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#16
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Frank Slootweg wrote:
And, unless things have changed, you only need *a* Microsoft account, i.e. it does not have to be *your* account, does not have to be 'tied' to the computer in question, etc.. I used this method with a 'rogue' Microsoft account to install a (MS) Store app on SWMBO's laptop. I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... |
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#17
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
VanguardLH wrote:
[...] For someone that has a local/offline Windows account, or converted their Windows online account to a local/offline account, they could try using the Store app to see if this old advice still works to skip having a MS account: - Login into an offline (aka local) account in Windows. - Launch the MS Store app. - Click the SignIn button next to the search icon. - Login into your MS account. - When the "Make it yours" dialog appears, do NOT enter a password. Instead click on "Sign in to just this app instead". I think it's the phrasing of the "Sign in to just this app" that users are likely not to understand. Seems the word "retrieve" or "download" is missing after the word "just". Yes, the phrase is unclear/misleading. To some it might appear that they have to sign into an/the app *itself*, but they only have to sign in *now* to *download/install* the app. N.B. The Dutch version of the phrase is even worse. (Can't translate it without making it worse/better than it is.) "In plaats hiervan bij iedere app afzonderlijk aanmelden (niet aanbevolen)" [...] |
#18
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Andy Burns wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote: And, unless things have changed, you only need *a* Microsoft account, i.e. it does not have to be *your* account, does not have to be 'tied' to the computer in question, etc.. I used this method with a 'rogue' Microsoft account to install a (MS) Store app on SWMBO's laptop. I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... Strange! I just tried and get the "Sign into each app seperately instead (not recommended)" message. Clicking that *does* ask for a Microsoft account. BTW, I'm on Windows 8.1, not 10. |
#19
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Ken Springer wrote:
On 10/9/19 7:33 AM, VanguardLH wrote: Having an MS account is not the same as using a*Windowws* online account linked to your MS account. Are you absolutel *sure* this is still true? I don't have a Win10 home that has a local/offline Windows account defined. I might later convert my online Windows account to offline, but I've not yet had the impetus. Users fear that they could lose their Windows login if MS suspends or kills their MS account due to abuse, like they catch a spammer. The assumption is that you cannot login locally if your MS account has been revoked or suspended. I'd have to look into that, but I doubt that is what would happen. Other than the problem with Task Scheduler to run elevated events under the specified account which won't work with online accounts, I've yet to feel compelled convert my Windows account from an online to offline account. The sync feature did save a bite out of my butt once when I had to do a fresh reinstall of Win10. Well, if YOU have a local/offline Windows account, then YOU could test it pretty easily. I'm thinking about how Google merged all their services so you had only a single login and password for Google. How is that related to a Windows account whether it is a local/offline or MS online account? How do we know MS didn't do the same thing? Yep, MS did the same thing. One login for Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com e-mail, Calendar, Skype, OneNote, OneDrive, and so on. The reason I ask, is years ago, I created a Windows Live account. IIRC, that let me access the MS commumities. But I don't know if that is the same thing as a Microsoft account, these days. I suspect it is, as I just created a new user account in W10. When asked for a Microsoft account, I used that account and password, and eventually was logged in and at the desktop. Yep, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and many other multi-service sites have long had just one login to access all their services. I was forced to create a PIN, but that was OK as the screen said the PIN was stored locally.ss Note, when creating a PIN, most users dislike they cannot use their old password as they can with a local/offline account. PINs are normally restricted as to which characters are allowed; however, there is an option when creating a PIN to allow non-numeric characters, so you can make your new PIN look like your old password. When I entered the MS Store, there was no option to log out/sign out of the store. Because, when you log into Windows with an online account, you're already logged to your MS account or the auth token gets used to get you logged into your online account without user intervention. Even Google's Chrome web browser can do that due to its sync function. If you configure Chrome to sync to your Google account, then you don't have to log into every Google site. You just go there and you're automatically logged in. However, I've found non-Google sites are now adopting Google's authentication method in Chrome which I don't like. eBay, for example, will popup a prompt asking if you want to automatically login thereafter using your Google account. One, I don't want my Google account associated with my eBay account (that's not the e-mail address I used to register at eBay). Two, I hate that distracting popup when I know I'm not going to use a Google auth token to login at eBay. Three, often I visit there to do a search, and only want to login when I want to buy something. In Chrome, I went to chrome://settings/privacy and disable the "All Chrome sign-in" option. Alas, that also means the sync feature becomes disabled which lets me sync my bookmarks across multiple instance of Chrome on different hosts (similar to how Firefox's sync works). I suspect everything is now just one username and password. Per service provider? Perhaps. For Microsoft and Google, yep. I haven't used Yahoo in MANY years, but I suspect they also have just one login to access all their services. Less strain on resources to do a front-end auth validate to allow access than to have every service perform its own auth validate. |
