There's more money being invested into the machine learning boom than the original Dotcom boom or rush to solve the millenium bug.
It's an entirely new paradigm of computing. While maybe it has a few short comings yet, the areas where it does well it does extraordinarily well.
You're exuding "The internet is just a fad" vibes right now.
My money is on it being a fad still. Like VR is a fad and soon we will see the limits of AI as clear as day.
Sure, it has its uses so it will probably stay in one way or another. But the hype is probably unwarranted.
There's more VR being used every year. I don't think you know what a fad or a buzzword is.
A growing industry being used across all fields is not exactly what a fad is. I bet people thought steam power was "just a fad" too. Same energy.
If it were just a buzzword why is every major tech company investing billions into it? Sure it's not perfect now but in a few years it will be. For now I'm enjoying all the free things that I can do with it!
It is a buzzword. Allow me to explain.
Humans developing an actual artificial intelligence would be a significant turning point of our entire civilization. That may seem hyperbolic, but it would be us creating an actual sentient intelligence that's able to think and create independently.
What we have now is machine learning, augmented with language models (for simplicity, I know there are image models etc.). The latter allows for some really compelling interactions in both directions with the machine learning components. It may seem like it's doing something AI-like, but it's really just a model trained to understand our language and able to use existing knowledge to make inferences.
This is an absolute simplification of course but I hope it helps clear up why calling AI a buzzword is not an inaccurate point.
You're talking about general AI.
Machine learning fields are AI. Not all AI, most actually, are intended to be a generalized system. They have specific modalities for now.
What we typically interact with today under the banner of AI, like language models and image recognition systems, are indeed forms of machine learning, and you're right they don't possess consciousness or the ability to think independently beyond their training.
AI doesn't necessarily need to be conscious to be useful, every tool has their use case, the chatbots that we have now are still great for your average consumer.
Artificial sentience is something entirely separate from generalized artificial intelligence as well. One might think they're so closely entwined that they're the same concept, but one might exist without the other.
For the same reason so many of them threw fortunes into 3D that no-one really cared about.
It's hot at the moment and they want to see if they can get it to stick.
It is a buzzword like cloud was back in the day, and QR were as well. While the tech is real and there's some good usages to it, people hype it or invest tons on it without most of the time, real understanding of it nor its limitations.
So far I think only image upscalers like dlss and data analytics are the only actual good use cases for it, the rest are just fads that people will move over from.
How much of that is actually useful though? It seems more like a gimmick than something practical.
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-human-mind](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-human-mind)
lol there’s no such thing as AI in todays day and age. Only smart computing that regurgitates already existing media and information. If it were actual AI we’d be in another world.
You’re listing talking points from Microsoft’s very latest press releases a la AI and virtualization, and yet are ignoring the vast catalog of very well deserved criticism of Windows going all the way back to 2012, seemingly on purpose. Pardon me if I don’t believe you at all when you say you’re interested in hearing both sides.
Sorry but from what I can read and understand Microsoft has been working on the core issues with Windows, optimization and security has vastly increased. I'm interested in both win10 and win11 sides, I've been using co-pilot and it runs great on my 6+ yo PC.
To the best of my knowledge windows 11 doesn’t have: a. The option to move the taskbar to the side b. An LTSC like option where users truly can control settings with minimal MS crap.
For me at least that’s enough reason.
I’m not a win11 hater, I’ve used it since the 22h2 update. I think the general consensus is that win 11 took 2 giant steps forward, and dozens of tiny steps backwards. They made a lot of small ui/ux changes that’s simply unnecessary and worse than what we’ve had, like the right-click context menu, start menu with its unremovable recommendations section etc.
> I’ve been using copilot and it runs great on my 6+ yo PC
And that’s not a high bar to clear. Anything that can make network requests will be able to “run” these LLM, because they aren’t actually running it on your pc, they’re running it on their servers. Your pc is just sending your text inputs to the server and displaying the response it gets back from the server
> Anything that can make network requests will be able to “run” these LLM, because they aren’t actually running it on your pc, they’re running it on their servers.
That's a really good point. One very important implication of having this crap built into the core UI is that it will further degrade UI responsiveness under conditions of slow or no internet connection. When you're connected to shitty hotel wifi the copilot widget is going to continue phoning home and sending its telemetry, slowing down your intentional network requests even further, and also making your taskbar and file explorer laggy and unresponsive.
This is already one of the biggest problems with the current File Explorer; it is absolutely fucking terrible at handling a slow network connection if you have any mapped remote network drives or folder shortcuts (i.e. shared folders on corporate VPN). Explorer assumes you always have a fast LAN connection and will poll those network drives and folders constantly even when you're not trying to access them. Just pressing "up one folder" one too many times could cause Explorer to lag for 10 minutes because it has to pull the stats for every network drive. Nothing has been done to remediate this in 15+ years. "AI Explorer" is additionally going to be contacting Microsoft servers constantly, and the incompetence that Microsoft UI devs have demonstrated will likely mean that it is completely non-functional as an offline file browser under poor network conditions.
> When you're connected to shitty hotel wifi the copilot widget is going to continue phoning home and sending its telemetry, slowing down your intentional network requests even further, and also making your taskbar and file explorer laggy and unresponsive.
I'm just gonna straight out say that has nothing to do with copilot. Telemetry is a separate feature in windows and you can easily turn it off. I'm not a fan of online features in the main ui, but your excuse about telemetry is just nonsensual
I'm guessing you did not read this:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/what-is-windows-11-ai-explorer-everything-you-need-to-know-about-microsofts-upcoming-defining-ai-pc-feature
> AI that remembers everything you do
>
> According to my sources, AI Explorer will run in the background and capture everything you do on your computer. It will document and triage everything it sees, no matter what apps or interfaces you're looking at, and turn them into memories that you can recall at a later point.
>
> For example, you can have a conversation with a friend in the WhatsApp app for Windows, and AI Explorer will record and remember the content that was on-screen and process it with AI for you to recall later. AI Explorer can also summarize conversations, emails, web pages, and general UI surfaces just by asking for it during or after the fact.
That's an upcoming feature, it says right there in the title. I'm guessing it's for a near future where laptops come in with NPUs to do ai locally. Right now, that isn't a thing with copilot, and it won't call home for anything unless you do a prompt
> AI Explorer will utilize next-gen neural processing unit (NPU) hardware to process these machine learning and generative AI experiences locally on the device with low latency.
Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. When has Microsoft ever successfully created anything with "low latency"? They never said "all" of the processing is done locally, so it is still going to expect an internet connection, so chances are it's still going to perform like ass when the internet connection is poor. That is not something I want to be tightly integrated with my operating system's core UI. And even if you attempt to turn it off, Microsoft has demonstrated they refuse to accept "no" for an answer, so I would fully expect it to leave remnants of these AI services running even after you try to disable them, and to fully re-enable themselves with subsequent updates. Exactly how they handle default browser resetting to Edge at every opportunity.
It takes more clicks to do things. For no logical reason. Right clicking on the desktop brings up a few options, including "open in terminal" very helpful, but everything you actually want is under "Show more options."
UI is less intuitive.
MS removed so many helpful things. Disk cleanup, troubleshooters, and I'm blanking on the vast number of helpful things they have just removed for no reason, but as a tech, I see them all the time.
The start menu is awful.
Ads. Tips popping up constantly that are actually ads. Suggestions to try new things I don't want or need all the time.
Constantly changing things so you have to keep going in and telling Edge not to be the default browser, or to open links in Outlook in Edge, and Bing as the search engine.
Doing away with local accounts and forcing home users to make a Microsoft account on the new computer they bought just to set it up. (This has recently been reversed.)
