[LINK] Of Walled Gardens and Their Dangers

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

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: brd at iimetro.com.au
web:   www.drbrd.com
web:   www.problemsfirst.com
Blog:  www.problemsfirst.com/blog