It has been seven months since the release of Windows 11 and it is still feeling a lot of growing pains. A solid mix of missing features, compatibility issues, and a buggy interface. Not everything is terrible as a lot of these troubles have been fixed and many more are in the works (at least, Microsoft says they are). However, there are still certain things that drive me away from making the upgrade.
We have a number of test systems we upgraded to the new OS, as well as a laptop I carry around from time to time. It makes for a great opportunity to slow let the OS grow on you from time to time. The only issue is that it really isn’t growing on me at all. Not yet, at least.
There are still various visual glitches that we run into from time to time. Like the laptop, which was the most recent to make the upgrade (a few weeks ago). Half the time you boot it, the taskbar is half-missing. Some say a re-install of the graphics drivers will ix it, but so far this has not been the case. You either have to reboot or restart Windows Explorer from Task Manager.
Then there was the issue of the Windows Security (aka Defender) interface not displaying. The service was running in the background but if you try to open the dashboard to view settings or notifications, it said there was no app associated with that link (“Windowsdefender link” missing). We had to restore it using PowerShell. Not something a novice would have been able to figure out, which means it likely would have resulted in a re-install of the OS itself or worse.
It seems that each machine has run into unique experiences like these. Each one requiring odd little fixes or the lack of (mostly fixed eventually through various Windows updates).
One of the big ones that we have all come to an agreement here on is the fact that Quick Access on right-click was removed for all icons pinned inside of the Start Menu. If you have a program like Photoshop in the start menu tiles in Windows 10, you can right-click on it to see recent files/projects opened with that app, including any user-pinned items. Many of us rely on that feature for various files/projects we access frequently (like commonly used templates within editing apps).
Thankfully, in Windows 11, you can pin those icons to the taskbar and right-click on them from there instead. However, now you have a busy taskbar if you have a lot of programs you rely on this feature for. The taskbar can get busy enough as it is.
Then there is the fact that the taskbar still sucks in Windows 11. I haven’t found a person that thinks the new design using icons over tabs was a good idea. Outside of a few Apple fans that feel it doesn’t bother them at all. However, those used to having the tabs likely find it to be slowing down productivity and work-flow as it isn’t as quick to eyeball everything that is open vs just an icon. Every second counts sometimes when it comes to avoiding stress.
There are many reasons, these being only a few, that keep me (and others here) from upgrading any system I heavily rely on. This is why only a small handful of machines here have been upgraded (and most of them make use of Stardock’s Start11 to improve upon the Start Menu to make things a bit easier). We all depend upon being efficient in our day-to-day tasks and Windows 11 doesn’t seem to offer the flexibility to accommodate for this. I am sure Microsoft will figure it out eventually but it just hasn’t happened yet.
So what are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer Windows 11 over 10? Or are there features you wish it supported? Use the comment section below to share your own opinions
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“It has been seven months since the release of [[[ — INSERT ANY MICROSOFT PLATFORM FROM THE START — ]]] and it is still feeling a lot of growing pains. A solid mix of missing features, compatibility issues, and a buggy interface. Not everything is terrible as a lot of these troubles have been fixed and many more are in the works (at least, Microsoft says they are).”