Windows 11

[gswindale]

As for Windows 11, the centred taskbar is an interesting idea in these days of widescreen monitors. I'm glad to see the tiles dropped from the start menu as I find them pointless and rather ugly; the new start menu looks cleaner and tidier.

It seems that the centered "start" button is just a default and that we can put it back on the bottom left if we so wish.

I had no issues with W10 being the "last version" of Windows - give it 6 monthly updates and away you go - just call it W10 2021-10 or W10 2022-04 etc.

 

[JamesT]

They weren't. People weren't going to be using 50 year old machines running Windows 10. Every time you buy a new computer, that's a new licence fee in to MS's wallet. The vast majority of Windows licences sold are OEM ones that die with the hardware they are first installed on.

The main idea of only ever having one version of Windows going forwards was to stop the hold-outs and reduce support costs. The same people who didn't want to install previous major updates of Windows were also quite happy to install "service pack x" on their current version. The plan was that going forward, there would be regular service pack sized updates, and in fact, Windows 10 now is quite a different beast to Windows 10 on launch date (just look at how much more stuff has moved into the Settings app compared to day one).

However, once again, a decision made for quite sensible reasons has been overridden by Microsoft's marketing department. Nobody really cares what name the operating system they have on their computer is. The updated UI was already pencilled in for the next Windows 10 update, it just looks like someone in Marketing has gone "oh, you've moved the start menu away from it's infinite corner*, we should call it something different!".


* The reason the start button was in the lower left is to take advantage of the infinite target size according to Fitt's Law. Original designs included some with centred options, but it was found in testing that the usability of those designs was lower than the aligned options. The same rule applies to the application control menu (top left) and window close button (top right). They've not ended up in those positions by accident.

The other big method of buying licences is the volume agreements that companies will use. They pay an annual licence fee and get to use whatever is current.
Neither volume nor OEM particularly care what the major version number is, so Windows 10 with 6 monthly updates forever would have been fine.

I think it's partly the marketing dept wanting to keep up with Apple (they're about to release 12, why are you so backwards on 10?), but also the engineering dept wanting to draw a line in the sand in terms of hardware support. It's a bit easier to say a particular generation of CPU is dropped with Windows 11 than Windows 10 build 20H2. That way you give users 5 years to migrate, whereas dropping support with a build may only give 18 months.

 

[nlogax]

I think it's partly the marketing dept wanting to keep up with Apple (they're about to release 12, why are you so backwards on 10?)

Apple's recent versioning is marketing invention and malarkey. There were no major architectural or operational differences between MacOS 10.15 and its immediate successor MacOS 11.0. Meanwhile MacOS 10 / OSX managed to live for twenty full years.

 

[Crossover]

just call it W10 2021-10 or W10 2022-04 etc.

They semi have. Lhaving gone from trying to name them by build month, we now have 20H2, 21H1 and the next will presumably be 21H2

 

[galwhv69]

Apart from a few major glitches (mostly sorted out now), it seems to be running fairly well for me. Some of the UI tweaks are actually pretty good as well

 

[jon0844]

Apart from a few major glitches (mostly sorted out now), it seems to be running fairly well for me. Some of the UI tweaks are actually pretty good as well

I'm impressed with Windows 11 so far, as the UI becomes more consistent with less of the new and old pop-ups and dialogues. All rather trivial of course, but a more standardised UI is good for all concerned - although Microsoft needs to be mindful of all the users out there that won't adapt to change and will be confused.

I expect by the time of the official rollout, there will be many tutorials and introductions to the new features, and even the centred taskbar will probably require a first-time pop-up to invite users to change it.

What's most impressive for me is that I am running the ARM version in Parallels on a Mac Mini M1 and it's incredibly fast and seemingly bug-free thus far - not bad for a dev version of the OS, and running through a virtual environment. It didn't require any effort on my part, bar rebooting and letting it install (and Parallels automatically updating some tools).

 

[Strathclyder]

Win2K really was a great OS. That clean WinME style but without any of the underlying 16-bit flakiness. Absolutely rock solid!

Never had the pleasure of 2000 myself, Win98 was the first Windows OS I ever remember using. Vista was the first OS of my own (IE, the OS installed in my first laptop) however. Despite it's reputation, I personally never had any major problems with Vista (the hardware failed before the OS did).

 

[dosxuk]

Never had the pleasure of 2000 myself, Win98 was the first Windows OS I ever remember using. Vista was the first OS of my own (IE, the OS installed in my first laptop) however. Despite it's reputation, I personally never had any major problems with Vista (the hardware failed before the OS did).

Vista had two major issues - firstly that the scope was massively reduced at short notice resulting in many features being dropped yet still referred to or other features suddenly having to be changed to support the old way if doing things (e.g. libraries, which were supposed to be based on the new object based file system and would have been much better); and secondly, extremely optimistic minimum hardware specifications, resulting in many people's first impressions being barely usable.

Windows 7 as released was barely a service pack of Vista, but the rebrand, extra time to tidy the loose ends and bumping the hardware requirements to where they should have been was enough to make it one of the most popular versions of Windows ever.

