That’s nice. But it won’t keep me on Windows. I’m only using it in an airgapped environment for work development with IDEs that aren’t available anywhere else. Not for anything else. Never for anything else.
This will be handy for those couple of Windows-only applications I have that need an Internet connection and don’t yet work under Wine. Gives me a bit more time to try to debug them and see if a fix is possible.
Something doesn’t quite add up for me, though, with the “free” option of “Use Windows Backup to sync your settings to the cloud” or a $30 payment instead. Is Microsoft really that keen to get everyone’s settings, or is this an error in the press release and what they really want is everyone to use Windows Backup to transfer all their files to Microsoft’s cloud (OneDrive) in preparation for Windows 11?
Giving them your settings provides them (and anyone they sell it to) with more insight about you and how you use their software. This is valuable data and it kind of drives me crazy that articles refer to this as a free option. It isn’t free. It’s Microsoft pricing something low enough to get sales from middle of the road people, while being high enough that a lot of users opt into the backup option. It’s a poorly veiled attempt to extract more of you for their training, their ad sales, or their targeted sales.