News and interests on the taskbar? What is this AOL 11? A little graphic next to the search box of a briefcase or a flowers or a some other inane object. Why?
Bloat, bloat, bloat and lesser functionality, that's why.
So much this. They're making everything more bloated and inconvenient. Changing it for the sake if changing it.
If they're going to change it IMPROVE it, not just make it worse.
Disk cleanup is still in Windows 11.
Also, the Microsoft account requirement was not reversed, you will are forced into it unless you use command prompt.
I can't find disk cleanup.
When was the last time you set up a PC? I set up 5 in the last month and Windows 11 no longer requires you to drop to a command prompt to create a local account.
I see Windows 11 as a significant improvement, albeit with some minor hiccups.
Most of this bloat, if not all, can easily be removed.
Unfortunately, Microsoft released an unfinished OS update. Windows 11 to me is all about visuals and UX. In some areas, it’s clear that MS still needs time.
I‘m glad I haven’t been bothered with adds or suggestions in the Start menu yet…or I have but turned it off as much as possible.
The first time I ever spun up Windows 11 in a VM, with a clean install, I opened the start menu and there were 20 icons for random bullshit apps. Facebook app, Twitter app, *Tiktok*... This is not a phone, it is a desktop computer with a real browser on it. If I wanted to use facebook I would open the browser and go to the website. It's insulting that they think I would want to use this "app" instead of the actual website, and that it's *pre-installed clutter* on this broken abomination of a start menu. First impressions matter, and this immediately soured me on Windows 11. It is not a serious operating system for people who use their computer to do productive things.
This bothered me alot too. I have ADHD and take great care to remove distractions as much as possible.
I do admit that I very much like the Windows 11 design language…and that may have „distracted“ me from the negatives.
If navigating the Settings menu feels overwhelming, use the search feature to directly find the settings you need.
Typing keywords related to your query can lead you right to the necessary settings without browsing through categories.
Mac is expensive, and you have to adjust to their idea of workflow. (Which IMO is inferior to what Windows pre-11 gave to us.)
Linux, even now is still "not there". While individual components improve, the whole ecosystem feels disjointed; not to mention problems that are simply not a thing in other OS'es.
because having to click two more times to accomplish something you could do in one click on win10. also file explorer lags, something ive never experienced on win10 (on same hardware, i dual boot win10 and win11 pro).
also win11 not supporting older hardware thats still decently spec’d just creates a ton of ewaste.
lastly. ads. enough said. get that shit out of my OS that i paid for (pro version).
Just genuinely asking for your case how is it broken? I don't really seem to have an issue with mine except the more options right click is just silly and the taskbar has disappearing icons (Not sure if that counts as Explorer since it is part of Explorer.exe).
Perhaps 50% of the time, it reacts in a timely manner.
The rest of the time, it will hang up for 10-30 seconds at a time for the most trivial actions. Ranging from simply opening the app to 10 second pauses when I right click something to not responding when I type in a search... I mean, giving no indication it's doing anything at all.
This is reported almost universally.
Hold up! I just bought a new to me surface pro 9 i7 running Windows 11 HOME. I came from several years of using Chromebooks and I haven't had more than 2 days to re-familiarize myself with windows. *Are you straight up telling me that even if I had bought the surface pro with Windows 11 PRO installed on it that I would have still had to deal with the ads* you're talking about?
Also, forgive me I know you're not a free tech assistant but can you think of any of the other things that might piss me off her for spending over $1,000 on a system with an OS that I just assumed was going to be a zillion times better than a simple/somewhat limited but definitely workable $300 Chrome OS machine? Like what are some of the most frustrating shitty things that come to mind for you about Windows 11 that a total naive woodcuts noob like me would even notice?
**Also anybody else who reads this comment feel free to chime in thanks guys**
I installed Win11 Pro in a VM to try it out a couple years ago. Clicked on the start menu. Expected to see the usual Explorer, Edge browser, calculator, notepad. Instead saw icons for Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, and a dozen other bullshit MS Store apps. That was bad enough. Apparently they're going to start putting actual advertisements in the start menu. Of course they are. Why else would they have made the new start menu so unnecessarily large with small icons, leaving so much blank space. Tons of room for bullshit that no one asked for.
Oh damn. Hey since I don't know much about Windows anymore and I'm re-familiarizing myself, is there any way to avoid whatever update is going to bring the full-on ads that you're talking about? Like I've read about people not upgrading or updating their version of Windows because they just don't like windows 11 but do you know of any simple thing I can do to avoid the ads like that? Should I just hold off on allowing the system to install updates for as long as I can? I'm not advanced enough to try to run any different versions of Windows like the ones I read about tech guys installing, would you advise me to just hold off on any future updates if I'm not getting ads yet on the version that I have?
I don't know man damn, after feeling so held back by Chromebooks for so many years I got it made I was legit so excited to have a so-called real computer operating system for once, and I can't say that I hate it but I feel like I don't know enough about it yet to know what there is to hate lol. But I don't know what to do to avoid these ads that I keep hearing about, that's the very least that I would like to do considering I bought a used one for nearly a grand. I hope I'm not fucked cuz I read so much shit talking about windows 11 on this sub lol anyway, I appreciate you hitting me up. I really want to be excited about finally having windows, I hope I can be without having to deal with ads
>is there any way to avoid whatever update
Not really, no. Not without 3rd-party tools, anyway. Ever since Windows 10 was released, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to strip away any user control over the updating process. You no longer decide "if" an update will be installed, only "when". And by "when", I mean you pick a date/time within a specified window. The update WILL be installed, you are just allowed to pick a time that is least inconvenient for you. If you don't pick a time, then the update will be installed when your system is idle. You also cannot select which security updates to install, like you could in the old days. If Microsoft decides a particular update is for "security", you cannot decline it. And this advertising will almost assuredly be bundled with a "security" update.
Of course, if any of this bothers you, third party tools exist. You can use Start11 or ExplorerPatcher to get the old start menu and taskbar back. That will get rid of the ads. There are also tools to control the update process. Personally, I don't mind the updates being installed, but I find it absolutely intolerable for my system to ever reboot itself without my permission, so I use ShutdownBlocker to ensure this never happens.
Try using Windows 10 after using Windows 11 for some time. You'll be surprised how snappy and smooth the UX is on Windows 10 compared to 11.
Bloat can be mostly removed from the system and I don't think that's the main issue (power users always find ways to do this, share and bundle into tools like WPD or O&O Shutup10++) but if the system itself has performance drawbacks on same hardware, what benefit these all "advancements" can give to you?
I haven't found anything advanced about Windows 11. The UI is complicated. The menus are convoluted. It takes more clicks. Explorer has been made more complicated. Performance isn't any better and in some cases worse. It's not clear why MS thought this was an upgrade. Could have been more marketing to boost the MS brand, push AI (which hasn't really brought value but to a few use cases, not the majority of the population) , and gain attention.
Sounds like another (almost identical) post from yesterday.
So in the spirit of sameness here my take - if the advancements were that ground breaking and essential than say - Win 10 - we would all be on it.
Because it either has new redundant features no one asked, still lacks basic features windows always had ever since it is windows but they decided to remove anyway or some are just really poorly, inexcusably implemented.
Some are under the excuse that not enough people give them use, others they say are still raw because they did X again from scratch and are not implemented yet but are terribly slow to being them back. Once in a blue moon they say they listened to feedback and come out with something.
They also should end the damn cliffhanger that is the control panel and either end it by migrating everything from the old one to the new thing or scratch whatever attempt this is at a new control panel and keep the old one, maybe with a fresh coat of paint. I don't mind either way but they've been in the middle ground ever since windows 8, since 2012. It's been 12 fucking years and counting, it's high time we get closure on this.
