10 ms·

Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

98 points by segasaturn 2y ago

Pixelious 2y ago
Yeah, this pretty much sums up the Windows 11 experience—bloated, slow, and packed with features no one asked for. The fact that Microsoft is doubling down on hardware requirements despite clear pushback just shows how out of touch they are. TPM might have some theoretical security benefits, but for home users? Totally irrelevant.
- varispeed 2y ago
  Such a low hanging fruit for EU to slap a massive fine on Microsoft. Surely what they are trying to do is at odds with climate goals. We should be reusing equipment as much as possible, not buying new. Can only see a case when new equipment might be energy efficient, but not clear when actual benefit would materialise (e.g. cost of disposal, emissions to make new equipment etc.)
p_ing 2y ago
> But the TPM nonsense potentially marks even rather new and ultra-powerful computers as unsuitable for the upgrade. TPM has been built into processors for what... 5-7 years now? What mythical "new" x64 is this individual talking about? When I see someone arguing against TPM, it's fairly easy to write their argument off. They don't understand what it's used for or why, which is fine, but like those gamers discussing fixed page files, their opinion is just wrong. > There's another piece of self-contradiction in that article - BitLocker uses TPM 2.0 for encryption key storage. Amazing, except, again, HOME users cannot even run this BitLocker thingie, even if they want. The author is uninformed. Microsoft calls the Win 11 Home version "Device Encryption", essentially an unconfigurable version of Bitlocker. It's still BL under the hood. > ut then, when you think about it, if the system has TPM and encryption, and it's configured in a "clever" way, then you can't have this lovely freedom of deleting unnecessary stuff, now can you? Author isn't aware of dislocker. But keep on being smarmy. Anyway, this article is hardly worth HN's time.
- nemomarx 2y ago
  I had a Ryzen 1700 that didn't meet the windows 11 tpm standard. It was still working well for everything I threw at it, but I guess a little short of "modern". It still seems a arbitrary cut off for waste though. If TPM is standard enough on hardware surely adoption would happen regardless of OS requirements?
  - fresh_broccoli 2y ago
    > I had a Ryzen 1700 that didn't meet the windows 11 tpm standard. It's not TPM, Zen1 does support TPM 2. Also, its instruction set is identical to Zen+ (Ryzen 2xxx), which is supported by Win11. After all, Zen+ was just a die shrink of Zen1 with some minor fixes. It really seems like they blacklisted Zen1 for no real reason.
  - p_ing 2y ago
    > rather new and ultra-powerful computers > Ryzen 1700 Surely you jest.
    - nemomarx 2y ago
      what benchmark is it failing to match up to? other than AI work I can't think of a use case for a home machine where it would really be even noticeably slow. certainly it's fine for compiling code and etc. 2017 doesn't really seem old to me since improvements in chips has slowed down.
      - p_ing 2y ago
        The "new" benchmark. I quoted the author who said "new" and "ultra-powerful".
- mrkeen 2y ago
  I had a 16-core 32-thread Threadripper that I was rather fond of. Not good enough for win 11.
  - 2y ago
aboardRat4 2y ago
Wait until the programs you need to run only work on w11.
- Moomoomoo309 2y ago
  Honestly, this is one of the biggest boons for Linux. If your stuff isn't gonna work on Win11 and it isn't gonna work on Linux, so either way you need to make a change, then why not pick Linux? The barrier to entry for Win11 is much closer to the barrier to entry for Linux now in terms of program compatibility, so it's an easier choice than it's been in the past. (obviously I'm still not gonna recommend Linux to someone who uses Autodesk products or is very heavily invested into Adobe or needs some niche windows programs that don't run elsewhere)
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    > barrier to entry for Win11 is much closer to the barrier to entry for Linux now in terms of program compatibility How so? Apart from a handful of edge cases that not even remotely true to being true.
    - inetknght 2y ago
      I ditched Windows when 7 went EOL. I've been using Linux for years now. Other than the shitshow online clouds that think I'm a malicious robot, Linux works absolutely great for everyday desktop/school/work use, and is generally great for games as such. It's easier to install, easier to update, easier to manage, and easier to find useful apps for than I ever had to deal with on Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android.
      - antisthenes 2y ago
        For everyday stuff in 2025, if your browser works, you can be 90% productive in any OS. For complex configs and tweaking system settings Linux can be a pain, but then again, so is Windows, simply due to the sheer number of registry settings and the possibility that the OS will one day decide to override them with an update.
xnorswap 2y ago
If the first thing someone does is find a way to remove Windows Defender, I'm going to assume they're too clever for their own good. Windows defender is one of the best things Microsoft did for Windows. Prior to defender, the array of vendor AV solutions was a complete shit-show. Even previously useful options got bought out by the major players and stuffed full of crap-ware.
- varispeed 2y ago
  So true. Every commercial anti-virus software I tried has let me down. From letting viruses in, to damaging the system by itself and causing loss of data. It's like anti-virus software were viruses themselves. After being burned so many times I just stick to Defender and never had a single issue since (touch wood).
- dizhn 2y ago
  It might be better than 3rd party solutions but what if the person wants no AV software at all?
