5 ms·
I've been pretty much exclusively Linux-based for over a decade now, but I used every version of Windows from 3.11 to Windows 7, so I still have some muscle mem
by kyboren 9mo ago
I've been pretty much exclusively Linux-based for over a decade now, but I used every version of Windows from 3.11 to Windows 7, so I still have some muscle memory from the good ol' days.
Recently I was helping a relative do something on their Windows 11 machine and I asked them to press Windows key + R, type calc, press Enter. And I was astonished at the result. Literally: Mouth agape, frozen in astonishment for about 10 seconds.
I knew about the ads and tracking and the local account bullshit, but I didn't realize just how bad the Windows experience has become.
- netsharc 9mo agoWhat does happen? I'm using Windows 10 Enterprise (is that GitHub repo to activate any license still around?) , with policy to disable Internet search from the start menu... so your story makes me wonder what the astonishment is.
- agumonkey 9mo agoI'm betting a very large loading time.
- rstuart4133 9mo agoI had a similar experience to the OP. After a new version of Windows I tried to run something, or maybe it was just pressing the Start button, and I waited, mouth open, wondering what in $DIETY's name was happening before it responded. The pause was completely alien to a Linux user, who is used to the Window manager unconditionally responding instantly. It would be alien to users of older versions of Windows too. I decided in the end it was pulling down stuff from the web - in tiles it displayed beside the start menu. If you were on a fast network and had a good internet connection the problem mostly went away. The feature was inherited from WinPhone, I think. So it wasn't that the underling OS or video had got slower, it was them bolting on irrelevant crap to the menu. I later got smarter and deleted all the tiles, so only the menu was displayed. That improved things considerably. I remain gob smacked at them crippling their product like that. I'm try to avoid Windows now, and am mostly successful. But I read these stories about them adding AI and ads into the mix. If they bolted them into basic window functions like the start menu in the same idiotic way, I could well believe Microsoft has release the slowest Windows ever despite it running on the fastest hardware the planet has seen.
- ipdashc 9mo agoBit of a clickbaity way of phrasing it, but I'm also curious what the result was? From googling it I don't see any stories about recent changes to the calculator app, other than a few features like graphing.
- Rohansi 9mo agoI just tried it on regular Windows 11 Pro and it just opened the calculator.
- novaleaf 9mo agoI bet the friend just pressed the Windows key, and typing "Calc" and quickly pressing enter caused Bing to search for calc instead. Common failure because window's start-menu search/load/discovery is a total mess.
- Rohansi 9mo agoEven in this case it opens the calculator. Web search results are further down.
- novaleaf 9mo agoif you are searching for something for the first time (or after caching invalidates), it seems like it prioritizes search sources that have already completed. on my computer, that means web-search almost always completes first. So most of the time if I type in something "new" and don't wait, it'll bring up Bing. Sometimes it looks like "downloads folder" file search completes before Installed app search completes, because on one occasion I typed in an app's name and it launched the INSTALLER for the app. once all the searchs resolve it behaves "as expected". I am very surprised if you don't have the same symptoms I'm describing. Why is your computer behaving different from every Win11 install I ever interact with?
- Rohansi 9mo ago