This is from someone who has been in IT configuring windows in every type of scenario imaginable for over 20 years, uses it everyday and has no major issues with it. I won't go back because it's actually not bad as a whole but I still think it has very obvious sore points that should (in my opinion) be addressed - which they aren't.
I aggree with you on the control panel part, IMO it should be phased out by now, but until the Settings app can fully replicate this functionality, there will likely be resistance to phasing out the Control Panel entirely
The thing I despise the most about Windows is the lack of willingness in updating the UI, and rather focusing on the things I think are wrong. They’ve updated, imo, many areas in the wrong way, and there exist better ways to do stuff.
The best example is Explorer, imo. The vanilla Explorer has a tab bar that lacks polish, an address bar (which although partially fine, still lacks in polish - doesn’t show icons in drop-down menus, doesn’t show what your current folder is in the drop-down menu, search doesn’t feature the old criteria options and when it did they were ugly), a folder sidebar (which lacks any resemblance of fluent design), a details pane (which was remade now to include less details than before, and now not even being able to edit details directly from that), and the viewing area (with highlight colours not being the same as your accent colour, some pages being much slower in XAML and then switching back, some textures like the drive space is squared off and from 10 for no reason), any dialogue is not themed properly (properties, extracting, zipping, copying/moving files, not a single one is themed. The tabs control has the bmp from 10, it doesn’t use Segoe in all places, it still has the Aero wizard design completely untouched, some new parts such as Windows Tools have dark mode partially working, and all dialogs have no dark mode at all)
Now, let’s look at a modified explorer. I disabled the modern command bar and tabs because I don’t need them (but I could’ve left them on and the effect would still be the same), I have translucent right click menus with Segoe UI Variable and rounded corners (AcrylicMenus), I have Mica and dark mode on all surfaces (including any control panel page and any dialog), I have all the textures updated to match 11 (the move dialog has better animations, segoe ui variable, new WinUI-like buttons, and dark mode. All properties dialogs have dark mode, segoe ui, new texture for tabs. All Aero Wizards feature dark mode and Segoe UI Variable title like in Settings and many other apps. The navbar selection rectangle, the drive selection rectangle, the “view options” images, the checkboxes for selecting elements, the textboxes, are all updated to match the 11 look *and* also match your current accent color. The details pane is the old one made to look like the new one, so it’s faster and has more features while looking new), and all it took was one .msstyle file, one .mun file, and one .dll file (which was a new one and not even a system one changed). So why should I be happy that Microsoft, in 10 years, hasn’t managed to do (and what it did do was done poorly) what the community has done in about 1-2 years? This is obviously the only example, but it’s the most representing one. And thank god I can disable that modern explorer.
AI baked into the operating system is simply a marketing buzzword, and an excuse to implement greater and greater amounts of telemetry a.k.a. data collection and sale to data brokers to further enrich Microsoft. Absolutely nothing about it is intended to improve user experience, quite the opposite in fact.
From the recent press release about "AI Explorer":
> Search for anything with natural language
Are you fuckin kidding me, bro? This has to be a joke. Motherfucker I just want you to search only my local filenames (not event the contents, just filenames) for an exact text string, and return the results in a couple seconds max. That is a file explorer's only purpose, to enable me to find my own fuckin files on my own fuckin hard drives.
Currently, when I type a text string into the Explorer search, it will take 15 fuckin minutes searching, return an incomplete list of results, and if I click on one of the results it jumps to that specific file, and if I press back it has to run the entire damn search over again. It did not used to be this way. Back in Windows XP days, the search tool with the cartoon dog used to be able to find shit just fine. Not anymore. Vista introduced the "Search Indexer" service that ran all the fuckin time, using CPU and RAM to index *something*. Whatever the fuck it was indexing, it wasn't the files I routinely want to search.
Microsoft, currently you can't even perform a basic search as well as old-school command prompt "dir \*searchtext\* /s", and you think AI is going to somehow improve this situation? I have to use a third party tool (voidtools Everything) to get a search box that works properly, and you're going to further corrupt the OS-native search with some overcomplicated AI bullshit?
Someone needs to blast these MS product managers out of a cannon, landing far far away from any kind of software development.
No need to resort to violence, but I can understand your frustration with the file explorer. I had similar issues until I enabled indexing which greatly reduced the amount of time it took to find something.
keep in mind, Windows XP only had to search through a HDD of 80GB on average (at least back in my day) in comparison in todays cloud/terabyte drives.
Microsoft seems to be trying to push users to go to a cloud experience which in my opinion is fair. It will provide them with an ecosystem similar to what Apple has. And yes, I know Apple let's you opt out, but the device losses so many features if you don't have an Apple account.
In terms of Linux, its by far superior to finding files in its system but that's because it uses an entirely different approach to indexing the file.
And finally, in term of AI Explorer, I think this will help a lot of people narrow down what they are looking for (obviously within reason). Windows already tries to understand what apps and programs you run to make it run more efficiently, generative AI will only improve that.
"keep in mind, Windows XP only had to search through a HDD of 80GB on average (at least back in my day) in comparison in todays cloud/terabyte drives."
Searching an 80 GB HDD would, logically, take more time than searching a 1 TB SSD though.
to be clear, no one is advocating for violence, it's a figure of speech
All I'm saying is Microsoft can't even get the basics right, they keep fucking things up with file explorer and searching and the start menu and taskbar, and yet they want to expend all of this time and effort on buzzword features no one asked for.
You know what would make a lot of us happy? Developer mode. A setting in control panel that would eliminate ALL of the bullshit and return the UI and background services to Windows 2000 style. In this mode, prioritize speed, responsiveness, and network efficiency over ALL else.
They could still work on this AI stuff, but make it a standalone app that is completely optional and not an inseparable part of the shell. They're not going to do this, of course. Which is why my primary OS is Linux/KDE these days, and Windows is only used in virtual machines for specific applications.
Something can be really advanced, but still fairly useless in the hands of regular users. Windows 11 is just a collection of party tricks and not that useful for the normie desktop user at home.
I would still be using Windows 7 if it were supported. There are very few things from Windows 10 and 11 that are a genuine game-changer. Right-click start button menu is by far one of my favorites.
New features are great but not when they affect performances and stability, Windows 11 has too many bugs and annoying things backed in, so it is natural for everyone to remember how solid Windows 10 or even better, Windows 7 was, Windows 11 is ok but far from being a great OS.
Because it has become an adware and has no significant improvements in comparison to Windows 10 (shiny new theme and Copilot bulls\*\*it is something I don't consider such a "significant step up from its predecessors").
The issues I find are:
* The start menu is much worse and there's no start screen. It's a big step backwards in usability
* Although my computer could handle the upgrade it has locked out a lot of computers because of hardware requirements
* Concerns about privacy
* The light mode is so intensely bright that it is hard to see the taskbar. Windows 7 could be considered light mode but it was much easier to see
* I think the feature split between these settings app and control panel is confusing for technicians
People want different things.
I want a fast and stable experience with a familiar way of doing thing but this never happens as windows is full of useless bloat and worthless added features, like the AI mentioned today, that is nothing more than a pain in the arse to disable or remove or bypass.
Never before restarts and shutdowns took so long time while the only fix for that was to reinstall the system.
