Corporations start testing Windows 11 in bigger numbers. Good luck

Large corporations are starting to run Windows 11 pilot programs in anger, potentially helping to boost adoption of Microsoft’s latest operating system – whose popularity remains way behind its predecessor. According to figures from Statcounter, a web analytics service that has tracking code installed on 1.5 million websites, …

[ArrZarr]

I can't wait for all of the Windows haters to come out of the woodwork and list all the reasons why Win11 will never catch on, despite making exactly the same noises around this time after the Win10 release.

Windows 11 is basically fine, it covers the base of pretty much everything most people in most businesses will need (Looking at you, Excel). It has problems, because this is still Microsoft we're talking about but it's a perfectly functional operating system once you tell it to sit still, shut up and stop thinking for itself.

Except for the contextual menus. The new ones can go to hell as they're so non-functional that they may as well only contain the button that opens up the old context menu so that you can do whatever you wanted to do before but with an extra click in the way.

Now I'm going to go and hide in a hole before I hear you all coming after me in your attack helicopters.

[tangentialPenguin]

Windows 8 was "fine" as well if you ignored everything they changed from Windows 7, so was Vista. I think we should maybe raise our expectations a little.

It's also worth mentioning that Windows 10 wasn't good at launch either, it was good eventually

[chivo243]

It's also worth mentioning that Windows 10 wasn't good at launch either, it was good eventually...

still bloated. remove bloat. run win update. bloat returns. One time through the Spin Cycle Fantastique is enough for me, thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

The new MS sausage factory conveyor belt, adding vasts amount of bloat is the 'Microsoft Store'.

If you have an older laptop, it's worth using PowerShell to remove all the apps where Microsoft have decided they know best (as usual) and can't be removed from the Microsoft Store. Anything 'Xbox', is a good rule of thumb.

It's surprising how little the fans now come on after doing so, there is so much crap being installed, and most seem to have additional privacy/telemetry data collection implications, that are enabled by default, with different privacy settings within some dark corner of the app's settings, rather than controlled by the Windows OS under privacy settings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The new MS sausage factory conveyor belt, adding vasts amount of bloat is the 'Microsoft Store'.

Just to add, today's new store app, the Microsoft Store installed without my permission, "MSN Money".

Regulators, do your job, stopping sitting on your hands.

How is this not an abuse of power by MS, against competing personal accounting apps?

[aerogems]

Windows 8 was actually great, same with Vista. Both of them represented big leaps forward in terms of under the hood improvements. Vista got stuck in a development hell because decades of decisions made in Windows NT/2000, made before the Internet existed, and when the product was intended for enterprise use, meant that XP pushed the codebase about as far as it could go without a major refactoring. But the end result brought us a 3D hardware accelerated GUI, loads of security improvements, and a more solid foundation that could be used for future versions of Windows. Windows 7 was just a warmed over Vista that really didn't offer much except a rather obvious clone of the Mac OS X Dock. Windows 8 was another crucial release that brought things like better support for multi-core CPUs in the process scheduler, more security hardening, and a lot of core tools (like Task Manager) got a facelift for the first time... ever, really. Windows 11 is another pivotal release by again increasing security, this time turning on by default a lot of hardware security functions from Windows 10, refinements to the process scheduler again (of great importance for anyone running a 12th or 13th gen Intel CPU), and has represented the largest effort to unify the disparate designs of various Windows components since Windows 95. I will grant that MS did a terrible job of explaining a lot of their reasoning behind CPU support, and their decision to use the unfinished 10X UI is a little baffling, but on the whole the OS is a significant step forward.

I just don't get why people are so hung up on a branding decision. Windows 11 is just a name, the underlying OS is still fundamentally the same as Windows 10. Who cares!? You can still do all the same things you did before, so who cares what they call it? Call it Windows GooGoo-GaaGaa for all I give a rats arse. The name is meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

It’s not the name change or what’s under the hood that’s the problem normally it’s the GUI changes that piss people off. If they just changed the underlying code and less of the GUI and UX then people probably wouldn’t complain. As you mention Win 8 why didn’t the Metro, sorry TIFKAM start menu stick around in Win 10? Nothing to do with it being a pain in the ass to use by any chance?

Great now I’m going to have nightmares about that bloody TIFKAM pissing off the CEO again.

[aerogems]

It's a no-win situation for Microsoft. If they never changed the GUI at all, people would complain about how old and outdated it looked. But if they change it, then people piss and moan about how something is now 2 pixels up/down/left/right of where it used to be and the world is going to end as a result, or they changed the color of something to be half a shade different and it destroys the visual flow or some nonsense. The controls still act the same as they did, it's just the appearance that's changed.

I'm not a huge fan of the return to the Windows 2000 "flat" style UI controls personally, I think Vista was the high water mark from the aesthetics POV, but I just deal with it and get on with life. As I'm not a toddler I don't throw tantrums about it, I just suck it up and get on with things like any mature adult would do. Not sure what point you're trying to make with your straw man argument regarding the Start menu.

[JClouseau]

it's the GUI, stupid

Of course I don't have any meaningful stats about this, but from my personal experience and (IT) people around me the problem is not about what's under the hood. There is no question Windows 10 is quite stable, and the jury is still out regarding performance (OS and apps get more and more bloated over time but hardware has progressed a lot).

But Windows 7 was, as far as I'm concerned, very stable and mature as well. I kept it until last week. Honestly XP was not too bad either.

The big problem with Windows 8/10 is indeed the GUI. And sorry, but it's not just about "oh they changed my menus, I'm all miffed" (holds breath, turns red) as you seem to imply. It's just crappy and unfinished. I'm quite afraid of 11.

I've been tinkering with computers for ~35 years, as a hobby and then a job. And I like to think I'm not (yet) completely senile.

So why did it take me around 5-10 minutes the first time to find where to set the bloody screensaver, understand why the screen would go black without showing the chosen screensaver ? Oh yes, let's not forget the fact that the settings are shown in a Windows 7-style window (?).

This is a mundane example, but shows the "philosophy" (or lack thereof) of this GUI. I could go on about the network/wifi settings. At times it feels like the interface has been designed by Terry Gilliam. Or Terry's chimp.

It has nothing to do with "looks" or taste, just plain functionality.

This is Microsoft, a company that's more than 50 years old, with thousands of (I guess) talented employees, sh*tloads of cash, there is simply no excuse for them to offer (impose ?) such a crappy, nonsensical and illogical UX to millions of users/customers/businesses.

"Suck it up" ? Yep, we have no choice if we want to run some specific workloads. But we shouldn't have to put up with this.

Granted, I haven't really tried 11 yet, but the 10 "experience" is not too encouraging.

Aaaand I'm spent...

[aerogems]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

First up, credit for at least being the first person who can provide a couple of examples. They may be weak examples, but it's more than anyone else has been able to come up with, so kudos to you.

I won't argue that Microsoft has made a few blunders, some of them quite major. The "Vista Ready" program was a serious unforced error, as was trying to force a mobile oriented UI (which was awesome on mobile and still better than anything else out there) onto a desktop OS with very different use cases. I've also been a critic of how, if you know where to look, you can still find remnants of the old NT 3.1-3.51 UI in Windows 11. But that's not really what I'm getting at.

You say it's not all about "oh they changed my menus, I'm all miffed" (holds breath, turns red) but then you go on to complain about how they moved settings. Your first example was not being able to find the screensaver settings, then later you talk about having difficulty finding wifi settings and how the UX is "illogical." Have you ever considered the possibility that the new system is actually more logical, it just doesn't feel like it to YOU because you have ~35 years worth of habits? I mean, these days, screensavers have pretty much gone the way of the dodo, the more eco-friendly option is to just put the display into a low power sleep mode. So, an example about trying to find the screensaver settings is a good example, just not for the reasons you intended it.

I've made this challenge to others in different comments, but I'll do it again here. Find an old copy of Windows98 or something, load it up in a VM, and then try to do a typical daily workload using only the VM. I'll bet that your memory of how things were will not line up with the reality you experience.

[VeryRealHuman]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

IMO the stuff that got moved to the Settings app in Win11 is very intuitive and even more so than before. Still sucks that a lot remains in the old dialog hell we know as the Control Panel

[LybsterRoy]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

-- I've made this challenge to others in different comments, but I'll do it again here. Find an old copy of Windows98 or something, load it up in a VM, and then try to do a typical daily workload using only the VM. I'll bet that your memory of how things were will not line up with the reality you experience. --

Its an interesting point. However, you seem to have forgotten to think it through. So rather than "try to do a typical daily workload" how about " spend two months learing the interface and then try to do a typical daily workload". You note the subtle difference here. Its about training.

[Richard 12]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

They have consistently made changes that are the direct opposite of 50 years of research into WIMP interfaces.

Possibly the most egregious example is moving the Start menu to the middle where it's much harder to hit, and letting it move.

Thus turning doing anything at all into a slalom requiring fast, precise mousing. A skill the vast majority of computer users do not have.

Aside from that: Huge amounts of whitespace, at least three different design languages in the two different control panels, unclear what you can click on, interdependent configuration scattered into multiple different places, very important information (x won't work because y) hidden away, Start menu subfolders removed so you cannot organise applications (hidden assumption that nobody has more than about ten applications installed)

[AlbertH]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

The GUI is appalling (as described above), but the underlying code is even worse: Once again it's spaghetti. It's another bunch of kludges, hacked together to make it - sort of - work.

The "qualification" specifications for the latest iterations of this mess means that it won't run on many machines more than a couple of years old. In fact it never "runs" - even on the fastest modern hardware - it just sort of stumbles along.....

It's dreadful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

win 8 was utter shite with the tile wank.

your a crap troll or fucking demented

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

Upvoted for the truth, downvoted for the grammar.

[Dave K]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

"Have you ever considered the possibility that the new system is actually more logical"

No. If the new system was logical, they wouldn't need a text label next to the modern-style "toggle switch" buttons in Settings to tell you if they are on or off. That is a clear admission that the toggle-switch button is a failure and does not clearly illustrate its current status.

I also cannot believe it is logical to have basic settings in one style of user interface, then the "advanced settings" in a completely different (and older) style of user interface. That's not logical, it's just lazy.

Furthermore, I can't accept it's more logical to hover over an icon on my taskbar in order to bring up a list of Excel windows so I can see which is which, rather than having the filenames being displayed directly on the buttons on my taskbar (as every single prior version of Windows has supported).

I don't mind changes that are logical and well thought out. The introduction of "Settings" does make sense as Control Panel is a bit of a mess, but MS dropped the ball by implementing illogical UI elements (see above) and only shifting half the stuff across, so if anything they've made things more of a mess than they were before. I also don't mind the centered buttons on the task bar because there is an option to switch them back to the left - everyone is happy. But when they introduce a new version of something that clearly and plainly has less functionality than the old version (task bar and start menu for example), I cannot see that as an upgrade, only as a downgrade.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

Here's a more concrete example then.

My preferred approach for many years is to switch/launch tasks with the mouse. Some may prefer keyboard shortcuts etc, but I like being able to go from any task to any task in one click, and to be able to launch any of my frequently used apps in one click. No multiple keypresses, no hover here then click there, just one click and instantly done.

In Win10 and earlier, this is not the default but is easily achieved - a multi-row taskbar, disable task grouping, and a large quicklaunch area. Bonus - quicklaunch uses old-style .lnk shortcuts meaning you can have shortcuts to files or folders rather than apps, and can have multiple shortcuts for the same app with different command line parameters.

All of this very useful taskbar functionality is gone in Win11 (short of third-party workarounds). It's not moved somewhere else, it's just not there any more.

I get why they do this - more options complicate the code and make it buggier, harder to test comprehensively and generally harder to maintain. But it's still a very strong deterrent when you're asked to upgrade to something that lacks functionality you're using constantly.

I also get that they're designing for laptops with limited physical screen area. Which is fine - they clearly need to support that as best they can. But I have no shortage of screen area or pixels, and am quite happy to use some of that for a larger taskbar in order to get that one-click taskswitching. I don't benefit from a UI designed for a cramped workspace, and they've lost the flexibility of being able to take advantage of larger screen areas.

[Updraft102]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

"I get why they do this - more options complicate the code and make it buggier, harder to test comprehensively and generally harder to maintain."

That is the excuse for every lopped-off feature in any program now. Why not take it to its logical extreme, and delete all the features, and have zero lines of code? It is the ultimate in ease of maintenance. Not very useful, but in the modern era when it is all about making life easier on the maintainers, that's a small price to pay, innit?

[-v(o.o)v-]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

It is similar "designing to the lowest common denomination" as the idiotic touch screen interface in win10. MS just doesn't get it, it even gets worse and worse. Reducing the whole task bar/start menu to a list of icons and nothing else is a new level of screwing the power users.

[JClouseau]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

OK I'll bite (for the last time) : this is not about MS having changed my habits and I'm an old grumpy geezer who can't tell his right from his left mouse buttons.

This is about me being perfectly at ease from Windows 3.1 through 7 (included), thinking that the UI was getting better most of the time. No major UI-related complains from my part.

Then came 8 and all hell broke loose (not on any of my PCs, but as lots of IT people here I'm the "support" guy for the family)

I'm not a fan of MacOS either (family support, etc...) but at least the UI is consistent.

Oh, and screensavers are still a feature that is available today in Windows (don't know about 11), so if I want to use it please let me be, thankyouverymuch.

Now the article is about 11, not 10. So perhaps they learned and did improve the UI, but reading comments here and there I'm not holding my breath. Certainly won't be trying this out on my main home PC any time soon.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

If you miss a screensaver: You can copy them out of Win9x or Windows NT 4.0 and still install/activate them in Windows 11. I made the Windows 98se labyrinth saver 8k video this way. Though by that time it was in Windows 10, but it works in Windows 11 as well. Right-click your .SCR file, and you have "Test" "configure" "install" - at least I have those options and they work, I hope they still exist in a vanilla Windows 11 install.

The UI Improvement is a mixed bag: Parts are improved, but very important parts are changed in a way you need more mouse clicks and have less grand overview over what you have opened, most notably which explorer folders you have open.

[Updraft102]

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

"Have you ever considered the possibility that the new system is actually more logical, "

Sure... having a mobile-oriented Settings "app" on a desktop PC that has some of the settings in it, with the rest of them being in the desktop-oriented Control Panel, is *perfectly* logical. Having a half and half UI that is equally unfit for mobiles (which MS abandoned years ago, though you would never know it from their UI!) and for desktops, rather than one designed specifically for the platform upon which it is used, is the height of logic.

Having the thing full of ads, telemetry that can't be fully turned off (even on enterprise editions, where it still blabs about things MS considers "security" issues), and updates you can't control all that much are icing on the cake.

It used to be that when you plugged in a new device for which it does not have a driver, Windows would search for one on the spot from Windows Update if you asked it to. Now it just sends you to Windows Update, where you may or may not get a driver you need, and oh yes, while waiting to see, let's just go ahead and install every other update MS wants you to have too. Hope you weren't planning on using that new thing anytime in the immediate future!

Windows 10 did not start as crap and end up good. It started as crap, is crap now, and will go EOL as crap. Windows 11 started as even crappier, and it will end as crap too. It's Microsoft policy... Windows is crap, by design, and people will use it because MS spent 30 years trying to make sure they have no other choice.

Windows 9x would not work for modern workloads not because its GUI is inadequate, but because the kernel level stuff is a quarter century out of date. The GUI is perfectly fine... it would have evolved over time as the technical underpinnings did the same, but the basic paradigm would be the same.

I have my current desktop set up pretty much as it was with XP. From the moment I first ran XP to the last eleven years on, I had the theming service disabled and the 95-style cascading menu enabled, returning the appearance to Win2k.

My daily driver desktop is more like Win2k than it is like the Win 10 desktop. It has menu bars, title bars, status bars, no ribbon, and a denser layout than the touch oriented bits of 10. The application ("Start") menu has cascading flyouts for the various categories, very much like the one in 95/2k. The System Settings menu is a dead ringer for the old Control Panel, and there is no additional settings "app." It's what the classic UI would have evolved into if MS did not try to reinvent the wheel every so often (the current iteration of which being square like the wheels on a Canadian car in South Park). And it's far and away better than anything Microsoft has made in the last decade.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the strange changes that make no sense, like the new right click context menu in Explorer. Has limited options and you need to click on "Show more options" to get to the old context menu. Working on some updates on Win 11 machines today. Right click on an installer. The new context menu has "Run as administrator" there, but it is greyed out, despite me being logged in as an admin user. The "Show more options" old menu "Run as administrator" is usable. Bizarre. Why show the option on the new menu, but grey it out only to allow it on the old menu?

I have fortunately found a reg hack to turn the new menu off and revert to old behaviour.

[tiggity]

I did that reg hack too - got irritated by the extra clicks as I use those context menus frequently (I know there were keyboard shortcuts I could use, its all about the minor irritation of extra clicks / key presses).

What would help is if MS had an easy to use tool for tweaking the GUI, allowing user to make GUI more how they liked it, that would defuse a lot of the hate.

The GUI differences across versions are a pain (you notice it a lot when part of your work is remoting into various machines running different variants, some server, some consumer windows)...I have reached the point that if the version has vaguely modern search, then I just use that to fire up what I need to use

[Anonymous Coward]

your lucky the search is a total piece of crap

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I looks like 'your' the same AC as above...

[Fruit and Nutcase]

What would help is if MS had an easy to use tool for tweaking the GUI, allowing user to make GUI more how they liked it, that would defuse a lot of the hate.

TweakUI/PowerToys not like the old days

[yetanotheraoc]

MS battling dementia

"Why show the option on the new menu, but grey it out only to allow it on the old menu?"

Probably because they do different things. Surprised? That's just MS keeping you on your toes.

[LybsterRoy]

I'm calling here from reality. If it were just a simple move a few pixels no one in their right mind would complain, but when (as one example) Microsoft inflicts the ribbon on us many do.

--people would complain about how old and outdated it looked--

Strange I have never heard people moan about how their computer looked old and outdated, but I have heard (and emitted) many comments along the lines of "where the hell is that now", "where has it gone", "how do I..."

I know how we in the IT world love car analogies. How would you react if they altered the brake pedal so that it was round and positioned under the back seat? Would you then say -- The controls still act the same as they did, it's just the appearance that's changed. --

[Fruit and Nutcase]

car analogies...

Just wait for the iCar. And gawd help us if Nadella starts getting ideas into his head about wanting to get in to building vehicles

[Updraft102]

"I'm not a huge fan of the return to the Windows 2000 "flat" style UI controls personally..."

Windows 2000 never had flat controls. It had skeuomorphic simulated 3d controls... the opposite of flat.

[DoctorPaul]

Not only did Microshaft fail to offer Win10 users the option of a "classic shell" with a Win7 look, they actively sabotaged the efforts of those who tried to offer users that very thing. The hubris and sheer bloody-mindedness just beggars belief.

I've been using PCs since the BBC Micro and am still on Win7 - I've tried Win10 a couple of times and I simply cannot bear to look at it. I swear that those sharp corners actually hurt my eyes and the flat colours remind me of the bad old days of 256 colours being your limit. I may be retired but I still spend 6 - 12 hours a day looking at my PC's screens (6, count 'em) so I think that it's extremely important that what I'm looking at offends the eye as little as possible.

I must admit that I haven't checked whether the classic skin developers have managed to get back ahead of M$ in the last year or two, but even if they did I'm not sure that I could live with the update debacle in Win10 - at least with Win7 I can choose when and if to download updates. That's due to end in a couple of weeks of course :-(

I've been running Mint on other boxes for quite a few years now, so maybe I will finally make the jump.

It's a reflection of how crap Win10 is that, faced with a choice between Win7 without updates and Win10, I'm sticking with Win7.

[FatGerman]

Yes, this. Stop changing the way my tools work. Stop using a UI toolkit that makes certain windows invisible when you take a screenshot (Windows bloody Terminal). Just leave it alone. If someone came in and rearranged your desk so you couldn't find anything you'd be annoyed. If someone redesigned all the tools you use every 6 months so you had to relearn them you'd get annoyed. Why do we put up with it on OSes?

This is a large part of the reason I use KDE now. It hasn't changed a lot on 20 years, and that's why I'm productive.

[aerogems]

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen."

-- Albert Einstein

If you look at neurological research, especially in terms of combating things like dementia in old age, the key is to remain flexible enough that you can deal with unexpected outcomes and unfamiliar situations. If you just keep doing the same thing day in and day out, you are only reinforcing specific neural pathways and the rest will atrophy.

I'd also bet KDE has changed a lot more than you think over the last 20-years. Find an ISO of an old distribution from around 1995 and load it up into a VM. I all but guarantee if you try to do your normal work, half the things you try to do won't be possible because the necessary feature didn't exist, or you won't be able to find where a particular setting is because somewhere along the way they moved it and while there may have been much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time, you've since adapted and forgotten all about The Before Times(tm).

[An_Old_Dog]

Misapplied Example of Neurological Research

Your first paragraph about neurological research is true, but you what you ignore is the rate of the rate of change in modern society is increasing dramatically. We've got too many other things arbitrarily, needlessly changing, and we want to conserve our mental energy to deal with things which necessarily change, vs things which arbitrarily, needlessly change.

Clothing, auto, and consumer-device marketing is based on arbitrary, forced change. And so is desktop OS marketing. It doesn't need to be that way, but marketers do marketing the way they were trained to.

I don't actually care about UI look-and-feel, unless a change makes me slower doing things. Changing menu-item order based on frequency-of-use is the worst offender, because it prevents the build-up and use of "muscle memory".

[yetanotheraoc]

laugh of the day

"the key is to remain flexible enough that you can deal with unexpected outcomes and unfamiliar situations"

Oh I see, Microsoft is _helping_ me! That's why, in Outlook 365, when I use a quick task to reply to a message, the Inbox does not update the reply icon in the message list. That's why, even though I have attachment preview disabled in settings, if I select a message in just the right (wrong?) way, Outlook offers to preview the file while at the same time warning me that it's unsafe. On and on and on....

[that one in the corner]

> half the things you try to do won't be possible because the necessary feature didn't exist

How many of those "features" would actually turn out to be anything actually related to the OS (and, specifically, about how the OS UI acts) and not just programs that won't install and/or run, mainly because they weren't ever expecting to install on that OS?

E.g. is a 1995 ISO likely to support running 64-bit Blender in 128 GB of RAM? Probably not.

Does that fact have any bearing at all on the basic value and usability of the version of KDE on that ISO? Nope, not one bit. It would be possible - pointless and time-consuming, but possible - to get that copy of KDE to build and run in 64-bits, without changing its appearance or behaviour, so you could do your Blender'ing and complete the day's work.

Put another way: aside from drivers (in particular USB) and providing management for an increasing number of resources (RAM, fast LAN, more CPU cores, PCI instead of ISA ...) - *none* of which need change the End-User's interaction with the OS (USB drives look like any other drive...) - can you actually give examples of *useful* OS features that have been added since 1995? Not just sticking into the install some utility that just replicates - badly - a third party program (e.g. WordPad under Windows), but actual shiny new unarguably-part-of-the-OS features that impact on any other programme you may want to install - *AND* where those features then *required* changes to the way we interacted with the UI?

[LybsterRoy]

Beautifully written and my sentiments exactly.

[-v(o.o)v-]

"neurological research"? Muah, aerogems trolling and all you falling into it. Nobody can really be this thick, what a load of BS I've ever seen.

[LionelB]

So your next car will have the brake and accelerator pedals swapped. Just to keep you on your toes (so to speak).

[that one in the corner]

> If you just keep doing the same thing day in and day out, you are only reinforcing specific neural pathways and the rest will atrophy.

When playing an instrument, this is called "practising your scales" and is considered a Good Thing: reinforcing how to hold down the string with one hand and pluck it with the other without getting that horrid buzz every time.

By constant repetition you are reinforcing the ability to perform mundane actions without the need for conscious thought. In other words, you are learning to use a tool. And an OS should just be a tool - a means to an end, not an end in itself - a tool whose sole purpose is to support the use of task-specific Applications, so we can all choose the unique set of Apps to support our end goals. Once learnt, a properly made tool will never surprise us - a soldering iron that suddenly glows white hot is *not* useful! Given similar tools, one may be more pleasing - the handle is grippier, the tone is grittier and more Metal - but neither require you to suddenly hang upside down because the slidey bit won't work otherwise.

The world would not be a better place if, one Tuesday morning, all the world's guitars were suddenly restrung "upside down" and glued that way.

By supporting pointless GUI changes with the suggestion they are a neurological necessity, you are either unaware that the OS is supposed to be a tool for the End User *or* you are part of a hideous dystopian vision where no User has any interactions outside of their work and the only joy they could derive from 16 hours of mindless data-entry is when the desktop icons change or they have the excitement of a new settings dialogue for their keyboard.

[cosmodrome]

GUI changes?

I really don't care. It's the compulsive crap flood that pisses me off. Dozens of useless apps that are preinstalled and can't be deactivated like "cortana" or X-Box-bullshit. Apps that I don't have installed and do not intend to install but keep showing up in the start menu not even to talk about. And just don't let me think of the continuously self-lobotomizing "System Options".

[aerogems]

Re: GUI changes?

While none of that really has anything to do with the OS, I haven't seen Cortana outside of replays of Halo in... ages. You can disable it quite easily. In the startup apps section of the task manager, just set it to disabled, and done. I don't even remember doing that on my most recent computer, even after I moved to a new account. So far as I can remember, it was disabled by default.

And name 5 settings that you could change before, but can't now. I'll grant that it would have been better if MS locked some people in a room and didn't let them out until they finished overhauling the entire UI from top to bottom, but so far they've done a pretty good job of leaving a link to the old control panel when they haven't implemented the same feature in the settings app yet. I have yet to come across a single setting I could change before that I can't any longer, except maybe moving the taskbar to other parts of the screen. I never did that, but I know others did. So that's a freebie for you, only 4 left!

[aerogems]

Re: GUI changes?

This challenge is open to anyone, so how about it downvoters who can't even offer up any kind of counter argument? Any of you want to take a stab at naming 5 settings you could change in Windows 10 that you can't in 11? C'mon! It should be easy! You should be able to come up with 10+ just off the top of your head, and I'm only asking for 5! We're all waiting with baited breath. Tick, tock...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: GUI changes?

It's 'bated', and you went into the twaddle category when you dissed Windows 7 and haven't dug your way out yet. When does an unapologetic apologist become a troll? Somewhere ↑ that way.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: GUI changes?

_{(Maybe they've been eating tuna and expect to attract a cat...)}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: GUI changes?

we are too busy pissing about with a crap win 11 gui to be wanking about for a fucking crap troll.

just fuck off with that bollocks

[Dave K]

Re: GUI changes?

1) Task bar to be anywhere other than at the bottom of the screen.

2) Turn off "grouping" of task bar buttons and show the full name of the programs/files open instead of just an icon.

3) Right click on task bar to easily open Task Manager.

4) Start Menu that can show all my programs by default without requiring an extra button click and which doesn't have a big section dedicated to "recommended" apps (yes, you can turn the recommended section off, but you can't reclaim the space it takes up).

5) Change the size of the taskbar (handy to shrink it on smaller laptop screens)

6) Full control of which icons are always displayed in the system tray

7) Change the size of the Start Menu to show more icons (particularly handy on large screens)

There's a handful for you off the top of my head. No doubt if I ran Windows 11 as a full-blown OS on one of my devices instead of just as a test in a VM I could have found more for you. It is undoubtedly one of the least flexible/customisable versions of Windows I've ever come across. If you like the defaults, fine. If you don't, you're screwed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: GUI changes?

And this list of 7 CRIPPLING changes really makes my blood f***ING BOIL!!

The amount of productivity loss due to ONLY THESE SEVEN idiotic changes is MASSIVE.

*** Why didn't ANY reporters do their work and actually WRITE about these changes and publicize how BAD they are?? ***

Why do we need to cry again and again in an obscure forum about this that EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IMMEDIATELY the first time they see Windows 11???

REPORTERS. DO. YOUR. WORK. AND. RAISE. HELL.

[9Rune5]

Re: GUI changes?

I tried a screenshot just now, and Terminal shows up just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Great now I’m going to have nightmares about that bloody TIFKAM pissing off the CEO again."

You.....deployed Windows 8 in an enterprise? Egad man, what possessed you to do that?!

[Anonymous Coward]

“You.....deployed Windows 8 in an enterprise? Egad man, what possessed you to do that?!”

It was a personal machine that they brought into the office to get support on. Can’t say no to the CEO was the motto. As a business we didn’t want anything to do with 8. Went straight to 10 when it was released. Can’t remember the entire speech the IT director made but I learned the word “Fugly” from it.

[JimboSmith]

Windows 8 was actually great, same with Vista. Both of them represented big leaps forward in terms of under the hood improvements. Vista got stuck in a development hell because decades of decisions made in Windows NT/2000, made before the Internet existed, and when the product was intended for enterprise use, meant that XP pushed the codebase about as far as it could go without a major refactoring. But the end result brought us a 3D hardware accelerated GUI, loads of security improvements, and a more solid foundation that could be used for future versions of Windows. Windows 7 was just a warmed over Vista that really didn't offer much except a rather obvious clone of the Mac OS X Dock. Windows 8 was another crucial release that brought things like better support for multi-core CPUs in the process scheduler, more security hardening, and a lot of core tools (like Task Manager) got a facelift for the first time... ever, really. Windows 11 is another pivotal release by again increasing security, this time turning on by default a lot of hardware security functions from Windows 10, refinements to the process scheduler again (of great importance for anyone running a 12th or 13th gen Intel CPU), and has represented the largest effort to unify the disparate designs of various Windows components since Windows 95. I will grant that MS did a terrible job of explaining a lot of their reasoning behind CPU support, and their decision to use the unfinished 10X UI is a little baffling, but on the whole the OS is a significant step forward.

Yeah and you’ve obviously never had to support people for whom the UI is everything. Most people don’t know or care about the under the hood improvements, security, multi-core CPU support. What they care about is how it looks on the screen and how easy it is to use. Windows 8 was a pig to use, with different “desktops” depending on what program you were using. So something launched on Metro wasn’t seen on the conventional desktop and vice versa. Try explaining that to a harrassed C Suite executive who is mentally filling out your P45 as you talk. I know Stardock had a way round that but try getting that approved for corporate rollout company wide.

I just don't get why people are so hung up on a branding decision. Windows 11 is just a name, the underlying OS is still fundamentally the same as Windows 10. Who cares!? You can still do all the same things you did before, so who cares what they call it? Call it Windows GooGoo-GaaGaa for all I give a rats arse. The name is meaningless.

It depends on what you mean by branding. I couldn’t give a flying fig if they’d called it Windows We’re Gouging You or changed the now start button to resemble a butthole. What I do care about is when they change the UI so that there are no hierarchical menus on the now giant full screen start menu. Or you can’t boot into the desktop directly (yeah 8.1 fixed some of the problems but not all)..It wouldn’t have mattered what they called Windows 8 it would still have been a pig to use.

[aerogems]

While a nice anecdote, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I wrote.

[JimboSmith]

You wrote

Windows 8 was actually great

For you maybe it was, but for a lot of people it just wasn’t which is doubtless why TIFKAM isn’t here anymore. It probably worked fine on a tablet it’s just we were using desktops/laptops at the time. As I said 8.1 fixed quite a few things that were wrong with 8 but where I worked we had already taken the decision to skip 8 entirely.

Further you wrote

Windows 8 was another crucial release that brought things like better support for multi-core CPUs in the process scheduler, more security hardening, and a lot of core tools (like Task Manager) got a facelift for the first time... ever, really.

How many ordinary users do you think have heard of the process scheduler or security hardening? How many ordinary users do you think cared about the process scheduler or security hardening? How many more do you think cared that Windows 8 didn’t boot into a normal desktop, when you eventually found that desktop it no longer had a start button? How many ordinary users do you think found having two different types of programs etc. on Windows 8 confusing?

In Windows 11 you cannot ungroup taskbar items. This looks particularly odd if you have a large monitor as seen here: https://imgur.com/DerXJsy (not my image) and yes it did take me a bit of searching and then Googling to find out to my disbelief this wasn’t possible anymore.

You can’t have a double height taskbar.

You can’t have the taskbar anywhere but the bottom of the screen without downloading a third party program.

You can’t show all programs by clicking on the start button. You have to then click another button that says “All apps”

Instead of choosing an app to be the default for say all image files, you have to do each file type individually.

etc.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

There is a "Fix" for this Taskbar nonsense on a large screen, which I use:

1. Set Taskbar to Auto-Hide.

2. Use TranslucentTB with "Regular -> Clear" setting, which makes the Taskbar 100% see-through.

3. Optional: Get DesktopOK and use the "Hide desktop icons after 10 seconds". This will hide any hint which OS you are running, and gives a clean desktop, helps to focus. Don't worry, the icons un-hide automatically when needed. Additionally: I use the "Hide mouse after 15 seconds not moving" in DesktopOK, nice when reading ebooks and the like, where a mouse can be distracting since it is a "hey you are still on a computer" hint.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in the desktop background I present you exhibit "A": a turd reimagined and optimized by the Win 11 UI designers. Why a turd you say? Why not since the GUI around the background is one also.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Its not the stuff under the hood that the problem.

No one and I mean no one gives a stuff about stack protection.... or thread scheduling.

What people dont like is spending ages learning howto use tools and the program interfaces to those tools, and then some tool at m$ hq decides "Hey... its looks cooler as a flat icon that resembles a phone, and then we use contina to access the menus as a bonus feature" while the control panel has been renamed and hidden away further leaving the only option on the 'settings' tab "Reset to defaults"

I dont care how great the interface is.. and how many awards its won from the arts council if users have to spend 12 weeks learning the new interface... might just as well got linux if we wanted that.........

[aerogems]

Name 5 things that were changed so radically it took you more than a couple seconds to figure out.

[aerogems]

As before, challenge is open to anyone. So, anyone who wants to downvote, how about actually offering up something? If the changes Microsoft makes are really that bad, it should be easy to come up with 5 examples. Otherwise, it's hard not to take your silence as proof that you can't come up with even a single example.

[Paul Crawford]

None so blind as those who will not see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have 5, only used the home version it briefly try and help diagnose a problematic internet connection.

Had to work out how to take it out of "S mode" before I could run a command prompt, this was not easy and I was not happy. I use at work what they tell me to.

Linux and a chromebook at home will suffice for me, they both work brilliantly and by the time windows 11 is mandatory all my hardware will be defunct.

I'll look at it again then.

[WolfFan]

1. Where did Administrative Tools vanish to? Oh. Wait. They moved some of it to Windows Tools. And hid it, as they hid the damn Control Panel.

2. How do you group applications? In Win 10 and before you can do that. In MacOS you can do that. Can’t do that in Win 11, or if you can, I can’t find it. Of course, as none of my machines run Win 11, my experiments have been on other people’s computers.

3. How do you set up a Home, or, now, a Pro, machine without a Microsoft account? I could and did set up Win 10 and earlier without Microsoft accounts. I can and do set up Macs without Apple accounts. Why am I forced to use Microsoft accounts?

4. Related to above: how do I nuke certain apps, including but not limited to the MS Store, anything and everything X-Box, and the various phone things, none of which support iPhones. The majority of users at the office use iPhones. I have two iPhones, my personal one and my company one.

5. Certain users at work insist on having their task bars on the right; one guy wants it on top. It’s trivial to do that in Win 10. It’s bloody impossible to do that in Win 11 without hacking the system.

[Sudosu]

Not sure if this trick works for Win11(hope it still does), but it used to work for Win10.

Disconnect the network cable during the install and it lets you get around the push for getting a MS account.

I will still pester you every so often though.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

MUUUUUCH simpler, at least tested with the pro version including Windows 11. Use x@x.x as name, and x as password. Then it will offer a local account. Since I didn't use the "home" version of any windows ever it will take years until I am unlucky again since someone from the family...

[SundogUK]

Windows 8 was never fine. Windows 8 was a desktop OS that desperately wanted to be a phone OS and consequently failed miserably at both.

[WolfFan]

Vista was usable. Vista was actually faster on my hardware than XP. (Yes, really.) Vista had its good spots.

Vista ran incredibly slowly on a lot of ‘Vista-ready’ hardware. MS said that it would run in 512 MB of RAM. It will. It’ll be slow, and nothing else will run, but it’ll run. There were a lot of XP users with 512 MB or less.

Win 8 was useless. It was slower on my hardware than Win 7 or Vista. I hated the damn tiles. I hated the damn charms. I wanted my start menu back. Win 8.1 was marginally more useful. It had a kinda-sorta start menu. The machines I was responsible for at the office stayed on Win 7. I had one, just one, of my personal machines running Win 8/8.1. Others ran XP, Vista, or 7.

Win 10 had significant problems. Was those problems were addressed, I moved a few machines at home and the office to Win 10. Win 11 has even more significant problems. I see no attempt to fix them; apparently what I consider a problem is something that MS considers a feature. I will not be moving to Win 11 unless and until the problems are resolved. At current rate of progress, that means never. Work machines will stay at Win 10. We are migrating from Windows-based apps to Mac and Linux. When it becomes difficult or impossible to get a Win 10 system, all new systems will be Mac or Linux. At home I plan on running certain Win 10 machines until they die. They will be replaced by Mac or Linux systems. If Win 11 isn’t fixed to my satisfaction, I will never run Win 11. I don’t think that MS will ever fix things. They don’t see a problem.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

"Windows 10 is basically fine, it covers the base of pretty much everything most people in most businesses will need ... once you tell it to sit still, shut up, and stop thinking for itself."

FTFY, and this is exactly why nobody seems to want Windows 11. The problems you list re contextual menus only serve to hammer home that point.

[aerogems]

People say that about every version of Windows. Everyone hated Windows 95, then they hated Windows 98, then they hated Windows Me, NT4, 2000, XP, and Vista... There's a very predictable pattern with Windows releases. It's like an abbreviated version of the stages of grief.

Stage 1: Anger. Usually lasts for the first 1-2 years of the OS release. Everyone hates it because it changed how some GUI widget looked or where a setting was located.

Stage 2: Grudging Acceptance. Usually starts around the second or third year the OS has been available. Hardware has generally had a chance to catch up, same with software adapting to new standards. People still piss and moan about things were so much better back in the day if you get them started, but otherwise have generally learned to adapt to the new way of doing things.

Stage 3: Love. Usually starts around the time the next version of Windows is released. Suddenly the old hated version becomes the greatest version ever and people will have to pry it from their cold dead fingers. Eventually people get a new computer, or upgrade the software for other reasons, and then start over at Stage 1.

The longer any given OS version sticks around, the stronger and longer lasting Stages 1 and 3 are. Take Windows XP for example. Everyone hated it with a burning passion when it first came out. But because Vista ended up getting delayed for so long, it became entrenched and all that people knew/remembered. So, when Vista finally was released, Stage 3 kicked in with a vengeance. Microsoft's Mojave Experiment helped demonstrate this quite effectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> People say that about every version of Windows. Everyone hated Windows 95, then they hated Windows 98

I never hated Windows 98. You skipped Windows 98se.

> then they hated Windows Me, NT4, 2000, XP, and Vista.

You messed up the order: Windows 95, Nt 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98se, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP.

NT 4.0 was not hated, but was for a long time not fit for gaming. Windows 2000 was not hated. Windows XP was not hated, but it was ridiculed as "teletubby OS".

Vista was hated first, until Service Pack 1 fixed most things and was faster than XP on Dual-core CPUs, even more on quad core CPUs with enough RAM. But by then the reputation was already bad and MS concentrated on Windows 7.

The "Acceptance-pattern" does not match the history reality as well if you include all from Windows 95.

[aerogems]

I also didn't include Windows 1.0-3.11, or NT 3.1-3.51, what's your point? I wasn't aiming to give an exhaustive list of releases or necessarily list them in chronological order. It was a simple sample list. But the fact that there was need for a Windows 98SE kind of demonstrates the point.

NT4 was absolutely hated until one of the later service packs when it finally stabilized and it was never intended for gaming. XP was absolutely despised until about SP2 in large part because IGPs of the time couldn't handle the Luna skin system, which is also what bit Vista, though MS has to own the unforced error of "Vista Ready". Windows 2000 required some pretty significant hardware for the time which put a lot of people off, and the fact that the NT kernel actually enforced a lot of security measures meant a lot of apps didn't work, not just games. If you actually pay attention at the time of release and follow it all the way through, you notice the pattern. But you have to be paying attention, you can't just rely on the rose tinted glasses of your memory.

And the reason Vista performed better than XP on dual/quad core CPUs is because of some of those under the hood improvements. XP had no concept of CPU cores and treated dual/quad core CPUs as 2/4-way SMP setups, but there's a lot of differences between those two configs. Vista's process scheduler understood this, XP's did not. Windows 8 refined that even further as multi-core CPUs became the norm and more and more cores started being added. Then Windows 11 refined it further to support Intel's Thread Director on 12th gen (and later) CPUs with mixed power and efficiency cores.

But, here's a test for you. Fire up a VM and install Windows 95 in it. If, as people like you claim, most of the changes Microsoft makes are just adding unnecessary bloat and moving things around for no good reason, you should be even more efficient using this old version of Windows that could run in as little as 4MB of RAM. However, I'll bet whatever you have in your wallet that you will spend 60% or more of your time fighting the OS to do simple things. Obviously I'll have to depend on your truthfulness in reporting back. So, how about it? Willing to test whose hypothesis is the correct one?

[Dave K]

Wrong.

Right from the start, I liked Windows 95, I found the UI far more logical than Program Manager in Windows 3.1

Similarly, I liked Windows 98 straight off, it retained the same UI as Windows 95, but added some quality of life improvements.

I didn't like ME, because it was less stable than 98 and broke a number of DOS games I still played whilst providing no benefits I could see over 98.

I liked XP straight away too, it was far more stable than Win 9x, plus you could easily switch the start menu and UI into classic mode to make it look just like 98/Win 2k if you wanted to.

I didn't like Vista, the UI was messy and it felt cumbersome and slow (service packs improved the latter, but the UI remained messy)

I liked Win 7 straight away, they'd fixed the UI issues and performance problems from Vista, plus PCs had improved and could more easily handle the system requirements that Vista had previously introduced and Win 7 retained. It also introduced genuinely useful features like snapping windows, plus the improved task bar.

To be honest with you, I've never used a version of Windows which I've hated and then come to love. I still dislike Windows 10 FWIW, the UI is an ugly, boring mess, the forced updates are still a pain in the arse, the throbber is still broken and the sound effects still sound like they were knocked out in 30 minutes by an intern with a cheap keyboard.

Either way, please cut the crap with these generalistic statements like "everyone hated 95/98/XP etc. with a burning passion when it came out" before learning to love it, because that frankly isn't true. I want to like Windows 11, I genuinely do think it looks a lot prettier than Windows 10, but the crippled task bar and poor start menu ruin an otherwise not-that-bad OS IMO.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I concur:

3.0 = Ooh... exciting... a computer with a mouse, and Battle Chess! (I was 12, before this I had a BBC Micro)

3.1(1) = Ooh, 3D buttons!

95 = Sucky

98 = Not great

98SE = Good enough I guess

ME = My god, what the f#ck have they done to 98SE?

2000 = Great, loved it from the start

XP = Great (once you de-Teletubbied it)

Vista = Absolutely f#cking awful and I never liked it

7 = Great from the start

8 = Awful, terrible, horrible

(8.1 = Well, why didn't you do that in the first place? No thanks, I'll stick with 7)

10 = Well, I'll get used it I guess; followed by, okay it's fine, it'll do

11 = Oh, hello again Vista, I really didn't miss you.

[FIA]

Apart from your weird incorrectness regarding 11 I'd say that's about spot on.

(Go back to 10 after using 11 for a bit, it's awfully disjointed in comparison.)

I'd also add that NT4 was loved by some people (me included) as it was stable in a way the 9x series wasn't, but I didn't play a lot of games back then. It also need a lot of hardware chucking at it compared to the DOS shells. ;)

2K was great, although I still think they perfected it around NT5 beta 2, some of the later 2K UI changes grated.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

If 10 seems disjointed, it's only because they've papered over all of the joints in 11. They may be untidy, but some of them are useful.

[Updraft102]

People loved 95 when it came out. It was a sensation... lining up around the block to buy their copy the first day it was available. It was the first version of Windows that seemed like it really had a reason to be.

I hated the goofy Luna theme on XP... and it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that I could go to the performance settings and disable theming (and not much longer than that to see that I could just disable the theming service). No need to hate it because you don't like the default theme when it is easy to change.

I loathed 10 when I first saw it in June 2015, and that was when I began the move to Linux. Seven years later, I still hate 10, and still would not use it. Haven't tried 11, but from what I read, it's at the very least just as bad as 10, so I will pass on that too. Of course, even if MS lost its mind and made a decent Windows now, I still would not have much use for it.

[JimboSmith]

My Surface tablet at work was upgraded to Win 11 and it’s nice and fast but there are things I really don’t like. I’ve always had my taskbar on the left hand side of the screen since it was possible to do so. I’m not talking about the start button which you can move to the left if you like but the task bar. This isn’t possible on Windows 11 without downloading a third party software utility which being a corporate environment I can’t do. It used to be possible via a registry change but not anymore.

The start button doesn’t show all the programs unless you click a second button to show you all the programs. Not a problem for some (or even most) but annoying for me because the pinned programs don’t include the ones I use most. Even if I remove the already pinned ones and add mine they just go back to the way they were before. Now this may well be a corporate setting but it’s really frustrating. It always includes the “Tips” program that I have uninstalled four times now and it keeps coming back like the undead. The solution to this is pin things to the task bar instead but that brings up another issue. Going back to the Taskbar you can’t have a double height taskbar anymore for reasons that pass understanding. Possibly as a result of this you now can’t ungroup icons on the taskbar at all, i assume to save space on there. I only had outlook open with a few emails open when I first used it after the upgrade, but despite this there was only one icon on the task bar. That’s not very helpful and

Then they’ve mucked about with the UI of progs for no reason that I can see and in doing so it has also changed some of the way those progs work. Paint being a good example of this, once something was selected on screen if you rotated it, you could still move it around with the cursor keys. Now you have to click on the selected area with a mouse before it is movable with the cursor keys, which is frustrating. Especially if you only wanted to move it a pixel and your clicking moved it from where it originally was. The scroll bars are also crap now.

Little things that in an of themselves wouldn’t be a real pain in isolation, combined they’re a huge bugbear for me and from reading on the internet others too.

[Plest]

No beef with with Win11

I have Win11, it's OK, I don't mind it but outside security patches I really can't see what I've gained over Win10 right now. I'll keep using it as I can;'t be arsed to resinstall Win10 and I got Win11 through work's MSDN so no biggie to me.

If you have it already then whatever, if you don't then don't worry about upgrading as there's little to be gained to my mind.

[mecmec]

Re: No beef with with Win11

Windows 10 seems alien to me now. One thing I really like about Windows 11 is being able to use a genuine Linux shell and have windowed Linux apps running like native Windows apps. 90% of my work requires Windows, but it's handy to have certain Linux cli tools around when Windows ports are non-existent or blighted by compatibility issues.

(WSL is available on Windows 10 but it's hobbled compared to the Windows 11 version.)

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: No beef with with Win11

This is the only feature that might make me switch... meanwhile, I'm planning to hold out for 12 in the hope that it might be better!

[FIA]

Re: No beef with with Win11

(WSL is available on Windows 10 but it's hobbled compared to the Windows 11 version.)

The version in the microsoft store has graphical support for Windows 10 now, but it sounds like it might be a faf to run.

[amacater]

Re: No beef with with Win11

Not a faff to run - it "just works" for things like gedit and Firefox. This using Debian 11.6 - Ubuntu integration may be even better.

It's certainly OK and will also now support systemd which is nice to have (cue all the systemd haters now :) )

[Mike007]

It took me an embarrassingly long time to spot the cut/copy/paste icons on the new context menu...

[martinusher]

Its a matter of focus, really. Like most users I just want the system to work. I have a problem with companies like MSFT simply because their business model requires my work to be integrated into their environment so my work becomes their revenue stream. As an individual this is just a nuisance but as a company this has huge implications for my line of work, starting with the obvious "Do I want to entrust my business to this provider?" question.

So the key to using Windows 11, like other versions of Windows, is figuring out how to tell it to "shut up and go away". I need an environment to run my software. I don't really need their software.

[LybsterRoy]

My main objection to Windows 11 is simply cost. I would need to buy 1) a new computer or three to replace i7 laptops and 2) new software to replace that which is still running quite happily on W7.

Oh yes and then I'd need to figure out just where the hell they've moved things to now, or if indeed things still exist.

[herman]

Fast machine required

I tried Win 11 as I’m a Windows beta tester (shock horror!) and found that it requires high end hardware, so I bought the wife a very fast ‘gaming’ laptop with Win11 for her studies and it works OK.

The amount of wasted cycles and electricity is depressing, but that is the bane of Microsoft that one just has to live with.

[AlbertH]

Re: Fast machine required

There is a perfectly viable alternative if you don't want the expense of new hardware - any modern Linux replaces the latest offerings from MS easily and economically.

[mecmec]

The new context menu is fine.

Microsoft has been taking steps to decouple features like the context menu, taskbar, notification center and others from explorer.exe because integration between the desktop and explorer has always been a major cause of latency and bottlenecks. It's a good thing.

It seems like everyone has an attack helicopter really, even those who complain about attack helicopters.

[mcswell]

you forgot to mention rounded corners! fresh!!!

[MysteryGuy]

".. more like their phone..."

"... and are pleased that it looks more like their phone ..."

It seems to me that the whole idea that your business desktop PC should 'look more like your phone' is wrong and actually detrimental to productivity.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: ".. more like their phone..."

I'd personally be rather disappointed if my PC's OS looked anything like the interface on my phone.

[JimboSmith]

Re: ".. more like their phone..."

It seems to me that the whole idea that your business desktop PC should 'look more like your phone' is wrong and actually detrimental to productivity.

Amen to that.

