Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment Microsoft has quietly updated its release health dashboard and declared Windows 11 "designated for broad deployment." Adoption of Microsoft's latest OS stalled in recent months as enthusiasts that could upgrade did, and those who didn't meet Microsoft's draconian list of hardware requirements mostly remained on Windows 10. A …
some of us are old enough to remember the place before it got all tarted up. At the top end, there was a shop that sold motorcycle spare parts. I made the walk up from Ladbrook Grove Tube station more times that I could remember and always had to run the gauntlet of the ladies that stood on a couple of the street corners. Their choice of spot was probably by design as the offshoot from St Mary's Hospital (Paddington) had its clap clinic just a hundred or so yards from the aforementioned street.
How do I know all this? Some years earlier, I rented a flat that backed onto the mainline from Paddington while I was a student and no, I didn't attend the clap clinic.
Now it is all tarted up and every house is worth over £1.5M.
I wondering if that's when Quasar used to be there. We bunked off college once to go, then while sitting in reception waiting for our game to start, the cocking BBC news or might of been ITV, walked in and started filming. I remember trying to hide behind the pillars that were on reception to avoid being on camera.
So far it's working well. The only issue I've had is random tooltips when the mouse is near the task bar. I still can't quite work out HP's strategy, For about a year it couldn't output sound from its speakers so I bought a USB speaker but now that's sorted by an update. Rather to my surprise it seems that HP still consider the laptop to be worth supporting.
Yay.
Nothing about windows 11 makes it remotely interesting to me.
The fact the Microsoft keep trying to shove a "microsoft" account down my throat just makes it 10 times worse.
Microsoft are just "playing their violin whilst Rome burns" and amount of "innovation" in new versions of windows could be written on the back of a postage stamp. With continual re-writes of the UI for no other reason that "Because we can" tells me all I need to know.
The drudge on my phone involves a superficial photo of what was served at the latest corporate shindig I went to, the drudge on my laptop involves intimate details of my divorce and what led up to it.
You can fcuk right off with your 'Microsoft Account' on my laptop. I couldn't put it more plainly. Local account or no account and no Microsoft Windows.
It's not the same type of data, and never will be.
If you install W11, with a Microsoft account as recommended, and you are out of wireless range, don't have an Ethernet connection available, or Microsoft's servers vomit or have a DNS problem (both have happened before), are you locked out of using your W11 machine?
If you're locked-out in those situations, then using W11 is an unreasonable denial-of-service risk both for individuals and corporate users.
In the process of checking a laptop for a virus, I discovered it what appeared to be a virus connecting to another computer. On a non-standard port, without login, not on the same domain or even have the same credentials, transfer files. I could not find where there way ANY security challenges in the trace.
I was using a mirrored port on a switch with another device using wireshark watching the conversation.
After research I found this behavior to be the "new" method to do windows and application updates. (I consider outlook to not be part of the OS). It fell to this method when it could not talk to an WUS server. Just how fsk stupid can they get? I have no doubt they have some idea that they can verify something an all is well. That has always worked soooo well.
I would like to hear from you guys about this. I have found turning the "feature" off only is good till the next update.
Please, no gloating from the Apple or Linux guys.
I just helped someone set up a new Galaxy S22. And yes, I could do it without having a Google account. Unlike Windows 11, it actually lets you do this after a few nag prompts. Although I cannot install apps through the Google or Samsung stores without an account, I can manually install them by turning off a security feature.
I also just helped set up a new iPad. And yes, I was also able to do so without having an Apple account.
So far, the only way I have found that you can install Windows 11 without requiring a Microsoft account is to disconnect the internet after the first restart. Otherwise, you don't even get a nag prompt like Google and Apple do.
It's only "the way things work nowadays" because we let it.
Signing in to a store front (which is what the Apple App and Google Play stores are...) is one thing. They are mobile platforms, the apps shouldn't* need to harvest your call and SMS data for anything, nor have access to photo metadata.
Hell, there's even an MS store for apps!
The difference here is not being "forced" to signing into a storefront for whatever platform.
It's being forced to set up a non-local account on a machine YOU paid for or built. MS are taking it one further step down the route of not being able to admin your own stuff and making it that the things YOU put onto YOUR computer are no longer YOURS but actually now property of Redmond.
We sort of accept it with smart phones as they're something even the more techy of us can't build in our own homes of an evening. At least not without a metric shedload of specialised gear, anyway.