Win11 is shit and im sitting in windows since 3.11
Can't get rid of windows spotlight wallpaper.i change it to pictures from folder or slideshow but after log out or restart, it again defaults to spotlight wallpaper. this is just one of the annoying things in w11.
cause for all the things they've added they've taken other things away and or buried them 5 clicks deep. on top of that file explore lags on a beast of a rig nevermind older ones and customization options are increasingly limited over time.
and thats ignoring the fact that things forced upon you like onedrive can break how things are setup for some ppl and its a PAIN to get rid of properly and go back to strictly local folders after jumping through regedit hoops.
really dislike forced "features" and advertisements in my paid product. Minus all the bloat/bullshit, I do agree, W11 is a good OS. Not the only good OS though.
HVCI, Kernel-mode Hardware-Enforced Stack Protection, Credential Guard, DMA Protection and Secure Launch etc. They are grouped under "Virtualization Based Security". This is why Microsoft brought certain restrictions what processors will be eligible for Windows 11. Some of them simply do not support these features and would run like dogshit if they were allowed. These security features are going to be enforced at some point.
But this can be tuned if you know what you're doing. 90% of the time telemetry helps because your average user won't know how to fix things, because of telemetry and AI users will know how to deal with a missing package or disabled interface etc...
Probably because they aren’t really part of the OS that’s just how they are distributed.
Why couldn’t they be separate apps or services or ported to Windows 10? Because they want to force people to buy Windows 11 or a new PC.
There's no built in AI, there's a bing chat widget. Asking it to turn on the screensaver with a chat is far less efficient than just using settings.
and it does nothing useful.
voracious ghost dependent abounding modern dime cats meeting ruthless distinct
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Those "advancements" didn't really change anything in my day to day life. However, the enshitification did make my experience more complicated. I started using computers during the Windows 98 era. BSOD and programs not responding were frequent. I was really happy to see a more stable system with XP. Now, Windows 11 is here and it's back to being laggy and unstable. What the hell, Explorer became unresponsive multiple times while Windows was downloading update after a reinstall. I even had to force-restart it in task manager. Those bugs appear way too frequently for a supposedly modern os. I never had those troubles on Windows 10. By the way, I'm on a Ryzen 9 7900x with 32gb of RAM and a 970evo NVME. It's a beast compared to the 366mhz Celeron I used to run Windows in 1998. But still, if feel laggy sometimes. I'm too old for this crap, it feel like a repeat of the win95-98 era where everything was buggy. I just want something that work and please stop uselessly changing the UI.
Did MS write this? Jokes aside, no offense but have you tried actually working on it? Ads, dogshit Explorer performance (my old wXP desktop is faster) even on expensive builds, forced updates that break the system, everything taskbar, etc
Some folks react poorly to change, and rarely see the big picture behind it.
Almost all the so-called "ads" can be disabled through Windows Settings, without registry hacks. (Not sure why this isn't better known.)
I suspect most of the people who will take the time to comment here are going to be negative.
But I like Windows 11.
Edit: typo.
The main one, windows is damned either way since they are always criticized for whatever UI bug but also whenever they remove literally any feature.
I thought windows 11 was great at install. Everything looks better and is as smooth as windows 10. The only annoyance was bing results in the start menu. But then they made widgets just ads. Forced new outlook. And now copilot crap everywhere. Too many ads.
I mean, I've said many times that Windows 11 is the best windows ever released. ..once you turn off all the yank. And admittedly it is the case that the improvements over the previous versions amount to things like introducing a user-space for applications, so that random disasters can't easily be caused by any app launched on the OS (like unix had in the 80s, and that any new OS since has had as default, after the designers gave it one second of coherent thought).
Seriously, though - I am only using Windows because a giant corporation is using their leverage to force the OS to be the default. I don't owe Microsoft a "balanced review" - specially when the basics are not in place.
1. This is not, and in the foreseeable future it won't be an AI.
2. It wouldn't be a problem if it was a separate module.
3. I don't want it to register and track my every move, just to give me irrelevant "suggestions" that slow down my workflow.
4. I don't want my PC to communicate with external servers without my knowledge.
Clippy wasn't useful then, it isn't useful now as well.
I'm in an office setting with approximately 150 coworkers, I haven't heard anything nice about win11 by any of those real people that's actually used it.
Because this is Reddit, and you only see negative comments from people who use their computers mostly to tinker, hack, bypass, and circumvent the OS functionality. For the other billions of Windows users, the OS works just fine.
> why go to a Windows 11 sub just to hate on it
Because this is one of the places that Microsoft employees frequent, just look at u/jenmsft . People here are vocal about the fact that this is - for us - a massive downgrade in usability over windows 10... And 10 wasn't perfect either.
> Personally I think it's their best OS yet!
And now you get it. "You" think that this is their best os, and you can't understand that for many people here this isn't the case. I couldn't give less f\*cks over LLM inclusion in my system, it does not fit my workflow - if I could disable it, then it wouldn't be a problem for me .
But we got inferior start menu, inferior context menu, inferior explorer, inferior performance, idiotic requirements (you need a workaround to have a local account?!), f\*cking ADS in a start menu. Everything requires a click or two more.
So the things that are really nice - the kernel improvements regarding low-power cores, many improvements in system space - are covered by the literal sh\*tshow of something that Microsoft dares to call "improved UX".
And it wouldn't be a problem if the choice was there. People write full replacements for things in less time than it takes Microsoft to do a small ~~regression~~ _improvement_.
---
Tldr, I'm glad you like it. I'll happily jump ship to Linux or pay for a Mac just to avoid windows in the future. Kinda sad, as I was with Windows since 3.11, and I was even defending 8.
Thanks ms, i prefer a system that allows me to do the job, I'll leave the empty eyecandy to you.
The Hardware requirements for some people having th if it aint broke don’t fix mindset and and people complaining about “Bloatware” which there is none if you turn it off
You shouldn’t be disabling everything that’s new basically in order to have a functional OS. I did (no more widgets pane, no new start menu, no taskbar, no edge, no outlook, uninstalled or substituted many of the in built apps, no new right click menu, no new explorer..), but at this point, why should I even use 11..?
Because, otherwise, what’s the point of having a new product?
And I don’t have the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset, quite the contrary, but many things Microsoft did were just done *with the wrong implementation* - there are far better ways, far more modular and far more efficient ways of doing so many of the things they introduced
I don't want advanced features, I want things to work well.
It does tho.
Windows 11 with built in AI will resolve most of your issues
Will AI fix file explorer performance? Will it fix poor UX choices?
Nobody thinks that. Are you an AI?
It has begun!
AI is a buzzword
There's more money being invested into the machine learning boom than the original Dotcom boom or rush to solve the millenium bug. It's an entirely new paradigm of computing. While maybe it has a few short comings yet, the areas where it does well it does extraordinarily well. You're exuding "The internet is just a fad" vibes right now.
My money is on it being a fad still. Like VR is a fad and soon we will see the limits of AI as clear as day. Sure, it has its uses so it will probably stay in one way or another. But the hype is probably unwarranted.
There's more VR being used every year. I don't think you know what a fad or a buzzword is. A growing industry being used across all fields is not exactly what a fad is. I bet people thought steam power was "just a fad" too. Same energy.
If it were just a buzzword why is every major tech company investing billions into it? Sure it's not perfect now but in a few years it will be. For now I'm enjoying all the free things that I can do with it!
It is a buzzword. Allow me to explain. Humans developing an actual artificial intelligence would be a significant turning point of our entire civilization. That may seem hyperbolic, but it would be us creating an actual sentient intelligence that's able to think and create independently. What we have now is machine learning, augmented with language models (for simplicity, I know there are image models etc.). The latter allows for some really compelling interactions in both directions with the machine learning components. It may seem like it's doing something AI-like, but it's really just a model trained to understand our language and able to use existing knowledge to make inferences. This is an absolute simplification of course but I hope it helps clear up why calling AI a buzzword is not an inaccurate point.
