May 152022
 

Wow, what a change to past versions … has me so excited for the new look I am about ready to stop using Linux as my daily operating system after 27 years.

May fools Microsoft, May fools!

Anyways, because I often have to provide support to windows users and sometimes servers, I do try to stay up to date on the changes.  So I upgraded from windows 10 which went relatively smoothly, actually it went very smoothly and pretty quick much to my surprise.  It didn’t even blue screen even once.

After logging in for the first time, my first thought was “where the F is the start menu” and then I figured out its the only task menu item that doesn’t tell you what it is when you hover the mouse over it although that seemed to fix itself on subsequent reboots.

The next thing I noticed is that if you hover your mouse over the search icon in the task bar, it opens some random window all the way over in the left corner.  You might miss that like I did if you are using massive screen real estate (resolution 3840×2160 on each monitor….i love space).  One thing i do actually like about that, even though my mouse has to travel about 50 miles to get to it, is that it does show your last 3 used items, and of course paint is at the top cause all of these print screen shots 🙂

The above kinda seems like an afterthought because if you actually click the search icon, you are then presented with something totally different (I guess its similar but more in-depth search):

One other thing I noticed, the old way of placing your cursor on the screen to capture and then pressing ctrl+alt+prtscr to screenshot a specific screen doesn’t seem to work in windows 11.  I believe it still worked in windows 10 because I do that often.  PrtScr by itself, which is a shortcut key to Snipping tool, captures all screens.  When specifically running the  snipping tool, it shows this screen:

And of course if you press windows key + shift + s keys, it goes through all the motions of capturing a screenshot by drawing a rectangle around what you want to capture … except, it doesn’t actually capture it.  Because first, you have to select New and then press windows key + shift + s keys and then it captures.  Did I mention how much I hate pointy-clicky things?  If not, I will make that known before this article is done!  Others have mentioned other problems with the snipping tool that I haven’t tried to duplicate yet … but some of the comments are recent:  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/snipping-tool-in-windows-11-does-not-function-properly-on/m-p/3058362

Oh yea, before I wrap this up …. one thing you will notice and is soooo annoying to me, I will continue using Linux.  That issue is the new right click menu selection and also the start menu.

First the start menu, whenever I click the start menu button I expect to see all of my applications.  Instead I am presented with this:

Of course the above has all of the windows applications pinned already cause god-forbid you use something else which is another reason I love Linux so much …. options.  The other reason I love windows so much is because they aren’t trying to convince you to install applications you don’t want or need … i.e. forced advertising … like spotify, xbox, disney+, clipchamp, amazon prime video, tiktok.  When you click on more, it does show a longer list of recently accessed or used items.

Back to the problem before I get off topic again, in order to actually view your apps you have to hit the “all apps” button on the top right.  I hate pointy-clicky things which is why I love linux (I am mostly a console user, I loved windows 3.11 and even NT 3.51 because I spent most of my time in cmd) so having to click twice to get to something I should only have to click once on …. really annoying.  I don’t know if there are options to change this but I will find out when I get time.  I do know there are options to change the start menu pinned items via registry edit … because I was already searching for how to change this.  I haven’t done it yet, so I can’t comment about it.

The second most-annoying thing to me is the right click menu.  When you right-click you are presented with this menu (if you are not clicking on an actual item):

And this one if you are clicking on a file (notice what is missing?):

or folder (notice what is also missing?):

Doesn’t Microsoft know that 99.9% of all users who right click on anything are going to be “copying” or “cutting” or “pasting” yet those items aren’t in the default menu.  Once again, forcing me to have to pointy-clicky twice to get to what I want to do ( you have to select “show more options” and then your copy, cut, paste will appear).

To me, these issues above just proves to me that Microsoft is still out of tune with how people use their products and why I still continue using Linux as my every day operating system.  I want something that is fast, efficient, and doesn’t delay me from doing my every day tasks.

So all in all, my initial impression is that its not horrible although it does seem a little quirky at times.  Its your typically polished windows desktop that just takes some getting used to and I’ve only been messing around with it for 2 days so.

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