New Windows 11 build boasts inbox updates and UI tweaks Microsoft has sent a fresh build of Windows 11 into the Dev Channel, and eagle-eyed insiders have already spotted some hidden treats among the updates. As well as new and updated inbox apps, Build 22572 features more user interface tweaks. This time it was the turn of tabs in File Explorer. File Explorer tabs are back! ( …
Ah yes. Remember some of the advertising for Office XP back when Microsoft had at least something of a sense of humour and listened to the majority of the userbase?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWpR3VYmNDY
ie; Office eXcluded Paperclip. Sadly this version will probably build upon the pioneering work of Microsoft Bob and Clippy to produce something capable of delivering greatly increased levels of frustration and annoyance.
There is only two things I want my search box to discover: files on my computer and installed programs on my computer. Full stop.
I was helping someone with their Windows 11 machine yesterday. After getting out of S mode, I wanted to open the command prompt as administrator to manually add a local user. Since Microsoft somehow made the start menu even worse, I went to the search box and typed "CMD". At no time the option to run the command prompt come up. Instead, all I got was Bing searches about the command prompt. It did this even though I had already switched out of S mode.
The search box should never ever, without exception, search for anything except for what is on my machine. I have long believed that the purpose of Windows is to make money off you after the first day. Having a Microsoft account to log in is part of that, so is making the search box use Microsoft's search engine. Since the purpose of Windows is to be profitable after the initial sale, that means its purpose is not to make your life easier. That idea ended with Windows 7.
S mode is just a cynical way to make you use a Microsoft account.
If you didn't want to do anything useful with your PC then you need an MS account to download apps from the store.
If you did then you also need an MS account to download the "can I have a normal computer please" app from the store.
The MS account used to admin our Windows PCs is in the name of our faithful IKEA rabbit, and we have local (and un-elevated) accounts for actual use.
NB: net user /add is useful to get round the increasingly restrictive UI methods for local accounts.
For powershell addicts, New-LocalUser is useful, but then you need Add-LocalGroupMember to add them to the Users group (so they actually appear in the login list - this took me far too long to work out).
With such a diversity of user types using Windows, a feature that seems useless to one will be welcome to another. Linux is more concentrated towards a particular type of user and can usually stay within a known operational paradigm to keep most of them happy.
"Linux is more concentrated towards a particular type of user and can usually stay within a known operational paradigm to keep most of them happy."
Linux as a kernel sits underneath a lot of different distros and UIs to cater for a lot of different types of user.
You're not really familiar with Linux are you?
Reading TFA - tabs in the file manager, a tabbed terminal emulator - Windows sounds to be getting more like KDE everyday. After all, it caught up with multiple workspaces some time ago. It does need a much better start menu, however.
OTOH, because Linux has such a diversity of user types it has DEs offering a very different user experience - Gnome for one and I believe even Unity (the Ubuntu app-oriented DE) is being kept alive as a community project. There are a few DEs even more minimalist than Gnome and, of course, there's always the option of a straight terminal based set-up.
Now explain to me how the one and only, what Redmond decrees, one size fits all approach of Windows caters to this diversity of Windows users you told us about.
Get off that high horse.
Who wants to waste their life getting familiar with Linux? There are much better things like women, money, fun fun fun in the sun sun sun. And if u do want to while away those precious moments of your life interacting with an operating system like it's early 1990's then go for it. Knock yourself out.
"Now explain to me how the one and only, what Redmond decrees, one size fits all approach of Windows caters to this diversity of Windows users you told us about."
I'll take this: Shut up, u muppet. Get back in that server room! We've told you about this before. You scare the ladies.
Who wants to waste their life getting familiar with Linux?
5 minutes is hardly an entire life...
(see my earlier post - that is about how long it took a Vista-using "content consumer" of average intelligence to re-familiarize with Linux, particularly Devuan running Mate with TraditionalOk appearance)
Compare THAT to the time *WASTED* to re-figure-out how to be PRODUCTIVE using whatever "change for the sake of change": that was SHAT onto your computer via a FORCED UPDATE from Redmond... or even just to GET YOUR SETTINGS BACK THE WAY YOU HAD THEM. (yeah THAT "never happened" right???)
And which "particular type" of user is Linux geared towards? The coder? The paranoid web surfer? The granny who doesn't want to buy a new computer just because Win7 went EOL? The charities that recieve computers no longer capable of running Windows, but work just fine with something not quite so bloated? The gamer who wants far less lag-inducing bloat on their system?
