You can pay a similar amount to what your company pays for similar numbers of licenses across many OS's. Last I checked it was about ~500 USD a year. Sure, that's excessive for a single OS install, but if your company is footing the bill they usually don't care if you install on personal machines.
That's a pretty big understatement to be honest. I don't use Windows anymore, but I still occasionally set up Windows for other people and there's so many annoyances that it's difficult to even enumerate all of them.
Off the top of my head:
- MSEdgeRedirect to stop Windows from opening Edge even when it's not your defualt browser.
- Shutup10++ to quickly disable a bunch of crapware/unwanted features. (Some of these break things, too, so there is literally no way to make things "perfect".)
- Have to remove a horde of advertising-ridden crapware too. Groove Music, Maps, etc.
- Stopping the start menu from sending everything you type to Bing seems to be hard, too. I'm pretty sure there are multiple group policy items that sound like they would impact this, but I never seem to get the right one first try. It's kind of hard to find on Google too because it changes.
- I do not know what the current best way to get Windows to stop trying to wake up computers for Windows Update at random hours (and often failing to do so.) I think there is a group policy option, but I think there's also a power options configuration (also in the registry obviously) that you need to change to maximally disable wakelocks. This one isn't necessarily Windows 11 specific, but it seems to have gotten worse over time.
- A number of things are really hard to change: There are third party mods for the start menu and task bar, but they are not perfect at all; hacks that load the actual old start menu and task bar are limited and break with updates, unsurprisingly. You need to patch DWM to remove the window rounding behavior.
And honestly, that still doesn't duplicate Windows 7 for me, and worse, the further you stray away the more likely things are to break during updates. The best I've found is Windows 10 LTSC but 1. I don't think consumers can legally license it (lol) 2. It doesn't work with a lot of software, e.g. Creative Suite has stopped supporting it I believe. So this solution sounds good on paper but it's also not always applicable.
Lest you think paying extra for Windows 11 Pro for Workstations, just don't. It's nearly as heavy in crapware last I checked. It's kind of unbelievable that they still do that pre-installed app crap even if you pay them over $300 for the OS as if I fucking want it, but that's modern software for you. They literally won't sell you what you want at any price.
(I also strongly believe that you should try to install Windows Firewall Control or some similar firewall before allowing the machine to reach the Internet. There's an amazing amount of non-sense that gets sent to the Internet regardless of whether you consent to it. Not sure that all of it is actually a huge privacy concern, but I don't really care anymore; at this point it's out of spite.)
I'm a screen reader user, and I would regularly unplug my headphones when not using the computer, especially if it was stored in a bag. Of course, that meant everybody around me could hear my screen reader when Windows decided to do its thing. This woke me up at night multiple times and disrupted a few activities I was a part of. There was nothing to be done.
The trouble is keeping it up to date between Windows updates because they auto-install the bloatware.
Just run the script again after a major update. Only takes a minute. And don't let Windows update automatically. I have used this script and it works well.
Also found this in the other comments https://atlasos.net
Another big problem with a lot of these things is you run them, then later Photoshop or Winget or VS isn't working suddenly and you have to try to figure out what service or component needs to be re-enabled. At one point I just re-installed over this...
MS needs to make a profit on Windows. Apple can give away MacOS for free and make up the costs on hardware margins.
Windows can make money by charging consumers, by licensing to OEMs, by upselling other MS products, or by selling ads & content.
The only way MS will stop ads would be if consumers pay for Windows directly.
You’re right about the hassle of doing it manually, and I wish there were a global “Windows 2k mode” that ran the OS as lean as possible.