Even in the case you could remove it, it would probably be reinstated the next update. If it is not software dependant I will try linux and remove Windows completely
When Microsoft adds something like this, to the very valuable visual prime real estate taskbar, which is always visible at all times, why do they not include the option to remove it?
Do they simply not think about it, or is it a cold calculated choice in order to promote use of the new feature?
The other launchers were always more feature rich compared to the launchers that come with some phones. I love having everything and the kitchen sink in case I need it.
They usually do. I only have experience with Windows 10, though (after the trainwreck that Win10 eventually became, I had to move away from Windows permanently). Weather, Skype and the search bar all had setting checkboxes to remove them and get the taskbar back to what it used to be before Microsoft decided the entirety of Windows was their personal Bing advertisement ground.
(Also, as an ex-Microsoft employee, it's clear to me they only reason they're doing this stuff is to drive more 'organic' search traffic to Bing so they can have better numbers to show advertisers)
It's possible with Windows 11 they simply haven't done the extra effort to make this change toggleable?
Windows 11 does have the option to remove these items including search from the taskbar. The person asking the question wants to leave search on the taskbar but remove the text "Search" from within the entry field for the search widget.
Sorry, I'm bad at explaining myself, hah. I go on tangents.
My point was that with Windows 10 there usually was a toggle for the changes they make to the taskbar. But for some reason, there doesn't appear to be for this one.
It's just the label though, won't change anything functional. It's like asking for an option to remove "What's of your mind?" from Facebook status input box.
The Windows 11 task bar/start menu changes are really baffling to me because they really do change a bunch of stuff and then provide no way to turn them off. Most egregiously, if you just want apps in your start menu and remove the "recommended" fluff, then you literally end up with a start menu block which is half empty, and in the "recommended" half, it gives you a helpful link to the settings to turn back on the "recommended" option you just turned off. It's almost like someone at Microsoft is having a joke at their users' expense.
The search is now also really hideous. Popping open random websites by default instead of files or applications on my own computer that are a better lexical match is incredibly annoying for a company that also makes VS Code, which almost always finds what you want when you type just a few letters of the thing.
The start menu search is just another instance of someone at MS trying to meet a KPI to drive search traffic to Bing. I believe there's a registry setting where you can turn the Bing search off and it'll go back to how search used to behave in the start menu.
And the ads/'recommended' apps are just another source of revenue from advertising. It's really strange to me. Windows isn't a free operating system, it still costs $140 retail for a Home license. But they sure treat their users like it is.
Thanks for the tip! If anyone else has found themselves annoyed by an exact internet search result hijacking a partial local result when you start typing and hit enter, the registry path is HKCU:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer, set DisableSearchBoxSuggestions DWORD to 1.
I also find the ads in Windows unnecessary and redundant, considering I already paid for it. What I wonder is if a certain number of people have become so accustomed to seeing ads everywhere that they feel like a system is somehow less "exciting" or "helpful" when they aren't being bombarded with calls to action. This could explain why ads and other constructs like points, achievements etc seem to be getting shoehorned into interfaces that historically didn't need them.
I'm running Windows 11 preview and have the ability to turn off taskbar items in taskbar settings. I get the impression that they are still experimenting with the search box settings.
Nobody wants to use Windows Search but some Microsoft PM thought it's because people don't know what that box is and need a label to find it and use it...
If your design team is driven by metrics not vision then why would you offer the option to remove it having a metric saying people don’t like it makes the decision look bad, after all you’re being judged on how much you increase Bing hits.
Really good design can only exist where you’re building to the vision of someone with good and opinionated taste. Building to only metrics is why trash like sign up gates on Twitter/Pinterest etc exist.
Opinionated in the sense that you're trying to make the best tool possible and will spend time arguing back when people try and make it worse, like with suggesting the taskbar team focus should be improving Bing search hits metric.
Un-opinionated people will just do what they're told and design trash.
The thread is about removing the label, not the whole search box.
Which is a sort of silly thing to complain about, but Windows 11 has a lot of taskbar feature regressions. You can't even pin the thing to the left or right edge anymore. So I understand why users are frustrated.
This all represents a philosophical shift in Windows ("the taskbar is Microsoft's, not yours") and it will be a painful adjustment for power users.
That's not how Microsoft historically operates. Programs I wrote 20 years ago still work on Windows using ancient apis that they carry, because they care about backwards support. Whatever obscure msc or exe you ran in the 90s is still there, still runs, and still configures the OS. To this day you can check weird boxes deep in your disk config to put buggy behavior back into Windows, because it fixes a bug a single customer had decades ago.
My theory is simpler: it was too hard to add new features to the taskbar (like wide search bars and now text fields) when you had to think about a tall and a wide configuration. So they cut the tall way. Now they can cram all sorts of features into your taskbar.
It represents a shift in MS philosophy, closer to how Apple mandates progress in their OS.
If I have a program that emits a painful audio bit every time the user does X and only 0.05% of users disable it by going to a configuration value they need to search for through dozens of (my own) SEO'd results, that doesn't mean that only 0.05% of users want it disabled, it just means that only 0.05% of users were able to figure out how to stop my program from doing X.
I work on a product where our power user base is known for requesting registry options to change/disable feature x/y, and our market research has consistently shown a registry value doesn't enter most people's minds; to further this point, our user base is specifically IT persons. Even our Linux user base (actual day to day linux users) don't consider asking if we have a config file to edit somewhere in any overwhelming way.
The point I take from this data (which I know is anecdata for you) is that most users assume software "out of the box" is what you see is what you get. Making these changes and options and not including a way to remove them is not a good way of tracking interest since the sample size that is actually willing to take the time to complain and post compared to those that just look at other software entirely are far different. You're dealing with a complete unknown in the Power User space; regular users are even less inclined to see how to disable it and hiding it behind registry edits is actually a dissuasion.
MIcrosoft is well known, and one of the first which did extensive user-testing of UIs, video tapped, experts analyzing through one-way mirrors, questioning, ...
I doubt that they removed the side taskbar option without very extensive testing and discussions. In fact, it's a well repeated criticism of Microsoft, that they have TOO MANY options, not too few:
>> I doubt that they removed the side taskbar option without very extensive testing and discussions.