Data on home PC's has been the home owners since the day PC's started appearring in people's houses.
Why should it suddenly not be, because one Seatle juggernaut decided to follow what some fecking greedy, amoral skinsuit in SanFran is doing by stealing all the data?
See, if I've been given a corporate machine or a loaner - the assumption is the stuff I put on that? Unless I can legally get it off it ain't mine.
The machine I have at home? That particularly large chunk of silicon is mine and mine alone.
... then again, I suppose you'd be the type of person who'd try to get Housing Associations to ban blinds and curtains...
Repeat after me...
Windows is not a phone OS
top.
God knows, MS tried but failed miserably. They created the tiles UI for the phone and gave it (the pox) to everyone and we have been fighting against it ever since.
There is no reason to have a Windows account to run a desk. If there is then MS has singularly failed to persuade us.
If you persist, you can run MacOS without an Apple ID. Sure, they nag you but I know from experience that after a while, they give up.
IMHO, MS wants you to have an account on their system so that they can make their tracking of your every move so much easier. Well, F'k them. I ain't playing their shitty game and nor are a lot of people I know.
One tried to register an account with them using the name 'BalmerSucks' but they didn't like that but it says how a lot of us think.
I go off grid for at least 6 weeks a year. The new Windows does not like that. It can't phone home to the mothership. Great. My Macbook, does not complain other than if I don't connect the TimeMachine drive every 20 days. That is how it should be.
I'd better stop now. I have a ferry to catch to my off grid home.
My 2016 Razor black widow ultimate keyboard requires an online Razor user account plus several MB “app” in order to adjust the lighting effects. If I had suspected it was that stupid, I never would have bought it. Even worse: it has a usb socket on the side, for a mouse receiver or whatever. But it’s not a built-in hub! It is physically connected to a separate usb plug for the computer. Yes, my stupid razor keyboard requires two usb sockets on the computer in order to work.
(This is a warning about buying stuff like this on sale, you think you scored a bargain on a decent mechanical keyboard but instead you’re being victimized by incompetent design FOR EVERY SINGLE DAY SINCE 2016.)
Also I would assume that most of the developers are from the younger age groups who have no concept that computers used to work without being connected to the Internet and requiring a sign in.
And this takes us full circle, so many of the issues with Windows (and the other OSs) and many websites, is that they are created by arty-farty graduates on massive screens running a zillion pixel resolution.
They have no concept that there are people out there who don't have the latest and greatest tech and that what they see as looking great with dynamic toolbars and so on are completely infuriating when you actually want to use the product.
The subject says it all. If you want to be able to at all control how you use your software, you will have to switch to Linux. Restrictions like requiring a Microsoft account, the telemetry, and all the other spyware built into Windows will only continue to get worse. As a long time Windows user, if Microsoft keeps this up and doesn't change the requirements for Windows 11, I won't have any other choice than to switch. The corporations need to learn that they can't just push around and mistreat their customers. They will leave and go somewhere else, and thankfully we have open source software. We need an open source phone OS as well. A smart phone is nothing but a personal tracking device.
Hmm, let's see ...
* Many different versions of PC-/MS-DOS (abandonware)
* PC-MOS (DOS-like, multitasking, abandonware)
* CPM/86 (abandonware?)
* MPM/86 (abandonware?)
* OS/3 (now developed/supported by eCOS)
* GeoWorks (abandonware)
* MWC Coherent (v7 Unix-like, abandonware)
* SCO Xenix and Unix (abandonware, can't install without a license key. Did you keep that pink card?)
* BSD-derived Unixes
* Solaris-derived Unixes (withering-on-the-vine?)
* Plan 9 (abandonware)
* 9Front (Plan 9-derived)
* Haiku (BeOS-like)
* UCSD p-System (abandonware)
* ETH Zurich's Oberon (aka Bluebottle, aka AOS, aka Object-something, aka ...)
* Some dude's toy OS written in 100% assembly language
* BASIC-in-ROM, if your PC's old enough, and,
* Forth-in-ROM, if your PC is a C-64 or Atari 400/800 with appropriate cartridge, or is a sufficiently-new Apple ("Open Firmware")
I may have missed one or two.
It's actually a step backwards for me. I am one of those who created a new text document by going to the folder in explorer and right clicking and selecting new text document. Apparently someone has decided I was doing it wrong as you can't do that anymore.
