MicrosoftI know you can set up Windows home 11 with out having a Microsoft subscription. There is still a backdoor into that process that any of us who support small businesses are aware of. But because of the complexity of that, we usually just recommend businesses get Windows professional, rather than home.
as to the new Microsoft outlook for consumers which you're talking about, I don't see why anyone would complain about needing a Microsoft subscription since Apple and Google does the same thing. you can set up a MacIntosh without an Apple account, but you can't really get get to the Apple Store without an Apple account and virtually all the applications. These days are on the App Store so for all practical purposes, you need an apple account. If people want a product that doesn't require a subscription, they can easily go to a variety of other email reader vendors, such as Thunderbird, or any of the online services which as we know, requires an account with them. It's just been surprising to me that people hold MICROSOFT to a totally different different standard than all of their competition. I'm not quite sure why. The main thing that I found with the new outlook is that it is not doing as good a job catching spam getting into the inbox as Gmail seems to be doing. I still use Gmail daily along Outlook and I never get any spam in Gmail and I always get spam leaking into my inbox on Outlook.
