[pavon]

Windows 11 is much slower for me than Windows 7 or 10. A noticeable sub-second delay to bring up the start menu and respond to typing, about 3 seconds for file explorer to load, 5-20 seconds to start a screenshot. I wouldn't be surprised if antivirus is to partially to blame (only use Windows at work where it is required), but it is the same antivirus we used on Windows 10 and it wasn't this bad.

[dangus]

“A noticeable sub-second delay” lol. I guess you never ran Windows 98 on a pentium 2 like I did. If I had a dime for every sub-second delay I experienced on that machine…

Settings > Accessibility > Animation Effects > Off

5-10 seconds to start a screenshot, yeah man now you’re just lying. You sure you didn’t leave the delay timer on?

Are we going to gloss over the fact that the screenshot interface in old windows versions basically didn’t exist? There was no keyboard shortcut to open snipping tool by default in Windows 7. You had to know to use your print screen key correctly and to paste the image into Paint, and there was no visual feedback. Of course that performed fast because there was no UI!

[pavon]

> I guess you never ran Windows 98 on a pentium 2 like I did.

If you have to compare to a 20+ year old processor to look good, your system has problems. But since we are comparing old computers, Finder opens quicker on a 30 year old Macintosh 512k than Explorer opens in Windows 11.

> 5-10 seconds to start a screenshot, yeah man now you’re just lying.

Nope. I actually just updated that number up to 20 seconds after testing, because I thought my memory was exaggerating. This started in Windows 10 when they introduced "Snip & Sketch" to replace the old Snipping tool, but it was easier to go back to the old one in Windows 10.

Edit: Oh, and I just remembered another detail. Our library folders are mapped to network shares at work. Again, this has been the case for 15+ years now, and performance has just recently cratered. It would not surprise me if most Windows developers today assume everything is on SSD, and don't think about slapping low-importance file I/O in critical sections.

[dangus]

After this discussion I looked it up and the original sources that made a claim that the Windows 11 start menu is written in react aren’t even confirmed accurate, and allegedly the components involving react are using react native for windows and are therefore compiled to native code - no web views are involved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44124688

So even this base assumption that a slow heavy bloated experience is on offer is just hearsay. The only section that uses React is the allegedly recommended section, the one that can be disabled entirely with a single settings toggle.

Anyway, again, the 5-10 second screenshot thing, I’ve been testing it live and could never get it to be slower than 2 seconds between invoking the shortcut key to file on the disk. Keeping in mind that this includes me physically reacting as quickly as possible to click after the shortcut keys to initiate the capture. It’s about one second between clicking capture and observing the file appear in file explorer. My CPU is 5 years old, my RAM is DDR4, and I use an off brand nvme SSD, for your reference.

I will also add to this that the main competitor to Windows, macOS, adds an intentional delay to their screen capture where the screenshots aren’t added to disk until after the little preview disappears or is manually dismissed. In Windows the preview notification and file being written to disk happen simultaneously, and the system automatically copies the image to clipboard which Apple doesn’t do, saving further time.

Your network share issue could be something misconfigured at your work, I have no way to verify whether that’s something your IT department messed up. My personal Windows and Linux systems are both connected to my SMB shares at all times through their graphical file managers and I don’t notice any difference in performance.

Last rebuttal: your finder experience in Macintosh classic (System 3.0 when the 512k debuted) is fast because there’s no multitasking, when you are at the desktop of a Macintosh the only application open is Finder and it’s already in RAM. Open any other application and then close it. You’ll notice a relatively long delay (10 seconds in my testing, although I don’t have real hardware) after closing the application before the desktop and finder are responsive again. You can try this on your preferred Macintosh emulator online.