So I'm one of three people on the GOG forums who has Windows 10, and while nobody cared about Windows 8, I've got a bit of a question on the matter of that Microsoft Account requirement that is preventing me from using the Store.

Waaaay back in 2009 (or so) I got a Google Account after abandoning the rathole that Yahoo had become. As Google evolved and branched, I found it became the key to so many useful services that to be honest, Microsoft has shamelessly copied.

So here's the breakdown of the services offered by the account (as far as I can tell) and why I'm not using them.

Hotmail/Outlook: Hotmail was a dead fish by the time I heard of it, and outlook was nothing more than terrible software with insane limitations back in the day. Also, I've already got this perfectly nice and more to the point spam free Gmail here. The closest thing to Outlook I've actually used was Thunderbird.

OneDrive: Turns out that Google Drive gives me more than the space I need because I'm not an obsessive shutterbug. And even then pictures up to a certain size are free.

Office: I abandoned office back in the days of the Ribbon UI. I went from OpenOffice to LibreOffice and haven't really looked back since. Seeing as I'm not exchanging documents or such, this isn't really a problem. Also, Google Slides, Docs, and Sheets. So I'm covered two for two.

Skype: Desktop Skype works just fine. And I made an account for it back before it was bought out. But lately, I've been thinking of jumping ship.

Xbox Live: I've never owned any of the Xbox Systems, and GOG does me quite fine.

Bing: Bribing users to use your service with flashy rewards raised several flags. Not to mention, I've got it set so I leave no tracks on Google, and if I was really tinfoil, I could use DuckDuckGo.

MSN: I didn't understand what this did back when it launched, and I still have no clue what MSN is today.

Stores: I dunno. My plan was to either wait and see if Microsoft goes lenient as W10 app adoption picks up, or to sideload the apps.

Whew...is there anything else I'm missing or some kind of benefit? Otherwise, in the next feedback, I'll tell the feedback box rather bludgeonly that I see no real benefit to the account system.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Longer answer: If you value your privacy, if you value the optimization of your system, if you value your bandwidth... well, don't make a Microsoft Account.

Privacy: Well, it doesn't matter if you create an account or not, Win10 seems to spy you anyway, but, whatever, making a Microsoft Account is just going to make it worse. You're using Google services so I won't extend myself so much on this and I don't think it's your focus.

Optimization: I guess they already fixed it, but did you know that the XBOX app force V-Sync on the entire system?

Bandwidth: Unless you're a fiber user I don't see a reason to lose bandwidth with those apps on the background, I would remove them all.

Yes.

Cross buy across all Store supported devices.
Email address.
Skype.
Xbox.
1 TB storage on OneDrive.
Cross platform Cortana recognition.
Common typing and voice pattern database.
Personalised handwritting recognition.
Settings roam across devices.
Apps roam across devices.

By the way, nice bullshit posts. Well played.

I don't have multiple devices, my handwriting is crap, I don't use voice commands, and I don't plan to have a need for that much space.

Stop the bullshit. He said you need them, so you need them.

I just see it as privacy intrusion its like me inputting 1+1 in a calculator and the damn thing knows what sandwich I will most likely eat, I don't like that, I just want to know the answer to 1+1

And we shouldn't be concerned about Windows 10 phoning home even after we tell it not to.

I leave this link here, make of it what you will: http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10

But, it's something to keep in mind. With all the money that MS pays for shills, it's hard to know what to believe in terms of the credibility of foreign media.

That user just didn't seem to read my post at all. U:

Sure I did.

They could charge you for using their services...

Except that's not an advantage.. Hmmm...

Verily. I've been avoiding IAP products since I got an Android device.

What does the Microsoft Account have to do with the OS account? You are aware that you can keep those completely separate, right? If you don't care about the store, there's no need to make an MS account. Should you decide to make one, do check the option about the apps using the MS account individually, which does let you keep your local account intact. Elenarie has listed the benefits of an MS account, so if you don't need any of those, the store is the only reason to make one. Feel free to ignore it.

No need to make a Microsoft account if you don't want one. If the OP wasn't one of the people who bought into the anti-Windows 8 voodoo bullshit, he'd already know that.

Just for the sake of location, where might this option be found? I'm savvy, but I don't want to waste time.

In the screen where the app asks you for linking your MS account. It should come with the blurb about the benefits of the MS account as well, and the option should be on the bottom of the page. From what I recall, it should look similar to this, but I didn't pay that much attention when I did it on my pc. So you are looking for that kind of option.