Windows 11 Start menu changes trickle into Beta, movable taskbar still MIA

Microsoft is moving more of its redesigned Start menu into the Windows 11 Beta channel, although the long-awaited movable taskbar remains confined to experimental builds. Build 26220.8925 was released last night to Windows Insiders in the Beta channel and has "a number of improvements for the Start menu," including controls for …

[Someone Else]

Microsoft may hope that appearing to listen to taskbar feedback – rather than shoving more AI down customers' throats – might reverse some ill will toward its flagship flagging operating system.

There, FTFY.

_{That's the way I originally read it, anyway...}

[captain veg]

progress

"Windows 10 could work on 2 GB for 64-bit systems. Windows 11 needs at least 4 GB."

Windows 95 was designed to "run great"* in 4MB. Four MEGAbytes.

-A.

* It didn't. But it would run.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: progress

Amiga OS was more stable on 512kb

[Neil Barnes]

A leaner Windows that runs well on older PCs

Dream on, 'cos there's no way that's ever going to happen!

[Nematode]

It's not MIA - it's in the darned registry

The only thing that's missing in W11 to pop your taskbar on the left, right, or top is the OS-level UI. But it's there in the registry exactly where it was in Win 10:

Here

Why would they actually take out some buried part of the registry? Answer: they haven't. They're just trying to make Windows look Mac-ish and can't give a fig about the wide aspect ratios so many machines have which use up vertical real estate, the reason most left-hangers (including me) put the taskbar on the left so you get more vertical space

[Someone Else]

Re: It's not MIA - it's in the darned registry

Seems to me that if you want more vertical space, pivot your monitor 90 degrees. Oh, you've got one (or more) of those curvy, Cinemascope-type monitors? Well...I got nothing.

_{And, apparently, neither does Micros~1}

[stiine]

Re: It's not MIA - it's in the darned registry

Surely rotating a curved monitor would work, if your background image was a Falcon 9 launch image?

[Nematode]

Re: It's not MIA - it's in the darned registry

Disnae work when the keyboard is attached. Laptop?

[BPontius]

Re: It's not MIA - it's in the darned registry

A false equivalency, the existence of the registry key in Windows 11 does not indicate the existence of the function(s).

Internet Explorer browser, Cortana and Timeline have been removed from Windows 11, yet their registry keys remain. No amount of registry editing will restore them..

[IGotOut]

Hey guys we listened...

We're giving you this brand NEW feature. Look aren't we amazing. You all love right?

Windows 95? Nah, never heard of it. Look grandad I wasn't even born then, so it couldn't have had this brand new feature back then. We're so smart, look at us.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Hey guys we listened...

It it sometimes rather frustrating to have lived the evolution of all these small OSes and watched their gradual rise and fall.

Any Gibbon can do that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pessimism

Can't help but feel they'll have had one dev with a cheap Claude licence working on W11 feature improvements and 2000 with Claude Max working on new and exciting ways to stick 365 and Coprolite adverts and icons in new and exciting places

[ComicalEngineer]

We'll give you adverts but not the functionality you had before

I'm sure even Claude could vibe code the necessary changed to have the taskbar on the left without buggering about with the registry.

Further proof (were it needed) that M$ doesn't give a hoot about the average user and is happy to "depreciate" features that many users find invaluable.

I've had the taskbar on the left since W95 as a user of wide screen monitors and needing to have 2 pages side by side on the screen.

That said I'd like to thank @Nematode for posting that link

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

"Windows 10 could work on 2 GB for 64-bit systems."

Yes, but only for small values of "work". I saw a ton of netbooks with 2GB RAM, 32GB SSDs that would fill their hard drives the second they touched Windows Update and render themselves almost unusable immediately. (And yes I know - "buy a USB stick and Windows Update uses that" - despite that advice nobody I knew ever did, even after it happened the first time)

[Anonymous Coward]

Non sequitur

You are arguing (no doubt fairly) about the amount of disc space needed, in response to a statement about the minimum RAM needed. These two are not equivalent and, as you point out, adding bulk storage to a netbook is/was way easier than adding more RAM.

[Blue Screen of Bleurgh]

I always liked the Start menu on XP and 7, and even 10 at a push. But what they're doing to it now on 11 is really taking the piddle!

As for the taskbar - again I loved being able to put it where I want it in previous OS versions, but here we are some 5 years into W11 and they still can't give us the option despite being requested bigtime since 2021.