About Me

My photo
This is a blog for John Weber. One of my joys in life is helping others get ahead in life. Content here will be focused on that from this date forward. John was a Skype for Business MVP (2015-2018) - before that, a Lync Server MVP (2010-2014). I used to write a variety of articles (https://tsoorad.blogspot.com) on technical issues with a smattering of other interests. I have a variety of certifications dating back to Novell CNE and working up through the Microsoft MCP stack to MCITP multiple times. FWIW, I am on my third career - ex-USMC, retired US Army. I have a fancy MBA. The opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.

2014/02/13

Windows 8.1 Store app with local account

Playing with the Windows App Store and Windows 8.1.  By default, the operating system wants to push you into the cloud.  I am not a fan of that.  I don’t want my stuff being synced to Microsoft so they can share it with whoever they want or dissect my usage patterns or look over my shoulder.  They do enough of that already.

I wanted to download a simple free app.  Yet the default was to convert my Surface Pro 2 to a microsoft online account.  NOT!  I did not run into this before as the 8.1 install was an upgrade from 8.0 – which apparently does not do this so nefariously.

After a bit of searching, I found this blog article that explained how to accomplish what I wanted.  A local login, which uses my live.com account to access the store, but never try to convert my local account to a Microsoft online account with everything syncing to the MSFT cloud.

I understand the push to the cloud, I really do.  But I don’t think I should be gerrymandered into accepting what appears to be an underhanded policy to make the cloud the default.  As a suggestion for Microsoft – if they ever read this and actually think it through – please make the options outlined in the reference blog more visible as options instead of ASSuming that we all want to jump into the cloud and let you own my data and information.

YMMV

No comments:

test 02 Feb

this is a test it’s only a test this should be a picture