don't see it in here somewhere. I'm just. Oh, maybe it's under Microsoft. One more time, sorry, Microsoft. Yeah, I don't actually see it on this computer, but some people are saying they see it in somewhere in one of the folded driver, sorry, program files subfolders. OneDrive is in there somewhere. You can see it there as well. So it's probably on your computer right now. Like if you want to experience it, go get it. It's not like a beta thing. It's not in the preview. It's just stable Windows 11, it's just there. They just kind of quietly threw it in there. And tied to this, by the way, is a pop up I saw in Phone Link. In fact, let me see if it appears in this computer. Where. No, I haven't connected this yet, but when you have a phone connected through Phone Link, you'll see a bar at the top. Maybe it's when you go into Photos, but at some point you'll see a bar that says they're actually going to get rid of that experience. Like they might be getting rid of any photos interface inside Phone Link and they'll to put it in that app instead. Right. And so the current situation is we have this kind of weird thing. I don't know, I don't know why they did this exactly, but there's a gallery view in File Explorer which just mirrors the way that the Photos app displays your photos. But if you go into the Photos view, one of the things you can do is see your phone photos, obviously. I mean, and it works with an iPhone too. So if you have an iPhone, you don't see photos in the Phone Link app. So maybe this is a way to make this more consistent. But I think in the future, it's going to all go through this new photo OneDrive app. So that seems to be the progression there. And this doesn't impact too, too many people. But DIA is now broadly available for anyone, including those people who don't have, like, early access or whatever. But it's Mac only, so someday we'll have it on Windows. But for now, I would look at Comet and Neon, you know, as the.
