That’s just not true to my personal experience with over 200 devices from Dell and Lenovo. Especially concerning the not connecting to internet. That is literally the only step you need to take if the OEM install wants to force a MS account to be able to install local accounts. “Nearly impossible” is absolute hyperbole and you know it.

Listen, I get that Lemmy has a rather unproportionally large user base of Linux users. I like Linux for what it is, I really do. But if you think the job would have been easier by handing users who couldn’t operate Windows a Linux laptop you’re lost in the sauce. And honestly if you think ChromeOS isn’t used in professional settings then you really have no business attempting to suggest a ChromeOS alternative for what is usually the largest Tech Departments, in terms of number of end users, in the majority of Cities and Counties across the U.S.

Unfortunately there isn’t an alternative unless you live in a swanky community with a school system that has money thrown at it.

The problem, at this point, is mostly inertial. Google was poised at the right time. Surface SEs are a thing now, but how do you pivot a system that has 5000+ Chromebooks to SEs? Why should you if there is overwhelming support for what you have?

People who use Chromebooks are also really slow and aren’t technically savvy at all.

I don’t see how you can support that statement at all. It’s not like I didn’t work tickets for student devices, it just so happens that the overwhelming majority of my tickets that weren’t physically damaged Chromebooks were to support faculty devices, which were all Windows.

Why would absolutely anyone on this sub install Home? Microsoft themselves make a multi-edition .iso available on their website. And funnily enough now, Microsoft supports the hosting of massgravel. Should it take as many steps as it does two make a local account? No, but it’s literally two extra clicks.

It’s literally two clicks to make a local account instead.

Very much doesn’t my guy.

Loved his book Ghost in the Wires. Sad day in the computing world.

Imagine if you rounded up all the hateful, power hungry, bigoted misanthropes from the Warez forums of old and combined them into one. That’s Empress.

Imagine the absolute reckoning if someone managed to touch her with a blade of grass. The singularity would reverse the big bang.

Between Minisforum and Beelink putting out NUC-likes with AMD, Intel just can’t compete. I’m biased in favor of team red to begin with, but you just cannot tell me an Intel NUC provides better per dollar value than the above’s offerings. I’ve used NUCs, I like NUCs, but why pay more for less when there exist alternatives?