Aaron44126

You can get the passcode yourself right out of the BitLocker control panel. It is also stored in your Microsoft account, assuming that you set one up and use it to log in to your PC, and you can fetch it through a browser. The idea is simply to prevent someone who steals your system from being able to access your data, and I’m not really sure how they could do disk encryption better, a trivial workaround would defeat the purpose. Though I agree that activating it by default without informing the user of what is going on first is not the best approach.

A claim like this could be more persuasive with some specific examples. That said, I'm fully aware that Apple has "issues" with how they handle certain things, but they are in my mind a step above the rest of big tech (Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc.) when it comes to prioritizing end user privacy. I can point to examples like Advanced Data Protection for iCloud which puts the end user in charge of the decryption keys for anything stored in their "cloud", offering the only smart TV platform that isn't trying to make money off of the user with data tracking and/or ads right in the UI, having AI functions running models on-device as much as possible, or them leading the charge on app tracking transparency (iOS 14.5)... which ended up costing Facebook a lot of money in lost ad revenue. I'm also no stranger to Linux. I have a thread over in the Linux subforum detailing my attempt to switch to using it as a daily driver, and my reasons for eventually giving up. The long and the short of it is: I acknowledge that Linux has made great strides in recent years, and is now completely usable for basic desktop use and also for gaming in most circumstances, but there is still a gulf when it comes to "productivity applications" that I can't personally get past at this time. When I was using Linux, over half of my time spent doing "productivity tasks" was in a Windows VM. For specific simple examples, there are no good alternatives on Linux for OneNote or Quicken. Switching from a MacBook Pro back to an x86 laptop to run Linux would be an absolute hardware downgrade. I need a high-performance system, with an adequate GPU for gaming. The stock of x86 laptops that fit the bill are all comparably big bulky noisy heatboxes, with low battery life and performance compromises when running on battery power on top of that. MBP gives me the flexibility to have a system that runs cool and quiet all day long if I need it to, but also that can run performance-intensive tasks or games to the degree that I want if I need it to. (I'm hoping that the ARM-Windows laptop awakening will help to "solve" this eventually, but there are currently no Qualcomm chips out that can hold up to Apple's "Max" line.) I could use Asahi Linux on a MBP, something that I'm keeping an eye on, but it doesn't have the level of polish I'd expect yet, and it also doesn't yet support systems later than M2. KDE is the only Linux desktop environment that I can really tolerate, but it has too many rough edges / long-standing well-documented bugs, I think because the project just doesn't have the manpower to apply the level of polish that I would like to see in a desktop environment. (GNOME on the other hand is very-well polished, but it is not a power-user's desktop environment. I gave up on it after a week. Everything else that I tried is somewhere in the middle of those two endpoints.) Losing the macOS/iOS integration would also be a strong negative. When I was on Linux, I used Beeper for iMessage support, but Beeper pushed the envelope too hard and isn't an option anymore. (Switching to an Android phone or using Google services is a non-starter for me.) In any case, I would never be able to get approval to use Linux as a daily driver on my work PC. I did switch my "home server" from Windows to Linux a few months ago. That has been working great.

In-place upgrade to Windows 11 LTSC 2024 (from Windows 10 LTSC 2021) on my work PC, the Precision 7560. It's mostly fine to use. Windows 11 LTSC doesn't have any major cruft that I have observed. It does of course share some design issues with "regular" Windows 11 that I do not like, but, meh, for my regular workflow it doesn't make that much of a difference. I did have some issues immediately following the upgrade. First, trying to patch from the September 2024 patch level (which I was originally dropped on) to the April 2025 patch level didn't work. It kept getting "almost to the end" (literally right before dropping me back on the login screen) and then it would show a message that "something went wrong" and it was rolling back. A couple of reboots later, I was back at my desktop, unpatched. I tried other patches. December 2024 worked fine but anything newer did not, so something "broke" in the January patch. When I tried the February patch, it was even worse. It did an update to the USB 3.0 root hub driver which didn't get rolled back properly when the patch back-out process happened, leaving me with no USB support. (They must have "fixed" that in later patches because I didn't have the same problem when trying to install the March or April patches.) I ended up just making new install media with the April 2025 patch integrated and then did another in-place upgrade to that. That went fine. We'll see what happens when May patches drop next week. Second, it trashed one of my secondary data partitions which was using the ReFS file system. I have no idea why, but after the upgrade it just would not mount that drive, claiming in Event Viewer that there was "corruption". I was able to use the "refsutil salvage" command line tool to get the files off... and now I'm not using ReFS to hold those files anymore. Overall, the most shaky Windows upgrade I would say that I've been through on one of my own systems, but I think that I have things settled, as long as there isn't any ongoing trouble with the monthly patches going forward. ...Not that it matters for that much longer. I'm working to get my daily drivers off of Windows and this is the last system left. It should be replaced with a Mac later this year, but I'm waiting for the IT dept to finish some prep work before I can make that switch. (I won't be able to completely ditch Windows, it will just be relegated to being used remotely or in a VM.) I was sort of hoping to avoid using Windows 11 on a daily driver altogether, but with the company trying to get everyone moved up to Windows 11 during the next several months, I figured that I should take the plunge so that I can understand what issues might need to be addressed as the rest of my team moves over.

