- Microsoft has fixed Windows 11?
So we made a video a couple months ago, talking about how,
while there's a lot of nice new features in Windows 11,
one of the big downsides is the compatibility.
The initial list of what systems could be upgraded
to Windows 11 was incredibly small.
The justification for that wasn't super clear,
and a ton of people were running
the tool that would tell you if Windows 11 would work,
and even, supposedly,
correct systems that had everything you need were saying
that they were not actually functional,
so we did a video breaking that down,
and since then, some things have changed.
So just to refresh,
one of the big issues with Windows 11 is
that it requires, asterisk,
a TPM 2.0 chip, and it is there
to help ensure the integrity of Windows
and your files and whatnot, it's there for security.
Now this has been shipping for a little while.
Most brand new, in fact,
pretty much any brand new computer you buy today will have
a TPM chip.
However, a lot of even fairly modern systems
from three, four years ago may not.
In addition to this,
Microsoft also has limited the specific CPUs
that can run Windows 11.
Now if you go to look at the system requirements page,
it says, "Oh, you just need
"a one gigahertz, dual-core processor."
Easy, basically, everything has that,
but in reality, you also need to have a processor
which is specifically whitelisted by Microsoft
to be fully compatible with Windows 11.
Now many people have run Windows 11
and the early betas on much older or worse hardware,
and it's not difficult to run.
"I tried the public beta on my Core 2 Duo laptop,
"and it was fine.
"Not that big of a difference,
"although I think I had an issue
"with the chipset driver not installing properly."
Yeah, funny you should mention that.
So if you can run Windows 10,
technically, you can pretty much run Windows 11,
but Microsoft, this time around, has heavily raised the bar
to actually run the OS.
Makes sense, right?
Well, sort of.
So since then, they have made some tactical changes
in the way that you can actually run Windows 11.
If you're running a system
which is not technically supported by Windows 11,
but at least, meets those very easy minimum requirements,
then you can upgrade to Windows 11,
but you have to actually wipe your drive,
do a fresh install from an ISO,
and then you have to agree that, basically,
there's no support guaranteed
and no security updates guaranteed
and you're doing it at your own risk,
which seems a little bit aggressive
for a new version of Windows.
This is certainly the step in the right direction
that I had hoped for when I did my original video.
It's silly to lock out millions upon millions of people
with three-, four-, five-year-old PCs
that are perfectly powerful and capable
from running the newest version of Windows,
especially because Windows 10 has a shelf life.
You can't just sit on it forever.
It's only going to get a few more years of updates,
and then that's going to be that.
If you have a system, you can upgrade it to Windows 11.
The downside, though, is that the guarantees
of security updates
or patches or anything like that just simply aren't there,
so for all we know,
you could install Windows 11 on launch day
on your three-year-old Ryzen 1000 processor,
and then five minutes later,
you just never get another update, but we don't know this.
I doubt that they will cut off updates that fast.
Some people have had problems with games.
So that is one thing I've not done
as of recording right now.
I have not done a lot of gaming on Windows 11,
but some specific games aren't working.
I'll just say, personally for me,
using a lot of productivity apps and whatnot,
I've had no problems, everything has just worked
and launched right out of the box.
"I hate things like removing folder thumbnails,"
and it's, "Harder to switch default web browsers."
Skazzy, yes, so of course,
our brand new channel sponsor, Opera,
as I have went to go and set up Opera on my device,
as soon as I went to go change the default web browser,
it's not like, "Oh, quick, one little click thing."
First of all, it asks,
"Hey, are you sure you wanna try Edge?"
No, I don't wanna use Edge.
After that, then I have to not only switch it,
but there's seven or eight different things
where I have to switch it
for HTM files, HTML files, this and that.
And even after all of that, and I've got Opera set up
as my default browser pretty much across the board,
I'm using Twitter on Windows here,
and I try to open a link.
It opens up Edge, for some reason, I don't know why.
I can't get it to stop doing that.
Look, I have nothing against Edge.
I, of course, prefer Opera,
of course, link in the description,
but regardless of what browser you wanna use,
if you wanna change the default,
it is now far more difficult.
"Tried the release preview version
"on my main gaming PC and it's fine.
"No blue screens so far.
"It's just Windows 10 with a new skin."
I totally agree, and in a lot of ways,
it really is a new skin for Windows 10.
Short of apps being updated and whatnot,
a lot of that core code base
and everything is very similar to Windows 10.
They've been building the foundation
over the last few years, then they've got Windows 11
to go (popping lips) right on top.
"If I wanted MacOS, I'd use MacOS." (laughs)
I will 1000% agree that this is very MacOS-y, but also,
I mean, look, different strokes for different folks.
I personally think that Big Sur feels and looks very nice.
I like that sort of design aesthetic,
and I think that, personally for me,
Windows 11 looks better than Windows 10.
"I like the glass look, I hope search is improved,
"and I hope I can change the position
of the task (laughs) bar."
So I will say
that the taskbar, to me, actually, is totally fine,
but yes, you can change the actual design of it.
So by default in Windows 11,
your taskbar is centered on bottom.
However, in about five seconds,
you can open up the taskbar settings
and just set the taskbar alignment to left,
and it is exactly the way it was in Windows 10.
I think it's fine, as we were putting this video together,
there are a lot of features
and there's a lot of small things.
There's an entire video just doing,
"Here are 100 random, cool features in Windows 11,"
but to me, it's when you put
them all together does it really start
to feel like the more cohesive package.
So I've been using Windows 11
on the Microsoft Laptop Studio, which in a lot of ways,
really is the halo device for Windows 11.
