Windows 11 announced
 

I thought that they said W10 would be the last operating system.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/24/micr...e-updates.html

How could they have? Computers always evolve, and so must their OS.

I thought it was going to be 10.1, 10.2 and onwards. Something like that.

They did say that 10 was going to be the last one and would just be updated, that was why they did the how free for a year update from 7 and 8 to 10 thing.

Watching the presentation now (or, at least, an edited-down version), and I have a few thoughts.

First, the execs/presenters feel a lot more downbeat than the Apple people and, as such, seem more human. Still uber-corporate, but more human.

It made me laugh when the first guy said that the start button is now centred because it's closer to you. First off, if you're using a touchscreen, then you'll be sitting in a way where you can touch the whole screen so that makes no difference. And, secondly, if that were true then it'd be in the actual centre, rather than being the leftmost app in a centred list of apps which will be a different size depending on how many apps are in it. I expect that most people will do what there is the option to do - left-justify it again. It's what people are used to after decades of consistent design, and at least then the button will always be in the same place.

I also expect people will do what they did for the menu from Windows 8 onwards - use a third party utility to restore the old start menu, which is still the superior design. I'd also have thought that people who don't use all their connected devices exclusively for work will want to turn off the "have all my most recently-opened files on my start menu alongside a thumbnail" feature.

WRT split screen, when they first announced in for Windows 8 I couldn't see the point. All these years later I still can't. I'm sure there are some people who use it in some ways, but I've never had a situation where it would ever have come in handy.

WRT Widgets, that's another thing that I've not really understood. I barely ever see my desktop. I don't understand what advantage I'd gain from having things taking up space on it. And now it seems like they're going to be a floating sheet that...recommends articles to you for when you want to take a break from working?

The tablet stuff isn't relevant to me, but it seems like much of it is catching up to Apple, which is kind of ironic as most of Apple's big announcements seem to be them catching up to Android.

The gaming stuff seems interesting, but I have no idea if I have the hardware for any of it to affect me. I've got a desktop that had really good specs when it was new, but that's several years ago now, and computers age quickly.

Microsoft store...who cares? I've not visited it once. I don't care about Android apps, either.

I suppose the biggest takeaway is that I can understand why they thought this was big enough change to bust out a new version number, but at the same time there's not actually all that much that has changed. Which is really what you want from an update to an OS, I suppose.

I just hope they make it smaller, including Windows updates in smaller, discrete lumps. Win10 is so full of bloatware and inefficient code that it no longer fits on my 30GB travel laptop leaving enough space to allow updates. And the "disk" is soldered to the mobo, so I can't upgrade it.

The takeaway I'm getting from this is that they're making the Start menu and Taskbar look and act more like the MacOS Dock.

Yeah, that's gonna be handy. :rolleyes:

Well, you know. I've used both Mac and Windows machines for years, so I'm okay either way. As long as the OS actually works reliably, I don't really care about the cosmetic arrangement of controls.

My octogenarian dad is going to have some issues, though.

I would expect the opposite given that a) it's Microsoft, and the trend has been towards more bloat for years, b) there's a tool Windows 10 users can download to see if their machines can run 11, and c) they've said that "most" Windows 10 machines should be able to run it.

They're even renaming the Task Bar "the Dock".

I think my biggest gripe with this is that you need a Microsoft account to download and install it. I've gone all these years without a Microsoft account, and it would seem like a shame to capitulate now.

Really? All of the Microsoft promo material I'm seeing is still referring to the taskbar.

:( And will you have to log in to that account rather than one on the machine?

Perhaps not, then. I saw it in a YouTube video, and I'm sure they were being serious, but it's certainly credible that they were mistaken.

My Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB RAM, SDD, DirectX12 workhorse PC isn't compatible! That seems very strange

Nope the trend has been away from that, and it continues in 11. For example the following is not installed in a fresh install:

3D Viewer
OneNote for Windows 10
Paint 3D
Skype

The rules for new versions seem to be

1. Anything that doesn't need to be changed? Change it!
2. Anything that desperately needs to be changed? Find out what's wrong with it and make it worse.
3. Respond to all complaints "it'll be fixed in the next version."

Found the issue - TMP

No I'd say it is more:

"Hey all my friends in Seattle work like I do, so everyone wants to use their devices like I do!"

Skype is just being integrated into "Teams", which is now going to be part of the OS itself. They're introducing a bunch of widgets.

And in the old days I certainly never used to have a folder that featured programmes that I don't use and don't want and which either can't be uninstalled, or if they can then are automatically re-installed every update.

