3 ms·

The modern iteration of the Start menu is a particular travesty and has been rendered all but unusable in order to push you to Bing by accident. Microsoft simp

The modern iteration of the Start menu is a particular travesty and has been rendered all but unusable in order to push you to Bing by accident. Microsoft simply must believe that Windows can survive the users hating this crap, and I fear they are right. For myself 11 was bad enough to finally try out Steam on Debian and was pleasantly surprised. KDE is closer to being the Windows desktop I want than Windows 11 is, which is just insane. Minor point for the article, OOBE is a very widespread term in the consumer technology industry, not MS specific.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Kye 3y ago
The modern start menu (at least what I see) reminds me of the gnome and KDE equivalents. It's a simple little list of apps, a space to pin those I use a lot, and a snappy search box. Bing is there, but it's gotten less intrusive in 11. The search box is better about surfacing what I'm actually looking for and not showing web searches 99% of the time. So I can't imagine I'm seeing the same thing as what's got so many people up in arms about the start menu. Did I get a weird OEM configuration? It's a newish Lenovo Legion laptop. I haven't changed any start menu settings.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > So I can't imagine I'm seeing the same thing as what's got so many people up in arms about the start menu. Did I get a weird OEM configuration? To answer that question, check out the screenshot in the article. If you have a similar spittoon-load of crapware installed, you have the same experience as ~everyone else and for some reason you aren't registering it. If you don't, something ethical happened.
  - Kye 3y ago
    I guess it comes down to what you perceive as crapware. I accepted a long time ago that I'm not the target audience for anything aimed at the mainstream. There were some icons I unpinned for apps and tool installers I didn't need. None of them were actually installed. They just went to the MS store. No biggie. I'd expect a lot of people to appreciate links to install/access very mainstream things like Office or Instagram. They're trivial to remove and don't affect performance. When I think crapware, I think bloaty nonsense that no one needs or wants like Bonzi Buddy or 900 different browser toolbars. I don't see unpinning a few things on a fresh install as some great burden.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      It's a bit frightening that they've beaten you down to the point where you don't even recognize the ads and crapware on "your" computer for what they are. Spyware is still every bit as invasive and harmful as it was in the Bonzi Buddy days, but it looks a bit different and now ships as part of OS itself. You should try to unblind yourself to it because no matter how much you think you aren't affected by it you are absolutely being taken advantage of.
      - Kye 3y ago
        That's absurd. They're shortcuts like any other. Nothing is even pre-installed like when OEMs would ship computers with AOL or Compuserve when those were popular.
        autoexec 3y ago
        They are ads if they link to an app store, and bloatware if they've actually installed that crap on your machine. The shortcuts on my machine are for things I personally chose and installed and none of them open an app store. I've had cell phones that came with apps pre-installed like facebook that couldn't even be uninstalled normally. Does that count as "just a shortcut" too? Those shortcuts weren't put there for you as a courtesy. Those are paid advertisements
        xethos 3y ago
        > ... apps pre-installed [...] that couldn't even be uninstalled normally. Does that count as "just a shortcut" too? I mean, logistically I'd expect parent to agree with that. They don't take up any additional space that you, the end-user, could take advantage of (because they were on the system partition). Personally, I agree that stating which programs are to be installed on your hardware is a good way to determine who actually owns the hardware, but if parent is logically consistent, then sure: it'd be "just a shortcut" that the average end-user will take advantage of.
hardware2win 3y ago
I agree Start menu is slow as shit I have w11 at work and w10 at home and i see the diff
- Simulacra 3y ago
  You might enjoy Classic Shell Start Menu. http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/
  - zihotki 3y ago
    FYI, Classic Shell is discontinued, long live the https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
    - capableweb 3y ago
      It will never cease to be strange to offer some software that does UI modifications without having any screenshots showing said modifications.
    - Simulacra 3y ago
      It still works! I installed it on a Windows 11 machine, and it puts the little start button down there and it works. So while it may be discontinued, it's still very much works.
evaporating 3y ago
Best of both worlds in a good window laptop with Windows 10 with no bloatware :). I purposely reinstalled windows 10 after upgrading to windows 11 due to all this intrusive bloatware
- vxNsr 3y ago
  My company keeps trying to force me onto W11. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve marked my connection as “limited” so it won’t download any updates and outlook asks me if I still want to connect even though I’m on a slow connection. Only way to prevent that virus from infecting my work machine. I tried it twice and rolled back twice after less than an hour.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Kye 3y ago

