Aaron44126

So, the news today is that Microsoft has published their first major batch of Windows 11 "upgrades" including: Android app support (in preview) Mute & share buttons available from the taskbar Taskbar clock now shows up on secondary monitors Weather on the taskbar Refreshed "Media Player" and "Notepad" applications Some of these come down through the Microsoft Store, and some come in this month's "optional" Windows Update patch (and they will also be rolled into next month's "required" patch releasing March 8). Microsoft article Ars Technica — "Microsoft will tweak Windows 11’s UI and features pretty much whenever it wants" So on one hand, great, they are improving the platform. On the other hand, they are forcing changes on people. You never know what you're going to get. I want to be in control of when feature changes happen on my system; patches that "add features" or otherwise change the user experience should be separate from security updates. That's really the core of a lot of what I feel is wrong about the direction that Microsoft is taking Windows. Honestly, I'd like to see more reactions from the business community and IT folks supporting big businesses. They haven't really gotten on Windows 11 yet, but I can't believe that they'd be happy about this direction. Yeah, pretty much... "Technical" Microsoft is much more interesting than "bean-counting" Microsoft and they clash together sometimes, as we are seeing with Windows here, but sometimes it even happens with the dev stack. (To their credit, Microsoft did end up reverting their decision described in the article here, after public pressure from the dev community.) Just as soon have them relax the requirements for Windows 11, since as I mentioned, there's no real reason for them to be what they are. They could keep support for Windows 10 going through the end of 2031 since they will be issuing patches for Windows 10 LTSC anyway... Not sure if they will really make any changes though. The main reason the Windows XP support got extended past the originally published end date was because it took them so long to get Vista out, Vista was a pretty big change, and Vista left a pretty negative first impression; that people got really entrenched in XP, in businesses in particular. They could have a similar situation happening here, in particular depending on the business community's reaction to Windows 11; too early to tell. (Also there's a real chance that "Windows 12" could be released before Windows 10 support ends, especially if Windows 11 ends up with a broadly negative reputation.) I won't deny that Windows 11 looks "better" than Windows 10 in general. That's one of the things that got me excited when I first saw it. I do like the new snappy animations as well. I'm aware of products like StartIsBack; I actually started using Start11 when it first released in anticipation of a Windows 11 upgrade. I did not end up doing the upgrade, but I'm keeping Start11 around because I know that it will allow me to keep the Windows 10-style tile Start Menu after I eventually upgrade (once an LTSC version is available). In any case, this only solves part of what I'm complaining about — Start Menu, and Taskbar to some degree. And really, I don't want to have to spend time figuring out how to "work around" changes in the platform that I don't like — especially when such changes could be forced down with little warning, at any time.

The system should have come with a plain metal plate heatsink for all of the NVMe drive slots (even slots that shipped without a drive in them). You should use that heatsink with your new drive. Don't run it without a heatsink at all. If you move the original OEM drive from the PCIe4 slot to one of the PCIe3 slots, swap the heatsinks around appropriately so that they stay with their original slots. The PCIe4 slot heatsink is a bit different than the PCIe3 slot heatsinks. There is rather little clearance. I'd assume that a NVMe drive that comes with a heatsink attached is intended for desktop use. I still think that it might be beneficial to put some thick thermal pad on top of the PCIe4 slot heatsink in this system so that there is contact between the heatsink and the chassis (like there is with the PCIe3 slots). This would probably be better if you have the chassis without the SSD door. (I have not tested this to see if it really makes a difference, though.)

It's not for warranty purposes. It's basically for security, so that the device owner can know if someone has opened the chassis (to I dunno, make a copy of the drive, install a custom hardware or a tracker, ...). [Edit] Ninja'd

This one has a 180W power adapter included. I'm not sure how important it is but I think you'd want some overhead so it can give a full 130W of power to the system. (The 130W version would be more appropriate for Dell systems that ship with a 90W power adapter.) https://smile.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-Adapter-450-AEUO-4W2HW/dp/B01C8PHWQY There's no USB-C to USB-C cable. The dock cable is "permanently attached" to the dock and there is only one USB-C end that you have to worry about. (Most of the pictures don't show this but the one with it mounted behind a monitor does.) The 130W power supply is not just for charging the battery fast. Today's mobile CPUs can use over 90W of power for turbo boost. If you connect an underpowered PSU then it could throttle the CPU performance. The like button is more obvious if you switch to a dark theme. (There is a "Theme" drop-down at the VERY bottom of the page.) They're working on fixing this...

