Elon Musk thought so – and wasn’t happy about it
Question of the Fortnight
If you want your complaint about Microsoft to get noticed, it helps to be the richest person in the world and to have 174 million followers on X (formerly Twitter). It doesn’t harm your chances if you also happen to own X and have a reputation for making impulsive statements that trigger debate.
Welcome to the world of Elon Musk, where life is never dull - even when he’s trying something as mundane as setting up a new Windows 11 laptop.
The story began on 25 February when Musk posted on X that he was unable to use his new laptop without creating a Microsoft account, which also meant “giving their AI access to my computer” (www.snipca.com/49545).
His message, read by 93 million people, slammed this restriction as “messed up” and that it wasn’t “cool” of Microsoft. Plenty of people agreed: he received 40,000 replies and 220,000 ‘likes’.
It turns out that Musk was wrong – you can use your laptop without a Microsoft account. But we don’t blame him for getting confused, because Microsoft makes it far from easy.
First, let’s explain the difference between a Microsoft and a local account. The former is an online account, letting you use Microsoft’s online services, including OneDrive, Outlook.com and Skype. It also lets you synchronise your settings and preferences across different Windows devices.
By contrast, a local account is offline, and works only on the computer you create it on. Many people prefer this because it stores the password on your computer (not online) and you don’t send any personal data to Microsoft. The company can use this to monitor what you do both inside and outside Windows in order to show you targeted adverts. You don’t have to be as important, powerful or paranoid as Musk to want to keep your data private.
What Musk didn’t realise is that his laptop had automatically connected to his local Wi-Fi network without password access. This prevented him from skipping the option to sign up with a Microsoft account.
He also hadn’t learnt the trick for disconnecting from the internet in order to set up locally. So, for the benefit of tech billionaires everywhere, here’s what he should’ve done.
Follow the Windows 11 installation process until you
