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Windows 11 Design Mistakes

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Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#31
post #12
post #7

Last time I installed Windows 11, I found that I could not skip the 'use a Microsoft account as your local account' that Microsoft really encourages. In anger I spammed the back and forward button ~5 times. Suddenly, the option to setup Windows 11 with a local account appeared. Microsoft has lost whatever initial magic helped them make a good OS, it's all corporatism now.

> Microsoft has lost whatever initial magic helped them make a good OS, it's all corporatism now. I never heard anyone that described Windows as a good OS. It was always a Platform for Microsoft Office or Games. MacOS was always the good OS.

MacOS has never even been decent in my viewing and everyone i know. It's not even in the running, as if only linux and windows even exist.

I understand you might have a different view if you are embedded in the apple ecosystem

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#32

I'm telling you, installing Ubuntu is the way to go for ~70+ yr old parents. Put firefox and chrome on there, throw some bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar (local weather, some news, facebook, amazon, whatever else they like), connect thunderbird to their ISP email address that they've had for 25 years, install zoom, and life is great! I've had roughly zero problems in the past ~5 years with non-techy parents going th…

10 years ago I would've agreed that Ubuntu is the most reliable option.

For me now it comes across as a bit clunky, unpolished and less coherent compared to Fedora Silverblue — Ubuntu has more visible seams where it's been built from separate projects.

A major upgrade of Silverblue is literally 3 clicks plus the time it takes to do a normal restart. It doesn't ask questions a non-techy doesn't care about, and they can't break it.

(I'm not saying your choice of Ubuntu is “wrong” or anything, but if you haven't yet done so, it's worth installing a previous version of Silverblue and role-playing how it would work for a non-techy audience long-term.)

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#33
First interaction with a new Windows 11 laptop, setup screen, it wanted me to pick my country from a list. I tried typing in the first letter of the country's name. The list didn't do anything. Aah, it felt like it was one of those "Code your own UI" that people used to do with HTML/Flash that forgets about accessibility...

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#34

I'm telling you, installing Ubuntu is the way to go for ~70+ yr old parents. Put firefox and chrome on there, throw some bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar (local weather, some news, facebook, amazon, whatever else they like), connect thunderbird to their ISP email address that they've had for 25 years, install zoom, and life is great! I've had roughly zero problems in the past ~5 years with non-techy parents going th…

10 years ago I would've agreed that Ubuntu is the most reliable option. For me now it comes across as a bit clunky, unpolished and less coherent compared to Fedora Silverblue — Ubuntu has more visible seams where it's been built from separate projects. A major upgrade of Silverblue is literally 3 clicks plus the time it takes to do a normal restart. It doesn't ask questions a non-techy doesn't care about, and they ca…

My experience is that Ubuntu is past its prime for the elderly.

My mum was on various versions of Ubuntu for about 15 years. Updates started to be a problem and the network manager caused a lot of trouble for her, and by extension me and her neighbours who would "help" from time to time.

I gave up and went to win 11 and haven't had trouble other than the ads and non consistent popups. If it gets worse I'll have to try something else but I'm not looking forward to it.

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#35

This article is a bit overblown. I was initially looking forward to a juicy article about the UI inconsistencies...probably should be flagged. Context: I manage Windows 11 laptops for my family...5 machines. Windows 11 has its issues but this is not it. Create a Microsoft Account, a dummy one, and use the store to disable S-mode. Remove the MS Account and done. It would of been a lot easier and take less time than wr…

> Your real mistake is not installing Windows 11 Pro. Which you can get for $24 from stacksocial. [1] With PowerShell and Group Policy Editor you can clean ... just like you would configuring your favorite Linux distro...which you are advocating for:

I don't know man, this sounds like Stockholm syndrome. Aside from the extra money and the Linux fanboyisms... why not just install a configurable OS that isn't user hostile?

Windows is just too unstable for my computer illiterate grandparents. They are slowly loosing their vision, they can't handle the spastic updates to UI, the tabloid headlines, random games that are automatically installed and other visual garbage... the list could go on. I setup their desktop environment to be incredibly simple, just enough for their needs, with remote access, and no spontaneous updates.

I'm not advocating against Windows because FOSS reasons. I have no time for bullshit, I need something that works and Windows does not.

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#36
If you want an easy system to give to something with little/no experience with computers, these days to me is better to install to them something easy like Ubuntu or Fedora, or Zorin OS if they are familiar with the Windows UI, and they probably wouldn't event notice the difference.

And you get: no crap with Microsoft accounts, no viruses (yes, they still exists!), no automatic updates to major versions that break everything, no unwanted data collection to Microsoft, no computer that slows down without any reason after some years of usage.

If a person has to only use a PC for internet, documents, emails, etc and doesn't require any Windows specific software, there is no reason to use Windows. When people asks me to fix they computer because they got a virus or the computer simply did become so slow to be unusable or it updated automatically to the next major version and nothing works I offer the Linux option, and to this day everyone was happy about it (against my interest, since then they no longer call me to fix their problems, it would be better to put Windows and have them come to me and pay me 50$ to format their crap every 2 years).

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#37
post #5
post #4

There are so many stupid decisions that were made with Windows 11 that it's probably good that most people can't use it without creating tons of ewaste replacing perfectly functional HW.

I'm still amused that my CPU is new enough to have 16 physical and 32 virtual codes, but too old for W11

My CPU from 2011 has 16 cores with ht... that's over a decade.

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#38

This article is a bit overblown. I was initially looking forward to a juicy article about the UI inconsistencies...probably should be flagged. Context: I manage Windows 11 laptops for my family...5 machines. Windows 11 has its issues but this is not it. Create a Microsoft Account, a dummy one, and use the store to disable S-mode. Remove the MS Account and done. It would of been a lot easier and take less time than wr…

Agreed. I was disappointed too. This just feels like another “use Linux, big corps suck” article.

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#39

This article is a bit overblown. I was initially looking forward to a juicy article about the UI inconsistencies...probably should be flagged. Context: I manage Windows 11 laptops for my family...5 machines. Windows 11 has its issues but this is not it. Create a Microsoft Account, a dummy one, and use the store to disable S-mode. Remove the MS Account and done. It would of been a lot easier and take less time than wr…

> Your real mistake is not installing Windows 11 Pro. Which you can get for $24 from stacksocial. [1] With PowerShell and Group Policy Editor you can clean up a lot of the stuff quickly. Why bother installing a crappy/inferior OS in the first place? I personallt like nothing about W11

Because no matter how great linux now is for gaming, mac for graphic design or whatever there is still a plethora of professional apps that need windows and some that need windows 11. This just don't do X attitude is so small minded.

Re: Windows 11 Design Mistakes

#40
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft has lost whatever initial magic helped them make a good OS, it's all corporatism now. I never heard anyone that described Windows as a good OS. It was always a Platform for Microsoft Office or Games. MacOS was always the good OS.

Not true, all the mac operating systems before OSX were flaming bags of dog shit. Win 2000 was significantly better than any of them

Still are. I can't believe how everyone complains about MS's setup flow but gives apple an easy ok to their iCloud nagging for which you need to edit globalPreferences to disable it. Or the messed up mouse acceleration, or scroll wheel acceleration, or the forced impossible to disable animations, or the terrible handling of full screen applications in combination with three screens(though ig this isn't an issue for modern Mac users, you can't even have three screens anymore).

Windows in turn has superior tiling, you can disable animations and you can disable OneDrive very easily. Borderless full-screen applications let you drag others across them and there's a lot more you can customize

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