All cool. It's probably better this way, people are used to "Enter" just doing a regular line break and not a full paragraph break. Just wanted to make sure that I'm not going to have to go and "unfix" them...

@Hiew I noticed that the extra paragraph line break that you get from hitting the "enter" key is gone. The change affects old posts retroactively. Was this intentional? If so, is it intended to be permanent? (Doesn't bother me either way but it did "squish up" the long Windows articles that I had written, links in signature, and I had to go and fix them up.)

I rather doubt that you will be able to boot from it directly. The BIOS won't know to look there for a bootable drive. Chainloading might work though. (UEFI boot loader installed on a SATA drive, but OS installed on the NVMe drive.)

Look on Amazon for a Dell WD15 dock. $135. It's a bit older but it should work. It can do 130W power delivery, and it supports 2× 1080p displays at 60 Hz (plus USB, audio, Ethernet).

It looks like you can change your vote if you like. Click the "Show vote options" button below the results.

So, I personally am here for the notebook talk. I think what set NBR apart from other PC forums (Tech|Inferno, Overclock.net, [H]ardForum, etc.) was the focus on notebooks. Specifically, the various hardware manufacturer sections. A new user passing by could find in-depth discussions on specific models, issues, and upgrade options, and find knowledgeable people to ask questions of. I really hope that we manage to recapture that here. There's really no place else where it exists otherwise. Notebooks were the niche of NBR. I say this recognizing that there is a group of people who (presumably) originally joined up to chat about notebooks, but stuck around after moving away from notebooks and are still active. (I know that Intel's move to BGA and the general move away from MXM has played a role in making notebooks less interesting for some people since there are generally less upgrade options now.) And I don't want to say that I think there is no room for more general PC chatter on a site where most users are chatting about notebooks. No issue with that at all. So I guess the question is, do we have the name reflect our niche or do we try to push beyond our niche and broaden out the user base a bit? I personally am a bit apprehensive that trying to be the home for "everything PC" will put us in a position that nothing really sets us apart from other forums like those mentioned above. Anyway, I guess that is why we have a vote. 🙂

Voted for "NoteBookTalk", though "Notebookrevival" is cool too, I like the idea of having a new name that is reminiscent of our old name. And when considering "efgxt"... That is a kind of cool name but I think that the name should indicate to newcomers what we are about. Observations: If we end up going with one of those, I think they should be stylized as "NotebookTalk" or "NotebookRevivial", matching the stylizing of "NotebookReview". "Notebookrevivial.com" and "Notebookrevival.net" are so similar, if they end up splitting the vote and changing the outcome compared to what it would have been if just one of them were present, then maybe we should think about combining them for results purposes or having a runoff. Same for efgxt.com/.net as well. (Not an issue yet based on the current results.)

Posted my long-windows Windows 11 complaint over here. https://efgxt.net/topic/197-the-problem-with-windows-11-as-i-see-it/

