What's the verdict? Windows 11 Discussion Thread

When will you upgrade to Windows 11?

  • As soon as possible

    Votes: 5 33.3%

  • 1-3 months

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • 3-6 months

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • 6-12 months

    Votes: 3 20.0%

  • 12+ months

    Votes: 3 20.0%

  • Never

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • Total voters
    15
After using Windows 11 for a few months - it's mostly fine, but I do find more noticeable lag with my system. My hardware spec isn't a 2021 build, but it's not that old, and should easily be powerful enough to cope with most things.

Windows menus (especially the start bar and search) and software changing states (going from fullscreen -> minimised) do have noticable lag spikes. I believe search is generally faster than Win10, but especially on first boot the results are painfully slow when searching for locally installed software.
 
Since my old machine was getting to be a bit of an antique, I got a new W11 laptop earlier this month.

W11 itself had a lot of petty little annoyances, that it took me a while to eliminate, but once I'd done that, and modified things to my liking, I have to admit that despite my earlier comment in this topic, I've come to quite like the new UI.

Of course I think a lot of that liking is influenced by the fact that my new machine has a SSD, rather than my old machine's HDD, and is in general a lot more responsive than the old one was.
 
I like Windows 11, but I still miss the Toolbars option which was on the Taskbar menu.
 
Having been using Windows 11 for a while now - I'm not super keen. It feels extremely sluggish compared to Windows 10 - and basic operations often take a long time.

A few examples I've noticed on my system:
  • Right clicking on an icon at the bottom of the screen in the start bar has a noticeable lag for the right-click context menu to appear. On occasion it doesn't appear at all.
  • Moving a large file - I tried moving a large file (around 20gb) from one folder to another. The window prompt for move appeared, and was set to "calculating" at 0% for several minutes before I cancelled the operation and retried. (On the second occasion it was almost instant).
  • Search is frequently slow and has noticeable latency (although it wasn't very fast in Windows 10 either)

Then there are general annoyances:
  • It's annoying having to repeatedly click "show more options" because Windows 11 doesn't always recognise your software installed can handle the file extension. (I have 7zip installed, but W11 always hides 7zip in the show more options menu. Meanwhile clicking "open with" for most archives just shows the "No programs installed" window.
  • I would like Microsoft to stop shoving Microsoft Edge down my throat. :-) I legitimately have no idea how their current strategy to getting Edge and Bing users is not illegal under their previous anti-trust lawsuits (especially in the EU. What happened to browser choices??).
  • I don't want OneDrive to automatically be setup on my system, and try and sync all of my documents. And then complain that I've used up my 5GBs of space. I don't want onedrive, I've never set it up and never wanted it.

Plus Microsoft's new experiments with advertising in the File Manager don't exactly give me hope for a better future...
 
I've always "Turned off or disabled One Drive," without any problem. I never take anything away, though, where I have any bit of free cloud storage. Should I wish to use it OneDrive still fires up with ease, but once I exit, I'm out unless I were to fire it up again.

I also haven't had those other problems. Even under Windows 11, the advice I've been dispensing since the early days of Windows 10 still applies:
---------------
Whenever inexplicable issues present themselves “out of the blue” and with seemingly no reason, these are the two things I try first, in order:

1. Using DISM (Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management) and SFC (System File Checker) to Repair Windows 8.1, 10 & 11

2. Performing a Windows 10 or 11 Repair Install or Feature Update Using the Windows ISO file

If #1 fixes the issue, #2 is unnecessary.
----------------

Between those two, if I have a system that boots, way more than 9 times out of 10 the problem is cured.
 
I installed W11 using a Local Account, so no problems with OneDrive.
 
Will Watts said:
It's annoying having to repeatedly click "show more options" because Windows 11 doesn't always recognise your software installed can handle the file extension.
Click to expand...
You can change that with a registry setting; I've personally gotten used to it now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1494661475553714177

Will Watts said:
Plus Microsoft's new experiments with advertising in the File Manager don't exactly give me hope for a better future...
Click to expand...
I've heard about that. I don't think it will come to fruition in an actual release build though and if it did, the backlash from users will mean its prompt removal.
 