And yet Windows 11 adoption remains low.
The nonsense UI changes to the taskbar are the primary reason I am still using Windows 10.
The issue with having so many features is that people use those features and become reliant upon them. Removing those features means that the product is not as good as its predecessor and thus fewer people move to the new version.
I suspect the TPM 2.0 requirement is the bigger reason. Let's face it, most Windows users are unaware of what exact version they are running. If it prompted to auto-update to Windows 11 they would click yes.
>> I suspect the TPM 2.0 requirement is the bigger reason. Let's face it, most Windows users are unaware of what exact version they are running. If it prompted to auto-update to Windows 11 they would click yes.
I am sure that may be true for some users, but certainly not for all.
My computer meets TPM 2.0 requirements, but I turn down every Windows 11 upgrade offer.
The business I work for buys new PCs to replace old ones, but the company OS image is still Windows 10.
Well, except the article and the argument aren't what we were talking about.
You were talking about % of users using an option and the cost of using it, to which I argued that it's quite difficult even with perfect telemetry to know whether people are not using an option because they don't want to use it or they just cannot find it. Telemetry data like this just tells you N% of users do X; you don't know why just from the fact that they do it. The user base for my product does X which is contrary to the intended design all the time, and we don't know why until we get to one on one discussions as to why they tried it that way, and even that is very difficult data to get.
Your article here is not really related, it's about choices in UI that are confusing (and also cannot be enabled/disabled from the UI), and in fact I even understand this point to undermine the first; even if Microsoft continues to do large amounts of user testing, are they doing anything meaningful with the data if they continue to have too many choices?
I don't think there's a lot of sense to speculate on why Microsoft made a choice unless they publish a claim as to why they made a choice; we can point to data and anecdata endlessly to support positions but it doesn't actually make a case for the affirmative in either way.
What I am to say is that even with user testing, countless options, and so on, at best you can say that on a vanilla installation, N% of a sample group did X. With extrapolating statistical math, you can assume with a margin of error that if N% of users from Z sample set did X, then Y% of users will likely do the same with some margin of error.
From anecdata I can know from other persons who call themselves Windows power users and/or technical persons, I know that the common response to most Windows changes is not that it's good or bad, but that you just learn to deal with it after awhile. Personally I take this as more negative, that is it's not active adoption it's begrudging acceptance, but that's a personal take.
> Your article here is not really related, it's about choices in UI that are confusing
But remove any of the shutdown options, and someone who uses it will complain saying that it's the perfect one for them.
> know that the common response to most Windows changes is not that it's good or bad, but that you just learn to deal with it after awhile.
So what's the alternative, not changing nothing ever? We would still have the Windows 3.1 interface (no taskbar) according to this logic, I'm sure the transition from the 3.1 model to the Windows 95 model was extremely disrupting to Windows 3.1 users who had muscle memory for it. Yet in retrospect it was the correct choice. Should Windows 95 kept as an alternative the Windows 3.1 interface? Forever? Should it still be present in Windows 11 just because there are 10 users who loved it?
I got your point about hidden features and removing them, I sometimes discover wonderful features in software I've been using for years, but at the same time, I accept that progress also means losing things sometimes. You get 10 new features or improvements, you lose 2. Other say "no, I can't lose nothing, I will chose the existing 2 features versus the 10 new ones". That's ok too, they can keep using Windows 10.
Use a taskbar replacement. I use StartAllBack [0] because unlike the Windows devs, I use my monitors in landscape mode (sassy way of saying it gives you a vertical taskbar). It’s not free (not even as in beer, cheap and a one-time payment though), but it’s the only one that did what I wanted. If you are okay with a horizontal taskbar, there are even FLOSS tools.
It's sad because I liked Windows, but at this point if they keep doing this stuff I'd rather change the OS than the task bar. I still get all sorts of hardware and driver trouble that require arcane commands buried in old forums to fix, but Windows' UX is getting so much worse every update.
Besides being very much in love with a bunch of Windows-only programs, I also work on .NET Framework (from before cross-platform times) apps, so I’d need to dual-boot anyway.
I'm on https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to make 11 bearable, but it's a bit of a rough ride every time an update hits. First time ever I went through with a "donate" link on some software, that's how bad 11 is!
I ordered an MS Surface Pro 8 when orders went live on the MS site. It turns out it had the dubious honor of being the very first laptop to ship with Win11 pre-installed. There was no mention of this on the order page or way to opt out. So it was a surprise when it showed up.
I rely heavily on taskbar features so ExplorerPatcher has been my savior and the only way I stil have Win11 installed on that machine. It was a little rough in the early days but it's gotten much more reliable, especially if you're not taking bleeding edge Win11 Insider builds from Microsoft.
My problem is that I need a left-screen-edge taskbar, which they totally removed as a feature in Win11. StartAllBack gives me that. Does ExplorerPatcher do that too?
Just checked, left/right is possible, with two settings (one for the display designated primary, the other for all other displays).
Taking another look at StartIsBack I'm somewhat surprised that I preferred donating to ExplorerPatched over buying StartIsBack, I guess I didn't want to get used to something that I could not install on any new computer encounter without money getting involved. That, and the massive Google results dominance StartIsBack enjoyed while I was desperately looking for an 11-fix: at a certain level of SEO success the trust heuristics in my brain start screaming "scam" no matter what. In an objective level I really don't believe that StartIsBack is anything close to malware (doesn't even require admin, apparently (1)), but the SEO success and intense layman appeal of the site triggers all my fight or flight reflexes. Far too reminiscent of those old system cleaner tool traps.
((1) not that "no admin" would be a panacea: that might have been a difference back in the day when "taking over the system" was the only thing to really be concerned about, but these days on a typical personal computer there's plenty of valuable identity stuff that a piece of malware could harvest without ever escalating beyond user)
Yeah that's totally fair. I had the same reticence, I didn't want to pay for a fundamental fix. But I needed it and I found no better option so I installed it. And it's pretty impressive overall. I avoided paying for it as long as I could (90 days) and then told myself, yeah, definitely can't do without this still, and paid for it.