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  And their method of removing it is by deleting folders?! Even though they definitely know Windows is not like Linux where "everything is a file". I'm actually surprised it booted. Other that that, I thought it was a great criticism of Windows 11.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    > And their method of removing it is by deleting folders?! I suspect this is the only way to actually get it to stop running. See some of the sibling comments here about how it re-enables itself. Maybe if you had the enterprise version of Windows you could do something else.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Windows Defender is so good that Microsoft Security Essentials was renowned as the worst anti-virus by anti-virus reviewers and providers. You know something is awesome when the putrid market wails like a banshee.
markus_zhang 2y ago
I'm glad Dell Refurbished only sells workstations with Windows 10 Pro. It's not a pleasant experience but still way better than Windows 11. I wish they had Windows LTSC though.
- clircle 2y ago
  I'll be pirating a copy of LTSC when MS stops security updates to 10 Pro.
  - lousken 2y ago
    you can get keys from a reseller quite cheap
    - soylentcola 2y ago
      Not to be too pedantic, but aren't those typically being purchased under some other license that doesn't apply to you (bulk, oem, cheaper country, etc) and then resold in violation of the licensing terms? And that's when they're not just "pirated" themselves? Seems at that point you might as well just skip paying whatever questionable middleman in involved if you're not concerned about abiding by TOS or license.
      - lousken 2y ago
        I haven't read the entire EULA to be 100% sure, but Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 can be found with MS solution partners so I don't think they would be in violation with M$.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Shhhh...
dusted 2y ago
yeah, I've been forced onto it by corporate on my windows machine.. from an aesthetic and usability point of view, there's only negatives.. the ui is even worse than 10, flat and featureless and ugly, looks like a bad prototype theme for gnome, 20 years ago. They somehow managed to take the utter mess that were the settings of windows 10 and redefine the word utter to a new low. I'm sure there's some technical things in the kernel and system API that needed changing, but somehow I feel like they could have done that without changing anything that's on the screen.. I wonder if they actually put the thought and consideration into windows user experience that they did when they designed Chicago.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Someone who had worked on the inside commented here that the Windows 10 design team didn't even use Windows, and things suddenly made so much more sense. I think there's been some interesting changes on the kernel and user-space API side, but it's drowning in the UI shit show. It's very clear usability is no longer a priority, and they change things just for the sake of change.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Windows 11 made me buy a Mac.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Simplestas 2y ago
http://www.startallback.com http://www.startallback.com
vachina 2y ago
Microsoft knows this and therefore focuses more on cloudifying all your apps, I.e. your windows Pc becomes a thin client for Microsoft hosted services, ensuring infinite revenue. This is just gonna get worse with even better internet connectivity in the future, and consumers jumping on it because subscriptions requires much less cash outlay than owning hardware that runs the value generating part of the app.
- psychoslave 2y ago
  Glad to hear they solved this all nitty point, so with these infinite revenue there will be an infinite amount of resources to trickle down to the rest of humanity! Right?
LorenDB 2y ago
The "location override" feature that the author complains about does not allow apps to access location even when it's turned off. Instead, it gives apps a way to change your reported location; e.g. Remote Desktop can change your reported location to match the remote computer you're accessing.
Steve16384 2y ago
I was thinking the same thing myself - Windows 11 needs 10x more powerful hardware than, say, Win XP, but doesn't noticeably provide any new features. Where's all the processing power going?
- puttycat 2y ago
  Inefficient graphics and Electron apps.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Where's all the processing power going? Making round corners on window borders. Do you know how many triangles they need for that ? Neither do I. /s
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  It takes a lot of CPU to show all those ads.
Waterluvian 2y ago
I have a legal copy of Win 11 and after very carefully scraping all the garbage off of it, I had a gaming and general use system that felt… fine I guess… for months. Then last week I got a full screen “finish setting up windows” that wants me to create a Microsoft account. I have two options: “remind me in 3 days” or “continue… and if you change your mind you can’t actually go back. You have to reboot.” So every three days I get to be interrupted by this upsell. <long frustrated rant about what being a Big Tech engineer/designer actually signals>
- devmor 2y ago
  There should be a registry key or GPO setting to override this called “EnableOOBE” or something similar.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I searched it up for you, no idea if this works: To disable the "Make account" and "Remind me in 3 days" prompt on Microsoft, navigate to your Windows settings, then go to System > Notifications & actions; within the "Notifications" section, look for options related to "Suggest ways to finish setting up your device" or similar wording and toggle them off to prevent these reminders from appearing.
Kapura 2y ago
do the people making decisions at Microsoft even use windows? it's incredible that it's been allowed to get this bad.
snozolli 2y ago
