Yes, a lot of people have been unplugging Ethernet or routers with or without wifi to avoid the email account login and force the local account.

If you take your time installing and read the screens, you will see you don't have to have an email login. You can install with any name you like, but it looks sort of optional the way they've done it.

I use a hotmail login - and win8.1 all my docs and pics and downloads that I save are in skydrive and only placemarker/shortcuts on my hard drive.
I'm trusting skydrive .. but do have dropbox for backing it up & occasionally make a zip onto another drive.. Quick because few picts and most documents I will keep will be in some text format. Transfer fast,, zip small. .txt .xml. .oxps .rtm

This post was edited by mikie on Sun, Nov 3, 13 at 14:14

I deleted all the apps that require me to register to use on W 8. I have had computers a long time and haven't had to register with most things. I noticed superantispyware now wants you to register and another one that I can't think of right now. I have to admit I will never use W8 as long as there is classic shell.

Mikie Did you do the W 8.1 up grade? Do you like it?

I had a funny experience with a new Windows 8 computer yesterday. A lady phoned with issues and had phoned Dlink, Microsoft, her ISP with no luck and had taken the machine to a local repair store and they could not help her.

Trying to sort the thing out I eventually got online using just 4 numbers for the password that she had entered previously despite a notice appearing saying it required 8 digits minimum at least 2 caps, 2 numbers and 2 non letters or numbers. Still not sure how it worked but it did so..........

I think one the most interesting things about a PC is the mystery. There so many things that can cause the same problem and so many way to fix a problem.

The lady I sold my laptop to called today and I asked if her husband had looked at it, he takes care of their PCs. She said no, I think he won't touch it because he thinks it is off limits to him. She told me the round about way he set her games up, she had to click on several things and go through IE to play her games. I told her the shortcuts were in the folder on the desktop, just open and click on the game she wanted to play. She thought that was so easy.

EmmaR
Yes I updated my laptop from win7 to win8 pro for the $40 special, then to 8.1 preview, then to win8.1 pro. The original win8 had lots of issues but all fixable. Only one slight issue with the win8.1 final.. it didn't path the IE cache probably because I run a ram drive for that. So I had to add the path & uninstall and reinstall the few apps I do have installed.

Win8.1pro final is nearly perfect here. I've talked others through the 8 to 8.1 upgrade and even a complete computer dummy did it with severe anxiety causing her extreme stress the whole way messaging me every two minutes telling me how scared she was :).. Caused me more stress than she had maybe.

There really is not much to that 8 to 8.1 upgrade at all, except it then breaks the refresh.. maybe they have fixed it by now. There is an easy fix to that - just download the 8.1 iso and it builds an esd folder for refresh & reset features and burn the iso because win8.1 has no option to make a system repair disc.

I haven't had a problem with 8 except I don't like it. It is the fastest boot up computer I have ever had, maybe that is Acer. They have changed the msconfig/startup, the start up is listed by catagories and there are a lot of them. It was so simple in the msconfig/start up menu. It's was fun getting 2 laptops set up, one to sell and one to learn. Now I have nothing to do. LOL