#20
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Andy Burns wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote: And, unless things have changed, you only need *a* Microsoft account, i.e. it does not have to be *your* account, does not have to be 'tied' to the computer in question, etc.. I used this method with a 'rogue' Microsoft account to install a (MS) Store app on SWMBO's laptop. I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... Those exist there? Many "free" apps are just lureware to get you to pay to upgrade to a non-crippled (full) version of the app, or they incorporate ad content to generate their revenue (you can't even pay to upgrade to a non-ad version). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows No filter there to let me pick to view only "free" apps. Oh, I see, there is a "Show all" link next to the "Top Free Apps" section. Yet that takes me to a "Top Free Apps" page, not an "All Free Apps" page. Still no differentiation between ad-supported "free" apps and really free apps. If "Free+" is supposed to represent those apps that are ad supported, it is misleading. The "Free" (no "+" suffix) are not all free. How can you use the Netflix "Free" (no "+" suffix) app without having to pay Netflix for their streaming service? Spotify is one of those pre-installed apps in Win10, it's lureware, so I uninstalled it. It's not free. In fact, at the MS Store for the description of Spotify, it says "Stream Spotify free, with occasional ads, or go Premium." Well, why didn't that have the "Free+" label at the store to denote that it is adware? The definition of "free" has been severely abused for a long time. This is like sites that will mislead that a product is free because the download is free. Yeah, free to get, but not free to use. The app itself is free to download, but not to use it. Just because I can get a disease for free doesn't mean that I want it. |
#21
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Andy Burns wrote: Frank Slootweg wrote: And, unless things have changed, you only need *a* Microsoft account, i.e. it does not have to be *your* account, does not have to be 'tied' to the computer in question, etc.. I used this method with a 'rogue' Microsoft account to install a (MS) Store app on SWMBO's laptop. I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... Strange! I just tried and get the "Sign into each app seperately instead (not recommended)" message. Clicking that *does* ask for a Microsoft account. My experience (in the recent past) was that I could download some apps from the MS store without an MS account while others did require an account. However the thing that made me nervous using a real MS account was that the OS sometimes gave my real info to the apps I was using. For example it filled in my real email address to the Thunderbird app (email side) without my asking and since I was also using Thunderbird for a Usenet newsreader it made me a bit nervous... For Usenet I now use the Chrome OS (Chromebook) running an Android Windows emulator app (Crossover) that is running a Windows app (SeaMonkey). That ought to fool em... :-/ |
#22
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
VanguardLH wrote:
Andy Burns wrote: I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... Those exist there? Many "free" apps are just lureware Typically scanner apps for multifunction devices, they're not very good, but often not available any other way ... |
#23
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Andy Burns wrote: Frank Slootweg wrote: And, unless things have changed, you only need *a* Microsoft account, i.e. it does not have to be *your* account, does not have to be 'tied' to the computer in question, etc.. I used this method with a 'rogue' Microsoft account to install a (MS) Store app on SWMBO's laptop. I find I don't need any microsoft account to install free apps from the MS store ... Strange! I just tried and get the "Sign into each app seperately instead (not recommended)" message. Clicking that *does* ask for a Microsoft account. BTW, I'm on Windows 8.1, not 10. Yes, you do need a Microsoft account to get the apps from the Microsoft Store using that scheme (I don't how the others are getting apps without a login). That wasn't the issue, which was do you need a Windows online account (sync'ed to your MS account) to use Store apps rather than use a local/offline Windows account (not sync'ed to a MS account). You can use a Windows local/offline account to get and use MS Store apps. That does obviate you from having to login at their web site. Having a Windows online account (sync'ed to an MS account) eliminates having to login. For many, having to login is not a big inconvenience. |
#24
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
On 10/9/19 6:43 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote: VanguardLH wrote: Anyone can get your birthdate using your name, and your name isn't secret. But should not, unless you are law enforcement with a valid court warrant. You think the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) is a law enforcement agency so they can show the birthdates of everyone listed there? In the US, and many other countries, a person's date of birth and residence is considered public record. Companies do background checks all the time, and they aren't getting court ordered record checks. I know one guy that got ****ed at me when I contacted him regarding a problem with his grocery store (privately own). I looked him up using the county's property tax web site. Put in an address, voila, I find the owner. Odd he should think running a public business would keep ownership of the store or property a secret. We are talking at cross purposes. I am saying what should be the case and you are telling me the sad reality of the actual case. |