The Windows 11 Explorer titlebar is always colored depression-gray One of the most baffling aspects of modern Windows is that it's ridiculously hard to tell at a glance which window is active. It used to be that the active window's title bar was bright blue, and everything else was gray. These days, I have two 2560x1440 monitors, which was unimaginable back in the day, and regularly fail to identify which window is active. Also, the modern Alt-Tab popup often takes two full seconds to appear on my machine. I can't even imagine how they managed that.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  Oh, but it gets better than all the windows being the same color! Sometimes, even though the taskbar shows your window as active and you have the blinking cursor in a text area, typing won't type until you click that window!
- ankurdhama 2y ago
  Any window that is based on good old Win32 API title bar will have proper title bar accent color (ex: Run dialog) BUT the new generation of WinUI based windows wont have this coz it looks like they render their own "header bar" or something. WinUI right now is so bad that even resizing the window show partial blank area that you can see before the whole area gets repainted again.
binarin 2y ago
For my personal computers I was actually buying Windows licenses up to and including Windows 10, but now I switched to alternative acquisition methods again, and mostly run Windows in VMs with GPU pass-through and disabled networking. Just an honest relationship - they don't respect me, I don't respect them.
- M95D 2y ago
  You can set up a proxy server with a whitelist on the host, so it won't be completely offline. For example, to allow online games.
qntmfred 2y ago
I for one am quite happy with Windows these days. I started out on Windows (3.1!) switched to Mac in 2009 for over a decade and have mostly been back on Windows the last few years. I had a lot more to complain about in the last few years of being a Mac user.
batrat 2y ago
I stopped reading when he uninstalled defender. Is the best thing ms did to windows! OP is like the 90% of linux users: if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks. Like you said most users don't care about TMP, they also don't care about who is protecting them, what interface it is, how printers work, how office works, how browsers work. This is why windows is/was successful, you start it, open outlook, mail, browser, print, play games, etc. Without ever thinking why it works. Does windows suck? Probably, but it does the job and is enough for 99% of the home users. Also if someone wants to personalize windows check reddit, you can change almost everything.
- xx_ns 2y ago
  > if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks Well... yeah? The computer is a tool. If my tool doesn't do what I want it to do, or, by extension, it does things I didn't ask for or need, then it does suck. If my tool suddenly told me that my toolbox needs another, arbitrary tool Y that I don't need (in this case, TPM), then I will look for another brand. The fact that "most users" are ignorant doesn't mean that the users who aren't ignorant should be punished. "Most users" are capable of doing the things you listed perfectly fine on other operating systems, like macOS or the various user-friendly Linux distributions, without being treated with hostility by the OS. The argument "it does the job" doesn't really hold water - the entire IT support industry is built on Windows not doing the job when the user doesn't know "why it works" as you put it.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    > "Also, security, as we see every day, is all about backend infrastructure, like telcos not getting hax0red, amirite, and not about home users. After all, in my three decades of computing, 100% of harm to my "computing estate" came from companies being lax with their data in their "clouds", not from any movie-like hax0rology on my local systems." Does the author not remember the days when connecting an unpatched Windows system to the internet got it hax0red in minutes? And how those hax0red Windows systems were a pain for the rest of us, being spam and DDoS sources and worse? And that Microsoft fixed it? And the author doesn't want to pay taxes for roads because they don't benefit from roads because they walk to the shops? Because they are a free thining independent Linux user who doesn't understand that the shop employees drive to work and the shop stock is driven to the shop.
71bw 2y ago
Insane how people are still using anything other than illegitimate LTSC copies. They keep spitting in your face and you keep taking it? They are not getting a single cent from me, they can rot in hell for all I care for. Give me back my Windows 7 experience...
rspoerri 2y ago
The good thing about Windows 11 requiring TPM is, that's the easiest way to prevent an unintentional upgrade. Typically you can disable TPM in the bios and prevent the OS from updating itself . Which i did as soon as i heard about that requirement :-)
eppo999 2y ago
great write up dedoimedo!
tannhaeuser 2y ago
One only needs to look at growth figures (Azure and OpenAI positive, Windows and Xbox negative) to understand Windows' trajectory against end users. Already Windows 10 22H2 (?), supposedly largely identical to Windows 11, has mindlessly shuffled setting dialogs and stuff around to confuse users and make switching off Windows updates (and "telemetry" gathering and ads) practically impossible save for disabling networking, even "Pro" versions. Fortunately there's Proton/Wine/Steam to save gaming. It didn't have to come this far. Windows 7-10 had also decent bits not just intrusive disk encryption, "duel" boot where it prevents alternate EFI boot loaders and OSes, removing "virus" .exes without even telling, millions of pointless items in file explorer and start menus except the one that one actually is after, broken search, cringeworthy verboseness, ...
ryandvm 2y ago
