Windows 11 has witnessed the introduction of yet another piece of nagging designed to drive the use of another Microsoft service – but as always, this is in danger of having the opposite effect.
Windows Latest flagged up a fresh move regarding Microsoft’s promotional activity: a pop-up to push the Windows Backup app (which was introduced to Windows 11 and 10 last year).
Windows Backup does what the name suggests, providing a client to handle backing up the files on your PC, and it leverages OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage locker, to do so.
Windows Latest was treated to a nag, which appeared as a notification (in the right-hand side notifications panel, on the desktop) pushing the Windows Backup app. It informed the tech site: “Your PC is not fully backed up. Backup is not turned on for Credentials and Folders. Back up now to save them if something happens to your PC.”
As the site notes, this is apparently being implemented via a server-side update (so it could automatically come to your Windows 11 machine at any time – though we’d hope it’s only showing for those who aren’t using the backup app already, of course).
The notification gives you the option to dismiss it or elect to ‘Back up now’ – choose the latter, and Windows Backup kicks into life and starts syncing your files with OneDrive (as well as backing up system settings, apps, and your whole PC, essentially).
Windows Backup is designed for consumers and works for those logged in to a personal Microsoft Account in Windows.
As Microsoft made Windows Backup a system app, it’s on all Windows PCs by default, which has been controversial for the likes of business computers which won’t use the app – they still can’t remove it, even though it’s for consumers only as mentioned.
There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, more nagging, Microsoft – really? We’re getting a bit tired of this, and while every little pop-up might seem a small move in itself, they all add up to a fatiguing experience in the wider Windows experience.
Here’s an idea – a ‘promo center’ in Windows 11, a part of the interface you can visit that highlights all the features and capabilities you might be missing that aren’t turned on yet (like the Windows Backup app). You can visit here if you’re genuinely curious to see how you might improve your Windows installation via Microsoft’s other services, and all this kind of messaging is confined here – and doesn’t appear unwanted in everyday use of the OS, when it officially becomes ‘nagging’ as it were.
Depressingly, this will never happen, but hey, we can but hope.
The other issue is that many people with a OneDrive account will have the basic free allocation of 5GB of storage space. That’s not going to go very far towards backing up the contents of an entire PC. So you’ll have to fork out for more space via a OneDrive subscription – which is clearly what Microsoft is driving at with this new initiative.
At the same time, it is a great idea to have your PC backed up in this way – or in some way, ensure you have some kind of backup system in place – and there’s nothing wrong with OneDrive, either. It’s just the way Microsoft has gone about things here, which is off-putting and, as we noted at the outset, is perhaps more likely to persuade folks not to use OneDrive out of principle and seek out another cloud backup service instead.