#25
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
123456789 wrote:
[...] My experience (in the recent past) was that I could download some apps from the MS store without an MS account while others did require an account. However the thing that made me nervous using a real MS account was that the OS sometimes gave my real info to the apps I was using. For example it filled in my real email address to the Thunderbird app (email side) without my asking and since I was also using Thunderbird for a Usenet newsreader it made me a bit nervous... I think, with Microsoft, you have good reasons to feel nervous! Somewhat related recent experience: I 'needed' (Don't ask!) to try the Windows 'Mail' *app*. Before I could do anything, i.e. not even configure it, it asked for a Microsoft account, so I gave it my 'rogue' account and then I could select which kind of Mail account I wanted to set up ('Add your email accounts': Outlook.com, Exchange, AOL, 'View all in settings'). After finding out what utterly useless POS ("Duh, Frank!") the 'Mail' app is, I deleted everything, but did not see any way to *logout* from my Microsoft account. And lo and behold, if I now start the 'Mail' app, it does *not* ask for an Microsoft account and goes directly to the 'Add your email accounts' screen. So my 'login' did stick and that fact must be recorded somewhere. OTOH, the (Microsoft) 'Store' still asks for an account, so I'm not *totally* assimilated (yet?)! :-) For Usenet I now use the Chrome OS (Chromebook) running an Android Windows emulator app (Crossover) that is running a Windows app (SeaMonkey). That ought to fool em... :-/ Very sound approach! I use 'tin', a CUI (Character/Console UI) newsreader of Unix origin, running under Cygwin, a Linux-like environment on (MS) Windows. All my directories - oops, folders - are in hierarchies which Microsoft (hopefully) has never heard of, so I guess I'm reasonably safe. Anyway, if someone searches on my name, they'll probably find someone who is *not* me, so ... :-) |
#26
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
On 10/10/19 9:48 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: On 10/9/19 7:33 AM, VanguardLH wrote: Having an MS account is not the same as using a*Windowws* online account linked to your MS account. Are you absolutel *sure* this is still true? I don't have a Win10 home that has a local/offline Windows account defined. I might later convert my online Windows account to offline, but I've not yet had the impetus. My 2 W10 installs are Pro. Users fear that they could lose their Windows login if MS suspends or kills their MS account due to abuse, like they catch a spammer. The assumption is that you cannot login locally if your MS account has been revoked or suspended. I'd have to look into that, but I doubt that is what would happen. That just doesn't even make sense, to me. As you know, I use a Mac 95% of the time, and I sign in with a local account. I don't have iCloud and App Store access unless I choose to log in to those services. Never have done that with iCloud. Or, for One Drive either. Other than the problem with Task Scheduler to run elevated events under the specified account which won't work with online accounts, I've yet to feel compelled convert my Windows account from an online to offline account. The sync feature did save a bite out of my butt once when I had to do a fresh reinstall of Win10. Well, if YOU have a local/offline Windows account, then YOU could test it pretty easily. Then, a very basic question, how do I tell if my account is an MS Account, or an MS Online Account? I'm thinking about how Google merged all their services so you had only a single login and password for Google. How is that related to a Windows account whether it is a local/offline or MS online account? Could MS have taken both types of account and merged them into a single MS account, not just an online account. How do we know MS didn't do the same thing? Yep, MS did the same thing. One login for Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com e-mail, Calendar, Skype, OneNote, OneDrive, and so on. The reason I ask, is years ago, I created a Windows Live account. IIRC, that let me access the MS commumities. But I don't know if that is the same thing as a Microsoft account, these days. I suspect it is, as I just created a new user account in W10. When asked for a Microsoft account, I used that account and password, and eventually was logged in and at the desktop. Yep, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and many other multi-service sites have long had just one login to access all their services. Which relates to my question above, could there be no difference,now, between and MS Acccount and an Online account? I was forced to create a PIN, but that was OK as the screen said the PIN was stored locally.ss Note, when creating a PIN, most users dislike they cannot use their old password as they can with a local/offline account. PINs are normally restricted as to which characters are allowed; however, there is an option when creating a PIN to allow non-numeric characters, so you can make your new PIN look like your old password. I saw that. When I entered the MS Store, there was no option to log out/sign out of the store. Because, when you log into Windows with an online account, you're already logged to your MS account or the auth token gets used to get you logged into your online account without user intervention. Even Google's Chrome web browser can do that due to its sync function. If you configure Chrome to sync to your Google