Wild to me that a company can work on a product for twenty years, have multiple releases, and not have made any significant improvements to it beyond updated hardware support. Like, y'all could just do a 25th Anniversary Edition of Windows 2000 and people would go ape shit for it.
- Kenji 2y ago
  A lack of improvements I could stomach. What bothers me are the regressions! It's getting worse with every update!
  - fcq 2y ago
    Not honoring previous settings, reverting back to whatever is more convenient for Microsoft or trying to push down of our throats Copilot on every single corner might be the most infuriating thing....
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 ???
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    HN will never let facts stand in the way of good FUD.
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      It's Snarkiness, not FUD. Neither fear, uncertainty nor doubt involved here. And I think everyone knew from context that the claim was strongly tongue in cheek.
internet_points 2y ago
Our windows pc is complaining that it's not Windows 11, but does not have a TPM so it can't get windows 11 anyway. Is there any "long term support" windows or something that will have security updates after October?
incrudible 2y ago
I hate where Microsoft is going, but there is no obvious alternative. I am not go to be paying hundreds of dollars markup for RAM/SSDs and limiting myself to a single GPU vendor by switching to Apple. I am very hesitant to deal with desktop linux bullshit, but Windows 11 may just be the thing to push me over the edge. I know there are great people at Microsoft who know what “the right thing” is for the people who actually care about the platform, but it seems that nowadays they do not have the required ownership.
- JSR_FDED 2y ago
  I’m puzzled. On the one hand you don’t want the complexity of a Linux desktop, but you want the hassle that comes with changing GPUs. Over the life of a typical machine is it really worth upgrading the GPU separately?
  - reginald78 2y ago
    For me the answer is yes. It has been more important than upgrading the processor or anything else. But this depends upon your use case. If you're a tinkerer or even just some kind of traditional PC gamer Mac just isn't a fun platform because there isn't much you can do with it besides buying a newer one. For a long time Windows was a good choice for this kind of user but less so now.
  - incrudible 2y ago
    Upgrading a GPU is not much of a hassle on an ordinary desktop, you open the case and plug it in, at worst you also need to upgrade the PSU. And you do that maybe once during the lifetime of the machine. The real problem with the Apple approach though is that the very highest end SoC gives only the performance of a much cheaper midrange discrete chip and does not support all the software. Unified memory is nice, but that does not make up for it.
- soco 2y ago
  That's the very point of this discussion: not everybody cares abut the platform. As long browsing and office work, half (or more) of the population would never know a Windows from a Mac. And they shouldn't either. PS video and music, let aside games, are already for power users.
stuartd 2y ago
The reason for the TPM requirement (I heard, anyway) was so they could dump a decade or so’s worth of compatability fixes. Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0] ‘Windows 10 will lose security support in October 2025’ [0] https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/windows-10-will-lose-security-support-in-2025-aZV723o24RP9 https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/windows-10-will-lose-se...
- gruez 2y ago
  >Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0] That seems... fine? Once upon a time, windows had a fixed support lifecycle of 10 years, and you had pay to upgrade to the latest version. Windows 10 was released in 2015 and will be supported until 2025. This is entirely in line with that. At least with windows 11 the upgrade is free.
  - stuartd 2y ago
    2015?! Wow. Did not realise that. (I have to use Windows for work, but that’s Server 2022). You are quite correct, that does change the perspective.
theandrewbailey 2y ago
I've been unimpressed with the direction that Windows has been taking for 15-ish years. Aero glass was one of the best-looking UIs ever, but it was thrown out. Windows 10 was tolerable for me, but the reports of what's been happening in the beta channels is disturbing. Telemetry has been there for a while, and I took steps to stop it, but I despise ads (suggested/recommended apps are practically ads). I don't think any sane person asked for a screenshotting AI that you could ask for your credit card info. The people in charge of Windows are out of touch with what everyday people actually want from it. Because Windows 10 support is ending this October, I moved to Linux 2 weeks ago, and I don't think I'll be back to Windows unless it turns around.
Paianni 2y ago
Neither TPM 2.0 or 1.2 is required for a Server 2025 install. Microsoft could easily disable the restriction is they wanted to.
lousken 2y ago
"It's all here." What's all here? The Spanish Inquisition? yes ... Either use W10 IoT LTSC or switch to another OS entirely, it's not like w12 will fix it, so you might as well face the inevitable today
devinprater 2y ago
sigh I can't wait for Windows to annoy blind developers enough so that they switch to Linux, and hammer it into shape for us users. Windows just has the best support for blind people. I mean it's falling to entropy with every release, but screen readers hold things up as much as they can. Luckily even File Explorer has gotten so slow that Microsoft starts sending messages to screen readers "working on it..." to let us know just how inefficient Windows Maybe it won't be too much longer.is.
slyfox125 2y ago
I went from 7 copies of Windows 11 Pro in personal use - all purchased at full price - to using none now. Now they are all combinations of FreeBSD, Debian, and Endeavour.
kendrickan 2y ago
[flagged]