To be honest the whole thing is a UX nighmare but that seems to be par for the course these days.
> Still stinging about my inability to "upgrade" because my HP 360 (£1500) has "only" an I7v7.
Count your blessings. You'd be stinging even more if your system actually supported it, and you suddenly woke up one morning with a slow, bloated, spyware-infested piece of shite where your OS used to be.
Microsoft would very much like users to sign in with a Microsoft Account "to get the most out of your Windows 11 experience."
I bet they'd like to get the most out of your experience. The more they can get from "your" computer, the more they like it. As for the removal of local accounts, for me that will result in the removal of Windows full stop. I have a local AD domain at the moment, but when I retire this year I will remove all Microsoft from my home.
and I await the huge increase in Microsoft's Hotmail / Live "subscriptions", as millions upon millions of people learn / realize that they can just as well create a burner Live email account to satisfy MS's Win11 sign-in demands...
Icon, a toast to the flaming pile that will be MS's user "growth" expectations.
No, but they will in a few weeks when you try to log on again to your Outlook account, then it will surreptitiously notify you that Microsoft has noticed unusual suspicious activity, and ask you to enter a valid telephone number to access your account.
What is so devious about this so-called fake security 'validation' is that mobile phone networks have vast amounts of established surveillance in place in the UK, and this information is easily available without a warrant to the Police and umpteen other regulatory organisations.
This is forcing users to provide additional personal information under duress (no access to account otherwise), and MS should be taken through the courts for this. 'Where are the regulators on this?" Fcuknig nowwhere, as per usual, that's where.
So in effect asking for a mobile phone number, might seem quite innocuous, but in actual fact, doing and entering it, links that account 'very much to YOU, for future reference, including your address and location, even if the name you registered is "A User".
Just to add, Google have started this malicious activity too, in the name of so called 'Security'.
Yeah, I mistakenly sign up for a T Mobile phone back in 2003. Back then, they required you to give them your Social Security which I thought was total invasion of privacy and should be illegal. Stupidly, I went ahead with it anyway. The phone got horrible reception. So, I returned it a couple days later. I wasn't a customer of theirs since then. A few months back, my bank notified me that my SSN and drivers license number were found in T Mobile's data breach data that was compromised. I think it was 50 million customers whose data was compromised. So, even though I wasn't a customer of theirs for close to 20 years, they still had it on file. There is no reason why they should ask for a SSN. Comcast used to ask for SSN also. They are illegally surveilling us, that's why they are doing it. Kind of like how the CDC bought cell phone location data from a "data broker" so see if people were locking down.
@rmullen0
Usually the SSN is required in order to do a credit check before offering a contract to a customer in those situations, because it’s the closest thing to a National ID number we have in the US.
Yes, I know that’s not the legislative purpose of an SSN, and that it opens the door to some pretty intrusive possibilities, but not quite outright “surveillance”. Please don’t take this comment as some sort of endorsement of this state of affairs, but there *is* a legitimate business purpose for them asking for it.
Erm. We don't brandish our Social Security numbers in the UK. It would be unthinkable for anyone other than a government agency to request such. And most citizens would need to hunt for theirs.Lots of other parts of the world don't even have anything of that sort. The mobile phone networks seems to work OK without it.
You have to hand over your national insurance number to more organisations than just the government. I haven't had a contract phone for a few years now, but I'm pretty sure I needed it to get a mortgage, and I think you will need to provide it for credit checks when taking out loans.
Our equivalent is the national insurance number. You use it to claim benefits, and you give it to your employer so they can give the government the correct amount of your wages.
Some other government forms might ask for it in the same way they ask for a passport number or driving license number to simplify ID checks, but you wouldn't have that for a private company who have no way to look up a national insurance number anyway.
My last MS account was suspended because of 'suspicious activity' on the account. Eg logging in over a VPN and they required me to add a mobile number to verify ownership it before i could unlock it.
So that was the last time i used it, as I refuse to give out my mobile number as any form of identification or for 2fa.
So if there is no local account option going forward on Windows 11 i will definitely not be upgrading to it.
At the moment, you can choose "domain account" and it will let you create a local account. They purposefully have the wording to confuse people and force them into using online accounts. Microsoft operates kind of like the government does. They do what they want to do, regardless of what the people that use their software think. Just like the corrupt politicians that do absolutely nothing that the people want and instead waste all the tax money on the military industrial complex.
