Windows 11 experiences

[wild_turkey 3159]

Anyone using Windows 11 yet? I didn't even realize it had been released until I recently bought a new laptop that came with it installed.

I have a lot of Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Airpods, AppleTV) but I've resisted getting a Macbook because I've always liked the Windows OS experience better than Mac OS. Now they've changed some stuff that seems not for the better, or maybe I just need to figure out how to adjust it to my liking.

1. Windows Spotlight doesn't work for me so far. I like seeing the rotating images on my startup screen. Need to fix that.

2. Taskbar buttons were centered like on Mac, which I was able to easily revert to the bottom left configuration. However, the taskbar buttons automatically combine multiple windows of the same app. There is no way to uncombine them, which is highly annoying to me.

3. Taskbar size is huge. There is an option in Settings to change the scale of everything, but if I reduce the scale to a suitable taskbar size, the scale of everything else becomes tiny. I found a Regedit to use as a workaround, but it screwed up the spacing of the Widgets on the bottom right side.

4. Spacing of things seems more spread apart. For instance, looking at files in a folder in List View, there is more space between each file, which means less files can be seen on the screen at once. I remember griping about this in an old shaggybevo update because I couldn't see as many threads on a page. Maybe that's a minority opinion to want things tighter together.

I'm curious what others' experiences have been with Windows 11 so far. I'm not seeing much upside, and unfortunately, since this laptop came with it pre-installed, I don't think I have an option to revert to Windows 10.

Edited December 12, 2021 by wild_turkey

[torre 1286]

 

1 hour ago, wild_turkey said:

Anyone using Windows 11 yet? I didn't even realize it had been released until I recently bought a new laptop that came with it installed.

I have a lot of Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Airpods, AppleTV) but I've resisted getting a Macbook because I've always liked the Windows OS experience better than Mac OS. Now they've changed some stuff that seems not for the better, or maybe I just need to figure out how to adjust it to my liking.

1. Windows Spotlight doesn't work for me so far. I like seeing the rotating images on my startup screen. Need to fix that.

2. Taskbar buttons were centered like on Mac, which I was able to easily revert to the bottom left configuration. However, the taskbar buttons automatically combine multiple windows of the same app. There is no way to uncombine them, which is highly annoying to me.

3. Taskbar size is huge. There is an option in Settings to change the scale of everything, but if I reduce the scale to a suitable taskbar size, the scale of everything else becomes tiny. I found a Regedit to use as a workaround, but it screwed up the spacing of the Widgets on the bottom right side.

4. Spacing of things seems more spread apart. For instance, looking at files in a folder in List View, there is more space between each file, which means less files can be seen on the screen at once. I remember griping about this in an old shaggybevo update because I couldn't see as many threads on a page. Maybe that's a minority opinion to want things tighter together.

I'm curious what others' experiences have been with Windows 11 so far. I'm not seeing much upside, and unfortunately, since this laptop came with it pre-installed, I don't think I have an option to revert to Windows 10.

https://www.zdnet.com/paid-content/article/6-ways-to-customize-windows-11/

https://www.elevenforum.com/

 

I have not upgraded,  not sure I will.   Have checked some reviews.    Check the above links which I have bookmarked.

I did read you can revert to Win 10 within a certain time frame.   May want to google.

Edited December 12, 2021 by torre

[52-80 19159]

Not what you asked for...but bro, just get a Macbook lol

[idigTexas 2289]

I've been running Windows 11 for about a month.  Other than a few cosmetic issues, most of which I was able to change to my satisfaction, it's been no different than my Windows 10 experience, which was perfectly fine.  

[0xdeadbeef 1651]

58 minutes ago, idigTexas said:

I've been running Windows 11 for about a month.  Other than a few cosmetic issues, most of which I was able to change to my satisfaction, it's been no different than my Windows 10 experience, which was perfectly fine.  

This.

It took less than 30 minutes to fix the Start Menu, after that, it's just Windows.  In the past 2+ months, I've had to google a handful of things to find where they moved them, but the answer is always at the top of the search results.   Yes, some icons and visual things are different, but within weeks everything feels normal.  I not sure I could even tell you what's different from Win 10. Same stuff, different version.

  

 

[Parliament 14260]

Why in God's creation can they give us an option for a "Windows XP view?"

[Sandman 3403]

9 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

Windows Spotlight doesn't work for me so far. I like seeing the rotating images on my startup screen. Need to fix that

I made the switch to 11 when it dropped. Spotlight was working fine until just a couple of days ago, not sure what's wrong with it. I also have issues with the screensaver turning itself off and with the pc not going to sleep when scheduled.

[freyguy 4273]

I miss NT...it was so clean.

[CooterBrown 18014]

I bought a Mac last Xmas and I dislike everything but the battery life. I thought I’d eventually get used to the OS and stupid quirks but a year later I still can’t stand it.