I find that one ugly and inconvenient (I think around XP was the time I tried alternate window managers because the default look was so ugly). The modern look with the icons and icon-actions is perfect for a vertical taskbar
Just a note that search indexer will still make your computer unusable when it kicks in, even on a Microsoft Surface device, as it has for the last twenty years. I gave it another try with this last update thinking they’d maybe worked on the backend, but:nope.
i am on kde so this is never a concern for me. anything and everything is customizable because they believe their users should be given a choice. compared that to apple/gnome (i even read in an old apple design magazine/books that users are stupid and should not be given choice to change the "design") but this is trying to move towards that but then you "still" have an option to change the taskbar with a third party one so windows is still not apple like yet....
the problem is, i choose apple, i know i am getting into a walled garden where people are expected to follow the way apple wants them to. kde is on the opposite end. Windows until win7 at least or as late as win10 was more towards kde than apple but it is trying to transition....
the problem is, people who use windows "expect" windows to be customizable and that is giving them grief. i'd stay people are having trouble adjusting to the Microsoft vision of moving to the apple side (because of actual nefarious purpose at least)
Why does Microsoft make these pointless UI changes? Instead of migrating over existing UI's in the rest of the operating system that use Aero, Windows 10, and even Windows 98...
I know that there are probably different teams for the Shell, and each app but I would hope that there would be a person that drives the overall "vision" of the Operating System.
Funnily enough, on this actual web page (superuser) you have at the top a search box prefilled with the "Search on Super User..." place holder.
Windows is not Linux, you can't customize every bit of text you see on screen. Every Windows instance kind of looks and behaves like every other one. For some that's actually a good thing, some people just want to get work done instead of spending days customizing every little pixel on the screen.
I removed the search text-box by right clicking on the task bar, this brought up the Personalisation>Taskbar settings menu. The top item under Taskbar Items is search, toggle the switch from on to off. As a side-note, I'm in EU, so perhaps you don't have this option in other regions?
In Windows 10 at least, if you remove the Search box / icon, you can still access search by typing while the start menu is open. This means you can quite easily search from the keyboard alone by first hitting [Win] to open the menu, then typing a query. If the result is a program, hitting [Enter] then launches it.
It does, but I suppose the Superuser post is really against the text "Search" being there. At a certain point it's unrealistic to expect configuration, even in registry etc, to be able to customize every little part of the UI. Even if it's 10 lines defining the registry state and checking it when the OS is pulling the search text, it's debt that only a handful of users will be annoyed by enough to go change.
On the subject, is there any compelling reason to use Windows 11 rather than Windows 10?
My plan is to use Windows 10 as long as it's supported, then stop using Windows altogether which is already only for games. Then I can hopefully use a Steam Deck or a future 'Steam PC'.
I can see how MS might consider Windows to matter less with their infrastructure/services business, but anything that keeps users on Windows rather than switch to the Apple ecosystem has to be worth the effort to make Windows suck less rather than cashing out. I'm trying to see the long term strategy and it might be making MS an open-source services company around .NET (and a Linux distribution) along with proprietary cloud and apps (SharePoint etc).
The only compelling reason to use windows 11 over windows 10 is if you enjoy the cosmetic changes and don’t care about the loss in functionality or you’re willing to install third party software or mess in the register to undo this loss.
I don’t care about their cosmetic change so I will do the same: hang to windows 10 until EOL and then pray to god that nvidia and wayland will have fixed their rough edges (night light, etc).
We're getting there! Wayland is slowly becoming more and more usable, and unless you've got an nvidia GPU, there's a good chance you wouldn't even notice you're running Wayland most of the time.
My intel igpu laptop is running Wayland full-time and it works perfectly. No tearing, night light works, xwayland is seamless, input stuff works*, and there's working sleep and resume, including sleep and throttling on low battery.
* You can't change the set of keyboard layouts without restarting Wayland, but you can switch layouts just fine.
I don't see why you posted this? The poster specifically asks for compelling reasons, because they know about the downsides that "punch you in the face". This diverts the conversation back to "windows 11 bad" instead of actually commenting on the content of ape4's comment.
I'm not sure I need an abject justification of why I posted that as I think it's fairly obvious, but here goes. I posted it because quite frankly Windows 11 is less notably productive and more distracting which is a net reduction in any realistic performance metric. Thus I disagree with the trite point that windows 11 is faster.
Didn't Windows already used to have a setting for this? I remember I used to set it more to 'balanced' than make the UI faster back when I had a Windows work machine. I guess that was more for process scheduling and not the MMS.
This feature has existed since Windows NT. Nothing has changed about it. By default, Windows will raise the priority of foreground apps a tick. You can turn that off if you want.
> Windows 11 definitely feels faster and smoother compared to Windows 10. Much of this comes from the improved memory management system that Windows 11 is using. If you own an average computer in terms of specs, you’ll definitely notice the difference. The same is valid for old low-specs machines. Windows 11 feels a lot snappier, even on HDD machines. Overall, it runs better than its predecessor on many computers.
Windows 10 system requirements[0]:
* Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
* RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
Windows 11 system requirements[1]:
* 1 Ghz or faster with 2 or more cores and appearing on our list of approved CPUs.
* RAM: 4 GB.
Gee, they made it "feel" faster and all they had to do was quadruple the memory requirements and restrict it to whitelisted hardware. However do the wizards at Redmond perform such sorcery?
>Gee, they made it "feel" faster and all they had to do was quadruple the memory requirements and restrict it to whitelisted hardware. However do the wizards at Redmond perform such sorcery?
What do the system requirements have to do with the better performance for 11, if the tests were performed on the same hardware?
You yourself posted the reason why it's faster and it isn't because of the system requirements: "Windows 11 definitely feels faster and smoother compared to Windows 10. Much of this comes from the improved memory management system that Windows 11 is using. If you own an average computer in terms of specs, you’ll definitely notice the difference. The same is valid for old low-specs machines. Windows 11 feels a lot snappier, even on HDD machines. Overall, it runs better than its predecessor on many computers."