I realise I'm ranting but - whilst removing OneDrive, I noticed this app had made a return. 🙃

1649613307737.png

Not sure if I hadn't removed it before, or if it re-appeared after an update (03/04 corresponds to the last update I installed). Although I think these bundled apps are technically "stubs" that don't install until the first time you run them.


x BlueRobot said:
I don't think it will come to fruition in an actual release build though and if it did, the backlash from users will mean its prompt removal.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure - maybe ads in the file manager are unlikely, but we do currently get ads in the notification centre.
 
Gary R said:
I don't.
Click to expand...
Nor do I.

One of the first things I do when setting up any Windows system is to go through Privacy settings throwing a huge number of toggles to "off." Regardless of what they say about the "advertising ID" one resulting not in fewer ads but in non-customized ones, I see far, far fewer (if any) ads on systems where that has been turned off, particularly if done during the install process itself.

When I hear about people getting ads in Windows 10 (and now 11) I often wish I could say exactly why they do, and I don't.
 
britechguy said:
One of the first things I do when setting up any Windows system is to go through Privacy settings throwing a huge number of toggles to "off." Regardless of what they say about the "advertising ID" one resulting not in fewer ads but in non-customized ones, I see far, far fewer (if any) ads on systems where that has been turned off, particularly if done during the install process itself.

When I hear about people getting ads in Windows 10 (and now 11) I often wish I could say exactly why they do, and I don't.
Click to expand...

Sound exactly like what I do when I install a new OS.

With W11, I may have done a few Registry Edits as well, to be honest I can't recall exactly which, but I do recall that there were some annoyances that required the Registry editing to remove them, I just don't know whether it was for Ads.

I do usually list any edits I make, but can't at this moment find the list for W11 (if I did in fact make one).
 
I just meant in general - Microsoft does insert ads in the notification centre. I believe some of these you can turn off - I don't know if there are any that can't be disabled. The setting for the Start Menu ads in Windows 10 was "Show suggestions occasionally in Start", but ads for apps can also appear in notification centre and on the lock screen.

Gary R said:
I don't.
Click to expand...

That's great. I still don't think Microsoft should be display ads in these locations at all. :-)

Likewise for fixes needing registry tweaks - we're a fairly niche group of power users who are comfortable editing the registry. App ads, privacy features, OneDrive, CandyCrush, pushing users to Edge or Bing - it's set the way it is because the majority of users aren't going to change these settings, or don't know how.
 
Will Watts said:
I still don't think Microsoft should be display ads in these locations at all
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree with you more on that one Will. When I purchased W11 I assumed I was buying an OS, not an Ad hoarding.

And yes, you shouldn't need to tweak the Registry to get rid of annoyances, they should all be capable of being disabled by the most non-technical of users. I mentioned doing so only because I needed to do it to resolve some of the things I found annoying, and not because I think it is a solution for everyone.
 
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I voted for as soon as possible, only because I work in the IT field. I have been using it since since the beginning. Was not happy at all about the hardware requirements. Thankfully I just got in with my 8th and 9th gen Intel CPU. It was a rough start and still is to an extent. However I have come to enjoy it more and at this point now, prefer it to Windows 10.
 
Adjusting the Privacy settings are a PITA. You turn something off and when you want to go to the next category it goes back to the top of the screen again instead of on Windows 10 you can scroll down on the left side, click on what you want to adjust and it shows on the right side so you can turn off your toggle. Not so easy on 11 though. You have to go back, scroll down and adust your toggle, then again it goes back to the top. PITA. Time consuming.
 
My verdict after using it on a brand new build for about two weeks is that it is absolutely horrible and it is very likely that I will go back to 10. I have windows 95 running on a 1995 laptop (486DX, 16Mb RAM) better than this garbage on what manufacturers sell as "premium" hardware (Gigabyte Aorus Master z690, 12700KF, 2x32GB DDR5, RTX 3070, NVME gen 4 system storage). Starting with Windows 2000, I have not seen such insanity, stay the heck away, at least for now.
 
Having been through another clean install recently, the forced internet connection and Microsoft account for Windows 11 was particularly annoying.

For whatever reason, my motherboard WiFi did not work with the generic Windows 11 drivers, so I wasn't able to get past the "Sign into your Microsoft Account" installation step.

Fortunately I had the drivers on a USB stick, and the installation screen does let you pull up a cmd prompt if you know the right keyboard shortcut, so eventually I was able to run the USB installer and get internet access. Wasted quite a bit of time on it though.
 

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