Windows4Lyfe.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

9 hours ago, freyguy said:

I miss NT...it was so clean.

 

Build yourself a VM of it for a trip down memory lane.  I did that, then loaded up period appropriate apps such as Office, Norton Utilities for NT, etc.  

 

As for the Win 11 questions, we started rolling it out to select users at work over the past 2 months; we have around a dozen folks using it (Win 11 Enterprise).  We have just over 300 users at work, so we aim to have everyone rolled over by June 2022.  

We have no technological reason to upgrade, but we are doing so from a user perspective:  in 2023-24, we will replace every desktop.  Those will have Windows 11, and we don't want the culture shock of moving to a different UI overnight.  We can roll this out at our own pace and get people used to things.  We did this moving from Win 7 to 10 as well.

Currently, of the few folks we have upgraded, none have asked if they can roll things back, or somehow revert from the stock UI.  We have been very clear that some of the differences can be altered (start button to left hand corner, for instance) but everyone so far seems to like it.

 

 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21907]

Just to be clear Windows in evil and Bill Gates is the devil, but since I'm forced to use it I want Win 7 back.

[TwiceHorn 31484]

11 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

I bought a Mac last Xmas and I dislike everything but the battery life. I thought I’d eventually get used to the OS and stupid quirks but a year later I still can’t stand it.

Windows4Lyfe.

Hmmm.  I made the switch several years ago just for the quality of the physical appliance (I think windoze machines have caught up).

I have no real problem with MacOS.  I think Finder kind of sucks compared to at least past iterations of Explorer, but I notice 11 changed up Explorer for the worse.

And, it annoys the fuck out of me that Windows 10 and 11 changed up various configuration and settings from how they've been since W95 in the name of being more user-friendly or "Mac-like."

[CooterBrown 18014]

14 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Hmmm.  I made the switch several years ago just for the quality of the physical appliance (I think windoze machines have caught up).

I have no real problem with MacOS.  I think Finder kind of sucks compared to at least past iterations of Explorer, but I notice 11 changed up Explorer for the worse.

And, it annoys the fuck out of me that Windows 10 and 11 changed up various configuration and settings from how they've been since W95 in the name of being more user-friendly or "Mac-like."

The little things annoy me. I can't tolerate that cut, copy and paste functionality uses the Apple key instead of Control.  It's too far to the center of the keyboard to easily reach with your pinky the way god intended. I can't stand the window close/min/max buttons are on the left instead of the right side. Finder sucks. I don't like that apps don't just close when you close them. I don't want them in the background draining resources. Close them. 

I don't need much out of a home computer nowadays. I need to browse the internet, use MS Office and SketchUp, and not much else. The main thing I care about is battery life.  I'll probably get a Surface soon. Similar build quality and battery life but Windows.

[Deej 76797]

21 hours ago, idigTexas said:

I've been running Windows 11 for about a month.  Other than a few cosmetic issues, most of which I was able to change to my satisfaction, it's been no different than my Windows 10 experience, which was perfectly fine.  

Same

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

I don't need much out of a home computer nowadays. I need to browse the internet, use MS Office and SketchUp, and not much else. The main thing I care about is battery life.  I'll probably get a Surface soon. Similar build quality and battery life but Windows.

You could get yourself a nicer Chromebook, run Office 365 apps and Sketchup in the browser.

HP, Acer and Samsung all make really nice Chromebooks ranging from $500-1000 or so.  Yeah, it's just a Chromebook OS wise, but the build quality is nice.

I have one of these for my work Chromebook:

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-chromebook-x360-14c-cc0047nr

 

 

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31484]

1 minute ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

You could get yourself a nicer Chromebook, run Office 365 apps and Sketchup in the browser.

HP, Acer and Samsung all make really nice Chromebooks ranging from $500-1000 or so.  Yeah, it's just a Chromebook OS wise, but the build quality is nice.

I have one of these for my work Chromebook:

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-chromebook-x360-14c-cc0047nr

 

 

 

 

When you say Office 365, do you mean the Android apps or online?

I have a cheap, fairly shitty Chromebook with nice build quality (not a Mac, but not flimsy shit either) and a celery stick.  It does a lot of what I need.  I use Libre Office in Linux for hardcore wp, as no online wp is adequate.

I don't really like Android on chromebook.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

30 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

When you say Office 365, do you mean the Android apps or online?

I have a cheap, fairly shitty Chromebook with nice build quality (not a Mac, but not flimsy shit either) and a celery stick.  It does a lot of what I need.  I use Libre Office in Linux for hardcore wp, as no online wp is adequate.

I don't really like Android on chromebook.

Online.

[TwiceHorn 31484]

5 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Online.

My crappy one runs those fine, along with Google docs.  I can get away with the excel/sheets stuff as I am not a hardcore user, but online word and docs just won't do.  Also, I do some graphic manipulation (cutting and pasting of pdf and image files and some alteration of same) and Preview is just a dream application for that.  If I was stuck with non MacOS, I would miss Preview the most.

