There's a fine line that PR has to toe in order to make a product sound supernaturally good but without it sounding like obvious hyperbole. This is a great example of PR failing to toe that line:<p>> <i>The new design and sounds are modern, fresh, clean and beautiful, bringing you a sense of calm and ease.</i><p>The default desktop theme brings me a sense of calm and ease...?<p>> <i>Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktops provide an even more powerful way to multitask and optimize your screen real estate.</i><p>So you've added some features to the way I drag windows about a screen?<p>> <i>Widgets, a new personalized feed powered by AI, provides a faster way to access the information you care about, and with Microsoft Edge’s world class performance, speed and productivity features you can get more done on the web.</i><p>So many buzzwords to unpack there.<p>> <i>Windows 11 delivers the best Windows ever for gaming and unlocks the full potential of your system’s hardware with technology like DirectX12 Ultimate, DirectStorage and Auto HDR.</i><p>Hasn't every release of Windows and/or DirectX made that same claim?<p>> <i>Windows 11 is optimized for speed, efficiency and improved experiences with touch, digital pen and voice input.</i><p>Yet wont run on 4 year old hardware....that's some piss poor optimisations.<p>I'm probably not the target audience for these kinds of press announcements but I really wish companies would dial it back a bit.
I was really hoping that we were past having to think about different versions of Windows. Microsoft hyped Windows 10 as the 'last version of Windows' and that's how it should be. But now we have to go through this stupid cycle again, wasting user and IT department time doing upgrades, as well as developer time worrying about version support.
As a long time Windows user, this is what is making me seriously think about quitting. To be fair, if Apple let you put MacOS on your own hardware I would probably have quit long ago. I just have to figure out if I am done with game development as well (which has been brewing for me recently).<p>Anyway, back to the point. This is the most anti-Windows step that this pathologically anti-Windows management has taken. You were never, in the past, forced to upgrade hardware because Windows flat-out refused to run on it. I have run Windows 7,8 and 10 on a laptop shipped with XP and it ran fine. 10 even added in-box support for Sony peripherals that 8 and 7 didn't have.<p>I fail to see how requiring TPM 2.0 or newer CPU features is going to protect the average user from malware, which is still the biggest risk to Windows users. If anyone knows, please educate me.<p>Enterprises can impose these hardware requirements on their systems, there was no need to force home users to upgrade. Instead of improving Windows so that it works better for users, it seems like MSFT wants to improve OEM bottom lines and sell more licenses.
I've been reading the feedback on /r/windows11 for a few weeks, and this release feels rushed. First available to public test at the end of June[0], and they're shipping it less than four months later with almost none of the issues/limitations/complaints being addressed.<p>This whole release feels very, if you'll excuse the expression, "lipstick on a pig." They didn't really fix any of the underlying and longstanding issues people had with Windows 10, threw a new thin veneer on top, and called it a <i>new thing</i>.<p>This October 5th release just feels like them expanding their public beta test to most Windows 10 users. I'm normally an early adopter (e.g. running iOS 15 Beta 7 right now), but I'm going to wait six months or more after Oct5 because this isn't even close to being production ready.<p>[0] <a href="https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/06/28/announcing-the-first-insider-preview-for-windows-11/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/06/28/announc...</a>
> Windows 11 is optimized for speed, efficiency<p>So why does it not support five-year-old hardware?<p>I realize it's all just marketing, but I'm actually really frustrated with how developers seem to be defining "performance" nowadays. There's nothing impressive about running fast on a fast machine. Not everyone has access to the latest and greatest hardware, nor should they, lest we want to ruin the planet.<p>If you're doing complex 3D modeling, that's one thing, but please tell me—what is the average office worker doing today that wouldn't have been possible on a PC ten years ago? And then please explain why Windows 11 needs a <i>minimum</i> of 4 GB of memory.
Comparing tech specs for Windows 10 vs 11: they doubled RAM requirements from 2GB to 4GB. They tripled storage requirements from 20GB to 64GB. Minimum CPU speed stays the same. That's comparing 64-bit vs 64-bit, the increased specs are even more extreme when considering Windows 10 32-bit.<p>Windows 10 system reqs [1]:<p>- 1 GHz or better processor<p>- RAM: 1 GB of 32-bit OS. 2 GB for 64 bit OS.<p>- Storage: 16 GB for 32 bit OS and 20 GB for 64-bit OS<p>- Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.o driver<p>- Display 800×600<p>Windows 11 system reqs [2]:<p>- 1 GHz 64-bit processor<p>- RAM: 4GB<p>- Storage: 64GB<p>- Graphics card: DirectX 12 or later with WDDM 2.0 driver<p>- Display: High definition (720p) display that is greater than 9” diagonally, 8 bits per color channel<p>- Internet connection (Windows 11 Home edition)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/" rel="nofollow">https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...</a>
> 1. The new design and sounds are modern, fresh, clean and beautiful, bringing you a sense of calm and ease.<p>THIS? is the number one point they want to highlight? Feel at ease, user, while we mine all your data and force feed you buggy release after buggy release of changes you don't want and didn't ask for!
> As the PC continues to play a more central role in our lives than ever before<p>Does Microsoft really think this? I'm finding it's pretty common to meet people who don't own a PC at all. They just use their phone and possibly a tablet.