I've been wanting to write this for a while. There are a lot of opinions on Windows 11 — many people think it is fine, and many people think there are issues. I'm in the latter camp and I want to get into the specifics. I wanted to write a more cohesive article that built up to something, but didn't have much luck with that, so I'm basically going to just hop down the list of issues that I have and address them one at a time. Some of them are related and I tried to group those together. On the whole, I do recognize that there are some real valuable technical improvements in Windows 11. And, I do recognize that people who use it probably won't have many issues. It's a solid OS in terms of performance and stability. And, I'm not generally one to shy away from upgrades. I was an early adopter of each version of Windows going back to XP. My issues here mostly stem from the influence of, I guess, the marketing people, project managers, and penny pinchers who had their hands in this project. Many of the issues that I will bring up have their origins in Windows 10 and have just gotten worse with Windows 11, so to some degree it is not Windows 11 itself that I have an issue with, but rather the "trajectory" that things are going with Windows and fear that if this is accepted as normal, it will only get worse. Launch bugs Let's start with the obvious. First impressions matter. The OS is the most important piece of software on a PC. One would expect any upgrade to be thoroughly tested before shipping. One month after release, Windows 11 hit an issue where certain apps would not launch. This was because of digital certificate that expired on November 1. I don't understand how this was not caught and corrected ahead of time. And, best I can tell, Microsoft did not provide any information on this issue to the public until November 4. Backing up to shortly before launch. Microsoft published an update that caused the desktop and Start Menu to completely lock up. This update didn't come down through Windows Update... it was, rather, an update to a JSON/text file that is pulled down by the "Iris" ads/recommendation service. Microsoft had to publish information on how to disable this service as a workaround. Now, one could claim that the pre-launch period is when such bugs should be detected and sorted out, so this one "doesn't count". I would instead argue that such a bug that allows the whole OS to grind to a halt does not speak well to the architecture that this whole thing is built on top of. Then there was the whole thing with AMD CPU performance taking a notable hit on Windows 11 that Microsoft scrambled to fix in the first few weeks. Launch bugs aren't a new thing for Windows with Windows 11. I have a whole collection of bugs that I ran into for Windows 10. I feel that with prior releases, Microsoft at least had a quality standard that a release would have to hit before they would ship it. That seems to have been relaxed quite a bit starting with Windows 10. In many cases, issues in the spoiler block here were brought up by Windows "Insiders" and posted in Feedback Hub and yet the OS was still allowed to ship with the bug present. All this to say, I don't feel that the QC around Windows releases is that great lately, and they've pushing to ship stuff on a deadline rather than "when it is finished". Preview period (or lack thereof) Related to the previous... Previous Windows releases had at least ten months of some sort of beta period. Also, Windows would hit RTM but still not be available to the public for another three months, giving time for final polish and bugfixes and also for application developers to make sure that everything was in order for their products to work on the new OS. The first Windows 11 build was made available in late June 2021, and Windows 11 was released in October 2021. A preview/beta period of just three months. That's not enough time for feedback to be collected and meaningfully addressed. As an example, Windows 11 got a bit of a trashing in the press because of regressions to the Taskbar, and they're only just now starting to address that (with rather small improvements so far). It feels like they've just turned everyone who purchased a new PC this past holiday season into a beta tester. (One could argue that Windows 11 was in preview for longer than three months, because some Windows 11 features like DirectStorage were present in Windows 10 Insider builds that dropped between Windows 10, version 2004 and the Windows 11 reveal. I would say, however, that all of the UI/"experience" parts of Windows 11 were held until the announcement and that's the part that needed a feedback period the most.) Update 2022-05-11: It seems that monthly patches aren't getting enough internal scrutiny as well. The May 2022 patch caused some major issues with a number of apps. Failure to deliver on new features So, what does your regular old user get from upgrading to Windows 11, anyway? Other than the visual refresh / "shiny fresh coat of paint"? Perhaps the headline feature when Windows 11 was announced is the ability to run Android apps on Windows, through a partnership between Microsoft and Amazon AppStore. Well, that feature didn't make launch and was delayed, and is currently available only in a limited preview form. Universal mute button? Didn't make release. (I don't think it's available yet either, outside of preview.) I do think this would be useful if conference apps other than Microsoft Teams adopt it. I'd love to be able to unmute myself while I don't have the conference window