The issue is that for those of us who are technically aware, ie most El Reg readers, we are actually in the minority.
For the average consumer out there they will just sign up. Most will already have a Microsoft account because they have:
X Box
Office
Hotmail
Outlook.com
So in the grand scheme of things is it really such an issue?
How many people commenting about this here have an Office subscription?
To be clear I do not support the way this is going, we should all be able to install an OS and create a local account but the reality is everything is going to be subscription based and required a login.
Look at all the other services that people will happily use without a second thought?
Why is Microsoft any different?
Doesn't work. I had a friend whose desktop kept wanting to force a Windows 11 upgrade. I was able to reverse that by uninstalling the recent updates in the recovery console and I turned off TPM in the UEFI. The next day, the same prompt came back telling me that they were going to install Windows 11. There was no option to say no.
With no prior Linux experience, I built a Linux Mint system last year for a project. The experience was "interesting", but I got there in the end.
If Microsoft get rid of local accounts then I'm afraid that might be the final straw and the three windows machines used every day will be going Minty too.
It's easier setting up Linux Mint than it is Microsoft Windows, even more so (hours shorter for Mint), if you intend to have both machines fully updated with all updates, as opposed to just installing an ISO version of either.
Windows Update is an absolute pile of shite, compared to the superfast apt-get update mechanism of Linux. Windows is even worse of late, due to the move to annual updates, because the cumulative updates are getting bigger and taking longer to install.
This is actually a bug that was introduced in Windows 10. A registry entry gets corrupted sometimes.
It's interesting to see the answers you get on Microsoft's forums though. When asking how to fix this, one of the first responses is (verbatim) "Why would you want to?" If that doesn't speak to the Microsoft mindset, I don't know what does.
And those same forums that are filled with idiots whose answer to everything is to "reinstall Windows".
Just what planet are these people on who believe that this is in any way a solution......
The Internet is increasingly full of garbage from people posting crap:
"Oh, I had that problem to and fixed it " with no clue as to how they fixed it.
"Reinstall Windows"
"Uninstall Windows updates"
"Install the latest drivers"
Often comments to questions that are absolutely nothing to do with the solution.
Often comments to questions that are absolutely nothing to do with the solution.
My favourite version of this is when the response is all about some ( trivially overlapping at most)issue that is in an entirely different and highly specific context.
i.e You may ask for help because, say, there's a white rectangle that keeps appearing on your desktop.
Someone will then post a response about how their screen turned completely white after they'd installed <named niche programme>. Ignoring the fact that you didn't say that your screen has turned white or that you'd installed this programme.
If Microsoft is greedy enough to try to force everyone to have a Microsoft account to use Windows 11 instead of a local account, I can see a severe level of push back.
They already spy on you enough as it is, no need to give them complete control of your computer.
See: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 for simple ways to minimise (but probably not prevent) their spying.
...anything that effects ease of use or functionality is another matter.
It's already become a struggle in Win 10 to keep the Start menu organised. The MS focus seems to be to turn Start into a kind of billboard instead of neatly organised Start folders with just the link to the programme you need, organised according to function (e.g. Graphics/Office/utilities) rather than the weird and wonderful names that the publishers give to their products ( and themselves) .Microsoft seem to have a fetish for forcing this mess upon us, completw with the stupid <product name> on the web links. The aim is clearly to help software houses to try to push us to buy some more of the same.
Thanks for the head's up. My Office 2016 is legit, but was a PITA to get running on Win10 after I upgraded my laptop. It really felt like an 'intentional defect' that I had to work around. There were incessant offers for O365 if I would just hand over my credit card number.
Sadly we here are the vast minority. Most users blindly do what MS tells them to do.
I had this and the most likely reason is that the key has been resold.
It will only work on one installation of the OS (not necessarily even on the same hardware). These can be perpetual copies so you think you are okay only to find you are not.
Running Windows 10 a couple days ago, I saw a new icon in the task bar information area that looked just like the normal green highlighted windows update only with blue highlights instead. When I clicked on it, it was to install Windows 11...
I promptly exited out, rebooted my machine, and went into the UEFI BIOS to disable fTPM.
Oddly, after saving the change and rebooting, Windows Update still says I'm ready for Windows 11. I most decidedly am not!
