Friday, December 3rd 2021

Windows 11 a Flop, Survey Claims Less Than 1% Upgraded, Microsoft Improves Start Menu
Microsoft Windows 11, now nearing its third month since release, is for all intents and purposes, a flop. Market research by Lansweeper, which surveyed over 10 million PCs across the commercial and personal market segments, reports that less than 0.21% of the users it surveyed, had upgraded from Windows 10 to the newer operating system. The upgrade is free of charge. There may be several factors contributing to this lukewarm market response, but one of them is certain to he the steep hardware requirements. Windows 11 requires a trusted platform module (TPM 2.0), which disqualifies PCs older than 2018 for upgrades, unless the user is willing to try out workarounds to the limitation. Another factor could be the clunky user interface (UI), a less functional Start menu than Windows 10, and several UI-related bugs.
According to Lansweeper's data, there could be more people running outdated Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, etc., than Windows 11, and this poses a great security risk, as these operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft for regular security updates. Windows 10, on the other hand, is eligible for them until mid-2025—plenty of time for people to upgrade hardware to meet Windows 11 system requirements, or to simply make up their mind on switching over to the new operating system. In related news, Microsoft could give the Windows 11 Start menu a functional update. Test build 22509 introduces the ability to add more pins to the menu, or make room for more recommendations. The UI could see many such minor updates.
Sources:
Tech Radar PRO, HotHardware
According to Lansweeper's data, there could be more people running outdated Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, etc., than Windows 11, and this poses a great security risk, as these operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft for regular security updates. Windows 10, on the other hand, is eligible for them until mid-2025—plenty of time for people to upgrade hardware to meet Windows 11 system requirements, or to simply make up their mind on switching over to the new operating system. In related news, Microsoft could give the Windows 11 Start menu a functional update. Test build 22509 introduces the ability to add more pins to the menu, or make room for more recommendations. The UI could see many such minor updates.
393 Comments on Windows 11 a Flop, Survey Claims Less Than 1% Upgraded, Microsoft Improves Start Menu
Superior is in the eye of the user, the point is you don't change UI just to make it look like you have a whole shiny new OS. That's not true at all. Win11 also comes with a requirement for a Microsoft account and some arcane requirements for memory protections. Those memory protections can be worked around the same as the TPM requirement and are not turned on for the time being anyway. But they do come with a hefty performance penalty for CPUs that don't have the hardware for it.
When a CEO and most recently board of directors chairman makes a statement like the following "The Microsoft of 2021 is very different from the Microsoft of 2000" "To me and to everyone at Microsoft, our focus on our culture, our diversity, our inclusion, in particular, the everyday experience of our people is super important, it's a huge priority." i can't expect anything good from him or the company he's leading.
He said nothing about working harder to not fuck things up;or about how they "mined" enough data from everyone and about six years later allowing the user to turn off telemetry; or about working harder for updates to work correctly; or about updates not reverting settings and destroying some drivers; or about making the end user's experience a better one, nooooo, it's all about diversity and culture and other overused clichees and platitudes.
GG nadella.
Checked out win11 on a buddy's rig. Hated it.
First thing i did after finding out that an upgrade will be offered to win10 users, was to enter BIOS and make sure that TPM and Sec Boot were disabled;
we don't want M$ forcing their crap down our throats again, now would we!?
I'll be on modded win10 'till they drop support for it in 2025 and after that i'll be switching to Linux by the looks of it.
Not to mention Hello works so well, it can't recognize my fingerprint about half the time. I have already given up trying to use it.
And guys, look, lets gets oen thing clear here. Can the TPM requirement be worked around? Absolutely, just like windows 10 can be tweaked to boot on a pentium III. That does not mean the vast majority of users will do that. Most users do not know how to bypass TPM 2.0, fewer want to try and modify windows 11 so it will boot. Of the tiny percentage of end users who DO know how to do this, even fewer want to. Could I bypass the requirements ot get this to load on my PC? absolutely. Do I want to? HELL NO. If I wanted to tweak and bypass stuff to get my OS to work, I'd use linux (which I do, for the most part, since if I'm putting that work in I'm avoiding MS at all costs).
MS shot themselves in the foot restricting windows 10.1 so harshly. Backwards compatibility is a big selling point for windows. By "hefty performanc penalty" you mean 1%? Because those who HAVE worked around the restrictions have reported almost no difference in performance.
Requiring TPM 2.0 is just a dog and pony show to work witht he like of netflix, amazon, et al that want to stop those eanie pirates recording their content. And if you believe conspiracy theories, a way to ban people who say no no words from ever using a computer again.
Also, I believe that performance penalty will be indeed substantial if you want to enable all the security features like Memory Integrity etc. Some penalties are hard to measure though (i.e. you may be measuring bandwidth while there's latency penalty etc).
I'm still pissed they changed the normal behavior of the backspace key in Explorer in Windows 7 lol
It's almost like Microsoft should fix their crap before releasing an OS, that at best, is still in early beta stage.
They released the OS with Snipping Tool broken somehow, their "File Explorer update for Windows 11" was a shell extension that can be disabled with a few commands, their Android support didn't release with the OS and has been delayed to 2022, the taskbar is centered without activation so you have to home in on the start button instead of just dragging to the side, etc.
Essentially it's Windows 8 all over again, where they made it nice for touchscreens but forgot a lot of people don't have touchscreens. Similar to Amazon's Kindle (non-Fire) update where they made the UI a lot like the app, but didn't realize most Kindles don't act like phone touchscreens?
I tried Windows 11 but had too many problems (like a disappearing taskbar) and I went back to Windows 10 with no regrets whatsoever. I won't switch to 11 until I am forced to.
Enforcing isnt the issue here.
Do you know why I never suffer any Windows shenanigans? I dont tinker with it. Use as intended keeps you within regular troubleshooting steps if anything ever fails. That, and maximum delay on updates. 11 fails on both counts atm.
Switched over to "get the most" out of my 12900k and expected teething issues with win11 (or the new cpu arch) but its been flawless.
I hardly ever use the start menu, and on windows 10 I was using software called "taskbarX" to center all my icons, so centered by default is not much different on win11.
I'm definitely in the minority, actually enjoying win11, that said.. if it wasnt a free upgrade i probably would have stuck with win10.
daily tasks have become much more troublesome cause of this on my laptop, so I will wait until all these changes are fixed before upgrading.