These changes are only applicable to users in the EEA. For those outside the region, Windows will continue to function as it is!
The changes to Windows for DMA-compliance include:
- You can now uninstall Edge and Bing web search using the built-in settings. Earlier, the option was greyed out.
- Third-party web search application developers can now utilize the Windows search box in the taskbar using the instructions provided by Microsoft and choose any web browser to show results from the web.
- Microsoft will no longer sign-in users to Edge, Bing, and Microsoft Start services during the initial Windows setup experience.
- Data collected about the functioning of non-Microsoft apps, primarily bug detection and its effects on the OS, from Windows PCs will not be used for competitive purposes.
- Microsoft, from now on, will need explicit user consent before combining data from the OS and other sources. It will also deliver new consent screens where required.
I’d worry about how that might effect other things. Windows isn’t the only thing that changes its behavior based on region. What other software would be looking at that specific region setting?
That’s the real gift given by Microsoft:
Just change your region back to where ever you are after setup. Nothing on your PC outside of the OS will be reading the region set during Windows Install, they’ll be asking for the currently set region.
Maybe I’m misreading what you quoted but it seems to suggest you can’t do what you’re suggesting.
Once that region is set, it’s locked in unless you do a reset of the PC…which would presumably go through the windows set up again and ask for region.
You can always change your region in settings though, and Microsoft is not removing that ability as that would cause much much bigger problems. But their DMA checking only cares about the region selected at set up, whereas everything happening at runtime only ever gets the current region as the set up region has never been available before.
Hmm, if it doesn’t honor that setting being changed after the initial install it could be possible to set it during install to get the benefits, then change it post install to make other apps behave normally.