98 points by segasaturn 2y ago

Yeah, this pretty much sums up the Windows 11 experience—bloated, slow, and packed with features no one asked for. The fact that Microsoft is doubling down on hardware requirements despite clear pushback just shows how out of touch they are. TPM might have some theoretical security benefits, but for home users? Totally irrelevant.

varispeed 2y ago
Such a low hanging fruit for EU to slap a massive fine on Microsoft. Surely what they are trying to do is at odds with climate goals. We should be reusing equipment as much as possible, not buying new. Can only see a case when new equipment might be energy efficient, but not clear when actual benefit would materialise (e.g. cost of disposal, emissions to make new equipment etc.)

p_ing 2y ago

> But the TPM nonsense potentially marks even rather new and ultra-powerful computers as unsuitable for the upgrade. TPM has been built into processors for what... 5-7 years now? What mythical "new" x64 is this individual talking about? When I see someone arguing against TPM, it's fairly easy to write their argument off. They don't understand what it's used for or why, which is fine, but like those gamers discussing fixed page files, their opinion is just wrong. > There's another piece of self-contradiction in that article - BitLocker uses TPM 2.0 for encryption key storage. Amazing, except, again, HOME users cannot even run this BitLocker thingie, even if they want. The author is uninformed. Microsoft calls the Win 11 Home version "Device Encryption", essentially an unconfigurable version of Bitlocker. It's still BL under the hood. > ut then, when you think about it, if the system has TPM and encryption, and it's configured in a "clever" way, then you can't have this lovely freedom of deleting unnecessary stuff, now can you? Author isn't aware of dislocker. But keep on being smarmy. Anyway, this article is hardly worth HN's time.

nemomarx 2y ago
I had a Ryzen 1700 that didn't meet the windows 11 tpm standard. It was still working well for everything I threw at it, but I guess a little short of "modern". It still seems a arbitrary cut off for waste though. If TPM is standard enough on hardware surely adoption would happen regardless of OS requirements?
- fresh_broccoli 2y ago
  > I had a Ryzen 1700 that didn't meet the windows 11 tpm standard. It's not TPM, Zen1 does support TPM 2. Also, its instruction set is identical to Zen+ (Ryzen 2xxx), which is supported by Win11. After all, Zen+ was just a die shrink of Zen1 with some minor fixes. It really seems like they blacklisted Zen1 for no real reason.
- p_ing 2y ago
  > rather new and ultra-powerful computers > Ryzen 1700 Surely you jest.
  - nemomarx 2y ago
    what benchmark is it failing to match up to? other than AI work I can't think of a use case for a home machine where it would really be even noticeably slow. certainly it's fine for compiling code and etc. 2017 doesn't really seem old to me since improvements in chips has slowed down.
    - p_ing 2y ago
      The "new" benchmark. I quoted the author who said "new" and "ultra-powerful".
mrkeen 2y ago
I had a 16-core 32-thread Threadripper that I was rather fond of. Not good enough for win 11.
- 2y ago

aboardRat4 2y ago

Wait until the programs you need to run only work on w11.

Moomoomoo309 2y ago
Honestly, this is one of the biggest boons for Linux. If your stuff isn't gonna work on Win11 and it isn't gonna work on Linux, so either way you need to make a change, then why not pick Linux? The barrier to entry for Win11 is much closer to the barrier to entry for Linux now in terms of program compatibility, so it's an easier choice than it's been in the past. (obviously I'm still not gonna recommend Linux to someone who uses Autodesk products or is very heavily invested into Adobe or needs some niche windows programs that don't run elsewhere)
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  > barrier to entry for Win11 is much closer to the barrier to entry for Linux now in terms of program compatibility How so? Apart from a handful of edge cases that not even remotely true to being true.
  - inetknght 2y ago
    I ditched Windows when 7 went EOL. I've been using Linux for years now. Other than the shitshow online clouds that think I'm a malicious robot, Linux works absolutely great for everyday desktop/school/work use, and is generally great for games as such. It's easier to install, easier to update, easier to manage, and easier to find useful apps for than I ever had to deal with on Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android.
    - antisthenes 2y ago
      For everyday stuff in 2025, if your browser works, you can be 90% productive in any OS. For complex configs and tweaking system settings Linux can be a pain, but then again, so is Windows, simply due to the sheer number of registry settings and the possibility that the OS will one day decide to override them with an update.

xnorswap 2y ago

If the first thing someone does is find a way to remove Windows Defender, I'm going to assume they're too clever for their own good. Windows defender is one of the best things Microsoft did for Windows. Prior to defender, the array of vendor AV solutions was a complete shit-show. Even previously useful options got bought out by the major players and stuffed full of crap-ware.