 

[nlogax]

Windows 7 as released was barely a service pack of Vista, but the rebrand, extra time to tidy the loose ends and bumping the hardware requirements to where they should have been was enough to make it one of the most popular versions of Windows ever.

It has been said in jest that Vista was the beta and Windows 7 the release version. Never used Vista myself, I went from XP to Macs and only picked up 7 and then a bare-bones Win10 build as VMs in Fusion for work purposes. Last year I built my first gaming PC for the best part of two decades and was very impressed at the wider capabilities of Win10. Windows 11 is built on a very decent base.

 

[Strathclyder]

Vista had two major issues - firstly that the scope was massively reduced at short notice resulting in many features being dropped yet still referred to or other features suddenly having to be changed to support the old way if doing things (e.g. libraries, which were supposed to be based on the new object based file system and would have been much better); and secondly, extremely optimistic minimum hardware specifications, resulting in many people's first impressions being barely usable.

Windows 7 as released was barely a service pack of Vista, but the rebrand, extra time to tidy the loose ends and bumping the hardware requirements to where they should have been was enough to make it one of the most popular versions of Windows ever.

I must say, given those issues you describe, I no doubt am in the extreme minority of Vista users that came away from it wholly satisfied for what I was asking of it.

Never had much exposure to 7 personally, my next desktop PC - after my Vista rig suffered a electrical failure - was a brand-new machine with Win8 installed bought as a birthday present; predated by a few months by a Samsung Chromebook in Xmas '12 to bridge the gap (which in the event lasted until the end of last month). The former would go on to have 8.1 & 10 installed, all three OSes once again doing everything I asked of them very capably.

 

[Ediswan]

Vista had two major issues - firstly that the scope was massively reduced at short notice resulting in many features being dropped yet still referred to or other features suddenly having to be changed to support the old way if doing things (e.g. libraries, which were supposed to be based on the new object based file system and would have been much better); and secondly, extremely optimistic minimum hardware specifications, resulting in many people's first impressions being barely usable.

I recall a third. Vista was the first release of Windows with a revised hardware driver model. Older drivers would not work. Supply of Vista drivers by third party hardware manufacturers was patchy (to be polite). One more reason to stay with XP.

I found Vista to be fine. I had a Vista laptop which, with the benefit of an upgrade to SSD, remained in daily use until bits started falling off.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I genuinely think Vista was a very impressive operating system and I was surprised how well it worked even in the beta given what a huge change it was under the hood. My main Vista machine was 64-bit and running 8GB of ram and while it did need new drivers I didn't have many issues with it while XP-64 (needed to run more than 4GB ram) was pretty much stillborn.

As a few have mentioned I think it was a massive mistake setting the required hardware specifications too low which from memory I think OEMs had pushed for, many Vista machines were sold with less than 2GB memory which I found caused Vista to be sluggish. I upgraded a lot of PCs when people complained to me the PC they'd bought was running poorly and with 2GB ram they were good. What compounded this further was the change from XP's ram model where it only used RAM as needed to paging as much as possible then releasing it if needed to make better use of RAM leading people to criticise it for being inefficient when it wasn't.

UAC also drew criticism and while it was a bit heavy handed with its default settings it wasn't that bad given Apple and Linux alternatives required a password for similar actions whereas Vista just required a click. It was less convenient than XP but XP's security model was just completely broken and while UAC did cause hassle with some software, it was badly needed given XP allowed rogue software to run absolutely rampant.

I do think Vista's reputation is unfair and it's a bit odd because while it did have a rough start and it always was going to with the changes to 64-bit, UAC and others, Windows 2000 and XP both had very rough starts as well only getting better in their later service packs. Much of it seems to come down to the branding given the fondness for Windows 7 which wasn't that much different to Vista. I so frequently came across people telling me how absolutely awful Vista was and how much better Windows 7 was but when I asked what they didn't like about Vista they'd admit they never used it but they heard it was really bad.

Despite the love for XP it's easy to forget it's many downsides, aside from the useless 64-bit support and poor security there were a number of areas it was very outdated on. The one I was particularly grateful for was native sata support and easy ability to load drivers during the install whereas XP didn't support SATA or many other storage drives by default which meant a lot of fiddling around slipstreaming drivers into the ISO, burn it and find it still doesn't work.

 

[Worm]

That isn't really fair. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux - which was introduced in Windows 10 btw) is pretty cool, especially speaking as a software developer. And adding the ability to run android apps (which Chrome OS has been able to do for ages, and remember Mac OS runs iPad apps now too) just adds extra flexibility for people - if you don't like it just don't use any android apps on there!

I'm a Linux user of almost 7 years (typing this on Fedora Thinkpad) but I have to use exclusively Windows 10 at work. My point was is that to stay relevant for the everyday user and programmers (excluding most enterprise here), Microsoft have had to go beyond the NT kernel and add components of two rival operating systems. It's also worth bearing in mind that the ability to have a Linux subsystem and Android apps on Windows was available as far back as 7 and 8, the open source community had already implemented these as unofficial projects.