You're right that in literally the last couple of months they've finally listened to the cries of users and reduced a tiny amount of the bloat. But that's a small step back from a decades-long trend.

Up to 10.289?

I'm a bit confused on this part, and I'll dig into it after a bit, but what about domain joins? If you just have to make an account to download the ISO or whatever, then I'm not concerned, but I'll be damned if I'm going to create 50 microsoft accounts just so they can use the windows OS. If that is the case I would actually consider looking at other OS's and moving the office over. I've already got two on Ubuntu that like it more than Microsoft anyway.

Nope they've been doing it for years.

March: https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/0...-on-bloatware/
https://www.techspot.com/news/88948-...-upcoming.html

Although last year they did include an app that would remove other people's bloatware for you: https://www.howtogeek.com/265054/how...the-bloatware/

Lots of excellent articles about W11 including the TMP issue at Bleeping Computer...

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

I'm still waiting to update this W7 computer I'm typing on to Windows 9. I'll do that as soon as they release it.

"The good news is that if you do not like the new Start Menu, you can switch back to the 'Classic' Windows 10 Start Menu and left-align the taskbar, so it looks pretty much like Windows 10."

I wonder if I'll be able to keep it off my laptop this time?

The thing barely runs with Windows 10, which I kept refusing until the ******* silently installed it overnight.

(And broke a lot of one-off installed apps to which were installed to communicate with proprietary hardware)

It is. The branding department is getting bored and had to do something. The OS is fundmentally same, they just put some new curtains up.

But do the carpets match the drapes?

Choosing beggar. Greedy greedy greedy. You want all the benefits of a modern and comprehensive operating system, without being beholden in any way to the people who are providing you with that operating system.

I bought a new microwave a few months ago. Most of the buttons are the same as my previous ones, but the Start and Stop buttons are switched. I still go for the Stop button first by habit almost every day.

I haven't driven a stick shift in almost 30 years, yet I still find myself on rare occasions reaching for it to shift gears.

Firefox recently made a change to their appearance, making the menu items spaced farther apart ostensibly making them easier to see. But it's more mouse travel and I had to visually search to find the bookmarks I use daily. Fortunately I found a way to get them back the way I like because I can almost find my regular links blindfolded that way due to muscle memory.

So, I'm not fond of positional changes for things my body automatically knows how to do.

Yeah, as I say, I imagine that most people with a little bit of nous will put it back immediately, in the same way that it's common to see people with a classic start menu, rather than the start screen, or whatever 10 has now.

As has been mentioned TPM is a necessary condition for upgrading to Win11.

However, it is not a sufficient one, and CPU age seems to be a somewhat hit or miss factor.

I was unsurprised that my ~6 year old laptop with a 9 year old AMD A8 CPU wasn't going to make the cut, but disappointed that my 2 year old laptop with a 3 year old AMD Ryzen 2500u does not. It has TPM 2.0, which is enabled (I checked the BIOS), but for some reason Windows doesn't want to recognize it.

I checked for the AMD PSP fTPM support in the BIOS mentioned in the Bleeping Computer article William Parcher so helpfully linked to (Thanks, WP :)), but could not find such a setting. I suspect this may have something to do with the problem.

The CPU in question is not included on MS's list of compatible CPUs. This is also probably a contributing factor. Why it is not is a puzzle, since it seems to satisfy the horsepower,speed, and bandwidth requirements.

Here's the the thing. There are a whole lot of computers out there, desktop and laptop and tablet, which aren't going to make the cut. It isn't just a handful of older models.

And MS has announced the End Of Life for Win 10 to be 2025. So in four years none of those computers are going to get any security updates or support.

My older laptop has a 17" screen, which means it is my goto device for most sustained reading. It has been chugging along so well that I swapped out the original HDD for an SSD, and have been quite pleased with the improvement, especially when booting up.

My other laptop is a 15+" which does very well, much faster than her big sister, and barring blow-ups I had hoped for it to hang in there as well.

We aren't talking phones here, people. These gizmos are expensive, and now MS is essentially deciding by fiat that a huge chunk of the computer using public is going to have to buy new machines in four years or suffer the consequences.

Not a pretty look.

But I guess we know now why Win 10 wasn't the last version after all.

And yet, they did say exactly this.

If people are going to struggle with a rather minor update to Windows Linux is going to be well beyond them!

That will be 10 years of supporting a product, I don't think that is an unreasonably short time.

Plus knowing MS's past there will still be critical patches issued.