Two No, three new tasks just appeared on my to-do list:
1) Figure out how to downgrade TPM on my HP Envy desktop, when the BIOS config screen does not give you an option to do that. Seems that the BIOS version on that machine really wants to keep you locked into TPM 2.0.
2) See if Wine 7.x can be configured to run the Arturia soft-synth suite, Steinberg Wave Lab and Cubase. If I can get these to run on Wine, I will not longer have any need for Windows!
3) Load Linux Mint on SWMBO's laptop. This is a new on just added to the list. She, of all people, doesn't need to be bothered with a Micros~1 account.
Gonna be busy over the Memorial Day weekend (sigh).
>See if Wine 7.x can be configured to run the Arturia soft-synth suite, Steinberg Wave Lab and Cubase. If I can get these to run on Wine, I will not longer have any need for Windows!
Yep, I use my Windows PC for music as well as some gaming. I use Ableton Live + Arturia and while I've never actually tried it myself, I understand that Live runs OK under Wine. It's all the plugins that I reckon will be tricky but I could be wrong, as I've never tried.
I have a work laptop which I dual boot, as they have some spreadsheets that only work in Excel on Windows. As I'm about to leave the job, I downgraded the Windows 10 partition to 11 and I can confirm that it's shite and you don't want it. It didn't force me to ditch the local account, but a bunch of stuff didn't work because apparently you can't possible have an OS which doesn't track what you are doing.
Did the W11 thing for a few months. I really wanted to like it BUT just got tired of fighting with stupid things like broken File Explorer, dumb Start menu and Lord knows how many other things. It's pretty but still not worth the pain at this point. Is it another Win8? Probably not but MSFT needs to get their act together when they start shoving things down user's throats. If you are GOING to shove, please at least ensure the effing thing works at a basic level! I'm thankful at this point that most of my fleet at work doesn't support W11, at least I won't have to endure the pitchforks and axes of an enraged and unhappy workforce.
Same here. After hating the flat, ugly look of Windows 10, Windows 11 initially seemed promising as they actually put some effort into making it look quite good (IMO). Unfortunately, the daft system requirements, increasing push to a Microsoft account, the lousy start menu and frankly crippled taskbar have really spoilt things.
It's a pity. With a few tweaks, it could be a pretty good and well-liked OS. But instead of turning W11 into the OS that people want, MS wastes time faffing about with search bars on the desktop and other pointless gimmicks.
Indeed. My SWMBO came to me a few weeks ago complaining about her laptop that had upgraded itself to W11 over the weekend.
"What is this shit? Why does it want to search the entire frigging internet for a file that is in my Documents folder?"
I replied...
"Calm down dear. That is the new world order. You have to tell the world that you are working on something called 'my sexy love scenes'."
"Fuck that." she replied taking the laptop back from my greasy mits.
Cue a mega file renaming session. "Sexy love scenes' became 'Fuck Microsoft' etc, etc.
I'm still working on her to let me revert the laptop to W10. So far, she has resisted but one of our kids got a bit embarrassed to receive a document as an attachment to an email where the name was certainly NSFW but actually contained a cake recepie.
I know sometimes article writers can either get the wrong end of the stick or make a mountain out of a mole hill, but is it really the case that Windows 11 does away with local accounts completely?
In a business situation where users require admin control over the machine, the "safest" way to create a local admin account for them away from domain accounts. Is it really the case now that Microsoft are going to stop this being achieved by removing the local account?
If they are, I genuinely don't know what I'm meant to do with the people I have to look after. I can't give them admin access on the domain account, yet they won't be able to do their work without admin access to their local machines.
I'd like to know if I've got the wrong end of the stick and I'm worrying over nothing!
Home licenses have required a Microsoft account from the start. Now they're enforcing it with Pro licenses as well. Only Enterprise licenses can avoid it (because they have company accounts I presume).
You can still get round it by typing in a fake email and password and skipping past the error message for now, but who knows how long that will last.
Let 2 of my PCs "upgrade" to Win11. Tried to like it but it was so dumbed down in many areas I switched back. File explorer was so munted I installed a Midnight commander for windows and the shite placement of the start drove me insane. The final killer was that I couldn't place the taskbar on the left of the screen ...
looks like Win10 will be my last.
no local account and being forced to replace perfectly good machines is a nope
@pluraquanta this article does not go into any detail on setting up Win 11 pro and local account restrictions.