 

[D365]

I'm using Windows 11 currently and it's great. A much needed refresh of an old OS.

The safety feature such as TPM and secure boot are great as they protect the device further.

Nobody has to upgrade to Windows 11.

But they will have to eventually.

Secure boot is all well and good, but it makes dual booting into Linux a nightmare.

 

[nlogax]

But they will have to eventually.

A brave minority will continue to take the risk of using OSes that are out of support well into the future, way beyond when Windows 11 ceases to be.

 

[londonteacher]

Secure boot is all well and good, but it makes dual booting into Linux a nightmare.

Agreed, but why should Windows care about that? Their aim is to get people using Windows not Linux.

But they will have to eventually.

They don't though. Although not supported older operating systems are still used especially in many businesses such as retail and healthcare.

I suppose though these people could just upgrade to Windows 365.

 

[najaB]

Agreed, but why should Windows care about that? Their aim is to get people using Windows not Linux.

Actually, MS stated some time ago that their goal, long term, is to get people using their subscription services rather than selling an OS. They're going to be launching virtual desktops in the very near future which will be completely device/OS agnostic.

 

[Kremlin Stooge]

I genuinely think Vista was a very impressive operating system and I was surprised how well it worked even in the beta given what a huge change it was under the hood. My main Vista machine was 64-bit and running 8GB of ram and while it did need new drivers I didn't have many issues with it while XP-64 (needed to run more than 4GB ram) was pretty much stillborn.

As a few have mentioned I think it was a massive mistake setting the required hardware specifications too low which from memory I think OEMs had pushed for, many Vista machines were sold with less than 2GB memory which I found caused Vista to be sluggish. I upgraded a lot of PCs when people complained to me the PC they'd bought was running poorly and with 2GB ram they were good. What compounded this further was the change from XP's ram model where it only used RAM as needed to paging as much as possible then releasing it if needed to make better use of RAM leading people to criticise it for being inefficient when it wasn't.

UAC also drew criticism and while it was a bit heavy handed with its default settings it wasn't that bad given Apple and Linux alternatives required a password for similar actions whereas Vista just required a click. It was less convenient than XP but XP's security model was just completely broken and while UAC did cause hassle with some software, it was badly needed given XP allowed rogue software to run absolutely rampant.

I do think Vista's reputation is unfair and it's a bit odd because while it did have a rough start and it always was going to with the changes to 64-bit, UAC and others, Windows 2000 and XP both had very rough starts as well only getting better in their later service packs. Much of it seems to come down to the branding given the fondness for Windows 7 which wasn't that much different to Vista. I so frequently came across people telling me how absolutely awful Vista was and how much better Windows 7 was but when I asked what they didn't like about Vista they'd admit they never used it but they heard it was really bad.

Despite the love for XP it's easy to forget it's many downsides, aside from the useless 64-bit support and poor security there were a number of areas it was very outdated on. The one I was particularly grateful for was native sata support and easy ability to load drivers during the install whereas XP didn't support SATA or many other storage drives by default which meant a lot of fiddling around slipstreaming drivers into the ISO, burn it and find it still doesn't work.

Agree with this post, I used Vista quite happily and in some respects found it far slicker than XP, though at that time I think the Sony Vaio I had was designed around running Vista. Windows 8 was the killer for me, in the words of the late Graham Taylor “Do I not like this?”.

It seems to me that Windows 11 is a kind of mega-sized service pack for 10.

(oh yeah... about those PrintSpooler privilege escalation vulnerabilities... )

 

[londonteacher]

Actually, MS stated some time ago that their goal, long term, is to get people using their subscription services rather than selling an OS. They're going to be launching virtual desktops in the very near future which will be completely device/OS agnostic.

Exactly. That is what Windows 365 is.

 

[danielnez1]

I don't think my ThinkPad T440P is "compatible" - though I use Linux (KDE Neon)

In regards to Windows 365, with my cynical hat on, it may be a ploy for Microsoft to remove/migrate legacy stuff (i.e. Win32) to a subscription model, leaving the non Windows 365 versions dependent on their store and without backwards compatibility.

 

[Worm]

I’m anecdotally expecting W11 to be a dud. Looking back at recent history:

Windows 98 - beloved
Windows 2000/ME -flopped
Windows XP - full of holes but sorely missed
Windows Vista - hated beyond belief
Windows 7 - loved by most
Windows 8/8.1 - hated beyond all belief
Windows 10 - like Windows 7 but more square and flat so tolerated.

So by my admittedly flaky logic, Windows 11 will be an enormous flop.

 

[D365]

Agreed, but why should Windows care about that? Their aim is to get people using Windows not Linux.

I suppose though these people could just upgrade to Windows 365.

Or rather, Linux within Windows, by the way things appear to going.

Have never heard of Windows 365.

 

[londonteacher]

Have never heard of Windows 365.

It's a cloud based version of Windows releasing in August. It works on pretty much any device including phones and tablets such as iPads and Mac OS devices. It would also work on Linux.

Windows 365