The high-powered and expensive Chromebooks kind of baffle me. mostly because my shitty one is so good. And I don't even like Chrome.  I don't use it on other machines.

Edited December 13, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

16 hours ago, freyguy said:

I miss NT...it was so clean.

Yep. The last OS I really loved was Windows 2000. 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

29 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

My crappy one runs those fine, along with Google docs.  I can get away with the excel/sheets stuff as I am not a hardcore user, but online word and docs just won't do.  Also, I do some graphic manipulation (cutting and pasting of pdf and image files and some alteration of same) and Preview is just a dream application for that.  If I was stuck with non MacOS, I would miss Preview the most.

The high-powered and expensive Chromebooks kind of baffle me. mostly because my shitty one is so good. And I don't even like Chrome.  I don't use it on other machines.

 

Right; there's no functional difference OS wise device to device, but you can get a much nicer build (aluminum or magnesium), display, 8 GB (or more) ram, an Intel CPU that would run Windows efficiently, etc.  

 

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31484]

2 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

Right; there's no functional difference OS wise device to device, but you can get a much nicer build (aluminum or magnesium), display, 8 GB (or more) ram, an Intel CPU that would run Windows efficiently, etc.  

 

 

 

The one thing I notice about my crap one, that is not much of a limitation, is that if I have one video playing it won't play another, or another "sound file" from another window.  

Not 100% if that is a hardware driven limitation or just wise memory/processor management.

I have had multiple windows open and multiple tabs in each and a Linux app or two and it's never bogged on me or frozen up.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

The one thing I notice about my crap one, that is not much of a limitation, is that if I have one video playing it won't play another, or another "sound file" from another window.  

Not 100% if that is a hardware driven limitation or just wise memory/processor management.

I have had multiple windows open and multiple tabs in each and a Linux app or two and it's never bogged on me or frozen up.

Just tested it here on my HP.  Must be a hardware limitation of some kind.

Opened 4 different tabs, picked 4 different videos at random on youtube, and all 4 were playing audio/video at once.  Granted, that's a usage case that is a bit out of the mainstream, but it did work.

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31484]

1 minute ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Just tested it here on my HP.  Must be a hardware limitation of some kind.

Opened 4 different tabs, picked 4 different videos at random on youtube, and all 4 were playing audio/video at once.  Granted, that's a usage case that is a bit out of the mainstream, but it did work.

 

 

Thanks for the data point.

Yeah it keeps me from having that garble when you have a video running and some audio auto-run comes on in another window and mucks things up.  I see it as something of a feature.

[Paper_jam 831]

I had to get a new PC with Windows 11, and it's been functionally OK but I'm not huge fan of the following (admittedly, mostly minor) things:

> Had to create a Microsoft account to complete installation (there are workarounds easily found online, but the ones I tried failed for whatever reason.)

> Right-click context menus only show you a few options (never the ones I need) and you have to click again on "show more options" to get the full menu to display. Rage.

> Microsoft Edge has like 10 processes running even though I don't have it open.

> Microsoft brought back Widgets but gives you no control over how to customize or kill the newsfeed part of it. More needless processes and bloat running in background.

> Cosmetically, I think W11 is kind of ugly and toylike. I thought the same thing about W10. I liked the fancier desktop look of aero glass/Windows 7.

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31484]

It's irrelevant to me, but I keep reading that MS is ruining Edge, which was pretty highly regarded at first.

Firefox ftmfw.

[wild_turkey 3159]

Good news! Windows Spotlight randomly came back today. I didn't change any settings so not sure what prompted this. Maybe they just wanted me to live without it for a couple of weeks to learn to appreciate it more.

[pronghorn 44]

Sucks hard. Half my applications do not work

[Burt 4080]

Any other reviews since December?  Was thinking about making the upgrade, but want to be certain its actually an upgrade before doing so.

[torre 1286]

2 hours ago, Burt said:

Any other reviews since December?  Was thinking about making the upgrade, but want to be certain its actually an upgrade before doing so.

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/195715-few-questions-about-win-11-a.html

https://www.pcworld.com/article/811274/windows-12-2024-microsoft-windows-11-features.html

 

Many reviews on the 'net,  one above.  Limited reviews I have seen indicate no major upgrades in Win 11.    Per reports,  Win 10 may be retired in 2025.

Second link gives a forecast for the future.   Win 12 may be released in 2024.    "Situation is fluid"   🙂

I am on Win10 and thinking about buying a Mac.

 

[Rimbo 25939]

As always, reviews of the latest version are filled with bitchy whining.

It's a perfectly fine OS, just like its predecessor.

I find that the Surface libraries function more reliably on 11, and WSLg is really cool (no 3rd party X server needed to run Linux GUI apps).

 

[Hate 20108]

It’s fine. I’ve had zero issues with either laptop (work or personal).