Now there's a lot to talk about here,
and ultimately, I'm somewhat torn
on exactly who this device is for.
So let's start out with some of the big advantages.
So you've got the cool, tilty, flippy screen,
which is probably one of the more innovative ways I've seen
to do a two-in-one, the design itself on the chassis's also,
I think, incredibly clever.
So this is a 14-inch laptop, or vaguely,
since it does have a three-by-two aspect ratio.
It's a slightly different size than most,
but generally speaking, it is still a little bit smaller
than most 15- or 16-inch laptops, and because of that,
it's, while a little bit heavy, still fairly thin,
and a large reason why they've been able to do that is
by jettisoning everything that's
not the Surface connector, headphone jack,
and a pair of USB-C-based Thunderbolt 4 ports,
but because of that, they had this little lip
on the inside edge,
which means that all of the cooling is done
by these huge vents on the bottom.
New, we'd call this Surface Laptop Studio 8 gaming laptop,
but with an RTX 3050 Ti
and a higher powered, Intel 11th-gen Core i5,
or i7 processor, in this case,
you do have enough performance to do at least some gaming.
Is this just an excuse for me to play some F1 2021?
Well, yes, yes, it is.
So there is a 120-Hertz display on the device.
Now some games, you can run at 120fps
if you turn the settings down enough.
I'll say, for me, most of the time,
60 is probably a little bit more reasonable.
The thing that's nice about the Surface Laptop Studio is
that it is one of these devices that can do everything.
It's an in-between size,
where it's not quite a 15-inch laptop.
It's a little bit of a smaller footprint.
It's not as powerful as a full gaming laptop,
but you do have the 120-Hertz display.
You have the dedicated graphics.
On the flip side, you've got the touch screen,
you've got the tilty, flippy display.
The problem, though, that I have is that, realistically,
what are you actually gonna do with this device?
Because it gets very expensive very quickly.
Going up to the RTX 3050 Ti is a, I believe, $300 upgrade,
and at that kind of price, you can afford
to get a very nice actual gaming laptop,
such as the Razer Blade 14,
which can have a lot more performance,
but obviously, without the cool, tilty, flippy design.
The keyboard is excellent.
It does have a brand new haptic trackpad,
which is very similar to the kind of trackpad
that the MacBook has been using for a while.
The speakers were also terrific on this thing.
(speakers roaring) That's loud, man.
It's a decently powerful laptop,
but it's not that much more powerful
than something like the Surface Pro 8,
which in my opinion, is a far more portable,
far more practical device to carry with you every day.
- So where the Surface Laptop Studio is
not exactly the best sell
and it's hard to figure out who it's for,
the Surface Pro 8 is a much more interesting proposition.
So this right here starts at 1199,
as configured with the Core i7, 16 gigs of RAM,
and 256 gigs of storage.
This goes to $1,600.
Sadly though, like every other Surface generation before it,
this one does not come with the full, complete set
like I have here with a type cover and a built-in pen.
This is an add-on
that is $280 on top
of what you are paying for with the Surface Pro 8,
which is still ludicrous,
but of course, with it being a Surface,
it is not a traditional laptop.
You are probably comparing this to something
along the lines of an iPad.
I also like the display on it more, though.
This, as Austin had mentioned before,
does have a 120-Hertz display now.
On the surface-
- Hey! (Ken laughs)
- This thing is really neat-looking.
So it takes a lot of the design cues from the Surface Pro X,
which is great because that brought
a lot of physical improvements.
Most importantly, it has the little slot in the back,
where you can add in your own SSD.
It is expandable, which is great.
Now the thing here is
that this is also using Xe graphics, right?
- [Austin] Yeah, so it's got,
essentially, the same i5, i7 processors from the studio,
except that these are just a lower TDP version,
but it does have active cooling.
- It does have active cooling, which is great, and honestly,
unlike the Surface Laptop Studio,
where when you do really intensive things,
you feel the fans kick up, this is really quiet,
and I also enjoy the battery life on it.
Again, it's not as good as something like the iPad,
but compared to a normal laptop and a lot
of other more powerful systems, this holds its own.
It's pretty much there
with a lot of the lighter class laptops out there.
It does the tablet thing way better
than the previous iterations with Windows 10,
so that is definitely an upside there.
I feel like Microsoft angles these things for creatives,
but I feel like a lot of students like taking it around
because of the portability.
I feel like there are a lot of professionals
that would use this for applications
that I can't even conceive of.
Maybe an architect might want to use it,
people above my pay grade, (laughs) essentially.
The bottom line with the Surface Pro 8 is this.
It is the best iteration of the Surface Pro that we've seen.
It keeps a lot of the same things
that we love from previous generations,
but it brought on a lot of new features
from other products on Surface that we loved, as well.
This is what I wanted to feel from the Surface Pro X,
but I think this is the best iteration of what they made.
- I'm happy that Microsoft have decided
to open up the availability of Windows 11.
That is certainly the right thing to do.
However, I also don't think it's necessarily a great idea
to immediately dive in and upgrade on day one.
Not only are there some compatibility issues,
to be fair, from my experience,
it's been pretty solid going from 10 to 11,
but some games, some random apps, do have some issues.
But on top of that, without the promise of updates
on your unsupported Ryzen 1000 system,
it's a little bit of one of those things
where we know that it will work,
and if you're an early adopter
or you really wanna just go for it, feel free,
but the good thing is
there is a whole lot more to Windows 11 than meets the eye.
Thank you very much for watching.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel
for lots more spicy Microsoft content like this,
and until next time, I will be
definitely not switching
to any new devices that are right there.
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