in front. So, what are we left with? DirectStorage was hyped up for games, but it is coming to Windows 10 as well. WSLg (ability to run Linux GUI apps with 3D and GPU compute support) is a really neat feature but won't be used by very many people. Aside from Snap Layouts, deeper Teams integration (only useful for Teams users), and the half-baked "widgets" feature, I'm drawing a blank on what Windows 11 actually brings to the table. Well, there is Intel Thread Director for new Alder Lake CPUs. That is supported on Windows 11 only. But I have a feeling that will be changing sooner or later (probably sooner). System requirements Imagine taking a reasonably high-spec PC from 1995 that shipped with Windows 95, and trying to run Windows Vista on it. It would be a performance disaster. PC hardware was improving at very quick pace back then and software was changing to take advantage of it. Now imagine taking a reasonably high-spec PC from 2010 that shipped with Windows 7, and trying to run Windows 10, version 21H2 on it. ...It would be fine. You would expect the current version of Windows 10 to perform at least as well as Windows 7 did on that hardware. In both of these cases, we're looking at an 11-year difference between when the hypothetical PC was released and when the OS upgrade that I suggested that we try was released. The PC ecosystem has flattened out over the last several years. Particular pieces of software (games and graphics or compute-intensive workloads) will certainly benefit from a hardware uplift, but the baseline for a web browser and basic office software to work well has not really changed in over ten years. This means that a quality PC can last a long time, and that you can expect to continue running the current version of Windows on a PC that is getting old enough to be a teenager. So, when Microsoft has basically left Windows hardware requirements alone since Windows Vista was released, why are they now hiking the requirements for Windows 11? ...All this means that pretty much no PC released before mid-2018 meets the official Windows 11 hardware requirements. At the time of Windows 11's release, they were drawing the line at supporting only the past three years of hardware. That's worse than even Apple, which supports their systems with OS updates for around eight years. Microsoft went from looking better by supporting upgrades "forever" to suddenly looking way worse. The new requirements that could be troublesome for users of older PCs are basically: CPU — 8th-gen Intel CPU ("Coffee Lake") or later is required, or an AMD CPU of roughly equivalent age TPM 2.0 is now required UEFI Secure Boot is now required The CPU requirement is the big one. If you meet the CPU requirement, then the latter two can most likely be addressed by toggling appropriate settings in the BIOS setup if there is an issue. Microsoft has struggled to explain these requirements. In truth, they are not actually requirements; Windows 11 actually works fine on older hardware. You might have to jump through some hoops to get it to install, but that is only because of artificial install-time blocks that Microsoft has put in place. Once you have Windows 11 up and running, there is no hint that you're running on unsupported hardware. (Well, they're just now getting around to adding a little bit of a nag to Settings.) It works with older CPUs. It works with legacy boot. It works without a TPM. I have not heard a single story of hardware that worked with Windows 10 failing to work just as well with Windows 11. So, Microsoft's explanation is that the requirements hike is improved security, not improved performance. And I certainly understand the importance of security. However, I don't think that this argument really holds up with the requirements level that they have set. They could have started out by requiring TPM 1.2. Windows 10 already supports all of the security features that they mention in the article — most or all of them are also available on systems older than 2018. Some, like VBS memory integrity, are available but disabled by default on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. And nevermind if you're more interested in gaming, and security is less of a concern. A nice gaming system purchased in early 2018 with a Kaby Lake CPU is now destined for the landfill at the end of 2025, unless you want to run it without any security updates at all, jump through hoops to run Windows 11 unsupported, or maybe switch to Linux. In any case, the fact is that upgrading an "unsupported" system from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will not make it less secure than it was on Windows 10. Microsoft should allow end users to make that choice, so that they can make use of other features in Windows 11 (...such that they are...) and continue their system's lifecycle past 2025 if they so choose. Microsoft also talked up the benefits of a system with all "DCH" drivers and put this interesting tidbit in one of their articles explaining the reason for the system requirements hike: Reliability: Devices that do not meet the minimum system requirements had 52% more kernel mode crashes. Devices that do meet the minimum system requirements had a 99.8% crash free experience. ...Crunching those numbers, I guess that means that devices that do not meet the minimum system requirements had a 99.7% crash free experience. Yep. Definitely worth all of this rigmarole. This is speculative, but I have to wonder how much this was motivated by Microsoft just being fed up with how slow PC sales are these