Also, Windows 10 was launched in 2015, while 11 launched in 2021, it can be understandable they advertise higher system requirements today vs 2015, as computing hardware has also evolved in that time frame and so have the demands of the apps people run on their system, and they wish their users to have the best experience and if they'd advertise lower system requirements, then some users would complain "it's slow". This way they make it clear on which hardware you can expect a decent experience, and it's in no way gonna be on a system with once CPU core and 2GB of RAM. Hell, even the 4GB required for Win 11 seem incredibly conservative.
> What do the system requirements have to do with the better performance for 11, if the tests were performed on the same hardware?
> You yourself posted the reason why it's faster
First, note well that the article lacks benchmarks and is careful to only ever say Windows 11 "feels" faster.
If Windows 11 can preload 4 times as much in RAM that might be described as "improved memory management system" which would make it "feel faster". It is also an approach that is denied Windows 10 due to its minimum system requirements.
I find that spending some time turning off all the bloat that is enabled by default on any given Windows version results in an immediately responsive UI, such that feeling faster is not much of a selling point.
It is just amusing to me how each new version of Windows is billed as "the fastest ever!" while the minimum system requirements continue to balloon.
For my work computer the Start menu takes 4-5 seconds from hitting the Windows key to opening, and another 2-3 seconds to register what I'm trying to type in. I didn't see that test included in the article, do you have a measurement on your machine for this?
For my home computer both of these are instantaneous. But I admit I have tweaked performance on this machine because it's mainly used to music production.
Don't downgrade to Windows 11 (yes, it's a downgrade from my point of view). Windows 11 is very hostile to users. You can read my list of pain points with Windows 11 in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748076
I've come to the point where the only time I will take an OS upgrade is if security updates are stopped (unlikely) or if I'm switching hardware. My theory is that no OS "upgrade" will improve performance. Theoretically it could include optimization, but usually includes bloat because the minimum standard is raised.
Linux gamer since 2020 here. While obviously not perfect, things are getting better at amazing speed. Between Linux getting better and Windows getting worse at compatibility, your 3-year timeline looks very doable.
Though multiplayer games will remain a pain point for the foreseeable future, due to anti-cheat shenanigans.
(Also, sometimes the compat is there, but figuring out how to enable it is a pain. d3dx* being a good example; for me, it was selectable in winecfg menu, but wasn't installed until I figured out winetricks. Steam and Proton issues are much less obtuse.)
AFAIK the two big services (BattlEye and EAC) both already support Proton.
Off the top of my head, the biggest games not supporting Proton due to anti-cheat are Destiny 2* and Halo Master Chief Collection, and Halo MCC is actively being worked on by Valve & Microsoft.
*despite running BattlEye now, the Destiny devs have a deep-seated trauma from their game being derailed by cheaters for the years prior before BattlEye, and thus make very obtuse choices like not allowing overlays or not flipping the BattlEye Proton switch and allowing Destiny 2 to run on Proton
Those services support Linux, but like you noted, not all the games that use the services do. (adding to your Destiny example, Fortnite has explicitly been denied[3] Linux support.)
AutoHDR is 1000% better in my experience. Still some quirks, like Windows Key+Shift+S Screenshots not being tone mapped on my HDR monitor sometimes, but otherwise W10 HDR wasn't too pleasant.
After waiting for 22H2 I finally upgraded (in place). It feels faster and looks like my 16gb of ram fill up slower which I attribute to improved memory management. All my multi device Bluetooth issues are also gone (had problems with Bose headphones disconnecting, Bluetooth keyboard not working a times using Windows 10).
I did install startallback so I can have vertical taskbar and modified registry to bring the Windows 10 right click menu back (which to be fair to Microsoft wouldn't be needed if my other software would use the win 11 APIs to add options to the menu)
Windows 10 gets very confused when you have monitors with different DPIs and you're switching between them, which is very common for me nowadays. Windows 11 doesn't seem to have any problems.
It also has better HDR support and feels faster to me.
I think MS is just playing around with different UI concepts and seeing what users will tolerate in 11 before cleaning everything up in Win 12 just before the support ends for 10. At work, we're still on Win 10, with no plan to move to 11, which mirrors my strategy at home.
I also largely avoided Win 8, staying on 7 almost until 10 was released, which was a tolerable 'fix' of 8's experimental features.
I'd switch today if Valve could fix all the problems with their VR kit on Linux. Yes, even though that means ~$1000 in hardware costs for me to buy a new headset and base stations and whatnot. Microsoft has managed to burn so much of what made Windows my preferred OS away that I'm willing to put up with Linux Desktop's bullshit instead.
Linux desktop since 2016 here. The nice part about the Linux bullshit is that it's always the same bullshit. You don't get brand new bullshit shoved at you.
It's nice to feel like you really own your software.
Devils advocate I upgraded last week (after holding off for a long time) and it's working well for me. Memory management seems much better with WSL / in general (not having to restart nearly as much). I make use of virtual desktops a lot, and the no animation when switching between them is a nice QOL, but one I couldn't go back on.
You can make everything less hostile quickly by removing the search bar, and removing the "search web" feature in start menu etc in a couple of minutes.
WSL virtual environment will allocate memory during use, but won't release it... in earlier releases it would use up everything... in more recent versions (not sure when the cut from 10/11 was), it will limit to half system ram... You can set this manually with a config file in your home directory. WSLg is limited to Win11 though, even though it was in the insiders builds for 10 before 11 came out.
Win11 isn't too bad, but the increases in effectively advertorial software, ads in search results and breaking twice on me, my desktop is on my Linux drive most of the time, and I'll probably remove my Windows drive altogether (nvme/pcie adapter) for a 10gb nic.
At this point, the only Windows system I use is my work computer, and it's too locked down for me to update WSL or Windows to a new release cycle (21H2). Glad WSLg is on Win10 at this point though... Was really a turning point imo for working inside WSL... VS Code remote dev is also invaluable, but not the same as actual *nix apps.
Windows 11 has finally fixed bluetooth - in 10 you get two audio devices", bluetooth stereo and bluetooth hands-free. When you are watching a video, and someone calls, your headseet switches to a 'hands-free' mode and all sound that is still streaming to the stereo audio device dissapears into a black hole.
Windows 11 actually understands that this is a single audio device and handles bluetooth mode switching for you. This removed a mahor painpoint for me.
Otherwise, in my opinion, its a normal mixed bad - something is better, something is worse. Meh.