It does not mention that this is the case, only if you choose to set up the device for personal use. If you select the Work or school account option, you will be prompted to use your organization’s domain* instead.
None of the articles on 22H2 this article included have said the option in Settings 43300 was referring to, creating a user account for a user without using a MS account has been removed.
It looks like regarding local accounts nothing has changed between 22H2 and the current version of Win 11. That choosing personal use asks for an MS account.
That said you should not be forced to use an MS account for personal use.
* Not sure if a workgroup can be used in place of a domain probably not.
I don't think local admin accounts are a good idea at all. Not compared to a secondary and needs permissive domain account.
I always react to the new os grief discussions thinking a) a half decent administration wouldn't be stressed by any of this, b) where can I find a half decent Windows admin, c) oh ℉>¢{ RHEL justified itself again...
I'm pretty sure my 7 yr old lappy, which hasn't been powered up in a couple of months, running W10 latest, as of two months ago, won't allow W11, I doubt it has a TPM chip. Never cared to look and see, it was a freebie from an old colleague who was leaving the country.
At $Company, there are some machines that will never be connected to a network so I am getting replacement kit with Win10 Pro for some really old laptops where I can still make a local account. They run dedicated tests (written in VB6) and have no need at all for network access. Besides, $Customer insists on no network access.
In the future, I might just migrate the tests over to Linux (must check to see if they will run under Wine) but if not, they are not that complex.
A little pain, but nowhere near the mess I would encounter with Win11.
In the future, I might just migrate the tests over to Linux (must check to see if they will run under Wine) but if not, they are not that complex.
Perhaps another option would be to convert the tests to Python? (Or maybe some other scripting language that is not YAN Micros~1 abomination?)
Might be some (additional) work, but would allow you to run them under Windows until Windows forces you to un-ass the area completely.
I got the ISO, installed it on a new laptop I only just bought. Upside, games more stable and my dev coding compiles along with my VirtualBox kit. Downsides....hmmm, well.....
Dear MS,
Stop f**king hiding the most useful admin options 17 levels deep just 'cos some numpty in Redditch can't stop clicking buttons and options and has to call MS support lines every 15 mins!!
I liked having Windows admin options instantly on hand, I do not appreciate you hding them in W11! Why do people have to fiddle with PC options, FFS you don't open the bonnet on your $70k fanny magnet and start screwing around with the engine control unit or any of the engine odds and ends, PC is the same you numpties.
Yours faithfully
Mr "W11 is alright I suppose"
"...to get the most out of your Windows 11 experience."
They don't get it. Most people don't want to 'experience' an OS; they want to be able to write a letter, surf the web, read mail, play games or whatever. The best way to allow that to happen would be to stop changing the damn UI every few years!
As for needing an MS account just for the 'privilege' of running W11 at home? Doesn't seem like a fair trade to me: I get to use their UI but they get to profile me, profit off the data they gather and hit me with adverts for products I didn't know I wanted. I'll pass, thanks.
And lets not forget that anything you search for in the windows menu gets automatically searched via Edge and Bing, thus boosting their metrics.
So... I got rid of the start ment (start11 instead) and got rid of the new right click context menu with a registry hack, and several other things... but it's getting exhausting fixing microsofts "improvements"
Windows 11 feels like Windows 10 with a fresh coat of paint. I like the improved dark mode support, more UI consistency and better window tiling but overall there isn't a big difference. What does annoy me is that my laptop with an 6th generation core i7 isn't supported, despite it still being quite powerful. I've upgraded it to Ubuntu 22.04 but it's annoying to have to do that just because Microsoft thinks I should have TPM 2.0.
'Microsoft would very much like users to sign in with a Microsoft Account "so we can Hoover up as much of your personal data as possible, to sell out the back door as quick as we can."'
There, FTFY.
Besides that obvious bit, I see this as nothing more than more of M$'s attempts to nudge the entire personal computing environment to monthly or yearly 'subscriptions.' They know the revenue from one-time purchases of an OS package will never match recurring charges.
Thank $DEITY for alternatives!
I bought a new laptop a month or so back and it came with Windows 11.
It took a few tries but using Classic Shell and Winaero Tweaker I've managed to get it looking like my Win 10 machine.
