Is it now worth trying Windows 11?

[gmb42]

Possibly hardware related then, is that "morgans" the refurb folks?  I'd return it for a refund.

[G7PSK]

Possibly hardware related then, is that "morgans" the refurb folks?  I'd return it for a refund.

Doing so, looking inside the "Refurb is not much as it is full of dust, I recon not much more than a wipe over the outside of this one, I have had a few in the past from Morgans including the one the wife is using at present which I got from them in 2007  and manufactured in 2004, it runs win 10 well but of course it wont run win 11 might try freespire on it.

[coppercone2]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/05/0327209/fsf-urges-moving-off-microsofts-github-to-protest-windows-11s-requiring-tpm-20

[SiliconWizard]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/05/0327209/fsf-urges-moving-off-microsofts-github-to-protest-windows-11s-requiring-tpm-20

Yes, as if there weren't enough incentives to move off github already!

[Karel]

I moved all my projects to Gitlab one day after microsoft grabbed github.

[nigelwright7557]

Stick with the devil you know.
All OS'es suck. (some more than others)

I recently installed an update to Windows 11.
Came to burn a CDROM and it no longer allowed it.

I did a search online and found an article saying the group policy needed changing to allow writes to CDROM.
I eventually found it and that fixed it.

[David Hess]

I would say no.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/

After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 (KB5062553), various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.

"Difficulties" means they crash or never start, but some things also operate too slowly, like the Start menu.

Slashdot has some discussion:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/21/1912228/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken

[paulca]

Having Windows 11 forced on me in work... along with the latest and greatest Office365...

I find the use of screen real-estate has gone backwards again.  Everything now appears to have big avenues of useless padding and whitespace around it.

Also everything seems to be a click spot for something, you cant click or highlight text on the screen without something triggering a pop-out or the view panel will turn into an edit panel and record you as an author.  All you wanted to do was highlight the line you were on, so you could look away a moment.

Most of the commonly used functionality has been moved around (again) within ribbons and hamburger buttons and DONT get me started on M$ Scarepoint, Sharepants.  I asked for a Dev Wiki, I got a sharepoint page I don't own, can't edit and when I create a new page it vanishes because I dont have access to the contents list.

[AndyC_772]

Hi all,

Currently I'm on the 1 year extended support period for W10, but need to have fully migrated away by the time security updates for W10 stop.

My most important use case is Cadence OrCAD which, as far as I can tell, simply doesn't run under Linux and nobody has successfully made it do so with any kind of emulation. This means the whole "just switch to Linux" idea is completely dead in the water and I'll be moving to Win 11.

With that in mind, my first W11 PC is on order and I'm looking for a 'best practice' checklist to run through when it arrives. Things like: how to create and use a local account, disable AI features and any other intrusive "help", removing any of the manufacturer's bloatware, that kind of thing.

Is there a good guide anywhere?

[wilfred]

Apparently, they are adding AI to Notepad.

Dave's Garage YT channel did a video where he asked AI to write him a retro Notepad app. Interesting video.

[Zucca]

Win11 is the best reason to switch to Linux. Thanks Microsoft for opening my eyes.

[abeyer]

My 2c on making W11 less awful boil down to:

• Get on an Enterprise SKU if at all possible. It's easier if your business does this for you, but it is also possible to do on your own... but sadly only with considerable jumping through hoops, more expense, and possibly only available on subscription now (not 100% certain, but that seems to be the way it's going.)
• Install startallback before you do anything else to revert most of the UI junk

Oh, and installing WSL2 and/or mingw64 is high on my list, too, though if you're mostly a windows user maybe not so important.

[jonovid]

had Win11 for a yr or more now. mostly for the windows only off-line applications I run.
a lot of auto remote linking bloat that came with Win11 had to be disabled.
had to redirect all the internal MS url links to a dead web address.
& do other under the hood fixs so it will to behave itself most of the time.
yes Notepad has AI & its funny how it trys with red underlines all over the test.

[Ranayna]

My 2c on making W11 less awful boil down to:

• Get on an Enterprise SKU if at all possible. It's easier if your business does this for you, but it is also possible to do on your own... but sadly only with considerable jumping through hoops, more expense, and possibly only available on subscription now (not 100% certain, but that seems to be the way it's going.)
• Install startallback before you do anything else to revert most of the UI junk

Oh, and installing WSL2 and/or mingw64 is high on my list, too, though if you're mostly a windows user maybe not so important.

