Dear Microsoft,
You know I only write these letters because I love you, right? Cruel to be kind, sort of thing, you know. It’s for your own good and you know it.
This time, you’ve increased my next annual Microsoft 365 Family subscription from £79.99 to £109.99. That’s an increase of £30 of my finest English Pounds and you didn’t even give me prior notice. Rude.
Then I noticed some some “subtleties” that have crept in whilst I was otherwise distracted. Namely Copilot. It would appear that Copilot has inveigled itself into Office programs now. Fortunately, there is an option to turn it off in the program (Word, Excel etc.), but it is on by default. The only place I can’t turn it off (irritatingly) is in PWA Outlook (which I am obliged to use at the moment).
But I don’t want it! You see, I had an education. I don’t need you to “summarize” or suggest replies for emails, or paragraphs for documents. I can do that myself. I also don’t want you to consume two lines of screen estate telling me that Copilot can do that. No. I don’t want it.
It wasn’t until I did some DuckDuckGo-ing (not Bing-ing, I hasten to add) that I discovered that the Copilot bit is added by default to my Microsoft 365 Family subscription. Hence the price increase for my next subscription.
Fortunately, I was able to downgrade my Microsoft 365 Family subscription to Microsoft 365 Family Classic, which is the same, but without all that Copilot nonsense. And it goes back to the £79.99 original price. Unfortunately, I have to suffer all that Copilot crap until my next subscription, which isn’t until December.
I have to say, it would have been nice to have been given the choice of whether I wanted your Copilot crap or not beforehand, instead of forcing it upon me.
Poor show Microsoft, you little minx. Poor show.
Love you still,
The Rigor Mortist.