I miss the Notifications thingy from the far right of the taskbar and Task Manager now means pressing WinKey+X and a mouse click. But on the whole I'm getting used to it. Only software I'm having trouble running is Darktable photo workflow. And that could be a hardware problem. My old machine was picky with certain USB sticks.
My only complaint is about the laptop trackpad. Whose idea was it to put clicky buttons under the trackpad surface? It's crazy! Go to click an icon and the pointer moves.
Still I'm pretty impressed that a £400 laptop with Iris XE hardware can play Tomb Raider (Square Enix version) at 60fps!
Would that be a local domain AD account or an Azure linked AD account?
I'm just trying to determine, as someone who is trying to avoid Windows 11 like the pox, whether in my IT estate I'll still be able to click in "Join domain instead" (or whatever it is called in Windows 11) or if it is more privacy invading "must be a Microsoft controlled account" BS.
My novice users don't like change.
I quite like the look of Windows 11 with the rounded corners - it looks nicer than 10.
But hiding File Explorer and right-click options to make things 'look better' is a bit of a disaster, as is removing text labels for things.
And why is that widget button now on the bottom left of the screen, where the start button lived for 27 years?
I install a reg file on every Windows 11 setup, to undo 15+ annoyances and make follow-up support just a little bit easier.
@Lost in Cyberspace using a reg file is a good idea +1.
But I found it unnecessary it took me a minute to set up the taskbar to work like Win 10. No widgets, left aligned, file explorer and as I did in previous win versions set it to hide.
As for right click context menu options I did not use them apart from setting the taskbar properties. There are many ways to get to Task manager I tend to use the WinX menu, a single right click on Start at the end of the taskbar.
My taskbar with some of my pinned applications removed hopefully the link works. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ar3jatuc45YMld8YHesOPmg1IB47vA?e=jasyaS
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The implication seems to be ( reflecting on MS adverting from a few years back,) is that users are only expected to use, or want to use, a small handful of programmes.(MS Office and a couple of the other usual suspects like Photoshop). So all they need to be able to do is select their usual tools, day in day out. Or maybe the latest game or two of an evening. i.e. no need to be able to locate a whole range of programmes, differing daily. I'm guessing that what Microsoft wants is that you click Start, and use one of the Big Brand software suites that you obtained from their "Store" on a monthly licence.
Which is probably true if you're a middle manager/lawyer/anyone else who only has one kind of task.
However, it's bloody useless if you are, say, creating a sequence of lesson plans one minute, designing a lesson the next, then creating materials for the lesson and probably writing a report in the evening. With maybe some postgraduate study materials at the weekend. Or managing a team of speech therapists, then planning your own interventions, then preparing for a multi-disciplinary team meeting. Or running a Scout/Guides troupe, with accounts to keep, risk assessments to perform, and activities to prepare etc. Or a final year student with a complex dissertation to complete.
Each of these may need a whole different bunch of programmes, which vary from day to day or month to month. Programmes which may only be used once or twice a year. That may be quite niche, or task specific. Or that are tested, used or discarded according to need. All the above describe the work of myself and my family members. And there are a squillion other examples out there I'm sure.
But that's not what/who Microsoft care about anymore. Maybe it's been working towards that for a long time. I was always surprised by the omission of Publisher from the Office packages that most needed it (e.g. home users, members of voluntary groups etc. who would need to create the odd leaflet, that sort of thing). Almost like they wanted to restrict private users to the most basic of functionality so that they could use it at work, and then sell the big software packages to corporate employers).
Dealt with almost a year of its nonsense, using Start11, Files etc. to gloss over its weaknesses. The emphasis was on a fresh paint job, dark/light modes and dumbing the OS down. The Store repeatedly reoffered updates such as People etc. that have no actual store app despite trying all the fixes. The Android app changes were lame via Amazon and frankly not worth the effort. Linux, well, there's other ways besides WSL to host it. All very pretty, not at all useful. A big step back. I figure W12 will be in the pipes soon as W11 is a swing and a miss.
It looks like yet another attempt to try to convince te business/corporate IT world that W11 is a good idea - they had an online event a month or two ago with the same aim which came across as increasingly desperate.
They must be aware that if take-up doesn't increase soon, then it's going to be another W8 and the only way to undo the damage will be to release another new version which doesn't include the bits most objected to (in this case, that probably means the system requirements, buggered-around start menu and some of the other annoying interface changes.
So basically go back to something very much like W10...
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