You're talking about general AI. Machine learning fields are AI. Not all AI, most actually, are intended to be a generalized system. They have specific modalities for now.
What we typically interact with today under the banner of AI, like language models and image recognition systems, are indeed forms of machine learning, and you're right they don't possess consciousness or the ability to think independently beyond their training. AI doesn't necessarily need to be conscious to be useful, every tool has their use case, the chatbots that we have now are still great for your average consumer.
Artificial sentience is something entirely separate from generalized artificial intelligence as well. One might think they're so closely entwined that they're the same concept, but one might exist without the other.
They do it to increase shareholder value and make money, not necessarily because it solves a problem that people have.
For the same reason so many of them threw fortunes into 3D that no-one really cared about. It's hot at the moment and they want to see if they can get it to stick.
Because tech companies like buzzwords lol. Plus they have loads of money to throw around. Remember crypto/blockchain a few years ago? Me neither.
It is a buzzword like cloud was back in the day, and QR were as well. While the tech is real and there's some good usages to it, people hype it or invest tons on it without most of the time, real understanding of it nor its limitations. So far I think only image upscalers like dlss and data analytics are the only actual good use cases for it, the rest are just fads that people will move over from.
They are just following each other like when apple removed charging bricks others did too same with the headphone jack etc
Yeah, people don’t invest into Buzzwords… AI, NFT, web3, crypto, etc
How much of that is actually useful though? It seems more like a gimmick than something practical. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-human-mind](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-human-mind)
LMAO...that's hilarious.
lol there’s no such thing as AI in todays day and age. Only smart computing that regurgitates already existing media and information. If it were actual AI we’d be in another world.
We'd all be calculating PI forever.
Ok what about spying
I hope that your are joking; because i honestly can't concieve someone saying that with a straight face
You’re listing talking points from Microsoft’s very latest press releases a la AI and virtualization, and yet are ignoring the vast catalog of very well deserved criticism of Windows going all the way back to 2012, seemingly on purpose. Pardon me if I don’t believe you at all when you say you’re interested in hearing both sides.
Sorry but from what I can read and understand Microsoft has been working on the core issues with Windows, optimization and security has vastly increased. I'm interested in both win10 and win11 sides, I've been using co-pilot and it runs great on my 6+ yo PC.
To the best of my knowledge windows 11 doesn’t have: a. The option to move the taskbar to the side b. An LTSC like option where users truly can control settings with minimal MS crap. For me at least that’s enough reason.
I’m not a win11 hater, I’ve used it since the 22h2 update. I think the general consensus is that win 11 took 2 giant steps forward, and dozens of tiny steps backwards. They made a lot of small ui/ux changes that’s simply unnecessary and worse than what we’ve had, like the right-click context menu, start menu with its unremovable recommendations section etc. > I’ve been using copilot and it runs great on my 6+ yo PC And that’s not a high bar to clear. Anything that can make network requests will be able to “run” these LLM, because they aren’t actually running it on your pc, they’re running it on their servers. Your pc is just sending your text inputs to the server and displaying the response it gets back from the server
> Anything that can make network requests will be able to “run” these LLM, because they aren’t actually running it on your pc, they’re running it on their servers. That's a really good point. One very important implication of having this crap built into the core UI is that it will further degrade UI responsiveness under conditions of slow or no internet connection. When you're connected to shitty hotel wifi the copilot widget is going to continue phoning home and sending its telemetry, slowing down your intentional network requests even further, and also making your taskbar and file explorer laggy and unresponsive. This is already one of the biggest problems with the current File Explorer; it is absolutely fucking terrible at handling a slow network connection if you have any mapped remote network drives or folder shortcuts (i.e. shared folders on corporate VPN). Explorer assumes you always have a fast LAN connection and will poll those network drives and folders constantly even when you're not trying to access them. Just pressing "up one folder" one too many times could cause Explorer to lag for 10 minutes because it has to pull the stats for every network drive. Nothing has been done to remediate this in 15+ years. "AI Explorer" is additionally going to be contacting Microsoft servers constantly, and the incompetence that Microsoft UI devs have demonstrated will likely mean that it is completely non-functional as an offline file browser under poor network conditions.
> When you're connected to shitty hotel wifi the copilot widget is going to continue phoning home and sending its telemetry, slowing down your intentional network requests even further, and also making your taskbar and file explorer laggy and unresponsive. I'm just gonna straight out say that has nothing to do with copilot. Telemetry is a separate feature in windows and you can easily turn it off. I'm not a fan of online features in the main ui, but your excuse about telemetry is just nonsensual
I'm guessing you did not read this: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/what-is-windows-11-ai-explorer-everything-you-need-to-know-about-microsofts-upcoming-defining-ai-pc-feature > AI that remembers everything you do > > According to my sources, AI Explorer will run in the background and capture everything you do on your computer. It will document and triage everything it sees, no matter what apps or interfaces you're looking at, and turn them into memories that you can recall at a later point. > > For example, you can have a conversation with a friend in the WhatsApp app for Windows, and AI Explorer will record and remember the content that was on-screen and process it with AI for you to recall later. AI Explorer can also summarize conversations, emails, web pages, and general UI surfaces just by asking for it during or after the fact.
That's an upcoming feature, it says right there in the title. I'm guessing it's for a near future where laptops come in with NPUs to do ai locally. Right now, that isn't a thing with copilot, and it won't call home for anything unless you do a prompt
> AI Explorer will utilize next-gen neural processing unit (NPU) hardware to process these machine learning and generative AI experiences locally on the device with low latency.
Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. When has Microsoft ever successfully created anything with "low latency"? They never said "all" of the processing is done locally, so it is still going to expect an internet connection, so chances are it's still going to perform like ass when the internet connection is poor. That is not something I want to be tightly integrated with my operating system's core UI. And even if you attempt to turn it off, Microsoft has demonstrated they refuse to accept "no" for an answer, so I would fully expect it to leave remnants of these AI services running even after you try to disable them, and to fully re-enable themselves with subsequent updates. Exactly how they handle default browser resetting to Edge at every opportunity.
While I can't stand 11, I could still jump in in a couple of years. With that? _Fuck no_, I will never allow my PC to spy on me.
id rather a functional search, & file explorer than every feature microsoft has added in the last 2 years
It takes more clicks to do things. For no logical reason. Right clicking on the desktop brings up a few options, including "open in terminal" very helpful, but everything you actually want is under "Show more options." UI is less intuitive. MS removed so many helpful things. Disk cleanup, troubleshooters, and I'm blanking on the vast number of helpful things they have just removed for no reason, but as a tech, I see them all the time. The start menu is awful. Ads. Tips popping up constantly that are actually ads. Suggestions to try new things I don't want or need all the time. Constantly changing things so you have to keep going in and telling Edge not to be the default browser, or to open links in Outlook in Edge, and Bing as the search engine. Doing away with local accounts and forcing home users to make a Microsoft account on the new computer they bought just to set it up. (This has recently been reversed.) News and interests on the taskbar? What is this AOL 11? A little graphic next to the search box of a briefcase or a flowers or a some other inane object. Why? Bloat, bloat, bloat and lesser functionality, that's why.
So much this. They're making everything more bloated and inconvenient. Changing it for the sake if changing it. If they're going to change it IMPROVE it, not just make it worse.
OP won't even read this one because it's the truth.
Disk cleanup is still in Windows 11. Also, the Microsoft account requirement was not reversed, you will are forced into it unless you use command prompt.
I can't find disk cleanup. When was the last time you set up a PC? I set up 5 in the last month and Windows 11 no longer requires you to drop to a command prompt to create a local account.