varispeed 2y ago
So true. Every commercial anti-virus software I tried has let me down. From letting viruses in, to damaging the system by itself and causing loss of data. It's like anti-virus software were viruses themselves. After being burned so many times I just stick to Defender and never had a single issue since (touch wood).
dizhn 2y ago
It might be better than 3rd party solutions but what if the person wants no AV software at all?
davidmurdoch 2y ago
And their method of removing it is by deleting folders?! Even though they definitely know Windows is not like Linux where "everything is a file". I'm actually surprised it booted. Other that that, I thought it was a great criticism of Windows 11.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  > And their method of removing it is by deleting folders?! I suspect this is the only way to actually get it to stop running. See some of the sibling comments here about how it re-enables itself. Maybe if you had the enterprise version of Windows you could do something else.
Dalewyn 2y ago
Windows Defender is so good that Microsoft Security Essentials was renowned as the worst anti-virus by anti-virus reviewers and providers. You know something is awesome when the putrid market wails like a banshee.

markus_zhang 2y ago

I'm glad Dell Refurbished only sells workstations with Windows 10 Pro. It's not a pleasant experience but still way better than Windows 11. I wish they had Windows LTSC though.

clircle 2y ago
I'll be pirating a copy of LTSC when MS stops security updates to 10 Pro.
- lousken 2y ago
  you can get keys from a reseller quite cheap
  - soylentcola 2y ago
    Not to be too pedantic, but aren't those typically being purchased under some other license that doesn't apply to you (bulk, oem, cheaper country, etc) and then resold in violation of the licensing terms? And that's when they're not just "pirated" themselves? Seems at that point you might as well just skip paying whatever questionable middleman in involved if you're not concerned about abiding by TOS or license.
    - lousken 2y ago
      I haven't read the entire EULA to be 100% sure, but Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 can be found with MS solution partners so I don't think they would be in violation with M$.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Shhhh...

dusted 2y ago

yeah, I've been forced onto it by corporate on my windows machine.. from an aesthetic and usability point of view, there's only negatives.. the ui is even worse than 10, flat and featureless and ugly, looks like a bad prototype theme for gnome, 20 years ago. They somehow managed to take the utter mess that were the settings of windows 10 and redefine the word utter to a new low. I'm sure there's some technical things in the kernel and system API that needed changing, but somehow I feel like they could have done that without changing anything that's on the screen.. I wonder if they actually put the thought and consideration into windows user experience that they did when they designed Chicago.

magicalhippo 2y ago
Someone who had worked on the inside commented here that the Windows 10 design team didn't even use Windows, and things suddenly made so much more sense. I think there's been some interesting changes on the kernel and user-space API side, but it's drowning in the UI shit show. It's very clear usability is no longer a priority, and they change things just for the sake of change.

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Windows 11 made me buy a Mac.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Simplestas 2y ago

http://www.startallback.com http://www.startallback.com

vachina 2y ago

Microsoft knows this and therefore focuses more on cloudifying all your apps, I.e. your windows Pc becomes a thin client for Microsoft hosted services, ensuring infinite revenue. This is just gonna get worse with even better internet connectivity in the future, and consumers jumping on it because subscriptions requires much less cash outlay than owning hardware that runs the value generating part of the app.

psychoslave 2y ago
Glad to hear they solved this all nitty point, so with these infinite revenue there will be an infinite amount of resources to trickle down to the rest of humanity! Right?

LorenDB 2y ago

The "location override" feature that the author complains about does not allow apps to access location even when it's turned off. Instead, it gives apps a way to change your reported location; e.g. Remote Desktop can change your reported location to match the remote computer you're accessing.

Steve16384 2y ago

I was thinking the same thing myself - Windows 11 needs 10x more powerful hardware than, say, Win XP, but doesn't noticeably provide any new features. Where's all the processing power going?

puttycat 2y ago
Inefficient graphics and Electron apps.
hulitu 2y ago
> Where's all the processing power going? Making round corners on window borders. Do you know how many triangles they need for that ? Neither do I. /s
dreamcompiler 2y ago
It takes a lot of CPU to show all those ads.

Waterluvian 2y ago

I have a legal copy of Win 11 and after very carefully scraping all the garbage off of it, I had a gaming and general use system that felt… fine I guess… for months. Then last week I got a full screen “finish setting up windows” that wants me to create a Microsoft account. I have two options: “remind me in 3 days” or “continue… and if you change your mind you can’t actually go back. You have to reboot.” So every three days I get to be interrupted by this upsell. <long frustrated rant about what being a Big Tech engineer/designer actually signals>

devmor 2y ago
There should be a registry key or GPO setting to override this called “EnableOOBE” or something similar.
dgfitz 2y ago
I searched it up for you, no idea if this works: To disable the "Make account" and "Remind me in 3 days" prompt on Microsoft, navigate to your Windows settings, then go to System > Notifications & actions; within the "Notifications" section, look for options related to "Suggest ways to finish setting up your device" or similar wording and toggle them off to prevent these reminders from appearing.

