Microsoft doesn't allow passwords greater than 16 characters in length

Headline is inaccurate. Seems to only be a restriction on live accounts, not windows 8. If you use a non-live account to log in, there isn't this restriction. I just changed mine to a 24 character password with no issues, but I'm using a domain account.<p>That said, major portions of what's new Windows 8 require a windows live account to use (the app store, most of the metro apps, etc).

The thing I hate is when people make excuses for it. Especially when those people purport to represent the company that made the mistake:<p>&#62; Besides, 16 character long password can have 2.8 nonillion possible combinations. You are more likely to reuse your passwords and got owned through that than password brute forcing.<p>That's a terrible excuse for a 16-character limit. Just admit it was a bad decision (probably made a long time ago) and move on.

Is a Microsoft Live account needed to use Windows 8? If so, that's a far bigger WTF than a 16-char password.

(for users with Microsoft Accounts)<p>Granted, that'll probably be the majority. Anyone know if non-MS accounts have this limitation?<p>EDIT: Nope, see <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389204" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389204</a>

"16 characters ought to be enough for anybody."

Does this mean Microsoft stores the plain text of Live passwords instead of hashes?

Some programmer decided to filter characters and limit the length of a string. Honestly, it's reasonable. I know it's not the point but 16 ASCII chars can be used to create a secure windows password.<p>And people with passwords bigger than 16 chars are a corner case. HN has had top stories telling programmers not to care about corner cases or to assign a very low priority to them.<p>In my opinion: "Nothing to see here, move along".

It sounds like an improvement on Microsoft's standard NTLM encryption, which supports only up to 14 characters

Is everyone else seeing banner ads in the Metro apps included with Windows 8 RTM?

Allow me to be the first to say, "WTF?"