days, and trying to do something to drive them up. They've basically forced all PC users to purchase a new PC before the end of 2025 if they have had not purchased one within the past three years. It is, quite frankly, badly handled and gross. How I would suggest that they address this instead is easy. Have separate "hard floor" and "soft floor" requirements. (They did have this when Windows 11 was first announced, but that documentation quickly disappeared.) The "hard floor" should be the bare minimum config that Windows 11 needs to work. Put the CPU limit, TPM 2.0 and UEFI secure boot in the soft floor category. Don't offer the Windows 11 upgrade automatically to PCs that fail to meet the soft floor requirements, but don't put any roadblocks in the way of people who want to upgrade anyway other than a one-time "Proceed at your own risk, your experience may not be optimal" warning. (Update 2022-02-17: @Papusan points out that newer updates seem to be checking for a TPM and failing if it is not present. This also seems to be an "artificial" limitation.) Feature stability (or lack thereof) Before Windows 10, with only a few exceptions, Microsoft bent over backwards to not change anything from a user experience perspective after a version of Windows launched. Bugfixes only. There are a lot of good reasons for this. Changes to Windows behavior brings the risk that programs that rely on that behavior will break. In the workplace, users are trained on a certain version of Windows to do their job and it makes sense to expect that nothing will change with regards to how things work because that could risk confusion (for less technically-inclined individuals in particular). Changes were reserved for actual new Windows releases, and because of Windows's typically long support lifecycle, upgrades to new releases could be carefully planned out and the schedule set not by Microsoft but by whoever manages the systems. Windows 10 broke this somewhat, moving to a quicker release cycle that settled into a new release every six months. These "feature updates" could bring user experience changes. Each Windows 10 release was only supported for 18 months, so users were expected to stay current. (Businesses got a bit of a break with fall releases of Enterprise and Education edition being supported for 30 months. Still a far cry from the 10 years of support for previous Windows releases.) Microsoft did, however, shy away from making user interface/experience changes to Windows 10 except for when feature upgrades dropped. You would not expect UI changes in the regular monthly cumulative update patches. ...Well, that was true until mid-2020 when Microsoft added the "News and Interests" widget to everyone's Windows 10 taskbar. (This was a monetization push disguised as a "convenient feature", but I'll get to that later on.) With Windows 11, Microsoft has decided that a new release every six months is too quick and they are looking at yearly "feature upgrades". That would mean that the next one is due this fall, in October or November of 2022. However, Microsoft has signaled that they intend to make UI changes to Windows 11 before then. Taskbar "improvements" are landing this month. (Update 2/17/22: It's now clear that they plan to make UI changes "whenever".) So, I have two major issues with the fact that they now feel free to roll out feature upgrades or UI changes as part of the regular monthly patching process. First off, it means that you never know when they are going to throw a change at you. You can't defer such an "upgrade" without also deferring security updates. And second, it basically removes any block from Microsoft shipping stuff in an unfinished state because they can always just come back and fix it up later. Lack of control / Microsoft's desperation to get users on Edge "You'll do it our way and you'll like it." Microsoft really wants you to use Microsoft Edge. Now, I was really excited in late 2018 when Microsoft announced that they were switching to the Chromium engine for Edge. I was a Chrome user, because it was basically the best browser from a technical standpoint, but I was getting apprehensive about Google's data collection practices and I was looking to get off. So, I was happy to try Chromium-Edge and I switched over as soon as beta builds dropped in April 2019. And I was a happy Edge user for a couple of years there, but I started having reservations around the time of Windows 11's announcement. Now, first off, there are some cool things about Microsoft and Google working together on Chromium. For one, Microsoft has made many advancements in the area of accessibility and contributed these upstream, so that Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers can benefit as well. They've also brought their Windows expertise to the table and made improvements in the way of power efficiency and smooth scrolling that have also made their way out to other Chromium-based browsers. But as for what is making me nervous... For one thing, Microsoft increasing the hoops that you have to jump through to use a browser other than Edge. Instead of having a system wide "default browser" setting, they made it so that you have to go change the default app for every different protocol and file type that a browser can handle. (That is now rolling back, after public pressure.) Also, if you try to use Edge to go and download Chrome, in-browser popups appear asking you to consider sticking with Edge. If upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11, if you don't pay attention to the OOBE