How can I put this delicately?
I detest Windows 11.
First, I have to state that there are only two computers in The Gulch that use Windows, both of them being laptops I use for work and came from my employer. The first is an almost eight-year old Lenovo P50 which originally came with Windows 7 and was later upgraded to Windows 10. The second is a Lenovo P16 laptop that is replacing the P50. It came with Windows 11 and I really don’t like it, “it” being Windows 11.
The other four computers at The Gulch use Linux, with a Lenovo W510 laptop and my 12-year old HP Pavilion tower using Ubuntu, and the two newer mini-PCs from Ace Magic running Linux Mint which uses Ubuntu as its base.
The only problem I ever had with Linux was with my laptop which wouldn’t boot properly after a Linux update. It was easily fixed when I used a bootable USB key to force another update which fixed the problem.
I received the new work laptop about 3 weeks ago and have been spending my own time on weekends configuring it and loading the programs I needed in order to do my job. The new User Interface (UI) looks nice, but it isn’t really all that intuitive, particularly if I need to look for a specific program that does not appear in the ‘Start’ window. One thing I liked about both Windows 7 and Windows 10 is that the ribbon that opened when when the ‘Windows’ key was pressed made it easy to find even rarely used programs. That’s not true with Windows 11.
One of the biggest problems I’ve had is that some programs I use under Windows 10 don’t/won’t work in Windows 11 without a lot of tweaking. I’m still struggling with a couple that I use all the time.
Another problem was configuring the display settings so the dual displays I use will show my desktop properly. It isn’t as straightforward as with Windows 10 or Linux. A co-worker has been struggling with this problem for over a week now as it seems that his laptop, the same model as mine, doesn’t seem to remember the settings and he has to reset them every time he boots his laptop. I haven’t had that problem, but it has taken a lot of time to get the displays set up the way I like. Neither Windows 10 or Linux had that issue.
I have found that the Office 365 suite on my new laptop does have a few quirks, but nothing major. The only thing that surprised me was that the ‘new’ Outlook isn’t nearly as friendly as the version I’ve been using on my old laptop. This isn’t just my opinion as I have asked others I know who are using Windows 11 and they made the same observation.
It seems Microsoft has forgotten the lesson of Windows 8. It was an awful version of windows, the UI set up more top look and act like a tablet even though the computer it was being used on wasn’t a tablet and didn’t have a touch screen. That’s the reason Windows 8.1 was released as people liked the ‘old’ UI used on Windows 7. Windows 10 returned to that UI. Why Microsoft thinks they have to redesign the UI with every new version is necessary baffles me. I can see a tweak here and there if there is a problem, but why change everything if what you have works and works well?
And so it goes.
