Costs money.

So does Windows itself.

If you're afraid to or don't want to pay for software then you should probably use some variant of GNU/Linux instead.

That's the whole argument. This should not need to be "fixed" by a third party tool, it should just be part of the system that was already paid for! (It was even included all the way up to 10 so clearly there was no technical reason to not have it anymore)

Frankly this mindset is ludicrous to me and yet I see this with MacOS users too who happily pay for third party solutions to first-party breakage on stuff you already paid for. Somehow the more you spend the less customizable software is and the even more you have to spend to work around dumb choices.

Of course not, it should not have been changed in such a way that required a third party utility. It's one of the reasons I'm still using Windows 10 and have taken steps to make sure my computers don't automatically "upgrade" to Windows 11.

I'm going against the mindset of not paying for software in general, no matter how useful it is to you.

I think the problem is the contract behind what you're getting for the software.

For me personally, I'm more than happy to pay for software if it's clear the developer has _my_ interests in mind when building it (think IDEs, CAD software, even stuff like Office or the Adobe suite). I'm also OK with using software that's free and dealing with dark patterns (shareware, online tools) or bugs (open source stuff).

But paid software that somehow still tries to bilk me for even more money? (See all of the ads that have been built into Windows these days, or various Android phones and bloat) I will be more than happy to go out of my way to crack and get out of paying for it, for nothing but to spite developers of such things. You can't have your cake and eat it too!

Windows is free (as in beer), if you can live with the minor nags, minor lack of customisation and watermarking.

> Windows doesn't cost money because I pirate it.

I think the parent was assuming only legal options.

If that's not a constraint, then food, cars, etc. are also free.

Where I live it's not illegal to pirate software for personal use.

Also, taking someone's car or food deprives them of them. Making a copy of Windows doesn't make it impossible for Microsoft to keep selling it.

I guess I was confused by the word "pirate".

I only use it to mean illegal copying.

Windows doesn't cost money because I pirate it. I could pirate this program as well but it's probably going to be harder to find a clean, recent version of it.

How dare people charge money as compensation for their time! Can't they just live off sunlight like everyone else?!?!

FWIW, @vasqc clarified in a sibling comment that his use case is legal in his country.

I think his use of the term "pirate" was confusing.

I don't care what the law says; the law says nothing about morality. If someone puts a piece of software on the internet and asks a reasonable price in return then you should just pay, and bypassing that is "piracy" and immoral. This isn't Microsoft Windows that you're forced to use due to their predatory (and illegal) business practices – which are mostly a thing of the past, but still has large effects today – by which Microsoft "earned" an ungodly sum of money.

I‘d pay a 100 times that amount to get a new Windows with consistent classic UI (e.g. Windows 2000 style).

the only reason i use it is to get vertical task bar. if MS added back the vertical taskbar option I'd be completely ok with win11 taskbar UI.

ExplorerPatcher [1] exists also

[1] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher