Anyone here using Windows 11?

[Steve]

I'm still on Windows 10 cos my hardware doesn't support 11. I could use workarounds to install 11, but looking at it, I don't know if it's worth it.

Are any of you guys using Windows 11? Do you notice any big improvements over Windows 10?

[TBearOne8III]

i literally just started using win 11 yesterday.  well, at least at work. the only thing i noticed is that the start menu and search bar is at the bottom center instead of bottom left.  they moved that annoying weather and news update thing to the bottom left so it dosent pop up every time you try to look at the calendar or adjust your sound.  this is just my work laptop so as long as it does what i need it to do im fine.  I dont really know what all has changed from 10 to 11.

[neks]

my desktop that i use for everything got the update like a year ago.

I have not really noticed any improvements. However I noticed regressions with:

- the start menu
In W10 you can group your shortcuts and organize everything by tasks or activities. I don't know if it's something people do but I realized it was possible and because I do work, games, music on my machine, it was super helpful. in W11 you can group shortcuts like you would do on an Android phone so it's a major step back in terms of organization/productivity for me.

- taskbar
on W10, my taskbar was at the top. Nuh uh, can't do that with W11

- multiple monitor management
I used to have the Windows tray on monitor #2 so that I would still have access when monitor #1 is displaying things full screen. Not possible with W11.

These things are things people have reported online multiple times. It's not excluded some of these things could get fixed in future releases but to me these have been annoyances.

On top of it, my update got messed up a bit and I have a couple of minor things that have not been working since I did this update and I need to reinstall from scratch. In hindsight, clearly I should have installed it cleanly...

[djdiggla]

I'm on 7 at work :/

[Steve]

11 hours ago, neks said:

I have not really noticed any improvements. However I noticed regressions.....

Sounds like a typical MS product in recent years.

I'm likely gonna stick with Windows 10 until support for it ends in October 2025.

BTW, @TBearOne8III, you can turn that news/weather thing off by right-clicking the taskbar and choosing "News and interests", then "Turn off".

[TBearOne8III]

@Steve thank you for that. shits been driving me crazy for years. that widget came with some random update. never thought to google how to remove it.

[Deft]

I'm still rocking 10, on hardware that is too old. I really don't like this constant creep of moderately intrusive widgets and shit in the O/S or browser. I moved to Edge as Chrome was fucking me off, but it's attempts to bring in random content, apps, widgets, shitty layouts etc is annoying.

[Dan]

I use MacOS and Win10 at home and  7, 10, 11 and Linux at work. I really dislike 11, it seems like a dumbed down version of 10 in some places. They've removed features for no good reason.

[djdiggla]

My work PC had a hardware failure so instead of fixing they are got me a new machine running 11. Don't have it yet because it can't be downgraded so the IT guy has to make sure all the drivers work. Hope it doesn't suck. Gonna be a big jump from 7 to 11!

[Steve]

On 8/10/2023 at 2:03 PM, Deft said:

I'm still rocking 10, on hardware that is too old. I really don't like this constant creep of moderately intrusive widgets and shit in the O/S or browser. I moved to Edge as Chrome was fucking me off, but it's attempts to bring in random content, apps, widgets, shitty layouts etc is annoying.

I'm really starting to fucking hate Microsoft.

Yesterday was "Patch Tuesday", so I updated Windows 10 and immediately after rebooting I got a notification saying I could play some game (I can't remember exactly which one) via Game Pass - an advert. A little while later, I got another similar notification. They have added something called "Suggested" to the list of apps that can send you notifications and if you don't disable it, you'll get hit with a load of ads.

I launched Word, cos I needed to print off a document. In the app itself, there was an ad promoting the mobile version of the app, which I dismissed, then a second ad advertising OneDrive, which I already use as I have Office 365, which I also dismissed.

Finally, I went to play Forza Horizon 5 on my Xbox only to find it needed a pretty large update. Once it was done, I launched the game, exited my home and started driving, and literally 3 seconds later I was met with a full screen ad for the upcoming Forza Motorsport, that put the game on pause.

These motherfuckers have literally ZERO respect for the people that use their products. A recent update to the Xbox turned the entire home screen into one giant Game Pass ad. I just don't understand the "people will hate it, but most won't switch anyway!" approach. Make good products/software and I'll use them. That's it.

[Dan]

Be thankful you don't have to deal with Patch Tuesday in a work enviroment, every other month updates break something! 

 

Microsofts bullshit is why I switched to a Mac at home, I don't love MacOS but I haven't had one stupid pop in since I switched over a year ago. 

 

EDIT: and don't get me started on what they've done to the Xbox dashboard!

[Deft]

Yeah I feel like my only credible option could be to go Mac, but I can't be fucked. Wouldn't be so bad I'm sure. Plus their kit is my kind of price bracket.

[djdiggla]

I'm on Win 11 now at work. It's fine. Seems fast. Only weird thing is they still let you DL programs but also they have native apps for half these. So IDK why they would let you do it both ways and potentially have both versions on a machine. Not sure which is better but assume one is over the other. Also I don't understand the point of Edge at all. It's trying to be a super app or something? Makes no sense to me.

[TBearOne8III]

2 hours ago, djdiggla said:

I'm on Win 11 now at work. It's fine. Seems fast. Only weird thing is they still let you DL programs but also they have native apps for half these. So IDK why they would let you do it both ways and potentially have both versions on a machine. Not sure which is better but assume one is over the other. Also I don't understand the point of Edge at all. It's trying to be a super app or something? Makes no sense to me.

we only use edge to download chrome.  That and the main employee portal at work only fully works on internet explorer or edge.  besides that, I dont have a use for edge or bing for that matter.  

[neks]

Edge is based on Chromium which is the open source foundation of Chrome, and adds a few useful features while also integrating Bing which I have no use for. I feel like It tends to be a bit faster than Chrome too these days. Anyway, Firefox all the way if you care about some privacy.

[djdiggla]

Man, I loved Firefox. And Opera. Switch to Chrome probably 10 years ago when FF stopped working on my computer. Feel pretty tied to it now. Miss me with Bing.

[djdiggla]

Win11 has been mixed. Seems fairly fast and smooth although the wireless mouse or keyboard will bog down sometimes for just a few seconds and not really sure why. Pretty annoying.

The normal ass PC speakers I had kept popping randomly so got some newer ones. They also occasionally pop but it's once or twice a day instead of a few times an hour. Pretty annoying tho... seems like a surge issue or something. The newish webcam sometimes has bad mic audio which was never a problem before. And monday it decided to uninstall itself. Back working now tho.

Some of the work flow is weird in that it offers duplicates of things... both as an installed program and/or app. But they are not the same and it's hard to tell which you are in. Also Win11 seems to not like installed programs... some don't work so you have to find the app which will work fine. Pretty dumb, repetitive and annoying. Even better, some apps have more than one version like Teams. So i have the Teams program installed (which Win11 doesn't like and keeps trying to have me sign up for an account if I accidentally open it) then the Teams app (which it liked until two weeks ago) and also "NEW" Teams which has an obnoxious NEW permanently across the icon. So there are three versions of the same thing installed but only one that works seamlessly. Maybe have Win11 delete the old app when it prompts you to upgrade/install the new app? But that would make sense. 

I learned Tuesday that Win11 allows Outlook to run all it's own updates automatically with no advanced warning so did a lot of shape file work in Google Earth Monday and left several windows open of emails or things I was working on. Came back Tuesday and the computer had updated itself which involved a restart. So all the work I had done in Google Earth didn't save since it was a forced restart. Also since it closed all my windows and emails I'm not really sure what tasks were left uncompleted so that's fun. 

I've set Chrome as my default browser but Win11 doesn't like that and still opens Outlook links in Edge. Edge is integrated in so it has widgits and shit on the toolbar that pop over when you hover over the weather icon. Not really my thing but have tried to embrace it and at least customize the stock bit to show WTI, Brent and natural gas prices. They can be added and I have but of course you apparently can't select the order it is displayed so depending on movement it displays whatever it wants and you have to page through instead of being able to just quickly check commodities prices. It decided I wanted to see Brent crude prices mostly but I actually am more interested in WTI. Fortunately if you click WTI instead of making that the primarily displayed widget it just opens a different Edge window all together. So customization is minimal/clunky or maybe it's just so unintuitive that I haven't figured it out. 

Several programs have changed features/menus which I guess isn't specifically on Win11 but still obnoxious. Sniping Tool which is a Win program works but is just a little clunky compared to the old one. Start menu pinns a bunch of shit but who knows if it's going to be the program, app or second version of the app. Would be nice if it just populated your recently or most used ones. There is a way to get to recently used but you have to click to it so IMO that's not very intuitive design. Basically everything takes more clicks or opens more windows unnecessarily in Win11. To me it seems like general interface is a step back as far as flow or simplicity goes.  

It does alternate desktops and also weird minimization of certain programs like Excel. It's kinda annoying and wasn't clear why opened docs were not opening. They were but just to the size of a AAA battery which you then have to find and click expand. Pretty helpful feature... I always wanted to open a file but not really have it open so i can then play where's Waldo and click it again. Great feature. 

So that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll be back to bitch more. Nothing is really wrong with Win11 but nothing is really right either. I don't hate it but don't love it. Lots of subtle differences or shortfalls that don't feel like a step forward in any logical way.

[Steve]

That all sounds like it would piss me off, tbh, especially the audio popping. Maybe that's a driver issue?

I really hate MS's lack of focus. They'll try and sell you on something, making out it's gonna be awesome, so you try it, but it feels unfinished and kinda buggy, then before it ever ends up feeling polished/finished, they scrap it and try and sell you on something else.

Some of their decisions baffle me. For example, they have an Xbox app for PC where you can send/receive messages, see what your friends are up to etc. In the most recent update to it, they have removed the ability to get a notification when you receive a message, even though it still has messaging functionality. Now you have to use a different app called Game Bar to receive notifications, but it has a completely different notification style to all other Windows apps, so when you receive a message, you get a pop-up on screen that stays visible for a few seconds before fading away, so if you're not looking at your screen when it happens, there's no way to know if you've even received a message as it doesn't use the regular action centre where you'd see the notification until you manually dismissed it.

[Dan]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:27 PM, Steve said:

I really hate MS's lack of focus. They'll try and sell you on something, making out it's gonna be awesome, so you try it, but it feels unfinished and kinda buggy, then before it ever ends up feeling polished/finished, they scrap it and try and sell you on something else.

Some of their decisions baffle me.

It's even worse if your Sys Admin, they are constantly changing how things work or what they are called, for no good reason. Even things like admin dashboards, one minute an option is here, a few weeks later it's moved to a completely different dashboard.

They seem to be in an endless development cycle on everything. Nothing is ever "finished".

[TBearOne8III]

you can turn those taskbar widgets off by the way.  right click on the task bar. click on task bar settings. and turn off the widgets.  I hate those pop ups. always happens when im trying to click on something else.  

[djdiggla]

PS I fucking hate Windows 11. The updates that break Adobe constantly and mouse lag are about to make me lose my mind. I swear this feels more like Win 3.0 than a modern OS. @TBearOne8III turned those widgits off just now so hoping that helps with the mouse lag. It's not constant lag btw just for no reason at all the entire system grinds to a snails pace. Super fun. 

[Deft]

I'm definitely going Mac Mini for my next home PC.