Tell us, oh wise one. Which particular use scenario can Windows handle better than Linux?
Linux is more concentrated towards a particular type of user
If you mean HAPPY and PRODUCTIVE, I would say "yes".
After having installed Linux on the laptop computer of someone who is NOT an I.T. professional, and it only took 5 minutes or so before this person was JUST as fluent with it as with Windows Vista, and there was NO! WAY! IN! HELL! I was going to put "Ape" or Win-10-nic on it, I think I can say that THIS proof of concept was EXACTLY what anyone TRULY familiar with Linux would expect. It works VERY well for the non-professional "content consumer" as well as for the professional "guru" type.
And... you get CHOICE! You know, REAL choice, like being able to choose something that is NOT 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE.
when you are so big you turn into a bureaucracy, it's IMPOSSIBLE to have Ideas™
(In Redmond they are probably too busy shuffling Electronic™ Paperwork™, pointing fingers at one another, and marching in lock-step in order to Keep™ Their™ Jobs™ or at least that's my impression of what happens when the "culture" of a company begins to resemble a communist regime, or perhaps The Borg, at least from my perspective)
I can definitely see the uses for tabs in File Explorer as opposed to multiple new windows, assuming it's less of a memory hogg than opening multiple windows was.
I fondly recall having to tell a user he wasn't getting a shiny new laptop with double the memory of everyone else just because he liked to have 12-15 file explorer windows open and his sytem ground to halt when he did. Perhaps getting to tell would be better than having to tell, this particular user logged the same complaint about performance once a month and was told every time including by his own and my head of department that he wasn't getting special equipment because of the way he liked to work.
KDE's Dolphin has had this for longer than I can remember. It's handy, I use it, but it's still not a cure all as sometimes you have so many tabs open you'll just use the places or devices on the left.
Can't rally compare MS's Explorer to Dolphin or anything else as they've removed so much useful functionality from Explorer that any other file manager is better. That's not a rag, it's sadly a fact because while Explorer was never 'advanced', it was factually better than it's own previous version, until Vista hit and destroyed it.
FWIW, if you want a good file manager, see if you can get Dolphin running in Windoes subsystem, it's arguably the best there is for features.
In many ways the change has come too late to be of genuine use for most, because we're in the midst of the death of the traditional file server anyway. Rather than 10-12 windows across 4-5 different servers and shares users will have either browser pages open to the SharePoint site or if they use File Explorer it will be links via the OneDrive for Business app
"... we're in the midst of the death of the traditional file server anyway"
Well, you still need views of some sort. Maybe not traditional, but I use multiple tabs with fish:// to various sites. Sure they're not "cloud" servers, but they're still views.
I know WIndows Explorer has slightly different behaviors for "\\whatever", but it's still a view and being stuck with modal windows for each is a little (or very) archaic.
Of course, how long until MS simply ties all this into Edge? They tried 20 years ago, which ironically was more advanced on their first try than it is now (maybe not more secure, but you still had more options).
"he liked to have 12-15 file explorer windows open"
I've a user (or two) who like to have so many browser tabs open that you can't even see the first letter of each tab title on a 27" full HD monitor, running at 1920 x 1080 with scaling (in Windows display settings) at 100%.
And they wonder why their PC doesn't seem "snappy".
shite software, nothing to do with having lots of windows open.
12-15 file explorer windows. i.e. the same program, only extra memory is the listing of files, if not someone fucked up.
100 browser tabs open. Why does the browser waste any memory here beyond the url allocated to a tab? No point in loading/rendering the page, so again someone fucked up.
Does no one know how to actually write software properly anymore?
No point using a browser written by you then - following your philosophy it couldn't handle more than thing at a time.
Open two+ tabs and, following your methodology, only the currently selected one can do anything - no updates, no bugger all with any of the others.
That sounds like really, really shite software... And you criticise others...
Really? You think 2 should behave like 50 or 100? You are likely to use 2, but 20, 30, 40+ ? Not exactly the same scenario is it. Perfect example of someone who knows nothing about good software aren’t you.
As for updates, it’s a browser, stop shoehorning applications into somewhere they don’t fit. Once again poor software with ridiculous bloat. If you aren’t viewing it why do you care about it updating until you do? Only explanation is wrong tool for wrong job.
There's quite a few times when I need to put 2 windows side-by-side (sort of) for whatever reason, like "wait, why aren't the tag IDs the same on these pages?"