The modern start menu (at least what I see) reminds me of the gnome and KDE equivalents. It's a simple little list of apps, a space to pin those I use a lot, and a snappy search box. Bing is there, but it's gotten less intrusive in 11. The search box is better about surfacing what I'm actually looking for and not showing web searches 99% of the time. So I can't imagine I'm seeing the same thing as what's got so many people up in arms about the start menu. Did I get a weird OEM configuration? It's a newish Lenovo Legion laptop. I haven't changed any start menu settings.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> So I can't imagine I'm seeing the same thing as what's got so many people up in arms about the start menu. Did I get a weird OEM configuration? To answer that question, check out the screenshot in the article. If you have a similar spittoon-load of crapware installed, you have the same experience as ~everyone else and for some reason you aren't registering it. If you don't, something ethical happened.
- Kye 3y ago
  I guess it comes down to what you perceive as crapware. I accepted a long time ago that I'm not the target audience for anything aimed at the mainstream. There were some icons I unpinned for apps and tool installers I didn't need. None of them were actually installed. They just went to the MS store. No biggie. I'd expect a lot of people to appreciate links to install/access very mainstream things like Office or Instagram. They're trivial to remove and don't affect performance. When I think crapware, I think bloaty nonsense that no one needs or wants like Bonzi Buddy or 900 different browser toolbars. I don't see unpinning a few things on a fresh install as some great burden.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    It's a bit frightening that they've beaten you down to the point where you don't even recognize the ads and crapware on "your" computer for what they are. Spyware is still every bit as invasive and harmful as it was in the Bonzi Buddy days, but it looks a bit different and now ships as part of OS itself. You should try to unblind yourself to it because no matter how much you think you aren't affected by it you are absolutely being taken advantage of.
    - Kye 3y ago
      That's absurd. They're shortcuts like any other. Nothing is even pre-installed like when OEMs would ship computers with AOL or Compuserve when those were popular.
      - autoexec 3y ago
        They are ads if they link to an app store, and bloatware if they've actually installed that crap on your machine. The shortcuts on my machine are for things I personally chose and installed and none of them open an app store. I've had cell phones that came with apps pre-installed like facebook that couldn't even be uninstalled normally. Does that count as "just a shortcut" too? Those shortcuts weren't put there for you as a courtesy. Those are paid advertisements
        xethos 3y ago
        > ... apps pre-installed [...] that couldn't even be uninstalled normally. Does that count as "just a shortcut" too? I mean, logistically I'd expect parent to agree with that. They don't take up any additional space that you, the end-user, could take advantage of (because they were on the system partition). Personally, I agree that stating which programs are to be installed on your hardware is a good way to determine who actually owns the hardware, but if parent is logically consistent, then sure: it'd be "just a shortcut" that the average end-user will take advantage of.

hardware2win 3y ago

I agree Start menu is slow as shit I have w11 at work and w10 at home and i see the diff

Simulacra 3y ago
You might enjoy Classic Shell Start Menu. http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/
- zihotki 3y ago
  FYI, Classic Shell is discontinued, long live the https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
  - capableweb 3y ago
    It will never cease to be strange to offer some software that does UI modifications without having any screenshots showing said modifications.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    It still works! I installed it on a Windows 11 machine, and it puts the little start button down there and it works. So while it may be discontinued, it's still very much works.

evaporating 3y ago

Best of both worlds in a good window laptop with Windows 10 with no bloatware :). I purposely reinstalled windows 10 after upgrading to windows 11 due to all this intrusive bloatware

vxNsr 3y ago
My company keeps trying to force me onto W11. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve marked my connection as “limited” so it won’t download any updates and outlook asks me if I still want to connect even though I’m on a slow connection. Only way to prevent that virus from infecting my work machine. I tried it twice and rolled back twice after less than an hour.