A couple of weeks ago I ran out of screen one an external monitor that can run my work MacBook Air. So I switched to my Windows desktop from five years ago and connected a different monitor. Love it. Productivity is off the charts. But this means I’m finally spending a lot of time in Windows 11, and damn it, it’s cheesy.
There are some things that Windows does very well compared to macOS and Linux. First of all, all the games are there, and Windows runs on any hardware without much effort. You don’t have to spend at least a thousand dollars on a non-upgradeable machine to use it. You also typically don’t have to download a bunch of drivers or spend six hours at the command line manually building the damn operating system.
But for every header like “Notepad in Windows 11 finally gets a spell check function“There is”Microsoft is reintroducing pop-up ads to Google Chrome on WindowsFor all Windows Subsystem for Linuxwhat rules are there”Microsoft begins testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu, Microsoft seems dead set on packing Windows 11 with “features” that distract your attention or try to convince or trick you into using some Microsoft product instead of what you intended to use. I’m 30 or 40 years old and I don’t need it.
I grew up on Windows 3.1, NT and 95. I went to college on a Dell desktop. I worked for Maximum PC The magazine is five years old, for God’s sake. I’ve built a lot of computers. I’m typing this on my main personal computer, a mini-ITX gaming rig that I lovingly hand-built in 2019. I continue to use Windows.
But over the past few years, I’ve spent more than 40 hours a week using the relatively quiet macOS for work, and spent as little time on the computer as possible when I’m not working. So, although I upgraded my desktop to Windows 11 about a year ago, I haven’t spent that much time with it. When I used my computer, it was primarily for home admin or (rarely) gaming, and therefore had little interaction with the OS itself. I am a frog that came out of a pot; I just jumped back and got burned.
I am a frog that came out of a pot; I just jumped back and got scalded
At some point, there is a button next to my start menuClicking on it, or even hovering over it, can fill an entire third of my monitor with things I never asked for and don’t care about. The fire hose of news oversaturation. Stock prices. Weather. (This is useful, but I can get a lot of places.) Now there is also system tray button For second pilotmy everyday AI companion who is present now in all Microsoft products inversely proportional to its usefulness.
The Start menu was mostly trash since Windows 8, but is now almost completely useless in its default state. Half of them are pinned apps that I didn’t pin or even install. And I don’t blame the OEM. I’m an OEM and I didn’t post them here.
Somewhere in the last few versions, Windows seemed to have forgotten how to index files on my computer. So if I try to open a program, file, or setting the normal way – by going into Windows and starting to type – it basically shows me results from the Internet, which are useless because it uses Bing to find them.
Microsoft did something Really Wonderful and with supporting documents. Previously, this information was built into the OS. Now, if you are in the display settings window (for example) and go to the support section and click “Set up multiple monitors”, Microsoft Edge opens – even if it is not your default browser – the phrase “How to add multiple monitors to a Windows 11 computer, site: Microsoft.com“, and displays a page with a single result: an information window. excerpt from the relevant support page on the Microsoft websiteas well as a link to open the exact settings screen you just came from.
It’s a) bonkers and b) still a significant improvement over last time I tried this when such a link gave a null result. This is Microsoft corporate synergy in action. Why keep all those Windows users to yourself when with one click you can make sure Bing and Edge commands are eating too?
Edge used to be a slightly improved version of Chrome. Now it’s full of sidebars and malware. (Perhaps it’s still an improved version of Chrome.) It keeps asking me to change my default search engine back to Bing (I won’t), and its default home screen is, yes, full of garbage.
Why would one of the world’s largest technology companies release such… an inconvenient operating system? Well, partly this is, of course, More than 30 years of creating each new version of the operating system on top of the old one.This doesn’t really explain why things like this used for normal operation seems to have been replaced by new systems that don’t do this, but there may be something else going on.
Windows is a huge success. It brings money. This over 70 percent of the global desktop marketThe edge that is still quite a decent browserand Bing, the search engine, have much smaller shares of their markets. Every Windows user can be harassed by Microsoft speechor trick with switching to Edge or Bing or second pilot Beating the competition is good for Microsoft, so it makes sense to use some kind of spreadsheet to capture as many opportunities for synergy as possible.
Is not only Windows, obviously. Every damn app wants to steal your attention a million times a day. Many budget Windows phones and computers come preloaded with adware and malware that companies pay OEMs to install. Ritual banishment of unnecessary software is a long-standing tradition among Windows users.
But previously this garbage was separate from the OS itself. Samsung’s version of Android is highly hyped, but it’s Samsung’s version, not Android itself—there’s a reason why the phrase “pure Android” is common among many phone reviewers, and why reviewers praise Pixel phones far more often than Pixel phones. customers buy them.
Ars Technique I’ve already written a good practical guide to disabling most of the crap that is in Windows 11, And this is not my first rodeo. I Maybe turn off most of this junk. Most people never bother, or don’t know how, or don’t realize it’s not necessary. Mostly they will just learn to turn it off. Every now and then they might click something and then some part of Microsoft will make some money.
