On 1/11/2013 2:19 PM, Frank O'Connor wrote: > The lessons are: > 1. Avoid 'walled gardens' - no matter how convenient, ostensibly useful and > comfortable they are.
I recently upgraded my Win8 tablet to Win8.1 and nearly got trapped in Microsoft's Walled garden. The upgrade seems to insist on a Microsoft Account which I foolishly set up, thinking there was no alternative. When the system had finished, I discovered that my tablet was attached to Microsoft's cloud by an umbilical cord. The system had manged to get me to change my account name and password, which was now stored in the cloud. Changing my password meant logging onto Microsoft first. Not my idea of a good idea. It would seem that Microsoft wants to keep all your data in the cloud so you can get at it from any device. IMHO, making data easier for me to get at means that it is also easier for others to get at. I won't bore you with the details but I managed to free myself from the cloud and re-establish the tablet as a stand alone device with the original account name and password and with all installed applications working OK. It took some effort and cunning and taught me to be very careful in future. My advice to anyone thinking of upgrading to Win8.1 is to get onto the web and research before doing so. There are ways to avoid falling into Microsoft's cloud trap and I wish I'd done my homework first. -- Regards brd Bernard Robertson-Dunn Sydney Australia email: [email protected] web: www.drbrd.com web: www.problemsfirst.com Blog: www.problemsfirst.com/blog _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
