I upgraded my primary laptop to Windows 11. A few people had said they liked it, I know that I needed to keep up at some point, and in the later stages of a pandemic, I thought this was the safest bet. I have a desktop I use regularly, and didn’t want anything risky there, and I have an older laptop, but it’s a 2015 era device, so I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. This was a 2019 laptop, so fairly new.
In most cases, Windows is Windows. The task bar centers icons, and the start menu comes up in the middle, not the side. Not big changes.
However.
A few things I’ve noticed, which I find rather disturbing.
Slow
Windows 11 is slower, and often has interrupts or pauses that I didn’t have before. If I press the Windows key, the Start menu is slow to appear, and even then, loses some of the keyboard buffer. So if I type Windows+n+o+t+e, expecting notepad, I find the Start menu and “ote” or “te” in the window.
Incredibly annoying.
It also appears more checking online for stuff, and a poorer experience when I’ve changed networks.
This is the most disturbing thing as it appears Microsoft has gone back to bloatware for Windows, assuming hardware gains. Windows 7 and 10 were slimmer, and felt like the OS was more hidden, understanding that it is a platform on which the software we need runs. The OS isn’t important for UI/UX most of the time.
Get it out of the way.
Task Manager
Second thing is that Task Manager isn’t available from the status bar. I don’t know who thought this was ergonomically a problem, but when your Start menu doesn’t start, not being able to get Task Manager is a problem.
In addition, I find at times the System Interrupts are using 100% of the CPU and outside of getting Task Manager up, nothing else works.
Ugh.
Too Much AI or MS Preference
One of the more annoying things I’ve found is that if I look for some apps, Microsoft stuff gets in the way. For example, I will sometimes need to stat OpenLiveWriter. For some reason it sometimes disappears from my task bar where I pin it. If I try to start it, with the Windows key (pause) then type “open”, Excel is the first thing that appears. No other apps, but Excel.
Stop with the guessing here.
I see similar things if I type “SQL” as the list of matching apps, SSMS + Redgate stuff, is hidden and I get the one, almost always wrong, guess.
Overall
I don’t see anything great about Windows 11 so far. Tbey’ve moved things, made minor additions, and likely made it easier for some users, but not for someone used to Windows that lives in the keyboard. Even finding some of the older things, like User Account names, is harder in W11.
I wish I hadn’t upgraded. I dread the day I need to move away from Windows 10 on other machines.