Getting an Education SKU might be a bit easier, and has the same capabilities as Enterprise.
You will likely not be in license compliance though for either version. But honestly: who cares?

You might even want to think about getting (IoT) LTSC. That has various advantages, especially if consistency and stability are important for you. Some actually useful things might require a bit more effort to get though, since the MS Store is limited in LTSC.

[abeyer]

You will likely not be in license compliance though for either version. But honestly: who cares?

afaik that's not true for enterprise... as long as you can find an enterprise channel partner who will sell them to you, you're valid, there's no actual license restriction on who can buy ent.

[Infraviolet]

AndyC_772, I know exactly where you're coming from with being unable to "just" switch to Linux. I'm only on Linux because I was lucky that the Windows programs I relied upon (circa 2016 and the programs were already legacy by then) do run under Wine. But you might find yourself better off with Windows inside a Virtual Machine and Linux as the host that runs on your physical computer. I don't know how resource intensive your CAD software is, perhaps it is too much for a VM to handle unless some really overpowered hardware is used... but if it can run in a VM, then it makes life a lot simpler. With a Linux host and Windows guest you can install Windows fresh with no bloat, except that which Microsoft already includes, you can ensure that any telemetry only sees the work you perform within Windows-only software and not all the activity on your PC, you can easily roll back after a mandated Windows update breaks something.

[AndyC_772]

Well... I'm officially on "the other side" now. My W11 PC (a Lenovo Thinkpad P16v Gen 3) arrived this morning and I've spent all day making it usable. That may sound sinister, but it really could have been a whole lot worse.

The machine itself is certainly decent - solid, business like, quiet. Lovely OLED screen, though for some reason, fonts all look a little thin, which isn't terribly attractive or readable but I'm sure there's a setting somewhere for that.

Of course, first power up means going through the first time setup wizard. I have an MS account already, so the easy thing to do is use that for the built in account, then add a local admin account later. This option still exists but is confusingly labelled and hard to find. (Settings - Accounts - Other Users - "I don't have this person's sign-in information" - "Add a user without a Microsoft account", then add a user name). Once the user is created, you can make them admin, and delete the original MS account, leaving a local user account as the only one on the system.

Nudges, and dark patterns in UI design? F**k them sideways.

Fortunately that was the only really offensive part of the process. I expected to have to turn off a bunch of frivolous sign-in options, and recommendations for back-up and other features that conflict with privacy... no worse than W10 in that regard. I also uninstalled some things I know I won't be using: 365, Excel etc, and stopped a bunch of things like OneDrive and Edge from loading at start-up.

Goodbye also to Lenovo's "digital wellness" application, though I left "commercial Vantage" alone for now.

The first and only real hiccup was installing OrCAD. The HASP (dongle) driver didn't work, but I was fairly easily able to find an update from Thales, who apparently now own that particular IP. With the new driver installed, the OrCAD installation took ages (as it always has done), but succeeded. Repeat the exercise to install the most up-to-date hotfix - also takes ages - then try and figure out how to make the UI look like the one I've clearly quite heavily customised over the last 5 years or so.

I can't blame W11 for that being a cumbersome task; looking you squarely in the eyes here Cadence. But it's done now, and the new machine is waaaaaay faster at rendering than my old £600 HP with integrated graphics. I'm actually looking forward to my next PCB.

Other installs? Thunderbird, Crossworks, Firefox, Libreoffice, Code::blocks, ST utility / CubeMX, various other bits & pieces all installed OK. Network drives all mapped to my NAS. File explorer opens directly to "This PC" and isn't nearly as slow as I'd been led to believe. I'm also curious to see how LTSpice behaves on a Core Ultra 9 285H vs my 6 yr old i5.

So far, so good, then. There was one nasty graphical glitch the first time I ran PCB Designer, but I've not seen it since so hoping it won't recur. Otherwise, tomorrow is a normal working day and I'm cautiously optimistic that it will indeed be an ordinary one - just with a faster PC.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I just updated from Win7 to 11 as there were a few things I wanted to use that don't run on 7.
No major problems getting stuff running, like PCAD2006 and Visual Basic 6 .
By far my biggest gripe is all the unnecessary and non-optional changes they've made to  the desktop UI - less visible scrollbars, poorer handling of multiple open folders/files on the taskbar, the stupid thing that wants to rearrange all your windows when you drag near the top of the screen ( and also at some other times I've not figured out yet) , defaulting bitlocker and OneDrive to ON, rounding off the window corners, no apparent way to disable window transitions & effects.