I went to Windows 11 on my laptop and hate it. Windows 10 will stay on my desktop for as long as possible.
That said, there is one thing that really bothers me. They only added support for the 6GHz Wi-Fi protocol in 11 (as part of WiFi 6e). So I can't use the 6 GHz channel on my desktop. It's really annoying.
There's many features being released for 11 only. Seemingly to incentivise people to switch. Windows subsystem for Android being another (beta).
I have seen Uni student buy Apple laptops after their Windows laptops have automatically upgraded or by mistake and they hated the experience.
Connected OS to your MS account, gear up for operating system level Ads and counter productive UI. I think this will finally have me buy a Mac and use Unity for VMware if I need to run something Windows related. Thanks Microsoft.
I upgraded and can’t see why they even gave it a new number. Feels like some past Win10 upgrades were similarly large.
Apart from some cosmetic changes I have no opinion on, a few new and changed features (mostly good), the biggest difference I see is the new explorer context menu which is awful since you 98% of the time need an extra click to reach the item you need.
But apart from that, it feels like a solid version. Just the usual hardware support improvements alone make it an acceptable upgrade. It also feels slightly more clever in the MacOS way when it comes to switching between audio devices etc.
>I upgraded and can’t see why they even gave it a new number.
The latest W11 is still obviously Windows 10 version 10.0.22621.1037, and that's on the beta channel where the comment is "Updated the search box on the taskbar with more rounded corners."
Outlook made a similarly annoying UI change recently, moving the nav items to the left side and taking up the full height of the screen. Thankfully there was an advanced setting to turn it off.
Last time I mentioned this here I was condescended to that this is a group policy setting. I'm not allowed to change them or request a change, but maybe you can.
Windows is just a burning trash heap at this point. I hate every moment of using it when I have to. How they can use the "professional" moniker with a straight face I don't know.
It's a shame because it could be better if they actually stopped the marketoids and CXO class from interfering in the product engineering decisions.
> It's a MS product, and if they want a "Search" label, they are free to add it.
> Either don't use an MS OS (there are at least two alternatives) or stop complaining about trivial things.
Are you seriously arguing that entirely switching OSs is the correct approach to solving this as opposed to asking how to remove the undesired behavior? Are you totally against individual customization of a user’s OS or sonething?
To search in Windows, click the start button (or hotkey for start) and simply start typing. I’ve never seen the need for the search box or button, label or no label.
This is all really subjective of course, but I dislike that that start button is small, search is big, and then applications are small again. However, perhaps eliminating the start button is in the future? Move the search button in place of the start button and its quite pleasing, to me at least.
I have to use windows for work but hate MS and want to move to linux at home at least. I did some f/oss work that needed unix, installed Ubuntu on a spare box, picked gnome - and it was horrible. Big, clunky, so much weird user-hostile behaviour, superficially slick visually but not good for workflow, and bugs... Windows has a lot of polish (which they are destroying) but I can't consider gnome again.
Are there any alternatives anyone knows of that are user friendly, reliable, don't keep hiding options...?
I'd really like to move off windows but so far it doesn't feel like I can.
Have you looked at KDE Plasma? I personally don’t like it because it looks and acts too much like Windows but it’s probably what you’re looking for.
I use Gnome myself because I like the hot corners, and I like it well enough but I’m currently trying to figure out AwesomeWM. I did borrow some of the shortcut ideas from it for gnome like windows key + enter for a console.
To be clear, it's not about how it looks or acts - I flip between emacs and visual studio and they are utterly different for example - I need an interface that
a) isn't buggy and
b) is designed by people who understand a GUI isn't an end in itself but a means for someone to get their work done.
There is also Linux Mint XFCE. I prefer this because *ubuntu isn't focused on the desktop any more and Mint is. Also, Snaps are annoying and he repo is controlled by Canonical. Mint doesn't have Snaps unless you want them.
I really liked Windows 10. Like I honestly felt like Microsoft had gotten their head out of their ass and started trying to build a good product again.
Sure, you had to use O&O ShutUp (1) and block ads via hosts table (2) and turn off DNS Caching (3) or it would take like 10 minutes to find your internet connection again every time you re-booted... but I felt like they were going in the right direction, and I could mute all the crap I hated.
And then Windows 11 came out. And it has zilch in the way of any new features, and they keep pushing more and more of the annoying crap. Like a "search" button that forces Bing, and weather than forces Bing, and "online" that forces Teams and whatever else. And you can turn stuff off, for the most part...
But I just feel like they're constantly trying to find new ways to spam their crap on me, and force their other products or services -- many of which I've already told them numerous times I hate. I hate Bing. I hate Teams. I hate all that schlock they're peddling. And they keep making it more pervasive, and harder to turn off.
And look, there's no UX improvements I enjoy, there's no features I need... Windows 11, and all of Microsoft's new features for Windows are just garbage. And it was hard to install, I had to do some hacky stuff to get my motherboard to spoof some settings so I could even put Windows 11 on what was at the time a 2-year-old computer.
If I had one wish for Microsoft, it would be to stop trying to sell me things via the OS. Just build a good OS, and stop all the other crap. It's not making me say, "Gosh, I love all your new features!" It's making me actively look for alternatives.
153 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadWhen Microsoft adds something like this, to the very valuable visual prime real estate taskbar, which is always visible at all times, why do they not include the option to remove it?
Do they simply not think about it, or is it a cold calculated choice in order to promote use of the new feature?
At least, I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I never use it.
That is not a realistic option.
(Also, as an ex-Microsoft employee, it's clear to me they only reason they're doing this stuff is to drive more 'organic' search traffic to Bing so they can have better numbers to show advertisers)
It's possible with Windows 11 they simply haven't done the extra effort to make this change toggleable?
My point was that with Windows 10 there usually was a toggle for the changes they make to the taskbar. But for some reason, there doesn't appear to be for this one.
The search is now also really hideous. Popping open random websites by default instead of files or applications on my own computer that are a better lexical match is incredibly annoying for a company that also makes VS Code, which almost always finds what you want when you type just a few letters of the thing.
And the ads/'recommended' apps are just another source of revenue from advertising. It's really strange to me. Windows isn't a free operating system, it still costs $140 retail for a Home license. But they sure treat their users like it is.