The "you can see this window OR this window" stuff is bullshit. The current Edge crap of "you WILL open a new window in a tab, not an actual new window" is just as irritating.
"Search Highlights" and "will highlight interesting moments in time from the world around you and in your organization."
"Search Highlights" and "will highlight what Microsoft considers interesting moments in time from the world around you and in your organization but will, in all reality will be as useful as targeted advertising*"
TFTFY
*In other words, effing useless.
It sounds just like the code they plonked into OneDrive. About once a week it pops up an annoyance wanting me to see "memories".
In my case, I just use OneDrive as a handy place to keep a backup of family history research and associated documents, so the picture the system uses to "tempt me in" is always an image of a census page I found a couple of years ago.
If I ever wander in there using a browser, I find that it has reshuffled everything (without my permission) into what it calls "Albums", the contents of which bear no relationship to their original naming scheme.
Yeah well, Android did much more the same thing to me. I couldn't understand why I kept getting notifications inviting me to look at the photos I took 3, 4, 5 or more years ago.
Then I realised every Google app, whether or not I had ever opened or used it, was sending me notifications. Great idea Google. I turned them all off, but for how long until Google decides I need to hear from them again?
It means that when someone sends you an email containing a video of a cat, you will be able to add another cat video to it and send it to all the other people you are "influencing", without the bother of saving it to your local drive.
After all, M$ want you to keep all your stuff on their storage, so that they can analyse it and sell you to their advertisers.
>As well as new and updated inbox apps, Build 22572 features more user interface tweaks. This time it was the turn of tabs in File Explorer.
So does this really mean MS are really trying to implement a consistent UI/UX style guide across the whole of Windows 11, or are they simply performing bespoke tweaks to individual application windows and announcing the changes as if they are somehow revolutionary.
Mind you at this rate of tweaking, Windows 11 might run out of announcements sometime after 2030...
I haven't used the built-in file explorer since they did away with the twin-pane version yonks ago.
One pane is useless to me and I can't be doing with keep having to open 2 instances when there are free (and much better) options out there like FreeCommander, though I paid the one-time fee for that a while back given I had been using it for years and got a pang of the guilts about it
It's a piece of shit, and Microsoft is setting the stage for things to get much, much shittier.
Listen up, all you Microsoft lemmings, droids, and brainless, mindless twits. All you Microsoft lemmings, droids, and brainless, mindless twits.Get ready for 'Desktop-As-A-Service' (Microsoft DESKTOP/LAPTOP SUBSCRIPTION, for you no-IQ, smooth-brain types).
It's coming.
Microsoft are a bit late to the "as-a-service" party. Apple and Google have been doing it for years. Use a 10-year old iPhone or Android device? No chance. They won't even connect to get updates, never mind the latest OS.
These days you find the likes of Toyota demanding cash to allow your use of things such as heated seats after the "introductory period" has elapsed.
...and for years there has been malware-as-a-service.
I'm a lifelong Windows user apart from occasional use of Mint if I need to for a particular reason. I have just had to move from W7 to W11 (my old laptop broke). I cannot express in words how ****ing ***t W11 is. It is truly appalling. I will never willingly get a Windows machine ever again.
The same licence should do both.
Download the matching W10 from MS to a USB stick.
Copy hardware drivers to it too, especially network drivers.
Boot from the W10 stick and install.
It will ask whether it is Home, Pro etc. Match your pre-installed flavour.
When it asks for the key, click on "I don't have a key". When it reports in it should find that there's a licence for this machine in Microsoft's database.
Install the drivers.
Do NOT install the Bloatware which came with the fresh kit.
"MOVING AWAY FROM WINDOWS, SOFTWARE CHECKLIST"
"After using Windows for some 30 years as my primary operating system, I have come to a difficult realization that I will need to wean myself off it for good sometime soon-ish. This isn't a trivial decision...
What prompted me was the news that Windows 11 Pro will (most likely) need an online account to complete the installation process...the very notion of a classic desktop formula being mangled so badly to serve some cloud-mobile greed model angers me. I have zero intention of using my PC like some smartphone chimp, on top of and beyond the technical inadequacies of Windows 11 itself. And then, later on in the future, an even more pointless idea of "desktop as a service" looms big. Nah. Not gonna play that silly game..."
https://www.dedoimedo.com/
Microsoft needs to relax the hardware restrictions. Otherwise, it is irrelevant what the new improvements are. People aren't going to buy all new hardware for a new version of Windows with new and always more confusing control panels
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