prompts, you may end up with Edge set as your default browser even if it was not before. Also, Microsoft is ignoring the default browser setting and firing up Edge at pretty much any opportunity that they can get away with in the Windows shell. If you search for something from the Start Menu, get a web link result, and click that, it will open with Edge regardless of your default browser setting (and search results come back in Bing, to boot, which basically no one wants to use). If you click a news headline or something from one of the "widgets", it will also open the link up in Edge. This open-everything-in-Edge behavior was worked around by the creator of Edge Deflector, who made a simple application that just redirected these requests to your default browser. Microsoft allowed this for a time, but when major browser vendors started thinking about utilizing the same technique to get around Microsoft's "make setting the default browser difficult" issue, Microsoft cracked down and Edge Deflector doesn't work anymore. (I did get off of Edge. I had taken a look at Brave, but at least at the time they didn't offer good synchronization with an iOS browser, so it was a no-go for me. I found that Firefox has grown up a lot since last I tried it as my main browser, and I am now happily using Firefox ESR. And I kind of like supporting a world where there are browser engines other than just Chromium.) As for why Microsoft wants you on Edge, keep reading... Windows as a monetization platform Microsoft is trying to find ways to get more monetary value out of Windows users than just the license fee that they collect. While I am happy to pay for a quality piece of software, and I don't even mind if "telemetry" goes back to the creator of said software if it is used to improve the product, I do have to draw the line at collecting data on me just to make money or other compromises being made to the OS just in order to shove a few pennies Microsoft's way. So, we have web results from the Start Menu opening up in Bing on Edge, which obviously delivers advertising revenue to Microsoft. Also, by pushing users to Edge, they are allowing users to take "advantage" of their "coupon code finder" or "buy now, pay later" eCommerce hooks. Microsoft may not be charging for or making direct commission off of shopping features like this, but I have to assume that there is data exchange going on that they will be monetizing (or else why would they be implementing this stuff at all?). It's not just Edge, either. Pre-installed apps and "recommended" apps are tied up in the business of monetizing Windows users. Also, the "widgets" feature is there as well. It's an evolution of the "News & Interests" feature that popped up in Windows 10 back in mid-2020. Most interactions with the various news widgets seem to send you to a MSN page where Microsoft can again collect advertising revenue. There is no allowance for third-party "widgets" at this time, so it is Microsoft's or nothing. Power user regressions – Start Menu The Start Menu is one of the most important pieces of UI in Windows. They made a major change in Windows 8 that a lot of people hated. I didn't hate it. I set up groups of tiles to allow one-click access to over one hundred applications, organized in a way that made sense to me. This was also easily pulled off on Windows 10, and even made better when they allowed creating "subfolders" of tiles. Enter Windows 11. Sure, you can still pin apps to the Start Menu, but you are limited to just three rows (without scrolling). Subfolders are gone. Free placement of apps is gone, they have to be laid out in "left-to-right" rows (like iOS). This is significantly less useful. Power user regressions – Taskbar This article explains it well enough. The Taskbar is probably the single most important bit of UI in Windows. Microsoft took away a lot of the customization options. It can now only live at the bottom of the screen. You can't drag files onto apps on the Taskbar to open them in that app. You can't ungroup Taskbar buttons or have it show text next to the buttons. On a multiple-monitor system, the clock only shows in the Taskbar on the primary monitor. (Well, it looks like that last one is getting "fixed" this month.) I know that a lot of people would open Task Manager by right-clicking on the Taskbar, but that option is gone and they'll have to get used to Ctrl+Shift+Esc or right-clicking on the Start Button. Power user regressions – Clock (seconds) I like to see what time it is. In this new work-from-home world, I like to join meetings promptly and that means I want to know when I have 10-15 seconds before the start time. Seeing the seconds part of the time can be useful for other reasons. For example, if I'm working on a program and have some issue, if I can quickly glance at the seconds part of the time when the issue occurs, I know right where to look in Event Viewer or in a log file to see what happened. Windows 10 has a registry value that you can set to show the seconds on the taskbar clock. Failing that, at least you can click on the clock and see the seconds in the flyout. Microsoft seems dead set on making it impossible to see the "seconds" part of the time in Windows 11. The taskbar clock registry setting doesn't work anymore. The clock flyout doesn't show seconds. They even ship a "Clock" app as part of the OS, and that app does not show you the "seconds" part of the time anywhere. Seems like a crazy oversight to me, but judging by their comments on Feedback Hub, they just don't care. (Update 2022-11-18: Microsoft