However I just checked and on my phone when I press the equivalent of the start button all the software is listed not just the pinned ones. So it’s looking less like my phone not more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: ".. more like their phone..."

"...detrimental to productivity."

Needed the free VS Studio 2022 on Win10... it tells me I need to upgrade my "operating system" (not Windows... OS!!***"

Needed the free VS Studio 2019 on Win11 and it tells me of compatibility problems and tells me to upgrade VS.

Either way, detrimental.

*** The fact it asked me to upgrade my "operating system" is ironic as I was running Win10 in a VM on KUbuntu.

[katrinab]

Re: ".. more like their phone..."

To me, it looks like a knock-off version of MacOS. And, when I am using it alongside a real version of MacOS, this gets confusing. The different look reminds me to do Windows stuff to get things done rather than Mac stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: ".. more like their phone..."

only a cretin would want a phone interface on a computer.

congrats cretin!.

[Roland6]

No surprise here...

With Windows 10 going EoL in October 2025 and nothing other than Windows 11 being offered, it is obviously enterprises will be getting serious about the W10->W11 migration.

With my clients the roadmap is:

FY 2022/23 - Assess W11 migration

FY 23/24 - Precursor migrations eg. servers, move to cloud etc. .

FY 24/25 - Migrate desktops.

FY25/26 - Contingency

[Sandtitz]

Re: No surprise here...

"With Windows 10 going EoL in October 2025"

Enterprises can use Windows 10 LTSC which is supported until 2027.

There's also the IOT edition for Enterprises and it is supported until 2032 or so.

[43300]

Re: No surprise here...

How many people actually use LTSC? We just use the standard releases and use Intune / WSUS to hold them at the required version.

I suspect that LTSC might have some of the same issues that we see when running client software on server versions (terminal servers) - i.e. checking the build number and then complaining if it's not one of the most recent ones.

[Dave K]

Re: No surprise here...

Very few. I think initially a number of businesses did migrate to LTSC, but that didn't please Microsoft - their intention was that LTSC would only be for specialised environments and they needed companies to use the standard channels, because that way companies have to get involved with testing new builds and that helps improve MS's chance of discovering bugs - seeing as they don't have their own QC department any more.

Anyway, MS got their wish by blocking Office 365 on Windows 10 LTSC. For most businesses, that pretty much eliminates the option of using it on regular office machines. Of course if you don't use O365, LTSC works just fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No surprise here...

Not being using office 365(should really be 355 with the amount of downtime due to it being cloud bollocks) is a bonus

[43300]

Re: No surprise here...

Unfortunately many of us have no option but to use it!

[NeilPost]

Re: No surprise here...

Windows 10 2019 LTSC is good until 2029, so am rolling over and back to sleep.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No surprise here...

I can guarantee that unless the UI problems listed above is fixed I'm bypassing ESU checks on our whole fleet & running 10 until '28.

[T. F. M. Reader]

L'Oreal, huh?

For them it's just cosmetics...

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: L'Oreal, huh?

They had to make up a reason to change.

[NeilPost]

Re: L'Oreal, huh?

Oh come on. Gaping open goal-mouth there.

For L’Oreal … Windows 11…. Because they are worth it.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

22h2 still contains bugs which are already fixed for the future 23h2

The first customer of us plans to migrate in 2024, first test end of 2023 with 23h2.

The RDP bug, the "Previous Versions for local drives" bug, and quite a few others, are still in 22H2. However, when testing the latest insider, aka the future 23h2 version, those two and a few other bugs are already fixed, at least since the last November build which was the first 23h2 version I tested. M$ seems to bee to lazy to backport the fixes back to 22h2, maybeeee they do it in February for 22h2.

This is a continuation of the "Good build - shitty build" cycle from Windows 10.

[chivo243]

We need

The George Carlin OS, it gives you a place for your stuff, just a place for your icons, your stuff? You want tabs, we got it, vertical, no problem, even horizontal tabs baby! Sidebars got your interest, we got'em! Widgets for all my friends at the bar! Got lots of stuff? We got multiple virtual desktops with lots of places for your stuff...

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: We need

You forgot to mention the most important thing: Sarcasm at every corner!

[fidodogbreath]

Large corporations are starting to run Windows 11 pilot programs in anger

Well, if they aren't angry at the start of the pilot, they will be when ads start popping up on the lock screen, Start menu, desktop search results, suggestions, notifications, etc.

[sarusa]

We're running Win11 at work, no problems (except with old machines)

Users here had no problem - Win11 is really just Win10 with a more consistent interface and some new functionality. The only thing that threw some people is that the icons in the lower bar are centered rather than left justified, but that's easily toggled or you get used to it fairly quickly. Of course you still have to turn off search in the taskbar, turn off news, turn off weather, turn off Windows Search Indexer, etc... but those are Win10 problems too, and nothing group policy can't smack down. We had one guy who was running Start10 on Win10 so now he's running Start11 on Win11. All in all it's no worse than running Win10 for bugs.

The problem, as TFA mentions, is that we've got several machines that can't run Win11 - they could probably be coerced into it, but that would be bad from a support perspective. So they'll be on Win10 till they die or get replaced. But that's not really a big deal because Win10 and Win11 really aren't all that different - WIn11 is more Win10.1. Unlike 98/2000 -> XP, XP -> Vista, Vista -> 7, 7 -> 8, 8 -> 10 which were huge changes.

So anyhow, the sky is not falling.

[katrinab]

Re: We're running Win11 at work, no problems (except with old machines)

98 -> 2000 was installing a completely different operating system.

XP was mostly a cosmetic upgrade to 2000.

7 was basically a bug-fix release of Vista

10 was basically a big-fix release of 8/8.1, the bug in this case being the entire UI design.

[sgp]

I was going to say there must of been a typo in the 450 000 Accenture users but according to Wikipedia there are 721 000 of them. Apparently the world just needs ever more consultants..

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was going to say there must of been a typo in the 450 000 Accenture users but according to Wikipedia there are 721 000 of them. Apparently the world just needs ever more consultants.."

ftfy

"I was going to say there must of been a typo in the 450 000 Accenture users but according to Wikipedia there are 721 000 of them. Apparently the world just needs ever more fuckwits.."

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprised "must of" survived the FTFY edit.

[DBJDBJ]

Corporate Windows is Just a host for the MS Office. And the Edge browser.

[Anonymous Coward]

why MSoffice?

it's all cloud shit, so they only need the browser. (by the look of it, most office "apps" are now just browser windows)

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

You've obviously never experience the "Could-Browser" version of Office. It is very limited, comparable to what Sharepoint is able to do (actually same code-base). And it is slow since everything is a delayed from your input to the browser, to the cloud backend, and back to your browser. For very simple documents it works fine. Most user have documents which are not very simple, and open (aka temporary download, handled automatically in background) directly from the cloud in the real office program. Which takes more time than doing the same from a normal file server. Then they work, fast and efficient, and save the document back.

If the cloud-browser of Office is enough for your company needs: Low requirements in your company!

[katrinab]

Office 365 is not "just a browser window", with the possible exception of Teams. There are web versions of the stuff in Office. They don't have all the features of their desktop equivalents, though they are improving.

[-v(o.o)v-]

He is probably confusing crappy Electron apps with "all software".

[9Rune5]

Looks fine to me

Except for Win8, I'm usually fine with new versions.

But I am a bit miffed that some "older" laptops are not supported. My wife's laptop sports an i7 that is a generation too old. I believe it has TPM 2.0, but the lack of i7 support took me by complete surprise. A colleague has the same laptop and chose to install W11 anyway. The result was a noticeably less stable environment. I suspect some of Dell's odd devices are to blame though. The CPU requirement is sort of understandable given that the underlying CPU is chock-full of spectre and meltdown issues.

I think manufacturers should be forced to open source their drivers when they stop their updates.

[43300]

Re: Looks fine to me

Not really found anything odd about Dell's devices in terms of software and drivers - yes, a few components tend to be non-standard (cases, PSUs, motherboards), but they rarely give trouble with OS or drivers. And of course all laptops are 'non standard' anyway, whichever brand they are - apart from SSDs and RAM (sometimes - RAM in increasingly soldered) nothing much is compatible from one brand to another.

I've been doing some basic testing of W11 for some time, including running it on a VM - the host meets all the W11 requirements except the CPU one and it worked fine up until the 22H2 release appeared - that absolutely refused to install that as an update via any of the methods I tried (Windows Update doesn't offer it, running the installer from an ISO or booting from an ISO and selecting upgrade both fail).

