six months ago i wrote that windows 11 felt unnecessary
have i changed my opinion basically no and here's why
even though i tested windows 11 with the windows insider program prior to its launch i wanted
to take another look has my impression of windows 11 improved yeah it has in places
but it's still trying to keep up with windows 10. windows 11's most significant flaw is that
it still feels less fun and less functional let me give you an example in windows 10 settings menu
if you navigate to personalization themes you'll see large evocative icons telling you what themes
you've installed now i like the windows 11 settings menu but themes here feel less about
your personality and and more like a neighborhood paint scheme that's been instituted by your hoa
it's very corporate we've written stories on pcworld.com about how to personalize your windows
10 pc but you can't really do that for windows 11 because one of the things to personalize
in windows 10 is the start menu and in windows 11 you still can't really do anything with it
in windows 11 the start menu is just a sea of icons with no real rhyme or reason you can move
them around and well that's about it sure we know changes are coming microsoft has scheduled start
folders for release during the fall but let's face it they've already botched those too
one of the key visual elements of windows 10 is the ability to visually weight specific
apps and folders by resizing them you can group windows 11 apps together together in a folder
but that makes the icon smaller i mean how does this make sense at a company where accessibility
has been a priority just let us resize everything icons folders the start menu itself i mean
it might end up being ugly but it's r ugly look i'll be honest i i don't even use the start menu
i simply hit the windows key type the name of the app and then launch it or i just use the taskbar
icon itself speaking of the taskbar you still can't move it you can resize it you can't drag
files onto taskbar shortcuts and launch them look i have no problem with the aesthetic if microsoft
wants to move from windows 8's fisher-price tiles all the way to a clean orderly aesthetic
with icons centered on the taskbar that's fine i mean i honestly kind of like it but microsoft edge
allows you to vertically group tabs along the left or right edge of the screen so why can't windows
in windows 11 microsoft added widgets teams chat replaced the search bar with a search icon
and essentially got rid of cortana i'll be honest to me all of these are almost
worthless i mean as a journalist i should use widgets and it's news and information i don't
but i've set my edge browser to informative where i still get a full page of news stories every
time i open a new tab the weather icon i mean come on it's always sunny in california right
and i turned off teams chat ages ago it's just unnecessary in a world full of the
real teams and zoom and google meet and i simply search via browser or just tapping the windows
key as for cortana well yeah i liked her but now i have a phone or a smart speaker to replace her
i've generally come around on the action center that's the cluster of shortcuts to
different features down in the lower right hand corner of your screen windows 10 does provide
more detail if you're listening to a bluetooth speaker for example it'll tell you but windows
11's organization is just better thankfully now the clock appears on all of your displays but
the calendar the calendar still doesn't really do anything it's just a desk calendar and it
wastes space now let's talk about the windows shell in windows 11 if you right click a file you
end up with this mess of choices with new icons for cut paste and rename which fortunately i've
learned but then there's this second overflow show more options menu for resizing a photo and whatnot
i mean why does this exist why isn't there a single unified menu for all of this file
explorer i guess is his own problem that what a file is and where it lives is a little different
in a world of teams and google workspace but microsoft at least seems to be recognizing this
other thoughts snap view it's a subset of the fancy zones utility but it works wonderfully
i'd also encourage you to tap the windows key plus h and try out windows dictation
it's simple it's effective and you can just do it for a few seconds at a time if you want as far as
the browser is concerned windows 11 now allows you to designate a specific browser as your default
with a single click it didn't before that's a step forward but it's still kind of ridiculous
that you have to designate a specific browser for opening pdf files for example microsoft revamped
the look and feel of the microsoft store app on both windows 10 and 11 and it's far better
organized and more useful as a result microsoft also updated some of its native windows apps
it jumbled up paint a tool everyone has used so that an entire generation had to relearn it
microsoft also reworked photos releasing it with a buggy thumbnails feature though it later fixed it
but photos cut out my favorite feature spot fix and left the useful magic select tool buried
inside paint 3d a tool that no one uses honestly the strongest argument from windows 11 comes from
the pc makers themselves which have made windows 11 synonymous with new pcs and especially intel's
all their lake chip and its thread director tool otherwise it's probably fair to say that neither
two under the hood selling points auto hdr or dynamic refresh rate have made much of an impact
drr ups the refresh rate of certain tablets for improved inking and auto hdr adds hdr on
older games without specific support but in our testing auto hdr didn't actually do all that much
now one selling point could be direct storage and the one game we've seen demoed for spoken
game load times were cut to under two seconds that's big now microsoft has told us about
upcoming features dragging and dropping files onto taskbar apps these start menu folders we
mentioned before live captions and more but they're not here yet well i mean even if they
were the sense is that microsoft is spending as much time playing catch-up with windows 10
as it is in launching new features for windows 11. this is the way the system is supposed to work
microsoft introduces new features windows complain or cheer and microsoft responds but you can't
get away from it even after six months there just aren't many good reasons to upgrade to windows 11.