Kapura 2y ago

do the people making decisions at Microsoft even use windows? it's incredible that it's been allowed to get this bad.

snozolli 2y ago

The Windows 11 Explorer titlebar is always colored depression-gray One of the most baffling aspects of modern Windows is that it's ridiculously hard to tell at a glance which window is active. It used to be that the active window's title bar was bright blue, and everything else was gray. These days, I have two 2560x1440 monitors, which was unimaginable back in the day, and regularly fail to identify which window is active. Also, the modern Alt-Tab popup often takes two full seconds to appear on my machine. I can't even imagine how they managed that.

vladvasiliu 2y ago
Oh, but it gets better than all the windows being the same color! Sometimes, even though the taskbar shows your window as active and you have the blinking cursor in a text area, typing won't type until you click that window!
ankurdhama 2y ago
Any window that is based on good old Win32 API title bar will have proper title bar accent color (ex: Run dialog) BUT the new generation of WinUI based windows wont have this coz it looks like they render their own "header bar" or something. WinUI right now is so bad that even resizing the window show partial blank area that you can see before the whole area gets repainted again.

binarin 2y ago

For my personal computers I was actually buying Windows licenses up to and including Windows 10, but now I switched to alternative acquisition methods again, and mostly run Windows in VMs with GPU pass-through and disabled networking. Just an honest relationship - they don't respect me, I don't respect them.

M95D 2y ago
You can set up a proxy server with a whitelist on the host, so it won't be completely offline. For example, to allow online games.

qntmfred 2y ago

I for one am quite happy with Windows these days. I started out on Windows (3.1!) switched to Mac in 2009 for over a decade and have mostly been back on Windows the last few years. I had a lot more to complain about in the last few years of being a Mac user.

batrat 2y ago

I stopped reading when he uninstalled defender. Is the best thing ms did to windows! OP is like the 90% of linux users: if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks. Like you said most users don't care about TMP, they also don't care about who is protecting them, what interface it is, how printers work, how office works, how browsers work. This is why windows is/was successful, you start it, open outlook, mail, browser, print, play games, etc. Without ever thinking why it works. Does windows suck? Probably, but it does the job and is enough for 99% of the home users. Also if someone wants to personalize windows check reddit, you can change almost everything.

xx_ns 2y ago
> if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks Well... yeah? The computer is a tool. If my tool doesn't do what I want it to do, or, by extension, it does things I didn't ask for or need, then it does suck. If my tool suddenly told me that my toolbox needs another, arbitrary tool Y that I don't need (in this case, TPM), then I will look for another brand. The fact that "most users" are ignorant doesn't mean that the users who aren't ignorant should be punished. "Most users" are capable of doing the things you listed perfectly fine on other operating systems, like macOS or the various user-friendly Linux distributions, without being treated with hostility by the OS. The argument "it does the job" doesn't really hold water - the entire IT support industry is built on Windows not doing the job when the user doesn't know "why it works" as you put it.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  > "Also, security, as we see every day, is all about backend infrastructure, like telcos not getting hax0red, amirite, and not about home users. After all, in my three decades of computing, 100% of harm to my "computing estate" came from companies being lax with their data in their "clouds", not from any movie-like hax0rology on my local systems." Does the author not remember the days when connecting an unpatched Windows system to the internet got it hax0red in minutes? And how those hax0red Windows systems were a pain for the rest of us, being spam and DDoS sources and worse? And that Microsoft fixed it? And the author doesn't want to pay taxes for roads because they don't benefit from roads because they walk to the shops? Because they are a free thining independent Linux user who doesn't understand that the shop employees drive to work and the shop stock is driven to the shop.

71bw 2y ago

Insane how people are still using anything other than illegitimate LTSC copies. They keep spitting in your face and you keep taking it? They are not getting a single cent from me, they can rot in hell for all I care for. Give me back my Windows 7 experience...

rspoerri 2y ago

The good thing about Windows 11 requiring TPM is, that's the easiest way to prevent an unintentional upgrade. Typically you can disable TPM in the bios and prevent the OS from updating itself . Which i did as soon as i heard about that requirement :-)

eppo999 2y ago

great write up dedoimedo!

tannhaeuser 2y ago

One only needs to look at growth figures (Azure and OpenAI positive, Windows and Xbox negative) to understand Windows' trajectory against end users. Already Windows 10 22H2 (?), supposedly largely identical to Windows 11, has mindlessly shuffled setting dialogs and stuff around to confuse users and make switching off Windows updates (and "telemetry" gathering and ads) practically impossible save for disabling networking, even "Pro" versions. Fortunately there's Proton/Wine/Steam to save gaming. It didn't have to come this far. Windows 7-10 had also decent bits not just intrusive disk encryption, "duel" boot where it prevents alternate EFI boot loaders and OSes, removing "virus" .exes without even telling, millions of pointless items in file explorer and start menus except the one that one actually is after, broken search, cringeworthy verboseness, ...

ryandvm 2y ago

Wild to me that a company can work on a product for twenty years, have multiple releases, and not have made any significant improvements to it beyond updated hardware support. Like, y'all could just do a 25th Anniversary Edition of Windows 2000 and people would go ape shit for it.

