Ask Paul: November 15 (Premium)

Happy Friday! This is our last full week in Mexico, so we'll be heading home soon. But first, an early start to the weekend.
Terrible is as terrible does
Christian-Gaeng asked:

I have a question about OneDrive or OneDrive Business. Like you, I have been using Google Drive for a while, simply because it works and isn't as annoying as OneDrive. My question is whether OneDrive for Business behaves just as stupidly as the private customer OneDrive. Or would you recommend the business version?

As I was testing using a local account over the past two weeks, I also configured two PCs for a Microsoft Work or school (Entra, I guess) sign-in from initial setup, in part for the book and in part to check on this exact thing.

On one of the PCs, I signed in to OneDrive using that WSA account. It's not as annoying as consumer OneDrive, but it did still harass me upfront to configure OneDrive Folder backup a few times. But since then, it's calmed down and it hasn't auto-enabled it (yet?). So far so good.

But there is one potential issue with this configuration if you intend to use a local or Microsoft account on the PC too. Many corporate policies are applied to subsequent sign-ins and some of them aren't great. So it's better, I think, to sign in with a Microsoft account first (or maybe a local account if you then properly secure it, encrypt the disk, etc.), and then use the WSA on there.

It's an interesting comparison to the local account experience I've had recently. When you use a local account sign-in from the start, that seems to work to suppress some of the harassment, too. It's not perfect, you still get things like the "Download now" animated icon in the File Explorer address bar and the occasional "You should use a Microsoft account" notes in Settings and Start. But it's still better than Folder backup just getting enabled without your consent.

That said, I need to use both of these configurations longer to be sure. But most of the PCs I have here in Mexico are now set up with a local account first, with one remaining on the WSA first configuration. So far, neither has any major issues, and the harassment levels, while a bit different between the two, are down from a straight-up MSA sign-in.
Taking the leap
CharlesVincent2 asks:

Taking an experimental leap of faith.. ordered surface 7 elite 32 gig 15” for new daily driver. ..for travel, corp use, financial modeling, productivity, collaboration and graphic apps, some video editing, thick training docs, product manuals and multimedia presentations, plus heavy dose of zoom and teams video. Moving from ThinkPad i7 4core 10 gen. Looking forward to silent, performance boost and full plane ride on battery. Hope it feels as snappy as M3 mac book pros.

I feel pretty good about all that and suspect you are going to love it. Surface Laptop 7 is my favorite laptop of the year, and the one I would choose if I were forced to give up all but one computer. It has never let me down...