account, then you don't have to log into every Google site. You just go there and you're automatically logged in. However, I've found non-Google sites are now adopting Google's authentication method in Chrome which I don't like. eBay, for example, will popup a prompt asking if you want to automatically login thereafter using your Google account. One, I don't want my Google account associated with my eBay account (that's not the e-mail address I used to register at eBay). Two, I hate that distracting popup when I know I'm not going to use a Google auth token to login at eBay. Three, often I visit there to do a search, and only want to login when I want to buy something. In Chrome, I went to chrome://settings/privacy and disable the "All Chrome sign-in" option. Alas, that also means the sync feature becomes disabled which lets me sync my bookmarks across multiple instance of Chrome on different hosts (similar to how Firefox's sync works). I see the login with Google and Facebook all the time. Like you, I silently flip them the bird by not doing that. I also do not use Chrome other than to help someone with using Chrome. I suspect everything is now just one username and password. Per service provider? Perhaps. For Microsoft and Google, yep. I haven't used Yahoo in MANY years, but I suspect they also have just one login to access all their services. Less strain on resources to do a front-end auth validate to allow access than to have every service perform its own auth validate. -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#27
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soapbox: offline accounts and speed
Ken Springer wrote:
Then, a very basic question, how do I tell if my account is an MS Account, or an MS Online Account? An MS account is a record of your accessibililty for their services. That is something online whether you use a Windows online or local/offline account, or a Mac, or Linux, or whatever OS to web connect to their servers. A Windows 10 online account is /synchronized/ to an MS account. Alas, there are some problems with an online account, like login credentials for some local processes (I mentioned the GUI frontend to Task Scheduler). It is unfortunate that Microsoft confused accounts types by calling them offline versus online. You're online in either case. Remember when they were called local or domain accounts? You were still using a local Windows account but authentication was either local from the SAM database or came from the PDC (Primary Domain Controller). Even with you normally using a domain account (which was still a local account), you could instead login using a local account. In fact, in QA, when we did our own builds for workstations, we knew what was the password for the local Administrator account (but didn't for the domain Administrator account because that wasn't for us to control). Now that the company leases the workstations, it takes being very pushy and going through managers to get the IT folks to dole out the password for the local Administrator account. Used to be you called your local account a local account (you used the local SAM database to authenticate your login credentials) or a domain account (you connected to a PDF to authenticate your login credentials). Nowadays a local account is a local or domain account or an online account that is still a local account that synchronizes to your online account. That's like the confusion over apps and programs, where apps are the newer UWP/WinRT (Universal Windows Program/Windows RunTime) "app" or the older Win32 program (uses the Win32 runtime). It sounds stupid, but you have to say "app" nowadays to mean a UWP program and "program" to mean the legacy Win32 program. If you have any history with Windows before version 8, app[lication] was just another name for program. To see if your Windows account is an offline or online accounts, just go into your user account info (search on "your account" in the taskbar searchbox). Under the Your Info group, see if a Microsoft e-mail address is specified for your ID or if just a username is specified. If a Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com e-mail address is listed, your local Windows account is [trying to] syncrhonize to your MS account (which is obviously on MS' servers). Could MS have taken both types of account and merged them into a single MS account, not just an online account. Regardless if being called a local, domain, online, or offline account, the account is still local in that it is still defined in the SAM database that is local in the instance of Windows you are running. The authentication can be local, from a PDC, or from an MS server (but really only for the sync functions). All "online" means is you have a locally defined Windows account in its SAM database that has linkages to your MS account up on Microsoft's servers. A "Microsoft Account" (defined locally in your instance of Windows) used to be called a "Windows Live ID". That is, Windows Live ID got renamed back in 2012 to Microsoft Account. It started out as having an ID that granted access to multiple online services using a single cached sign-on. Now it attempts to link your local Windows-defined account to your online account. A local account defined in your instance of Windows is linked to the MS service, so the local account's credentials is used for the single sign-on. Here, again, is Microsoft confusing things by calling the local account as "Microsoft Account" while you also have an online Microsoft account no matter how you might access it (from Windows, Mac, Linux). If you're old enough to remember how it was several decades ago, we used to have dumb workstations (basically a monitor and keyboard) at our desks which connected to a server after authenticating we had an account up there. It was called the client-server configuration: dumb workstation authenticatng to a server to access the server's resources. Then smart workstations came along