Kenji 2y ago
A lack of improvements I could stomach. What bothers me are the regressions! It's getting worse with every update!
- fcq 2y ago
  Not honoring previous settings, reverting back to whatever is more convenient for Microsoft or trying to push down of our throats Copilot on every single corner might be the most infuriating thing....
jodrellblank 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 ???
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  HN will never let facts stand in the way of good FUD.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    It's Snarkiness, not FUD. Neither fear, uncertainty nor doubt involved here. And I think everyone knew from context that the claim was strongly tongue in cheek.

internet_points 2y ago

Our windows pc is complaining that it's not Windows 11, but does not have a TPM so it can't get windows 11 anyway. Is there any "long term support" windows or something that will have security updates after October?

incrudible 2y ago

I hate where Microsoft is going, but there is no obvious alternative. I am not go to be paying hundreds of dollars markup for RAM/SSDs and limiting myself to a single GPU vendor by switching to Apple. I am very hesitant to deal with desktop linux bullshit, but Windows 11 may just be the thing to push me over the edge. I know there are great people at Microsoft who know what “the right thing” is for the people who actually care about the platform, but it seems that nowadays they do not have the required ownership.

JSR_FDED 2y ago
I’m puzzled. On the one hand you don’t want the complexity of a Linux desktop, but you want the hassle that comes with changing GPUs. Over the life of a typical machine is it really worth upgrading the GPU separately?
- reginald78 2y ago
  For me the answer is yes. It has been more important than upgrading the processor or anything else. But this depends upon your use case. If you're a tinkerer or even just some kind of traditional PC gamer Mac just isn't a fun platform because there isn't much you can do with it besides buying a newer one. For a long time Windows was a good choice for this kind of user but less so now.
- incrudible 2y ago
  Upgrading a GPU is not much of a hassle on an ordinary desktop, you open the case and plug it in, at worst you also need to upgrade the PSU. And you do that maybe once during the lifetime of the machine. The real problem with the Apple approach though is that the very highest end SoC gives only the performance of a much cheaper midrange discrete chip and does not support all the software. Unified memory is nice, but that does not make up for it.
soco 2y ago
That's the very point of this discussion: not everybody cares abut the platform. As long browsing and office work, half (or more) of the population would never know a Windows from a Mac. And they shouldn't either. PS video and music, let aside games, are already for power users.

stuartd 2y ago

The reason for the TPM requirement (I heard, anyway) was so they could dump a decade or so’s worth of compatability fixes. Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0] ‘Windows 10 will lose security support in October 2025’ [0] https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/windows-10-will-lose-security-support-in-2025-aZV723o24RP9 https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/windows-10-will-lose-se...

gruez 2y ago
>Which is fine, but dropping support for Windows 10 is just gouging from organisations who require support, and potentially leaving consumers who are ‘just fine’ with their PC and Windows 10 without security fixes - [0] That seems... fine? Once upon a time, windows had a fixed support lifecycle of 10 years, and you had pay to upgrade to the latest version. Windows 10 was released in 2015 and will be supported until 2025. This is entirely in line with that. At least with windows 11 the upgrade is free.
- stuartd 2y ago
  2015?! Wow. Did not realise that. (I have to use Windows for work, but that’s Server 2022). You are quite correct, that does change the perspective.

theandrewbailey 2y ago

I've been unimpressed with the direction that Windows has been taking for 15-ish years. Aero glass was one of the best-looking UIs ever, but it was thrown out. Windows 10 was tolerable for me, but the reports of what's been happening in the beta channels is disturbing. Telemetry has been there for a while, and I took steps to stop it, but I despise ads (suggested/recommended apps are practically ads). I don't think any sane person asked for a screenshotting AI that you could ask for your credit card info. The people in charge of Windows are out of touch with what everyday people actually want from it. Because Windows 10 support is ending this October, I moved to Linux 2 weeks ago, and I don't think I'll be back to Windows unless it turns around.

Paianni 2y ago

Neither TPM 2.0 or 1.2 is required for a Server 2025 install. Microsoft could easily disable the restriction is they wanted to.

lousken 2y ago

"It's all here." What's all here? The Spanish Inquisition? yes ... Either use W10 IoT LTSC or switch to another OS entirely, it's not like w12 will fix it, so you might as well face the inevitable today

devinprater 2y ago

sigh I can't wait for Windows to annoy blind developers enough so that they switch to Linux, and hammer it into shape for us users. Windows just has the best support for blind people. I mean it's falling to entropy with every release, but screen readers hold things up as much as they can. Luckily even File Explorer has gotten so slow that Microsoft starts sending messages to screen readers "working on it..." to let us know just how inefficient Windows Maybe it won't be too much longer.is.

slyfox125 2y ago

I went from 7 copies of Windows 11 Pro in personal use - all purchased at full price - to using none now. Now they are all combinations of FreeBSD, Debian, and Endeavour.

kendrickan 2y ago

[flagged]