Ugh I never looked in the top right corner of outlook till today.....there it is, that piece of shit. Why would I need a goddamn summary of an email I'm already reading
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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This side pane will provide 'contextual insights and actionable suggestions', but I'm betting the idea won't be well received
I know what it is, it's the 'summarise page for me' feature. That nobody uses as much as they want. That's why they're forcing it. We need a private email service / frontend / program, i feel like this is going to their servers without oversight. I don't know.
Despite the big AI backlash that started late last year, Microsoft clearly isn't downing AI tools – but did we think it would? No, of course not, as AI agents are the next-big-thing (TM) in Windows 11, and there's no getting around that
So is everything. Just say "install linux now" I guess. Samsung is going 'agentic' AI. On our phones. No privacy, even. Apple enabled the age verification at an os level, besides i also hate how file transfering protocols work on iphones.
This isn't even my phone anymore because AI must access everything. No, no and no.
"People hate it when we force copilot and AI stuff on them, what should we do? Folks hate it so much they're actively leaving our OS!"
"Okay, hear me out: Add more."
I used Edge for business tasks. Not like work task, or normal browsing, etc. But figured if someone was going to send me an excel document, if I say “well I opened it in edge" when it breaks, it avoids some problems.
But with the latest updates they've really been "Microsofting" it hardcore. Chrome dialogs with broken buttons, impossible to use combined tabs behaviour, dead end settings pages with no controls, crashes, slower and slower browsing...
It's becoming such a disaster I can't even use it for that anymore. Now this? Thank god Firefox is still around. Legit hearing people talking about it again...
its on people if they are still using EDGE.
It is sadly becoming the standard in business settings. If your IT department is setting Edge as standard, there is not a lot that you can do
My company laptop had both Edge and Chrome installed the first time I started it. Edge is the default and the one with an icon on the taskbar. I'm convinced that most people, at least outside engineering, will use Edge as their main browser.
Luckily for me I have the "Local admin" access so the first thing I do is to download Firefox and set it up as my default browser. On the time reporting site I get warnings that my browser is not Chrome, but it still works without any problems.
My place of work didn't block Chrome or Firefox but they are making it difficult to use.
They literally just wiped the Saved Passwords and Bookmarks off our PCs because...???
Didn't touch Edge, the "supported" browser.
Meh, Edge is no worse than Chrome at this point (because it's chromium now)... Which is still mediocre, but it's not horrible
How is it not twice as bad?
You get all the telemetry of Google and then Microsoft shenanigans.
The company I work for makes us. We have chrome but they're constantly threatening to remove it and if you have a technical issue with something web based and you're not using edge IT won't help you.
Why? Some people like living on the edge.
Who is making these decisions and what is their come to blood ratio, because I'm reckoning it's fairly high.
At this point I believe Microsoft pays the likes of Adobe to not make Linux versions of their software. Strange how MacOS has Microsoft office despite being them being the biggest competitor for their OS. It’s just that MacOS runs only on expensive MacBooks. Microsoft might have thought even if Macs get better than Windows in every aspect, people, businesses, schools and governments still won’t but them as they are too expensive.
But that’s not the case with Linux. Linux is pretty much better than Windows in almost every aspect. The only limiting factor is software support. And most people just use their computers for browsing the web and making spreadsheets and word docs — Microsoft office is the default here. If Microsoft Office were on Linux, Microsoft would have the potential to lose about half of their OS market share just because managers/CEOs will push it to save costs. Which will have a cascading effect — leading others like Adobe to make their creative suites available on Linux.
So Microsoft’s only card at play here is holding off Microsoft Office from Linux users as long as possible.
I see more and more open office style docs, and also pdfs.
Microsoft is currently pushing everyone to use office on the cloud, so they kinda are making office work on Linux (in a web browser).
Outlook running natively on windows is currently being phased out, Of course the cloud services version of outlook sucks eve more than the native version, and that's saying something. It looks like it's just hotmail to me. But that's what they're pushing everyone to. I wouldn't be surprised if the start phasing out other office products running natively in the coming years. Office already does everything it can to save files to one drive.
Cloud services are making them money, so much like how they're putting AI into everything, they also seem to want to put everything on the cloud because.... more cloud money! After all you can't just continue to use the older version of excel installed on your computer when excel exists in the cloud. You'll have to pay a subscription to continue using their software because it lives in the cloud.