So basically although it might be possible to get W11 to run on non-supported hardware using clean installs (with the initial release, I found that provided it had Secure Boot and at least a TPM 1.2 it would install - if those were missing it wouldn't), I definitely would not want to do this on any production machines in a work environment as it would be asking for trouble - it's entirely possible that the block on the annual feature update on unsupported hardware might be extended to monthly updates at some point, or that Intune might start causing problems.

And not sure what use open-source drivers would be in practice - who is realistically going to maintain and update them, in most cases?

[9Rune5]

Re: Looks fine to me

And not sure what use open-source drivers would be in practice - who is realistically going to maintain and update them, in most cases?

There are a few devices over the years that I would have wanted to keep around, so I would have at least tried to make a go of it.

Currently my son's Dell Precision M4600 has a wonky bluetooth device driver that suddenly decided to not recognize xbox gamepads. I suspect it wouldn't be difficult to fix whatever ails it. (then again, a usb bluetooth adapter doesn't cost much these days)

[Sudosu]

Re: Looks fine to me

Windows 11 EWE (Environmental Waste Edition)

[toomanylogins]

Can I have my borders back

All I want is nice thick borders. The ones that tell you where the edge of one vscode window is overlapping the window underneath. And some sensible font sizes.

[redwine]

vertical taskbar please

Upgraded to Win11, quickly noticed I couldn't move taskbar to the vertical position, immediately rolled back to Win10

[Anonymous Coward]

Our corporate policy is to remain at least one major version behind on just about all software packages.

Right now, that's I guess just-about passable. I'm not looking forward to the gap between Win 12 and 13.

[David Hicklin]

Windows 7 was peak Windows

Still using it now, have a couple of win10 VM's for stuff that really must have it but otherwise I will be running Windows 7 until..well I can't do stuff anymore

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Windows 7 was peak Windows

Brave stopped supporting Win7 a couple of weeks ago.

[xyz]

My big bugbear with windows is...

Languages. My win 10 laptop is Spanish bought and keyboarded, running in English and updates are hell. No matter how much dicking around with language packs I do, every update ends up with more and more Spanish menu options. It drives me nuts given the amount of "phone home"age aka telemetry that goes on. Obviously, the xBox, Cortana and the usual dodgy and unwanted appage that is constantly being lobbed at me is a right PITA too.

The only reason I stay " faithful" is the occasional bit of MS sponsored sanity, like SDSlite that I found yesterday, to get me out of a pickle.

[Stuart Castle]

I installed Windows 11 on my home PC months ago. I don't particularly like it. I don't dislike it either, it's just not enough of a change from Windows 10 to get me excited.. I think the problem is that previously, there as frequently extra stuff you could do with a new OS that you couldn't with the previous. There was stuff to discover. Windows 11 feels like Windows 10 with a slightly different UI,

So, that said, why is it still on my PC? Two reasons. First, I support Windows professionally, so it's best to get as much experience as possible in any new version . Second, I've got my PC set up with all the software and hardware I want/need and got it set up just how I like it. I really don't want to wipe the setup and start again without good reason.

[amacater]

Windows 11

Windows 10 downgrade for the win - it's amazing how many business laptops were sold that way. Otherwise it's Linux all the way for me and for the savvy folk that I work with.

Office integration with email and calendar is the only reason MS stay in business - and even that is slipping now that you can't get Office so easily on a perpetual licence. Decouple apps from the underlying OS - as MS has done with Microsoft 365 - and you might as well run Linux everywhere. Nearly 30 years with Linux as my main driver here - and it's been the year of the Linux desktop since about 1995 - see Lars Wirzenius quoted in LWN.net and at https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2022/goalposts/

[deaglecat]

I moved to Linux about 5 years ago. So glad I no longer have to deal with this stuff.

Once in about 3 months, I need to do something on Windows (e.g. itunes)... and if I dual boot into that ....it sometimes decides to overwrite the Grub bootloader to try and trap me again. Utterly abhorrent behaviour. Windows is actually pretty close to malware at this point.

[Updraft102]

Stick it in a VM... much easier for those rare times you need Windows. Anything USB can be passed through directly to the virtual Windows with no bother.

[Antron Argaiv]

Linux Mint at home, Win10 on the work machine.

I'm finding Windows and its Office apps harder and harder to use, mostly because I have to hunt through the various Ribbons to find the function I want. Configuring options and such in the OS is also getting more difficult...which setting page and which subpage will what I need to do be on? And just when you think you have it all figured out...another "update" changes things around again...at least, that's the way it seems. Add to that, Teams and Sharepoint...now which Teams channel are those files under again?

Happily using Linux at home for many years. I cannot ever see a need for Windows at home, would much rather use an OS whose UI can be counted on to remain fairly constant.

[harryajh555]

same for me, moved to Ubuntu about the same time, more secure, faster, and runs on much lower spec hardware - a no-brainer!

Occasionally I need to run a windows app on my dual-boot devices, I've always dreaded major MS releases and thought win 10 was going to be the last monolith release - I don't and have never trusted Microsoft, each release is rammed full of spyware, etc... - Linux is the way forward

[Sudosu]

My last Windows machine is a Win 10 gaming box with a very overclocked 6600K.

It stays off unless I am gaming and I mostly play older games anyway (though I almost upgraded for Battlefield 2042 before I found out how bad it was)

When I can no longer get support for it after the Win 10 EOL I should probably just find a new hobby instead of upgrading.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ease of Adoption Vs Ease of Deployment

This thing i find most bizarre about this whole Win 11 Debacle is that Microsoft have put a whack-tonne of effort into easier device management and the OS upgrade process with InTune and Azure AD. Seriously great tools from my point of view with my Infrastructure Admin hat on. Microsoft should be applauded for their efforts in this area.

I'm sure many of us remember going from 7 to 10 was no picnic ( but doable with tools like SCCM working properly). XP to 7 was a horror show that involved temp staff imaging and swapping machines like for like to get people (for us at least). it was NOT slick....

Now, if i wanted to put my 7000 user environment on Windows 11, i flick a switch in InTune and off it goes. The machines (with eligible hardware..but that's another story) would be upgraded in a matter of days.

But......and it's a big but........with my IT management Hat on (yes, it's possible to be a manager AND be technically proficient) I would absolutely not want to bestow this crock of shit interface on my user base. The Desktop support and helpdesk teams would be forever answering stupid questions about the interface, being spoken to like THEY designed it personally to piss off users and the engineering teams would be unbearable in their pompous critiquing of the UI. We'll cling on to Win 10, which in all honesty is pretty rock solid and well liked, for as long as we can and hope that we can leapfrog to Win 12 and that they can get it looking a bit better in the meantime

[that one in the corner]

Re: Ease of Adoption Vs Ease of Deployment

You have hit the nail on the head here.

There are lots of *good* improvements that MS make to the OS, adding under-the-hood support as well as visible-to-Admin new functionality that can be used to ease the lives of Support, which trickles down to better lives for Users.

Unfortunately, MS then also foists upon us a lot of changes that are highly visible to the Users - indeed, changes whose entire raison d'etre is to be visible without being in any way useful (as noted above, even deliberately removing usefulness). Forgetting that the OS is a tool to support the use of job-specific Applications and a good tool should never surprise you.

Could it be that the first group are devs devoted to their art, heads down fixing problems, whilst the second are vacuous self-proclaimed "Creatives", having lots and lots of vitally important meetings to talk about their "Visions" and spending time on proposals to management?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here for the omg wtf bbq m$ comments from the guys who can't accept change happens and who can't accept that the 'year of the Linux desktop' is never.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that your statement is itself contradictory... Change happens. And one of these days big biz will get sick of the MS shovelware.

Decision makers like myself are already telling them to get stuffed; chiefly through the use of careful tendering that ensure MS products do not win (or, anyone else that fails to meet the requirements for that matter).

[-v(o.o)v-]

Accenture?

Very fitting for Accenture to migrate. Laughing stock of a GUI for a laughing stock of a company.

All I can say is that I hope everyone else sees 11 as the turd it is and refuses to "update", thus forcing MS to do a win8 and backtrack with the crazy Fisher-Price GUI for spastics.

[M.V. Lipvig]

"Microsoft launched Windows 11 on October 22 2021, even though it was never supposed to happen: Microsoft advised in 2015 that Windows 10 would constantly evolve with new features added, negating the need to wait for the next major release. It was described by Microsoft as "Windows as a service."

They announced Windows 11 about a week after I bought a Win10 machine to do my taxes on. Going to try running tax software on Linix and if that works, off I'll go.