IMO 7 was Peak Windows, I've seen zero tangible improvement from later versions.

[Zucca]

IMO 7 was Peak Windows, I've seen zero tangible improvement from later versions.

Ironically looking at the stats, Win7 is going slightly up in usage after Win11 release.
My game plan is to use Win7 in a VM only for the few retarded SWs which do not support the Linux ecosystem...

[Karel]

By far my biggest gripe is all the unnecessary and non-optional changes they've made to  the desktop UI - less visible scrollbars,
poorer handling of multiple open folders/files on the taskbar, rounding off the window corners,

Frankly, this happened also with many Linux desktop environments... 

[AndyC_772]

IMO 7 was Peak Windows, I've seen zero tangible improvement from later versions.

Unplug, then plug in, a USB to serial adapter.

Under windows 10, the USB device gets enumerated again straight away, and the console port starts working. Under 7 the port stayed dead and needed reinitialising somehow.

That's literally the only benefit I think I saw switching from 7 to 10, and it's actually quite a big deal to me as I develop a lot of products which are configured using a serial command line. So, yay for progress, I suppose.

I haven't yet seen any single benefit of moving from 10 to 11, though, other than the relatively lower likelihood of a severe unpatched vulnerability infecting my network with ransomware.

"Nice laptop... shame if anything happened to it..."

[peter-h]

IMO 7 was Peak Windows, I've seen zero tangible improvement from later versions.

Very much so. I am on win7-64 and so far manage all websites I need, using chrome and (for some, like British Airways) firefox is needed. Supermium deals with anything else (DHL was one, IIRC).

Problem is that current version win11 cannot be installed (not at all; the hacks do not work) unless you have a CPU supporting SSE 4.2 and most older motherboards are screwed on that. For example I am running an i7-970 which is super fast... EDIT: just found the i7-970 does support SSE 4.2!

There are bent Ebay sellers like this one
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115710830111?var=415848756074
selling non win11 supporting machines, hacked to accept win11 but the buyer will not be able to upgrade it without doing some hacks. I bought two of these; one i5 and one i7. So beware!

I can run win10 in a VMWARE VM but it runs pretty slowly even on a 24GB 3.5GHz host machine, and I would not expect a win11 VM to be usable, but one never knows.

[Zucca]

well made.

Decided to keep the win11 box only connected to the "untrustued" wifi, and to do use it only as bench PC in my EE lab.
With the excellent RustDesk I will remote into it.

Unfortunately Win is still what we need to have in our EE labs, IMHO.

I could revert to Win10, but since I do not do anything sensible on that Win11 I just leave like this and see how much M$ can go down in the auto destruction path.

[wilfred]

I can upgrade to Windows 11. I've got the little blue dot. I was going to upgrade. I bought another SSD to preserve WIn10. I even bought some extra RAM. But now I'm not going to upgrade convert to Win11. I choose to get left behind. I want to be one of the Lemmings that doesn't follow the others over the cliff(*).

20+ years ago I choose not to sign into Facebook and still haven't had cause to regret that choice. I don't say I foresaw everything that transpired but It was an conscious choice because some things I did foresee.

Most people have a need for a computer and just don't give it a  thought as long as it works. Which is fair, but now I think they should start caring. Certainly beyond simply not wanting to replace a perfectly functional computer they already own. I had seen that video from Coldfusion someone liked to here. I think they were spot on in identifying the massive clout enterprise buyers wield. Home users are an afterthought.

(*) I am aware the Disney film was faked. I am referencing the Apple Macintosh ad which apparently wasn't.

[peter-h]

The problem is that mainstream software devs tend to be really arrogant and put in OS version tests just for fun.

Of course you don't need win10 or win11 to run chrome code! Most likely the functionality would run just fine on winXP. But chrome does not update anymore on win7... Firefox still does, for a short while.

So win10 will be the next migration point. I already run win10 in a VM, for software which - stupidly and pointlessly - demands it, like the UK HMRC tax and pension contribution calculator. This will be OK for a few years, probably.

I've found that it is very easy to set up a win11 machine (runs with no display or keyboard) and access it over RDP. I use it for a weird setup with a Debian VMWARE VM, and for Autodesk Fusion which is win11 only (runs on win10 but you cannot import anybody else's designs if they are on win11 - Autodesk's aggressive policy to drive everybody to a rented program). Win11 over RDP is the way to go for those who need it.