Yeah your strategy would make sense if Microsoft were still the machiavellian schemers they used to be. But now they just seem to be chasing after money in the short term in whatever looks to be growing (cloud services and AI) with no real long term strategy at all. And they really really want people to pay a subscription to use their software. But in their greed they just might kill their Windows business.
Ig then maybe they have just accepted that everyone will jump the OS ship sooner or later, so they are just trying to lock people in their ecosystem? That's why they make us create a Microsoft account on Windows, the sudden "We Love Linux" moto, making Cloud your dependency stuff.
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
Windows users, I hope you guys know that you have our support in these trying times. I'm wearing a ribbon and everything.
Microsoft only beats you because they love you
The only thing Edge is good for is downloading literally any other browser…
We wouldn‘t even need it for that if their Windows store versions of browsers weren‘t so terrible.
It also has a good use of being the toilet of browsers. As in, if you ever are required to temporarily install some pervasive plugin or extension to take a proctored exam or something, Edge is good to use because you know you won't use the that browser for anything you care about and you can protect good browsers from those garbage plugins.
That's what I have an entire laptop for. I call it the Dust Collector. It's sole purpose is to collect dust and maybe once or twice a year be ready for a proctored exam. It's not even allowed on my home network.
Better to use winget, though. That way you don't even need to bother with Edge's initial setup screens.
Better to use apt-get though. That way you don't even need to bother with the dumpster fire that is Windows 11.
Better to build from source, that way you don't have to deal with the snap versions of the program
Gentoo user: "Of course we build from source! (What are snaps?)"
As Ftumch said, winget is really the way to go these days. No browser, just:
Terminal > winget install mozilla.firefox > Done.
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This experience helps users quickly understand content
They really think we're stupid. Unfortunately, they may be mostly right.
Just let the AI have a teensy weensy peek at all of your emails, guys, it's just an itsy bitsy little peek, what's the big deal, why don't you trust us??
Companies that use Outlook use Microslop Teams for communication anyway. I work for one of those and honestly? Not my problem. I can‘t make them use open source software and I‘m not paid enough to convince them.
And if it's a gmail account you get to have two companies reading all of your mail!
I'll hate it because this already happens with links in MS Teams where despite having a high spec work computer it makes the system so sluggish that the mouse cursor won't move smoothly for 15 seconds or so while it sorts itself out.
I mean I've already got a Core i7 with 32G of RAM and an NVME sitting on my desk so how much freaking horsepower is THIS little stunt going to take?
No amount of processing power can beat bad code.
Edge browser now required a GPU with 12Gb VRAM minimum.
OF COURSE YOU CAN RENT GPU CLOUD COMPUTE!
Steve.
Steve fuckin’ gets it.
Not me though
You don’t have enough AI-ready GPU cores so Teams is running the local copilot model on the CPU with your most recent outlook emails in order to prepare a dummy to send to the cloud for further analysis
…I don’t know if any of the above is true but if it didn’t even stop you for a second to question it, isn’t it time to get off Windows?
I’m not even going to recommend an OS, just anything but Windows. Fucking Apple is more trustworthy.
You don’t have enough AI-ready GPU cores so Teams is running the local copilot model on the CPU with your most recent outlook emails in order to prepare a dummy to send to the cloud for further analysis
That's a depressingly probable reason even though you meant it as techno-babble. It is actually possible that the machine doesn't have enough NPU power!
isn’t it time to get off Windows?
I'm already using Linux everywhere I can both personally and at work, heck even my work laptop is running Linux. The blocker on my work desktop is that the remote access tool I use multiple times a day doesn't have a functional Linux version.
I could switch my work desktop over to Apple but I've never liked MacOS.
None, if you ditch windows.
haha nuke the partition, put Linux on it
Luckily there's still the trick of not using Edge. Who knows for how long.
So somebody took a look at the modern web and thought "Hey, this is pretty good, but you know what would make it even better? Even more shit you didn't ask for popping up in your face with every click!"
The Grammarly plugin also started opening their AI chat panel in the side panel randomly once a day. And they also have a ton of false positive highligting that's just plain ridiculous since they 'improved' their spelling checker with AI. I uninstalled it.
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