How do I disable Copilot and all Other AI functionality in Windows 11 PRO

I agree with you. Although I have been testing with Zorin Linux for a few weeks. It is pretty close to what MS does. The Libre Office seems to be much better than OpenOffice used to be. At least the spreadsheet can use dates prior to 1/1/1900 w/o having to write ridiculous formula's. I don't duel boot, but I've installed it on three old computers to test with, to get used to how to network and swap data and such. My final process is making sure I can read my MS365 emails w/o having to use the browser. There are options, so I'm working through them. I hope to rebuild my laptop with Zorin soon. BTW, Zorin comes with everything (i.e., LibreOffice) for $48 and you can install on as many computers as you like as long as you use the same login account. For $48, I don't mind buying more licesnes if I need to. It's still way cheaper than MS. Hope this helps.

Goodness, cloud is a buzz word and AI is a joke... And presumably you are alluding to the 'conspiracy theory' that the CIA 'popularised' the term, in fact that seems unlikely.

I am not a new boy, I've been covering the tech industry for 40 odd years - prior to that I was working on mainframes.

No AI isn't a joke, and it WILL be present in Windows and loads of other stuff. And yes the industry is hoovering up terabytes of data on us. Although I do suggest whining about it will not make it stop. And I love the idea that you call the youngsters 'know it alls' and how they have much to learn, and yet your solution is "MS just needs to stick to what they do well and quit using resources on phony AI." Really? That's the solution? You are telling Microsoft what it needs to do? Good luck with that.

Meantime in the real world, the industry will scrape more and more info about us, the only way to reduce the amount of data it grabs is to either mitigate as much as you can (a bit like the reason for this thread) or not use any of the products. Telling people you see as newcomers that they need to get older and wiser, is, y'now, and I'm only guessing here, not going to help.

Well it's a bit jury rigged, but you could make yourself a service that runs every 5 minutes, checks to see if edge is running in the background and closes it.

First make sure that all Edge processes have ended, enter the Edge installation directory and remove the files.

OK, well I liked the phone and would jump back in a heart beat.

This stuff has been going on for the 40 odd years I have been covering it, MS have at least 1.4 billion users, they are doing something right - although from the outside it doesn't always seem so.

The point I tried to make earlier is, if you want to use Win11 suck it up. Sure we can all fiddle at the edges and switch stuff off when we can (shout out to Les Firch for his WinSetView - swirches off 'Group By' in explorer), but we work to MS's pleasure not them to us.

I've always tried to expend the energy I would use complaining looking for the solutions to my problems - certainly going to MS doesn't help.

But that's just me - but I do know that shouting the odds about it makes no difference - lets face it these were the people who went with the talking paper clip (oh and someone at the usablity labs told me it handn't been fully tested there - which chimes with some other app based decisions I heard about).

Just my 10 cents

C