[daemin]

Local accounts were not available in Windows 8 or 8.1, they only got reintroduced in Windows 10.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my login credentials to my physical PC to be different than for my online accounts.

[danielbarla]

Scott Hanselman had a guide on how to actually create an offline account in Win 8 (see: [1]).

It involves navigating to a "Create a Microsoft Account" screen, and then clicking the well-hidden "Sign in without a Microsoft Account" at the bottom. Quite a well thought out dark pattern, confused me at the time.

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToSignIntoWindows8Or81Witho...

[microtonal]

That's false:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13951/windows-creat...

(I had a Windows 8 VM for compiling some software and used a local account.)

[daemin]

OK, I stand corrected. I recall that I had to use a Live account for a preview version of Windows 8 I installed on a test machine. Maybe my memory is off, I hadn't used it in ages.