[1_player]

I was holding off and waiting for a new Surface laptop or 2-in-1 until recently when:

- Windows 11 was announced and proves to be another Vista-like misstep.

- I have learned about Framework laptops and repairability and being able to upgrade one has become a killer feature.

[hardwaresofton]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but Microsoft seems to almost be doing the missteps in a pattern/on purpose.

Win95 vs Win98/ME/etc (? not sure)

WinXP vs Vista

Win7 vs Win8

Win10 vs Win11?

It's like the Intel's tick-tock model almost. On some level I do think that bashing this is a bit hypocritical when most of us nerds are also the first ones to bemoan a lack of innovation.

[ffhhj]

It's a two iteration learning process, and this time they need to learn people don't want ads and telemetry. Windows 12 will be privacy first.

[mirages]

It's more

95/98 -> 98SE

ME -> 2000/XP

Vista -> 7

8 -> 8.1

Can't say about 10 as the version numbers are harder to track

[hardwaresofton]

Thanks, I knew I was getting most of them wrong, haven't touched Windows in years, memory is very hazy

[shp0ngle]

> Windows 11 was announced and proves to be another Vista-like misstep.

It's not even out yet?

[pizza234]

The TPM and general older platform incompatibility problems have been advertised for long; not sure how it'll play out, but I'll avoid it like the plague.

[hnbad]

It's out for people on the Windows Insiders program. I happen to be on it and got stranded because they enrolled me for Win11 despite my machine not meeting the specs and now they've decided to no longer provide updates to that cohort an downgrading requires a full wipe.

That said, from what I've been seeing Win11 is mostly just Win10 with some minor incremental changes, some good, some bad. The default centering of the task bar is certainly a thing but you can set it to align left as normal although I miss having the task bar moved to the top. Only thing I find a bit tedious is the new right click menu in the file explorer, which I can understand the reasoning behind but still don't think was the right move.

I think the new widgets thing is a misstep like the charms bar but it's just another icon you can ignore. The built-in MS Teams chat feature is interesting but just adds to the redundancy of having to have separate Microsoft and Microsoft 365 accounts, which is getting silly.

[skinkestek]

Yet they have been advertising its problems I think. I'm not that into Windows though.

[dgellow]

I have to say that I do not understand the bad press around Windows 11. I'm using the dev channel since it's available and while things have been unstable (expected from a dev release), the user experience is clearly an improvement over the mess Windows 10 is. My machine doesn't feel slugish anymore, the Start menu and settings panel are finally usable, the new windows snapping features work quite well, managing external displays isn't a nightmare anymore, etc.

I was even able to update my old Thinkpad x230 after enabling TPM from the bios, it feels usable again.

[1_player]

> the user experience is clearly an improvement over the mess Windows 10 is

To me, it looks like another coat of varnish haphazardly and thoughtlessly painted on top of multiple layers on a crumbling, dry wall. A mishmash of ideas added on top of Windows 10, not an evolution and revolution and refactoring of what Windows is. Ah, and more telemetry and ads.

[dgellow]

Yes, that’s not false. But it’s a nice coating, to continue your wall painting analogy. It’s way more coherent than Windows 8 or Windows 10. but it’s still fundamentally the same windows mess.

[elorant]

How about scaling? Did they fix it because in Win10 it was horrendous.

[dgellow]

What are you scaling? I’m not sure I understand your question without more context

[elorant]

Scaling is when you change the size of fonts, apps, etc. In Win10 if you chose anything above 100% everything becomes blurry. There's also a problem when you use multiple monitors with different resolutions. You move a window from one screen to the next and it doesn't scale properly. It's a known issue for some years, and I'd wish they solved it in Win11.

[genocidicbunny]

The preview for it is available so in a way it is already out. The general release is also very soon -- October 5th -- so the latest previews are likely fairly close to the final version.

[aksss]

Or another Windows 8 misstep. They seem intent on releasing the product with a crippled start menu (zero customization and half of it seemingly reserved for ad space), the integrated teams chat is not compatible with work accounts, the widgets do not allow you to disable the news widget.

I appreciate the typeface changes, though as a Windows user such things have never been a priority to me.

What irks me is the loss of customization and productivity enhancements of being able to group and size the start menu - all my video editing stuff in one group, coding-related apps in another, etc. That organization is what I miss the most on a daily basis.

[stinos]

Have you considered not bothering with manually going through the start menu but just typing what you want, or otherwise pinning mostly used apps to the taskbar? Both are faster and more convenient than point-search-click and taskbar allows grouping. Only downside: typing in the start menu does not always work flawlessly; can't pinpoint the exact problem but seems like there's some algorithm behind it which takes some time to get the most used things to the top. Also it's not truly fuzzy matching, which is imo by far the best and fastest way for launching/searching anything (think Ctrl-P in text editors like SublimeText/VSCode or using fzf on the command line)

[aksss]

Yep, search is a thing, but far from preferable to menu customization for me - not as hs/ld, in my opinion. Requires more input and more brain cycles to start typing a name with (potentially) both hands than to hit the win key and select the pictograph that’s immediately there in the same spot every time. It’s hardly a process of manually going through the start menu unless you need something unpinned. Having both options is great, but I like my regular ‘work tools’ laid out before me, arranged by activity - a pod of icons for my video/audio editing, a pod for dev work tools, a pod of icons for office apps, etc.

But yeah, in win11 search is more of a focus not because it’s a new feature compared to win10, but because they hobbled the other features, and that seems like an enormous step backwards to me (the loss of customization/options).

Win 11 lets you pin apps to the menu still, but there’s no grouping, half the menu is taken up by a “recommended” section, and there’s no resizing of it. For the unchangeable half of the menu, which so far as I can tell is not an MRU list, it does hold recently installed apps from the store (and nowhere else) and likely will be used to stub in advertised apps (call me cynical). It’s a crippling change, and I suspect we’ll see those features added back in sooner or later. Much like win8.1. That’s about the best I can hope for anyway. MS is intent to release as-is.

[pjmlp]

As someone mostly into Windows development ecosystem, I fully agree with the Vista-like misstep (and Windows 8-like as well).

Yesterday they did a community talk about Ink support as if it was something completly new in Windows 11, my feeling was "have these guys ever used UWP Ink?!?".