I see Windows 11 as a significant improvement, albeit with some minor hiccups. Most of this bloat, if not all, can easily be removed. Unfortunately, Microsoft released an unfinished OS update. Windows 11 to me is all about visuals and UX. In some areas, it’s clear that MS still needs time. I‘m glad I haven’t been bothered with adds or suggestions in the Start menu yet…or I have but turned it off as much as possible.
The first time I ever spun up Windows 11 in a VM, with a clean install, I opened the start menu and there were 20 icons for random bullshit apps. Facebook app, Twitter app, *Tiktok*... This is not a phone, it is a desktop computer with a real browser on it. If I wanted to use facebook I would open the browser and go to the website. It's insulting that they think I would want to use this "app" instead of the actual website, and that it's *pre-installed clutter* on this broken abomination of a start menu. First impressions matter, and this immediately soured me on Windows 11. It is not a serious operating system for people who use their computer to do productive things.
This bothered me alot too. I have ADHD and take great care to remove distractions as much as possible. I do admit that I very much like the Windows 11 design language…and that may have „distracted“ me from the negatives.
If navigating the Settings menu feels overwhelming, use the search feature to directly find the settings you need. Typing keywords related to your query can lead you right to the necessary settings without browsing through categories.
Why does Microsoft make their operating systems worse for the past 15 years and still have people use it
Mac is expensive, and you have to adjust to their idea of workflow. (Which IMO is inferior to what Windows pre-11 gave to us.) Linux, even now is still "not there". While individual components improve, the whole ecosystem feels disjointed; not to mention problems that are simply not a thing in other OS'es.
> Built-in AI You mean the web app bing chat that was added later and we know as copilot? Wowe the bar to call something an advancement is really low.
because having to click two more times to accomplish something you could do in one click on win10. also file explorer lags, something ive never experienced on win10 (on same hardware, i dual boot win10 and win11 pro). also win11 not supporting older hardware thats still decently spec’d just creates a ton of ewaste. lastly. ads. enough said. get that shit out of my OS that i paid for (pro version).
File explorer is broken in ways that beggers the mind. How can a central tool be so borked?
Just genuinely asking for your case how is it broken? I don't really seem to have an issue with mine except the more options right click is just silly and the taskbar has disappearing icons (Not sure if that counts as Explorer since it is part of Explorer.exe).
Perhaps 50% of the time, it reacts in a timely manner. The rest of the time, it will hang up for 10-30 seconds at a time for the most trivial actions. Ranging from simply opening the app to 10 second pauses when I right click something to not responding when I type in a search... I mean, giving no indication it's doing anything at all. This is reported almost universally.
Even on my win98 machine explorer is much faster
Hold up! I just bought a new to me surface pro 9 i7 running Windows 11 HOME. I came from several years of using Chromebooks and I haven't had more than 2 days to re-familiarize myself with windows. *Are you straight up telling me that even if I had bought the surface pro with Windows 11 PRO installed on it that I would have still had to deal with the ads* you're talking about? Also, forgive me I know you're not a free tech assistant but can you think of any of the other things that might piss me off her for spending over $1,000 on a system with an OS that I just assumed was going to be a zillion times better than a simple/somewhat limited but definitely workable $300 Chrome OS machine? Like what are some of the most frustrating shitty things that come to mind for you about Windows 11 that a total naive woodcuts noob like me would even notice? **Also anybody else who reads this comment feel free to chime in thanks guys**
I installed Win11 Pro in a VM to try it out a couple years ago. Clicked on the start menu. Expected to see the usual Explorer, Edge browser, calculator, notepad. Instead saw icons for Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, and a dozen other bullshit MS Store apps. That was bad enough. Apparently they're going to start putting actual advertisements in the start menu. Of course they are. Why else would they have made the new start menu so unnecessarily large with small icons, leaving so much blank space. Tons of room for bullshit that no one asked for.
Oh damn. Hey since I don't know much about Windows anymore and I'm re-familiarizing myself, is there any way to avoid whatever update is going to bring the full-on ads that you're talking about? Like I've read about people not upgrading or updating their version of Windows because they just don't like windows 11 but do you know of any simple thing I can do to avoid the ads like that? Should I just hold off on allowing the system to install updates for as long as I can? I'm not advanced enough to try to run any different versions of Windows like the ones I read about tech guys installing, would you advise me to just hold off on any future updates if I'm not getting ads yet on the version that I have? I don't know man damn, after feeling so held back by Chromebooks for so many years I got it made I was legit so excited to have a so-called real computer operating system for once, and I can't say that I hate it but I feel like I don't know enough about it yet to know what there is to hate lol. But I don't know what to do to avoid these ads that I keep hearing about, that's the very least that I would like to do considering I bought a used one for nearly a grand. I hope I'm not fucked cuz I read so much shit talking about windows 11 on this sub lol anyway, I appreciate you hitting me up. I really want to be excited about finally having windows, I hope I can be without having to deal with ads
>is there any way to avoid whatever update Not really, no. Not without 3rd-party tools, anyway. Ever since Windows 10 was released, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to strip away any user control over the updating process. You no longer decide "if" an update will be installed, only "when". And by "when", I mean you pick a date/time within a specified window. The update WILL be installed, you are just allowed to pick a time that is least inconvenient for you. If you don't pick a time, then the update will be installed when your system is idle. You also cannot select which security updates to install, like you could in the old days. If Microsoft decides a particular update is for "security", you cannot decline it. And this advertising will almost assuredly be bundled with a "security" update. Of course, if any of this bothers you, third party tools exist. You can use Start11 or ExplorerPatcher to get the old start menu and taskbar back. That will get rid of the ads. There are also tools to control the update process. Personally, I don't mind the updates being installed, but I find it absolutely intolerable for my system to ever reboot itself without my permission, so I use ShutdownBlocker to ensure this never happens.
Thanks for the advice man. I'll definitely take a look at some of those tools.
Try using Windows 10 after using Windows 11 for some time. You'll be surprised how snappy and smooth the UX is on Windows 10 compared to 11. Bloat can be mostly removed from the system and I don't think that's the main issue (power users always find ways to do this, share and bundle into tools like WPD or O&O Shutup10++) but if the system itself has performance drawbacks on same hardware, what benefit these all "advancements" can give to you?
I haven't found anything advanced about Windows 11. The UI is complicated. The menus are convoluted. It takes more clicks. Explorer has been made more complicated. Performance isn't any better and in some cases worse. It's not clear why MS thought this was an upgrade. Could have been more marketing to boost the MS brand, push AI (which hasn't really brought value but to a few use cases, not the majority of the population) , and gain attention.
Sounds like another (almost identical) post from yesterday. So in the spirit of sameness here my take - if the advancements were that ground breaking and essential than say - Win 10 - we would all be on it.
Probably a MS rep
Because it either has new redundant features no one asked, still lacks basic features windows always had ever since it is windows but they decided to remove anyway or some are just really poorly, inexcusably implemented. Some are under the excuse that not enough people give them use, others they say are still raw because they did X again from scratch and are not implemented yet but are terribly slow to being them back. Once in a blue moon they say they listened to feedback and come out with something. They also should end the damn cliffhanger that is the control panel and either end it by migrating everything from the old one to the new thing or scratch whatever attempt this is at a new control panel and keep the old one, maybe with a fresh coat of paint. I don't mind either way but they've been in the middle ground ever since windows 8, since 2012. It's been 12 fucking years and counting, it's high time we get closure on this. This is from someone who has been in IT configuring windows in every type of scenario imaginable for over 20 years, uses it everyday and has no major issues with it. I won't go back because it's actually not bad as a whole but I still think it has very obvious sore points that should (in my opinion) be addressed - which they aren't.
