More subscriber experiences with Windows 11

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LANGALIST By Fred Langa AskWoody readers are dipping their toes into Win11’s chilly (but warming!) waters, and that means there are more and more real
[See the full post at: More subscriber experiences with Windows 11]

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lmacri, abbodi86

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Regarding the Windows UI – a never ending story. In my opinion, the biggest mistake made by MS is <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>forcing</span> the UI-changes. Especially when it’s not that big a deal to let users choose the UI they like. I’m a long-time AutoCAD user, starting in 1989 with Release 9. This introduced, for the day, a pretty big change to the UI by adding Pull Down menu’s and Icon Menu’s. The emphasis being adding. No changes to the existing UI elements like the Screen Menu of Tablet Menu. Over the years, more UI-elements were added, like Tool Bars, Palettes and the Ribbon. The best part being you can use ALL those elements at your liking. I.e. you can put the Ribbon, Tool Bars, Palettes, Pull Down menu’s etc. on-screen at the same time. It looks messy, but I do have some colleagues who use both the Ribbon and an occasional Tool Bar somewhere on the screen.

AutoCAD has been highly customizable from day one. Besides of arranging the UI-elements in a way that suits you, you can also customize the UI as a whole, letting the user choose what items appear in which UI-element. In the early days, you needed a text editing program to do that. I believe it was release 2006 that introduced the Ribbon and alongside  the GUI editor. Not the most friendly or stable tool, but it got the job done.

What I’m trying to say: it should not be difficult for MS to let users tweak their Windows UI. And they don’t need to go all the way Autodesk did with AutoCAD. If them UI-changes are aimed at attracting new users, then keep everybody happy by pre-defining a bunch of UI-styles and let the user choose which one to use.

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I’m with Gary Lavery. While changes in layout are an irritation to me, they would be worse for my wife. She uses her PC quite a bit but in a basic mode and tends to learn how to do it by rote. Understanding how the software interface “thinks” is not intuitive to her. Consequently gratuitous changes of layout are unhelpful.

We are both firmly wedded to Windows 10 for the immediate future at least.

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

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Why MS chose to have items move within menus is beyond me. Remember when they introduced that into Office – it had some odd name I can’t recall? Most frequent users worked out how to set them to always show full menus. Why would they voluntarily make the same mistake again?

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Whenever Windows managers change, Windows changes. Microsoft can’t remember mistakes as it isn’t a single mind. Every manager wants to put their stamp on things by changing what they can. Animations in 365 annoyed me so much that I went to LibreOffice. It’s less powerful but it does what I need without animations, annual subscriptions, or random changes.

Microsoft doesn’t really care what users want. They change things because they can, not because it’s to our benefit.

Windows 11 has a couple more years until the deeply rooted bugs, and the more obvious annoyances, are resolved to the satisfaction of most users. Windows 10 was the same way, at first. Now, it’s relatively polished. Although I still use Windows 7 Pro on one workstation with 0patch Pro installed to keep it secure.

GreatAndPowerfulTech

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I use both Windows 10 and Windows 11 every day on my dual boot daily driver.  I use StartIsBack++ on Windows 10, and StartAllBack on Windows 11 ($4.99 for either, lifetime license).  They look almost identical, and very much like Windows 7.  The easiest way to tell them apart is that the Taskbar in Windows 10 is not transparent, but in Windows 11 it is.

As far as an OS platform for doing the things I want to do, I haven’t yet found any noticeable difference between the two.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I installed it on my desktop and notebook without any issues. Can’t say it Wow’s me in any sort of way. It’s a little different but not so much as creating a steep learning curve. But some things just make you wonder why the change in the first-place vs Windows 10?? I mean, Microsoft could have tightened up Windows 10 releases going forward rather than creating a new Windows version. I certainly wouldn’t buy a new PC just for Windows 11 that’s for sure. If you can’t upgrade just stick with Windows 10.

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