I also find the ads in Windows unnecessary and redundant, considering I already paid for it. What I wonder is if a certain number of people have become so accustomed to seeing ads everywhere that they feel like a system is somehow less "exciting" or "helpful" when they aren't being bombarded with calls to action. This could explain why ads and other constructs like points, achievements etc seem to be getting shoehorned into interfaces that historically didn't need them.
100% agree it is a ploy to drive Bing search.
Really good design can only exist where you’re building to the vision of someone with good and opinionated taste. Building to only metrics is why trash like sign up gates on Twitter/Pinterest etc exist.
I think that is an oxymoron. Opinionated is just an euphemism for dogmatic and hard to work with person.
E.g. the Go formater that enforces no-tabs or whatever. I don't want the tool to force stuff on me, ever.
Pushing a stupid button and refusing to make the users able to remove it is a typical opinionated design choice.
Un-opinionated people will just do what they're told and design trash.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hide-and-unhide-...
The question is about keeping the search box and hiding the search label.
Which is a sort of silly thing to complain about, but Windows 11 has a lot of taskbar feature regressions. You can't even pin the thing to the left or right edge anymore. So I understand why users are frustrated.
This all represents a philosophical shift in Windows ("the taskbar is Microsoft's, not yours") and it will be a painful adjustment for power users.
What if only 0.05% of users do that? Is it really worth all that entropy in code and test matrix for such a low usage feature?
My theory is simpler: it was too hard to add new features to the taskbar (like wide search bars and now text fields) when you had to think about a tall and a wide configuration. So they cut the tall way. Now they can cram all sorts of features into your taskbar.
It represents a shift in MS philosophy, closer to how Apple mandates progress in their OS.
I also run software last compiled in 1997, but Windows 11 looks a whole lot different than Windows 95 where that software was compiled.
If I have a program that emits a painful audio bit every time the user does X and only 0.05% of users disable it by going to a configuration value they need to search for through dozens of (my own) SEO'd results, that doesn't mean that only 0.05% of users want it disabled, it just means that only 0.05% of users were able to figure out how to stop my program from doing X.
I work on a product where our power user base is known for requesting registry options to change/disable feature x/y, and our market research has consistently shown a registry value doesn't enter most people's minds; to further this point, our user base is specifically IT persons. Even our Linux user base (actual day to day linux users) don't consider asking if we have a config file to edit somewhere in any overwhelming way.
The point I take from this data (which I know is anecdata for you) is that most users assume software "out of the box" is what you see is what you get. Making these changes and options and not including a way to remove them is not a good way of tracking interest since the sample size that is actually willing to take the time to complain and post compared to those that just look at other software entirely are far different. You're dealing with a complete unknown in the Power User space; regular users are even less inclined to see how to disable it and hiding it behind registry edits is actually a dissuasion.
I doubt that they removed the side taskbar option without very extensive testing and discussions. In fact, it's a well repeated criticism of Microsoft, that they have TOO MANY options, not too few:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/11/21/choices-headaches/
And yet Windows 11 adoption remains low.
The nonsense UI changes to the taskbar are the primary reason I am still using Windows 10.
The issue with having so many features is that people use those features and become reliant upon them. Removing those features means that the product is not as good as its predecessor and thus fewer people move to the new version.
I suspect the TPM 2.0 requirement is the bigger reason. Let's face it, most Windows users are unaware of what exact version they are running. If it prompted to auto-update to Windows 11 they would click yes.
I am sure that may be true for some users, but certainly not for all.
My computer meets TPM 2.0 requirements, but I turn down every Windows 11 upgrade offer.
The business I work for buys new PCs to replace old ones, but the company OS image is still Windows 10.
You were talking about % of users using an option and the cost of using it, to which I argued that it's quite difficult even with perfect telemetry to know whether people are not using an option because they don't want to use it or they just cannot find it. Telemetry data like this just tells you N% of users do X; you don't know why just from the fact that they do it. The user base for my product does X which is contrary to the intended design all the time, and we don't know why until we get to one on one discussions as to why they tried it that way, and even that is very difficult data to get.
Your article here is not really related, it's about choices in UI that are confusing (and also cannot be enabled/disabled from the UI), and in fact I even understand this point to undermine the first; even if Microsoft continues to do large amounts of user testing, are they doing anything meaningful with the data if they continue to have too many choices?
I don't think there's a lot of sense to speculate on why Microsoft made a choice unless they publish a claim as to why they made a choice; we can point to data and anecdata endlessly to support positions but it doesn't actually make a case for the affirmative in either way.
What I am to say is that even with user testing, countless options, and so on, at best you can say that on a vanilla installation, N% of a sample group did X. With extrapolating statistical math, you can assume with a margin of error that if N% of users from Z sample set did X, then Y% of users will likely do the same with some margin of error.
From anecdata I can know from other persons who call themselves Windows power users and/or technical persons, I know that the common response to most Windows changes is not that it's good or bad, but that you just learn to deal with it after awhile. Personally I take this as more negative, that is it's not active adoption it's begrudging acceptance, but that's a personal take.
But remove any of the shutdown options, and someone who uses it will complain saying that it's the perfect one for them.
> know that the common response to most Windows changes is not that it's good or bad, but that you just learn to deal with it after awhile.
So what's the alternative, not changing nothing ever? We would still have the Windows 3.1 interface (no taskbar) according to this logic, I'm sure the transition from the 3.1 model to the Windows 95 model was extremely disrupting to Windows 3.1 users who had muscle memory for it. Yet in retrospect it was the correct choice. Should Windows 95 kept as an alternative the Windows 3.1 interface? Forever? Should it still be present in Windows 11 just because there are 10 users who loved it?
I got your point about hidden features and removing them, I sometimes discover wonderful features in software I've been using for years, but at the same time, I accept that progress also means losing things sometimes. You get 10 new features or improvements, you lose 2. Other say "no, I can't lose nothing, I will chose the existing 2 features versus the 10 new ones". That's ok too, they can keep using Windows 10.
A drastic solution, for sure.
