Any thoughts on All-in-one computers?

After looking at the decades I've used Microsoft Office, I can't say that the changes they've made to it have made me any more efficient.

I recently decided to drop my Office 365 subscription and went with LibreOfifice instead.

If Microsoft wants me to use Office they need to bring back Clippy.

 

Or Google?

If a product is free?
YOU are the product.

If you can't 'do Linux' AT LEAST get an Apple.
Apple, for all of their faults - and those faults are CONSIDERABLE makes the right noises at the right times about privacy being important.
AND...Open Office (or - better, Libreoffice) works in IOS.
It's complicated.
I get that, and there's nothing inherently wrong with trusting a for-profit institution to manage your docs and photos!
It's the "Easy" (or Diet Coke) Button of the 21st century!

Just remember that you're going to be 'paying tha man' every 5 years or so for new HARDWARE because of a security deficiency in the SOFTWARE.

Planned obsolescence - Wikipedia
IYKYK.....

 

That's because they make all their money on the back end by constantly finding new ways to make the unwitting waiver of your privacy rights more marketable to advertiser and fascists.

 

I can imagine advertisers meekly paying for the unwitting waiver of your privacy rights. Don't fascists just send goons into agencies to demand database admin rights and hoover up whatever they want?

 

It's total surveillance all the time of anyone they want to pay attention. Microsoft's biggest contracts with the government provided a dashboard for fascist to find out everything about you if they need to. Snowden exposed alot of this, but not all of it. Of course the golden era when governments all over the world were giving the US a strategic advantage by using Microsoft have mostly ended.

These days the scary stuff is they're using AI to target and eliminate people without human oversight... Then again ever since IBM's couch-sized punch card computers made the genocide of WWII efficient, big tech has always played a major role in mass murder.

 

Maybe I should look into that. I just hope it's not pirating. Then again, LibreOffice also works.

I get it, that Microsoft needs to make money. They can't just hand out free software. But what I don't like is:

1. Subscriptions for use of their products. The thing about subscriptions is the product never belongs to the purchaser. It's like leasing, except there's no resale value so you basically have to pay for the full price of the product every few years whether you like it or not. You also have to accept the changes they make to the product whether you like it or not.
2. The other problem with Microsoft is they like to tout their changes as if they were genuine upgrades. To some they may be. But for me, it has gotten really old now that every month or so, when I open Edge, it has to give me an explanation of all the new features that I don't care about and I just want to open my webpage.
3. Another thing is Microsoft drops features that I enjoy (and the same with Google and Apple). From Windows Live parental controls to Windows Subsystem for Android to EAS support in Outlook and Windows Mail to Windows Live Tiles to even Windows Phone, I was enjoying them all when Windows unexpectedly pulled the plug on them (unexpectedly for me anyhow). Since they killed Windows Subsystem for Android, now I have zero reasons to upgrade, or stay upgraded, to Windows 11 until they finally stop providing any and all free security updates for Windows 10.

 

My work computer (the one I'm using NOW) is a Wintel and I use MSO almost daily.
I know that it interoperates quite well with Open Office or LibreOffice because, owing to my beloved company's security anality I have to use them with a $100 'cast-off' notebook computer running Linux to move test data in and out of some of our equipment.

TRUST ME.
If I can do this, anyone can.
You do not have to be a geek or PC wizard to NOT use MS-anything....or IOS for that matter.
I do not have an agenda for or against Apple or Microsoft.
As a matter of fact....the planned obsolescence practiced by BOTH OF THEM have resulted in the world being flooded by inexpensive and very capable hardware AND software.

AT the risk or swerving back to the original question?
All-in-one computers are cheaper than they used to be but as stated above and at best they offer all of the disadvantages of a desktop system AND all of the disadvantages of a notebook.

You know what else is cheap?
Keyboards and monitors!

Get an inexpensive notebook, in whatever flavour YOU like and if you're into large screens and ergonomic keyboards - get those too.
Then you will 'have it all' for about the price of al all-in-one computer.
......and when planned obsolescence strikes....AND it will, you will only have to replace the notebook.

TIFWIW....