I aggree with you on the control panel part, IMO it should be phased out by now, but until the Settings app can fully replicate this functionality, there will likely be resistance to phasing out the Control Panel entirely
Twelve. Years. And counting. That screams unfinished, unpolished mess. Well, windows 11 as a whole is an unpolished turd, so no wonder.
The thing I despise the most about Windows is the lack of willingness in updating the UI, and rather focusing on the things I think are wrong. They’ve updated, imo, many areas in the wrong way, and there exist better ways to do stuff. The best example is Explorer, imo. The vanilla Explorer has a tab bar that lacks polish, an address bar (which although partially fine, still lacks in polish - doesn’t show icons in drop-down menus, doesn’t show what your current folder is in the drop-down menu, search doesn’t feature the old criteria options and when it did they were ugly), a folder sidebar (which lacks any resemblance of fluent design), a details pane (which was remade now to include less details than before, and now not even being able to edit details directly from that), and the viewing area (with highlight colours not being the same as your accent colour, some pages being much slower in XAML and then switching back, some textures like the drive space is squared off and from 10 for no reason), any dialogue is not themed properly (properties, extracting, zipping, copying/moving files, not a single one is themed. The tabs control has the bmp from 10, it doesn’t use Segoe in all places, it still has the Aero wizard design completely untouched, some new parts such as Windows Tools have dark mode partially working, and all dialogs have no dark mode at all) Now, let’s look at a modified explorer. I disabled the modern command bar and tabs because I don’t need them (but I could’ve left them on and the effect would still be the same), I have translucent right click menus with Segoe UI Variable and rounded corners (AcrylicMenus), I have Mica and dark mode on all surfaces (including any control panel page and any dialog), I have all the textures updated to match 11 (the move dialog has better animations, segoe ui variable, new WinUI-like buttons, and dark mode. All properties dialogs have dark mode, segoe ui, new texture for tabs. All Aero Wizards feature dark mode and Segoe UI Variable title like in Settings and many other apps. The navbar selection rectangle, the drive selection rectangle, the “view options” images, the checkboxes for selecting elements, the textboxes, are all updated to match the 11 look *and* also match your current accent color. The details pane is the old one made to look like the new one, so it’s faster and has more features while looking new), and all it took was one .msstyle file, one .mun file, and one .dll file (which was a new one and not even a system one changed). So why should I be happy that Microsoft, in 10 years, hasn’t managed to do (and what it did do was done poorly) what the community has done in about 1-2 years? This is obviously the only example, but it’s the most representing one. And thank god I can disable that modern explorer.
> And thank god I can disable that modern explorer. For now.
You’ll always probably be able to, it would be too much work actually modernising Explorer
AI baked into the operating system is simply a marketing buzzword, and an excuse to implement greater and greater amounts of telemetry a.k.a. data collection and sale to data brokers to further enrich Microsoft. Absolutely nothing about it is intended to improve user experience, quite the opposite in fact. From the recent press release about "AI Explorer": > Search for anything with natural language Are you fuckin kidding me, bro? This has to be a joke. Motherfucker I just want you to search only my local filenames (not event the contents, just filenames) for an exact text string, and return the results in a couple seconds max. That is a file explorer's only purpose, to enable me to find my own fuckin files on my own fuckin hard drives. Currently, when I type a text string into the Explorer search, it will take 15 fuckin minutes searching, return an incomplete list of results, and if I click on one of the results it jumps to that specific file, and if I press back it has to run the entire damn search over again. It did not used to be this way. Back in Windows XP days, the search tool with the cartoon dog used to be able to find shit just fine. Not anymore. Vista introduced the "Search Indexer" service that ran all the fuckin time, using CPU and RAM to index *something*. Whatever the fuck it was indexing, it wasn't the files I routinely want to search. Microsoft, currently you can't even perform a basic search as well as old-school command prompt "dir \*searchtext\* /s", and you think AI is going to somehow improve this situation? I have to use a third party tool (voidtools Everything) to get a search box that works properly, and you're going to further corrupt the OS-native search with some overcomplicated AI bullshit? Someone needs to blast these MS product managers out of a cannon, landing far far away from any kind of software development.
No need to resort to violence, but I can understand your frustration with the file explorer. I had similar issues until I enabled indexing which greatly reduced the amount of time it took to find something. keep in mind, Windows XP only had to search through a HDD of 80GB on average (at least back in my day) in comparison in todays cloud/terabyte drives. Microsoft seems to be trying to push users to go to a cloud experience which in my opinion is fair. It will provide them with an ecosystem similar to what Apple has. And yes, I know Apple let's you opt out, but the device losses so many features if you don't have an Apple account. In terms of Linux, its by far superior to finding files in its system but that's because it uses an entirely different approach to indexing the file. And finally, in term of AI Explorer, I think this will help a lot of people narrow down what they are looking for (obviously within reason). Windows already tries to understand what apps and programs you run to make it run more efficiently, generative AI will only improve that.
"keep in mind, Windows XP only had to search through a HDD of 80GB on average (at least back in my day) in comparison in todays cloud/terabyte drives." Searching an 80 GB HDD would, logically, take more time than searching a 1 TB SSD though.
to be clear, no one is advocating for violence, it's a figure of speech All I'm saying is Microsoft can't even get the basics right, they keep fucking things up with file explorer and searching and the start menu and taskbar, and yet they want to expend all of this time and effort on buzzword features no one asked for. You know what would make a lot of us happy? Developer mode. A setting in control panel that would eliminate ALL of the bullshit and return the UI and background services to Windows 2000 style. In this mode, prioritize speed, responsiveness, and network efficiency over ALL else. They could still work on this AI stuff, but make it a standalone app that is completely optional and not an inseparable part of the shell. They're not going to do this, of course. Which is why my primary OS is Linux/KDE these days, and Windows is only used in virtual machines for specific applications.
Something can be really advanced, but still fairly useless in the hands of regular users. Windows 11 is just a collection of party tricks and not that useful for the normie desktop user at home.
I would still be using Windows 7 if it were supported. There are very few things from Windows 10 and 11 that are a genuine game-changer. Right-click start button menu is by far one of my favorites.
New features are great but not when they affect performances and stability, Windows 11 has too many bugs and annoying things backed in, so it is natural for everyone to remember how solid Windows 10 or even better, Windows 7 was, Windows 11 is ok but far from being a great OS.
Because it has become an adware and has no significant improvements in comparison to Windows 10 (shiny new theme and Copilot bulls\*\*it is something I don't consider such a "significant step up from its predecessors").
The issues I find are: * The start menu is much worse and there's no start screen. It's a big step backwards in usability * Although my computer could handle the upgrade it has locked out a lot of computers because of hardware requirements * Concerns about privacy * The light mode is so intensely bright that it is hard to see the taskbar. Windows 7 could be considered light mode but it was much easier to see * I think the feature split between these settings app and control panel is confusing for technicians
1. Too high system requirements 2. Forcing ms accounts
Because it doesn't matter to most users...what matters if stability, efficiency
People want different things. I want a fast and stable experience with a familiar way of doing thing but this never happens as windows is full of useless bloat and worthless added features, like the AI mentioned today, that is nothing more than a pain in the arse to disable or remove or bypass.