If you're just talking about getting to your own files, a Linux server with SFTP enabled should be fine? I have a box in my house, just running standard Ubuntu Server, with SMB enabled for local access and SSH/SFTP exposed to the greater Internet (open port at the router), and a dynamic DNS name so that I can get to it from "anywhere" without having to know the IP address. I have taken additional security measures like not using the default port and requiring key-based authentication. For accessing stuff from my phone, there are a number of apps that can "speak" SFTP and allow access to those files. I use nPlayer to access videos that I have saved to play remotely, for example. For accessing from my laptop, I prefer to use SMB instead of SFTP to get a real sort of LAN file share experience. I have autossh set up to maintain a persistent connection to the "server", and it includes a SSH tunneling configuration so that I can get remote access to the SMB share. (This is a little tricky to pull off on Windows, since it will grab port 445 for the local SMB service and also doesn't like alternate ports for SMB, but pretty easy on macOS or Linux.) This is all fine for getting to your own stuff or working with a small number of people, if you don't mind going through the process of understanding it to the point of having it set up and working. It's not the solution if you're looking for something more like a real cloud storage experience (pretty web GUI, share files with others with email links, etc.).

Settings are in the registry. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Dell Fan Management

Windows 11 LTSC does not include Windows Recall.

Fought through bots and broken websites at midnight to secure a Nintendo Switch 2 preorder. "Lucky" to get one, maybe, from accounts I am reading it seems like the success rate was less than 50% among those who tried. I don't know why retailers can't make this experience more workable. But, at least it was easier than buying an NVIDIA GPU!

Precision 5000 series doesn't have the option to disable hybrid graphics and run with discrete GPU only. You need 7000 series for that.

BE201 will not work in older systems, the card is only part of the Wi-Fi implementation and it requires support from the system PCH. BE200 should work *if* the system supports regular PCIe M.2 cards. (AX211 and BE201 are CNVi, not PCIe.) I am not sure if the Wi-Fi slot supports PCIe, but it may fit in the WWAN slot with an adapter.

I can see Pro Max 16 in the U.S. ($1,849) but the Pro Max 14 isn't available yet. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/dell-pro-max-16-laptop/spd/dell-pro-max-mc16250-laptop/xcto_mc16250_usx Hard to keep the models straight. This is basically the replacement for the Precision 3000 line? It doesn't have a discrete GPU option, or an option for a high-DPI display...

Yeah, these are all examples of things I dealt with when first switching... Some require getting used to the "Apple way" of doing things, and some require third-party apps to work around. Closing programs? It's just Command+Q. It works everywhere, even from the Command+Tab task switcher. (Well, if anyone is to blame for mucking this up, it is Chrome and Edge which try to override this behavior by default. I don't have either of these browsers installed anymore, though.) Window snapping? Disable macOS's native window snapping, and install Rectangle (free & open source). Done. It has tons of options, too. Finder? Actually I haven't had a huge problem with it, but it also took some getting used to. I would prefer something more robust like Directory Opus, but Finder does seem to be in line with the capabilities of typical Linux file managers (Nautilus, Nemo, etc.).

My understanding is that (for now) the only 18" system will be the Pro Max Plus. ...If they released an 18" 'Premium' system with an OLED panel at UHD+ resolution, but they couldn't get that resolution in the 18" Pro Max Plus, that would be really disappointing...

This is true on iOS (...unless you live in Europe...), but macOS is an open platform, Apple is not making rules about what apps can or cannot be distributed or run. All major browsers have full versions on par with the Windows and Linux versions. (For sure, Apple does have some limitations / restrictions scattered around macOS, but setting up a full walled garden app ecosystem is not one of them.)

Pro Max Plus will be the “top” machine (by specs), replacing the Precision 7000 series.