I've been a Windows user since Windows 2 and I'm hoping I never have to run Windows 11. I've switched to Ubuntu on my work laptop and my (System 76 Meerkat) side-project/consulting work mini-PC. Desktop Linux is not great but is good enough, especially when running under alternative DEs like Regolith.<p>I used to be a diehard Windows user. I was even a contractor on Longhorn for Microsoft and I have a DLL I wrote that still ships in the System32 folder (it used to be two but I don't see that one in the System32 folder now in Windows 10). I used to be proud that I could walk up to any PC in a store and hit a key combo and tell me kids "I wrote that" when the Narrator window popped up.<p>I still run Windows 10 on my old personal laptop just to run Quicken/Quickbooks but my current side-project is an app to replace both of those with a single app. I'm looking forward to the day I can wipe Windows off that laptop and install Ubuntu (or maybe ElementaryOS as I've heard good things).<p>Goodbye Windows.
Why should I upgrade? What is the point?<p>What would I get for all my trouble?<p>Nothing in the article is compelling. Windows' quality control is abysmal. I'll stick with the devil I know in Windows 10.
I'm sure the 'third world' is bracing for the ecological disaster this will create. Anybody with a device more than four years old will toss it right in the trash and buy something new.<p>Sure, it will create lots of devices for us *nix people, but that won't stop tens or hundreds of thousands of working computers going to "recycling". Of course, we don't actually recycle e-waste, we just put it on a barge and take it to SE Asia or Africa where children burn it to harvest the metals.<p>The "greenwashing" of new devices is harmful - the best thing we can do is continue to use the ones we already have, and make them more repairable and supportable. A big part of that responsibility falls to Microsoft, who has done something reprehensible here.
How on earth are microsoft/windows.com images still low resolution. It really stands out and detracts from the visuals they're trying to sell.
Uff, I wonder if it's possible to decline the upgrade and still be served Win10 security fixes for a few years. Looking at past Win10 updates which mostly added fluff but never really improved anything I am <i>not</i> looking forward to Win11.
Windows 11 (the insider builds) are very buggy. I'm usijg w11 on two machines: MSI with 7th generation CPU, and Lenovo Thinkpad e14 with 10th generation CPU and they both have serious issues. The MSI have an audio driver issue where I have this noise from the speakers coming in constantly and the only way is to disable the audio driver. Thinkpad issue is even more annoying. Thinkpad won't shutdown or even sleep. It always auto reboots! And it's very annoying! I would have to fully drain the battery for the laptop to shutdown and I know that will be very disastrous on the laptop.
A contrarian note in the sea of negativity here: I have it on all my machines since the insiders release a couple of months ago and I'm very happy. Everything works. WSL2 has GUI support. UI looks nicer than Win10. I'm not sure about the hardware compatibility gripes -- will it really not install on old hardware or is this about "supported" status? It runs just fine on my Surface Go fwiw.
The first thing I think of when I see that UI is that it looks like a Linux desktop knockoff of a better desktop experience. That better experience used to me MacOS and/or Windows but now Windows is no better than Linux desktops. Will Windows 11 finally bring in the year of the Linux desktop?
This feels extremely rushed. They didn't even push it out to QA (aka Windows Insiders) until the end of July.<p>It doesn't really look like a compelling case to upgrade, for somebody who is happily using an LTSC build of Windows 10 that is rock-solid.
I use macOS and Pop_OS! as my main desktops but I have Windows 11 installed for gaming.<p>I like Windows 11 a heck of a lot better than Windows 10, which wasn't too awful. Performance is really good. The UI is much nicer. The OS is slowly getting less cluttered. winget is passable. The system monitoring tools are really good. The colors are really well done (well, aside from the new icons, which I find ugly).<p>The new tiling features are great -- although #!@!$ Windows Terminal Preview still does not support them, even with today's release!<p>If Windows 11 sat upon some sort of *NIX-based OS, it's probably at the point where I'd switch away from macOS, although I'm not sure whether that's because Windows is improving or macOS is getting worse. WSL exists, but it's still just a VM.
Will it ship with a vertical task bar option? Will it ship with a task bar that I can copy/paste between windows by dragging objects onto the taskbar button of the paste target?
It's going to be a buggy POS.<p>XP Good,
Vista Bad buggy half-baked UX nightmare
7 Basically a sendoff of Vista / Apology for it. *They could have updated 7 forever and I'd be happy.*<p>8 Bad<p>8.1 Less Bad, but bad.<p>10 Passable but stealing your data and watching everything you fucking do and you can't do shit about it, you must get updates and we buried all the system settings you loved behind stupid tablet UX<p>11 (I have no faith in m$)
Am I the only one who really enjoys Windows 11 so far? I use the beta daily and it has been quite reliable and way more snappy than W10 on my Thinkpad. I really like the new UI which feels more modern and harmonic, settings are finally cohesive and uncluttered (Control Panel is still in there somewhere but why should I care?). Animations are snappy, the window management is improved, new GPU accelerated Terminal is really nice, WSL has GUI support and even some Cuda now. It really feels like a nice mix between Mac OS and Linux (with WSL) so I really don‘t get all the hate.<p>Does it have tons of telemetry, cruft from 20 years in the kernel and some rough edges? Sure! Is the hardware requirements a bit ridiculous? Sure! But I think it is a nice OS that feels very productive and provides me with tons of value. And it is so much easier on the eyes wich I care about a lot. To each their own I guess but it sometimes feels a bit depressing how HN crowd trashes every OS. (I feel its similar with MacOS and Linux)<p>Is everyone here still using C64, Windows 2000 or OS9 because it „was the last good system“?