 Very good news for Windows users today. The EU has once again forced a big tech company into making their products just a little bit less of a bloated spyware-ridden dumpster fire if they want to continue selling in the EU market. So after they forced Apple to switch their phones over to USB-C and allow app installations from outside the app store, EU regulators turned their eyes over to Microsoft and they told them no more preventing people from uninstalling apps that ship with every single copy of Windows. So things like Microsoft Edge, Bing Search, Cortana, Microsoft News Feed, and those default camera and photos apps that nobody seems to use can now be uninstalled from your system. And you don't have to go through any fancy rigmarole to do it. Essentially it's just add and remove the program. And I think doing this is gonna save you at least one gigabyte of disk space. I mean Cortana has been dead since August. So anything related to her that's taking up disk space or using your RAM on a Windows OS is kind of like having a bloated corpse in your living room blocking your view of the TV. And there's going to be changes to how things are laid out in Windows which is detailed in Microsoft's blog which I'm going to link below. So some of these changes include putting more clear labels on system components. So things like your file explorer or your control panel, they're gonna say system below them in the search bar in the start menu. So that way you can differentiate between that icon and something that's randomly showing up on the internet in Bing Search. And then this section here where they talk about interoperability with Windows features, it starts off a little ironic by saying that Windows is an open platform. Are you serious? But then it goes on to list two new things, feeds and web search as those two new points that you can customize in your app. So I assume the way that this works is once you uninstall Bing, this is going to let you use something else for searching like DuckDuckGo or another provider for your web searches and apps. I guess this is gonna be more related to people who develop applications for Windows, not necessarily Windows users, but once those apps come out, if they work the way that I think they do, then that will then be a benefit to the Windows users. Now, if we keep scrolling down, this is another big one here about Microsoft account data. So EU users are actually going to have a choice whether or not they want to sync Windows with a Microsoft account. And this is something that has been a real personal pain for me, going back many years, long before I was making YouTube videos to when I worked at Geek Squad. So starting with Windows 10, it seems like Microsoft really started pushing the Microsoft accounts on people and their cloud apps. I mean, all of those things are obviously interrelated. And over the years, it's gotten harder and harder to just set up a Windows computer without using an email address, without giving it a phone number or something like that to create a Microsoft account. Because of course, when you create this account, they want you to validate it and blah, blah, blah. And like I said, this was a bit of a problem when I was working at Geek Squad, because sometimes people would pay us to do a new setup on a new PC for them, right? So we install a bunch of apps. Usually when people buy a computer at Best Buy, they get antivirus like for 90 days or something like that for free. So we'd install that for them. And yeah, just install a bunch of apps, change their defaults, basically all the same things that you would probably do for your grandparents when they get a new computer. But if you can't get past that Microsoft account creation step, then you basically have hit a snag where you then need to call your client that you're setting up this computer for so that they can come and verify that email and complete that account setup before you can proceed with installing their updates, apps, language packs, and so on. So yeah, this is just a wonderful improvement that's being added to, at least the European versions of Microsoft. And I think this default apps thing is another huge improvement too. Because in Windows, you can set default apps, right? So like, what is your default text editor? You know, what is the default browser, right? Things like that. But if you were to set, say Firefox as your default browser, Microsoft Edge is still going to open up for different unique instances. Like when you click on a link in your email, especially if it's Outlook email, okay? If you're using a Microsoft product and then it's going to interface with another, like browser or something like that, it's gonna try to interface with a Microsoft product by default. Or like, if you open a PDF, right? Lots of people use their browsers to view PDFs because they've got built-in PDF viewers. Well, chances are, if you've made Firefox or something else, your default browser, Edge is still going to open up the first time that you open up a PDF. So yeah, these updates that are coming to European windows are honestly some of the best ones that I could ask for besides just simply open-sourcing windows and that's probably not gonna happen ever or certainly not anytime soon. But there are a lot of questions that people are asking about this change that's coming to windows. Mainly, what I see people asking is, will it be possible for people outside of the EU to trick windows into thinking that their computers are in the EU so that they can get all of these same privacy and just end user benefits is really what it boils down to? And I'm gonna say that the answer is yes for this. It's gonna be yes in the vast majority of cases, just maybe depending on how much work you're willing to do. But the key benefit here is the fact that windows is typically run on laptops and desktops, which almost never have onboard GPS. So it's a little bit different with the changes that are coming to Apple, right? So like I said, Apple is going to allow a side loading for people that are in the EU, but because iPhones have built-in GPS and VPNs and stuff like that don't trick a GPS into thinking that it's in a different country, Apple can just use that to figure out whether or not you're really in the EU. I mean, there might be some ways to spoof your location but then that's gonna probably mess with maps and stuff like that. So yeah, it's a lot easier to spoof your location on a laptop, desktop, or anything that doesn't have onboard GPS. So I would imagine that if you set your region in windows to Europe, and maybe you also use a European VPN, like just tunnel all your traffic through that, then there's really no way from Microsoft to tell that you're not in the EU. The only way I can even think of how they could fight this just off the top of my head is to only apply these changes to new OEM computers that were bought in the EU or to genuine copies of Windows 11 that are built in the EU. But I don't even think that's really what Microsoft is trying to do because they mention up here that this can be downloaded if you're part of the beta program or whatever. So it's an update that you can just download and install to your system. I think in the next few weeks, or yeah, they say that it's gonna be a release preview that comes out over the next couple of weeks. And even if Microsoft does try to fight this with some more advanced region locks, I'm sure that people are gonna find a way around it. I mean, people are still able to use Microsoft activation scripts in order to crack office apps and Windows itself. So yeah, I'm sure that if Microsoft tries to fight against this, then Europe-fying your OS is just gonna become another option that's added to these activation scripts. So yeah, we'll have to see when these updates are available for download. If it's possible to get these benefits outside of Europe, I think I'll actually end up creating a new Windows 11 VM for myself with my region set to Europe and just see if that's enough and then maybe make a custom gateway and put that VMs traffic through a European VPN. Yeah, I'll basically see what it takes to get a based EU Windows experience here in Burgerlam. But let me know in the comments below what you guys think about this update. Do you think that it's going to be as good as it sounds on Microsoft's blog? Do you think that they're actually going to fight against it? And do you think that it's gonna be just as easy as changing your region to Europe in order to get these benefits outside of Europe? If you enjoyed this video, please like it and share it in order to hack the algorithm and check out my website, base.win where you can get merch like this Libre shirt here to help support the channel. And you can also save 10% store-wide automatically at checkout when you pay in Monero XMR. Have a great rest of your day.