I successfully did it on a brand new Inspiron laptop yesterday morning. I do regular device configs for my organization, and the moment this stops working, I’ll be here to rage about it!

Since they mentioned the workarounds but didn’t explain them, I’m copying my comment from another post a couple of weeks ago.

Lemmy probably isn’t the target audience for this, here’s the steps to bypass the MS account requirement when setting up W11:

Configure your keyboard, but before you select your wifi network press Shift+(Fn)+F10 to open Command Prompt.

Type in the following command and press enter. Your computer will reboot: oobe\bypassnro

After the reboot, configure your keyboard and location settings, and click the option at the bottom of the page to say that you don’t want to connect to the internet

Click the link on the next page to “Continue with limited setup”, then follow the prompts to enter a username and password.

I agree, but I find something else even more weasel-y and annoying when I’m adding a second user to an already-configured W11 computer. If I’m adding them as a local account without a Microsoft account, I’ll use Tab to navigate through the process of creating a username, password, and security questions. After the last security question, I’ll hit tab to navigate to the “Okay” button at bottom left of the window, which seems like a reasonable expectation. Instead, Windows will highlight the “Back” button at the bottom right. If you aren’t paying attention and hit enter or space bar, you have to start all the way back at the beginning.

I know that is a small dumb complaint, but when I’m setting 5 computers up in a row and tabbing through everything, my habits get the better of me, and I’ll have to redo it two or three times out of the five.

Lemmy probably isn’t the target audience for this, here’s the steps to bypass the MS account requirement when setting up W11:

• Configure your keyboard, but before you select your wifi network press Shift+(Fn)+F10 to open Command Prompt.

• Type in the following command and press enter. Your computer will reboot: oobe\bypassnro

• After the reboot, configure your keyboard and location settings, and click the option at the bottom of the page to say that you don’t want to connect to the internet

• Click the link on the next page to “Continue with limited setup”, then follow the prompts to enter a username and password.

Anecdotally, I’m running Kubuntu on a Dell 7280 with a 4 cell battery as my personal computer, which gets an hour or two of websurfing and home network experimentation per day, and I’m having to charge up once or twice a week. I dunno how that stacks up to other devices or distros, but I really barely think about my battery.

I actually really don’t like this feature, but I just went and checked on my S21, as well as my work S20, and both of them have a Flash notification option, which flashes the camera LED when a notification goes off. Is that what you’re talking about?

This sounds great, but the cynic in me can’t help buy wonder if this is counter-programming for Mozilla’s privacy study that came out a couple weeks ago: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/