[0]: https://www.startallback.com/
[0]: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/
I rely heavily on taskbar features so ExplorerPatcher has been my savior and the only way I stil have Win11 installed on that machine. It was a little rough in the early days but it's gotten much more reliable, especially if you're not taking bleeding edge Win11 Insider builds from Microsoft.
Taking another look at StartIsBack I'm somewhat surprised that I preferred donating to ExplorerPatched over buying StartIsBack, I guess I didn't want to get used to something that I could not install on any new computer encounter without money getting involved. That, and the massive Google results dominance StartIsBack enjoyed while I was desperately looking for an 11-fix: at a certain level of SEO success the trust heuristics in my brain start screaming "scam" no matter what. In an objective level I really don't believe that StartIsBack is anything close to malware (doesn't even require admin, apparently (1)), but the SEO success and intense layman appeal of the site triggers all my fight or flight reflexes. Far too reminiscent of those old system cleaner tool traps.
((1) not that "no admin" would be a panacea: that might have been a difference back in the day when "taking over the system" was the only thing to really be concerned about, but these days on a typical personal computer there's plenty of valuable identity stuff that a piece of malware could harvest without ever escalating beyond user)
Its portable and gives your taskbar look of Windows 98 -> Vista.
I find that one ugly and inconvenient (I think around XP was the time I tried alternate window managers because the default look was so ugly). The modern look with the icons and icon-actions is perfect for a vertical taskbar
And instead just use WinKey+F as a keyboard shortcut.
the problem is, i choose apple, i know i am getting into a walled garden where people are expected to follow the way apple wants them to. kde is on the opposite end. Windows until win7 at least or as late as win10 was more towards kde than apple but it is trying to transition....
the problem is, people who use windows "expect" windows to be customizable and that is giving them grief. i'd stay people are having trouble adjusting to the Microsoft vision of moving to the apple side (because of actual nefarious purpose at least)
I know that there are probably different teams for the Shell, and each app but I would hope that there would be a person that drives the overall "vision" of the Operating System.
Windows is not Linux, you can't customize every bit of text you see on screen. Every Windows instance kind of looks and behaves like every other one. For some that's actually a good thing, some people just want to get work done instead of spending days customizing every little pixel on the screen.
Does this not work in Windows 11?
My plan is to use Windows 10 as long as it's supported, then stop using Windows altogether which is already only for games. Then I can hopefully use a Steam Deck or a future 'Steam PC'.
I can see how MS might consider Windows to matter less with their infrastructure/services business, but anything that keeps users on Windows rather than switch to the Apple ecosystem has to be worth the effort to make Windows suck less rather than cashing out. I'm trying to see the long term strategy and it might be making MS an open-source services company around .NET (and a Linux distribution) along with proprietary cloud and apps (SharePoint etc).
I don’t care about their cosmetic change so I will do the same: hang to windows 10 until EOL and then pray to god that nvidia and wayland will have fixed their rough edges (night light, etc).
My intel igpu laptop is running Wayland full-time and it works perfectly. No tearing, night light works, xwayland is seamless, input stuff works*, and there's working sleep and resume, including sleep and throttling on low battery.
* You can't change the set of keyboard layouts without restarting Wayland, but you can switch layouts just fine.
This is what is frustrating. The core of windows and the shell is fine. It's just got a veneer of diarrhoea over everything.
I'm at a complete loss at the moment of how they manage to run the product like this.
> The Secret Ingredient: A New Memory Management System
> Windows 11 prioritizes apps and processes running in the foreground over background apps.
> Conclusion
> Windows 11 definitely feels faster and smoother compared to Windows 10. Much of this comes from the improved memory management system that Windows 11 is using. If you own an average computer in terms of specs, you’ll definitely notice the difference. The same is valid for old low-specs machines. Windows 11 feels a lot snappier, even on HDD machines. Overall, it runs better than its predecessor on many computers.
Windows 10 system requirements[0]:
* Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
* RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
Windows 11 system requirements[1]:
* 1 Ghz or faster with 2 or more cores and appearing on our list of approved CPUs.
* RAM: 4 GB.
Gee, they made it "feel" faster and all they had to do was quadruple the memory requirements and restrict it to whitelisted hardware. However do the wizards at Redmond perform such sorcery?
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-syste...
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-syste...
What do the system requirements have to do with the better performance for 11, if the tests were performed on the same hardware?
You yourself posted the reason why it's faster and it isn't because of the system requirements: "Windows 11 definitely feels faster and smoother compared to Windows 10. Much of this comes from the improved memory management system that Windows 11 is using. If you own an average computer in terms of specs, you’ll definitely notice the difference. The same is valid for old low-specs machines. Windows 11 feels a lot snappier, even on HDD machines. Overall, it runs better than its predecessor on many computers."
Also, Windows 10 was launched in 2015, while 11 launched in 2021, it can be understandable they advertise higher system requirements today vs 2015, as computing hardware has also evolved in that time frame and so have the demands of the apps people run on their system, and they wish their users to have the best experience and if they'd advertise lower system requirements, then some users would complain "it's slow". This way they make it clear on which hardware you can expect a decent experience, and it's in no way gonna be on a system with once CPU core and 2GB of RAM. Hell, even the 4GB required for Win 11 seem incredibly conservative.
Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.
> You yourself posted the reason why it's faster
First, note well that the article lacks benchmarks and is careful to only ever say Windows 11 "feels" faster.
If Windows 11 can preload 4 times as much in RAM that might be described as "improved memory management system" which would make it "feel faster". It is also an approach that is denied Windows 10 due to its minimum system requirements.
I find that spending some time turning off all the bloat that is enabled by default on any given Windows version results in an immediately responsive UI, such that feeling faster is not much of a selling point.
It is just amusing to me how each new version of Windows is billed as "the fastest ever!" while the minimum system requirements continue to balloon.
Maybe try disabling indexing or those web search feature.
Can't concur wit your PoV. Have not had any issues with it and the improvements in features and snappiness it brought over 10 was worth the upgrade.
You can read my list of improvements here (forgot to add Bluetooth improvements): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33870655
We have a bit under 3 years to get Linux's gaming support to match Windows without needing to delve into using KVM with a GPU passthrough as a crutch.
[0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows...