followed by more powerful ones that became PCs (personal computers) where the OS ran on the workstation and where authentication was locally validated and where you had memory, drives for local storage, and ever more powerful CPUs. Then the "cloud" came along which primary started out as storage but has not evolved into providing lots of servers, just like back when we used client-server configs. Microsoft is furthing that regression to dumb workstations having the servers do all the work by trying to get us to move back to the client-server config. The dumbest of devices can now be a "computer" but won't do much without a server. Local Windows account: Windows SAM database authenticates your login. Your local Windows account is independent of any other Windows account on another host. There is no synchronization of setup. Domain Windows account: Login authentication comes from a PDC server. Your account, its profile, and storage (within the profile) are synchronized to the server copy of your account. That allows you to roam: wander to another workstation, login, and you get access to your same settings and docs as on the other host. Offline account: Same as the local Windows account. Online account: A bit similar to a domain account but not nearly as much synchronized between your local profile and your online MS account. Incorporation of OneDrive which attempts to usurp your Documents folder extends having the storage up on the server, like with a domain profile. An Online account is still local account by linked to your online MS account. This is similar to the old Windows Live ID, but has moved into the local OS for management. An online aka Microsoft Account is still a locally defined Windows account in the SAM database. Microsoft Account: Another name for a local online account. Microsoft account (little "a"): Your online account with Microsoft. Keeping terminology succint and clear is not Microsoft's forte. Never had been. The reason you can convert a local "Microsoft Account" (aka online account) to a local account (aka offline account) is that both are still a local account defined in the SAM database in your local instance of Windows. That one incorporates single sign-on and sync doesn't alter that it is still a local account. Microsoft just wanted some way to differentiate between a local account that is unique to one instance of Windows with no sync from a local account that adds single sign-on and sync features where settings and data can be shared between hosts within an intranet or across the Internet (similar to roaming profiles for domains). Since you're familiar with the old Windows Live ID where you had an e-mail address and password for access to online services (previously called Passport), just think of Microsoft renaming it to Microsoft Account (but adding synchronization features between your local Windows instance and your online Microsoft account). Both offer single sign-on. One was just an ID you used to access online resources. The latter is incorporated into the to do grant the same single sign-on for the online resources. By involving OneDrive (the local sync client) and the OneDrive server (for online file storage), it's a bit of a cheap knockoff of the domain scheme where your profile and its files were stored up on the server. Rare few non-business users had more than once PC where one could run as the PDC, but then that scheme is usable only within your own network and not across the Internet to keep multiple Win10 hosts sync'ed to each other as though there were in a domain. With a local Windows account, you login using credentials stored in the local SAM database. Your profile remains local. No sync elsewhere. With a domain Windows account, you login using the credentials stored on the PDC server. You still get a local profile with a domain account. Your profile is sync'ed to the one online at the PDC, so you can roam and have your profile at other workstations that use the same PDC. With a "Microsoft Account" (aka online) Windows account, you facilite the single-sigon convenience (that you got with Windows Live ID), where those credentials are stored in the local SAM database (or it might be the local credentials management), and your profile's folders gets sync'ed to your online MS account (unless you change OneDrive's config), so it's a frankenjob between Windows Live ID and the domain scheme. Microsoft want's to generate revenue from their OneDrive service hence why the default config for the local OneDrive client is to sync your profile folders to your online OneDrive drive. OneDrive comes with a measly 5GB storage quota. Google Drive comes with an initial 15GB storage quota (unlimited for photos if you let them resize them). After several years of having a Google Drive account, they've upped my quota to 115GB without me paying anything. My OneDrive account is still at the 25GB quota that it had when it got grandfathered by Microsoft when they reduced the initial quota from 25GB down to 5GB. Without paying for more storage, I have a lot more at Google Drive than OneDrive. Microsoft want users to move to the client-server scheme where your local files end up sync'ed (and only available thereafter unless otherwised configured) to their cloud storage service. 5GB doesn't give you much for file storage, so you have to be careful what you store in your profile's folders (aka special folders), like Documents; else, configure OneDrive to not sync some or any of the special folders, or keep most of your data files somewhere else. Microsoft gives you a 1TB storage quota at OneDrive if you subscribe to their Office 365 product; else you only get 5GB. If the files you leave in your profile folders that are sync'ed by OneDrive have sensitive info inside of them, make sure you encrypt them. Don't rely on your MS account login to protect those files from snooping, even if you use a strong password. |
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