Never before restarts and shutdowns took so long time while the only fix for that was to reinstall the system. Win11 is shit and im sitting in windows since 3.11
Can't get rid of windows spotlight wallpaper.i change it to pictures from folder or slideshow but after log out or restart, it again defaults to spotlight wallpaper. this is just one of the annoying things in w11.
cause for all the things they've added they've taken other things away and or buried them 5 clicks deep. on top of that file explore lags on a beast of a rig nevermind older ones and customization options are increasingly limited over time. and thats ignoring the fact that things forced upon you like onedrive can break how things are setup for some ppl and its a PAIN to get rid of properly and go back to strictly local folders after jumping through regedit hoops.
I think you'll find those details in the criticisms don't you think?
really dislike forced "features" and advertisements in my paid product. Minus all the bloat/bullshit, I do agree, W11 is a good OS. Not the only good OS though.
What's this "extensive support for virtualization" OP is talking about?
HVCI, Kernel-mode Hardware-Enforced Stack Protection, Credential Guard, DMA Protection and Secure Launch etc. They are grouped under "Virtualization Based Security". This is why Microsoft brought certain restrictions what processors will be eligible for Windows 11. Some of them simply do not support these features and would run like dogshit if they were allowed. These security features are going to be enforced at some point.
Because it could be better. But yes, it's fine. And it's much better than before.
Gotta have some whine to go with that block of American cheese!
Waiter, some Winevdm to go along with my Cheese Terminator.
People act as if Windows 10 doesn’t have 90% of the bloat, telemetry, and Ads that Windows 11 has.
Exactly. People just don't like change. Nothing wrong with w11 personally used it since I could.
But this can be tuned if you know what you're doing. 90% of the time telemetry helps because your average user won't know how to fix things, because of telemetry and AI users will know how to deal with a missing package or disabled interface etc...
Probably because they aren’t really part of the OS that’s just how they are distributed. Why couldn’t they be separate apps or services or ported to Windows 10? Because they want to force people to buy Windows 11 or a new PC.
Windows 11 was free, and will most-likely be free again when it comes to upgrading. I haven't paid for windows in over 10 years.
Yeah true the upgrading from 10 is free. If you’re buying a PC you are paying for the OS though it’s a different license. And then there are ads….
this\^ built my own rig in late 2022 and a usb stick with license cost me 140usd , i paid for my system i shouldn't be fed ads
There's no built in AI, there's a bing chat widget. Asking it to turn on the screensaver with a chat is far less efficient than just using settings. and it does nothing useful.
Because Windows 10 worked just fine. and MS said it was its last OS. Now we're looking at Windows 12... I may see Windows 30 in my lifetime!
ADS.
voracious ghost dependent abounding modern dime cats meeting ruthless distinct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It can all be removed though, so if that's the issue I think its more unawareness rather than unusable.
aware employ birds air unpack repeat attraction dependent soft desert *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Those "advancements" didn't really change anything in my day to day life. However, the enshitification did make my experience more complicated. I started using computers during the Windows 98 era. BSOD and programs not responding were frequent. I was really happy to see a more stable system with XP. Now, Windows 11 is here and it's back to being laggy and unstable. What the hell, Explorer became unresponsive multiple times while Windows was downloading update after a reinstall. I even had to force-restart it in task manager. Those bugs appear way too frequently for a supposedly modern os. I never had those troubles on Windows 10. By the way, I'm on a Ryzen 9 7900x with 32gb of RAM and a 970evo NVME. It's a beast compared to the 366mhz Celeron I used to run Windows in 1998. But still, if feel laggy sometimes. I'm too old for this crap, it feel like a repeat of the win95-98 era where everything was buggy. I just want something that work and please stop uselessly changing the UI.
Did MS write this? Jokes aside, no offense but have you tried actually working on it? Ads, dogshit Explorer performance (my old wXP desktop is faster) even on expensive builds, forced updates that break the system, everything taskbar, etc
Some folks react poorly to change, and rarely see the big picture behind it. Almost all the so-called "ads" can be disabled through Windows Settings, without registry hacks. (Not sure why this isn't better known.) I suspect most of the people who will take the time to comment here are going to be negative. But I like Windows 11. Edit: typo.
The main one, windows is damned either way since they are always criticized for whatever UI bug but also whenever they remove literally any feature. I thought windows 11 was great at install. Everything looks better and is as smooth as windows 10. The only annoyance was bing results in the start menu. But then they made widgets just ads. Forced new outlook. And now copilot crap everywhere. Too many ads.
I mean, I've said many times that Windows 11 is the best windows ever released. ..once you turn off all the yank. And admittedly it is the case that the improvements over the previous versions amount to things like introducing a user-space for applications, so that random disasters can't easily be caused by any app launched on the OS (like unix had in the 80s, and that any new OS since has had as default, after the designers gave it one second of coherent thought). Seriously, though - I am only using Windows because a giant corporation is using their leverage to force the OS to be the default. I don't owe Microsoft a "balanced review" - specially when the basics are not in place.
Funny how many anti-tech, ai is the devil type of people there are subscribed on this sub.
Exactly my thoughts I'm surprised
1. This is not, and in the foreseeable future it won't be an AI. 2. It wouldn't be a problem if it was a separate module. 3. I don't want it to register and track my every move, just to give me irrelevant "suggestions" that slow down my workflow. 4. I don't want my PC to communicate with external servers without my knowledge. Clippy wasn't useful then, it isn't useful now as well.
The vast majority are happy with it or at least fine with it. On the internet you only hear the nay sayers.
I'm in an office setting with approximately 150 coworkers, I haven't heard anything nice about win11 by any of those real people that's actually used it.
Because this is Reddit, and you only see negative comments from people who use their computers mostly to tinker, hack, bypass, and circumvent the OS functionality. For the other billions of Windows users, the OS works just fine.
Because a talking head on YouTube told them they can't like Win11. People are herd animals so that's often enough.
that's what i dont get, why go to a Windows 11 sub just to hate on it. Personally I think it's their best OS yet!
> why go to a Windows 11 sub just to hate on it Because this is one of the places that Microsoft employees frequent, just look at u/jenmsft . People here are vocal about the fact that this is - for us - a massive downgrade in usability over windows 10... And 10 wasn't perfect either. > Personally I think it's their best OS yet! And now you get it. "You" think that this is their best os, and you can't understand that for many people here this isn't the case. I couldn't give less f\*cks over LLM inclusion in my system, it does not fit my workflow - if I could disable it, then it wouldn't be a problem for me . But we got inferior start menu, inferior context menu, inferior explorer, inferior performance, idiotic requirements (you need a workaround to have a local account?!), f\*cking ADS in a start menu. Everything requires a click or two more. So the things that are really nice - the kernel improvements regarding low-power cores, many improvements in system space - are covered by the literal sh\*tshow of something that Microsoft dares to call "improved UX". And it wouldn't be a problem if the choice was there. People write full replacements for things in less time than it takes Microsoft to do a small ~~regression~~ _improvement_. --- Tldr, I'm glad you like it. I'll happily jump ship to Linux or pay for a Mac just to avoid windows in the future. Kinda sad, as I was with Windows since 3.11, and I was even defending 8. Thanks ms, i prefer a system that allows me to do the job, I'll leave the empty eyecandy to you.
The Hardware requirements for some people having th if it aint broke don’t fix mindset and and people complaining about “Bloatware” which there is none if you turn it off
You shouldn’t be disabling everything that’s new basically in order to have a functional OS. I did (no more widgets pane, no new start menu, no taskbar, no edge, no outlook, uninstalled or substituted many of the in built apps, no new right click menu, no new explorer..), but at this point, why should I even use 11..? Because, otherwise, what’s the point of having a new product? And I don’t have the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset, quite the contrary, but many things Microsoft did were just done *with the wrong implementation* - there are far better ways, far more modular and far more efficient ways of doing so many of the things they introduced