Though multiplayer games will remain a pain point for the foreseeable future, due to anti-cheat shenanigans.
(Also, sometimes the compat is there, but figuring out how to enable it is a pain. d3dx* being a good example; for me, it was selectable in winecfg menu, but wasn't installed until I figured out winetricks. Steam and Proton issues are much less obtuse.)
Off the top of my head, the biggest games not supporting Proton due to anti-cheat are Destiny 2* and Halo Master Chief Collection, and Halo MCC is actively being worked on by Valve & Microsoft.
*despite running BattlEye now, the Destiny devs have a deep-seated trauma from their game being derailed by cheaters for the years prior before BattlEye, and thus make very obtuse choices like not allowing overlays or not flipping the BattlEye Proton switch and allowing Destiny 2 to run on Proton
[1]https://nitter.unixfox.eu/thebattleye/status/144147781631129...
[2]https://areweanticheatyet.com/
[3]https://nitter.unixfox.eu/TimSweeneyEpic/status/149051919491...
I did install startallback so I can have vertical taskbar and modified registry to bring the Windows 10 right click menu back (which to be fair to Microsoft wouldn't be needed if my other software would use the win 11 APIs to add options to the menu)
Generally my experience after 2 weeks is good.
(Though ironically, the biggest users of this feature I'm aware of are Linux VFIO enthusiasts trying to run multiplayer games in a VM.)
It also has better HDR support and feels faster to me.
I also largely avoided Win 8, staying on 7 almost until 10 was released, which was a tolerable 'fix' of 8's experimental features.
It's nice to feel like you really own your software.
You can make everything less hostile quickly by removing the search bar, and removing the "search web" feature in start menu etc in a couple of minutes.
Win11 isn't too bad, but the increases in effectively advertorial software, ads in search results and breaking twice on me, my desktop is on my Linux drive most of the time, and I'll probably remove my Windows drive altogether (nvme/pcie adapter) for a 10gb nic.
WSLg added support for Windows 10 recently. Run `wsl --update` to get the latest version.
Windows 11 actually understands that this is a single audio device and handles bluetooth mode switching for you. This removed a mahor painpoint for me.
Otherwise, in my opinion, its a normal mixed bad - something is better, something is worse. Meh.
That said, there is one thing that really bothers me. They only added support for the 6GHz Wi-Fi protocol in 11 (as part of WiFi 6e). So I can't use the 6 GHz channel on my desktop. It's really annoying.
I have seen Uni student buy Apple laptops after their Windows laptops have automatically upgraded or by mistake and they hated the experience.
Connected OS to your MS account, gear up for operating system level Ads and counter productive UI. I think this will finally have me buy a Mac and use Unity for VMware if I need to run something Windows related. Thanks Microsoft.
I'm personally hoping steam/proton/anti-cheat etc improves so that I can dump the entire mess...
Apart from some cosmetic changes I have no opinion on, a few new and changed features (mostly good), the biggest difference I see is the new explorer context menu which is awful since you 98% of the time need an extra click to reach the item you need.
But apart from that, it feels like a solid version. Just the usual hardware support improvements alone make it an acceptable upgrade. It also feels slightly more clever in the MacOS way when it comes to switching between audio devices etc.
The latest W11 is still obviously Windows 10 version 10.0.22621.1037, and that's on the beta channel where the comment is "Updated the search box on the taskbar with more rounded corners."
My theory is that MS never expected macOS to stop being OSX (version 10) and once Apple came out with MacOS 11, Microsoft had to follow suit.
WSLg, although it was developed on Windows 10 and only 'requires' Windows 11 by way of anti-feature.
(You can use other X11 display servers on Windows 10 but the UX sucks compared to WSLg, even though WSLg is a bit of a buggy mess.)
Then no, there's no reason to 'upgrade' at all.
But then how will MSN News drive up their engagement metrics?
It's a shame because it could be better if they actually stopped the marketoids and CXO class from interfering in the product engineering decisions.
Either don't use an MS OS (there are at least two alternatives) or stop complaining about trivial things.
> Either don't use an MS OS (there are at least two alternatives) or stop complaining about trivial things.
Are you seriously arguing that entirely switching OSs is the correct approach to solving this as opposed to asking how to remove the undesired behavior? Are you totally against individual customization of a user’s OS or sonething?
Are there any alternatives anyone knows of that are user friendly, reliable, don't keep hiding options...?
I'd really like to move off windows but so far it doesn't feel like I can.
I use Gnome myself because I like the hot corners, and I like it well enough but I’m currently trying to figure out AwesomeWM. I did borrow some of the shortcut ideas from it for gnome like windows key + enter for a console.
a) isn't buggy and
b) is designed by people who understand a GUI isn't an end in itself but a means for someone to get their work done.
I need both and gnome... wasn't it.
It is the default of xubuntu, which imho is a good first desktop linux, mostly because of the extensive documentation and tutorials for it.
Sure, you had to use O&O ShutUp (1) and block ads via hosts table (2) and turn off DNS Caching (3) or it would take like 10 minutes to find your internet connection again every time you re-booted... but I felt like they were going in the right direction, and I could mute all the crap I hated.
And then Windows 11 came out. And it has zilch in the way of any new features, and they keep pushing more and more of the annoying crap. Like a "search" button that forces Bing, and weather than forces Bing, and "online" that forces Teams and whatever else. And you can turn stuff off, for the most part...
But I just feel like they're constantly trying to find new ways to spam their crap on me, and force their other products or services -- many of which I've already told them numerous times I hate. I hate Bing. I hate Teams. I hate all that schlock they're peddling. And they keep making it more pervasive, and harder to turn off.
And look, there's no UX improvements I enjoy, there's no features I need... Windows 11, and all of Microsoft's new features for Windows are just garbage. And it was hard to install, I had to do some hacky stuff to get my motherboard to spoof some settings so I could even put Windows 11 on what was at the time a 2-year-old computer.
If I had one wish for Microsoft, it would be to stop trying to sell me things via the OS. Just build a good OS, and stop all the other crap. It's not making me say, "Gosh, I love all your new features!" It's making me actively look for alternatives.
(1) https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
(2) https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
(3) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/47441/ho...
https://twitter.com/reactos follow to see the progress