today announced that they adding an option for seconds on the taskbar clock as a result of user feedback; it is launching in an Insider Build and I presume will drop in production Windows 11 by the end of 2023 at the latest.) UI issues – Rounded corners on windows After going for completely rectangular windows in Windows 8, they've gone back to rounding them off in Windows 11. I don't mind this. It looks nice. But I need the option for rectangular windows. The reason for me is documenting software. If I want to grab a screen shot of a window, I can just hit Alt+PrntScrn and paste it somewhere. No cropping necessary. Now that the windows are rounded off, when doing this I get bits of whatever is behind the window on all four corners. So I will need to take care to put it on top of a white background or use third-party software to grab a proper window screenshot with transparency. As far as I can tell, there is no (non-hacky) way to disable rounded corners on windows in Windows 11. ...But Windows 11 supports rectangular windows. It's what you get if you don't have a GPU driver installed and run with the "basic" GPU driver. (Update: This command-line tool allows you to disable rounded corners rather easily.) UI issues – Radio buttons This is pretty inconsequential but it just bothers me. Radio buttons look completely different than the established norm, with the "outer" part of the selected radio button being filled in rather than the "inner" part. I'm surprised this got through accessibility screening. Also, radio buttons in Edge still use the old "inner" part filled in style. (Left = Windows 10, right = Windows 11. Oh, and here is Alt+PrntScrn at work — no issue grabbing a Windows 10 window snapshot, but the Windows 11 one will have dark bits around the corners, especially visible if you're using the light theme here.) Conclusion / recommendations I wanted to like Windows 11. I was excited when it was announced. The first actual new release in over six years. Like I said at the top, I've been an early adopter of each Windows release since XP. But, after trying it and coming to terms with the reality of what it is... This release actually seems like a step back in many ways and that's something I'm not used to seeing with Windows. Even when they take missteps (Windows 8, ahem) there have been enough improvements that I'm able to look past it, but that is not the case here. Windows 11 brings very little to the table and brings with it too many downsides. It really feels like it was rushed out to boost PC sales for the 2021 holiday season. Other than DirectStorage and WSLg, the new features that even made it in at release time seem half-baked. A pair of "epic fail" launch bugs just seal the deal. No thanks. Quoting Daniel Aleksandersen (author of Edge Deflector), in his article describing the demise of Edge Deflector: Microsoft still charges 200 USD for a Windows license while simultaneously filling the operating system with ads and crapware. Weeks before launch, Windows 11 wouldn’t even show the taskbar when it failed to display an advertisement dialog. Just last week, first-party apps and features of Windows 11 stopped working due to an expired encryption certificate. These aren’t the actions of an attentive company that cares about its product anymore. Microsoft isn’t a good steward of the Windows operating system. They’re prioritizing ads, bundleware, and service subscriptions over their users’ productivity. I feel much the same way. I'm a .NET developer, and a PC gamer, so I'm not switching to Linux or something. I just wish Microsoft would get back to just letting Windows be an OS, with productivity as the main focus. For now, I've switched to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and I am holding Windows 11 at bay. "Should I upgrade to Windows 11?" If you think that the stuff that I brought up is no big deal, then go right ahead and upgrade to Windows 11. At this time, I think that it is solid at a technical level; major bugs have been cleaned up, it is stable and highly compatible with apps that worked on Windows 10. If my post gave you pause, stick with Windows 10 at least for the short-term. It is still supported through late 2025. If my post resonated and you agree with my concerns, look at Windows 10 LTSC instead. Unfortunately, that means shelling out some money for an LTSC license, but the LTSC version of Windows neatly avoids some of the concerns that I brought up here. I'm hoping that will remain true when a Windows 11 LTSC version comes along.

Your two links are the same, but if you're talking about linking those to the thread list here, then yes, that is my intent.

Poking in with my Precision 7560 experience once again. The keyboard layout appears similar — Precision does have the numeric keypad but the same issue with the four keys mentioned here. I used SharpKeys to remap the keys. I'm not quite using the config pictured there. What I settled on is: Right Alt → Pg Up Right Ctrl → Pg Dn (I rarely use these keys so sacrificing them to get dedicated PgUp/PgDn seems fine.) I have "Fn lock" disabled so that the top row of keys function as F1-F12 and not as volume control, etc. So, more mappings: F11 → Home F12 → End (This allows me to use these keys as labeled but the F1-F10 keys are available without Fn press.) Insert → F11 Calculator → F12 (So I can access these keys without Fn press. I use F11 for "full screen" in some apps, and F12 for browser developer tools. Though I realize that XPS doesn't have the "Calculator" key ...) Home → Insert End → Calculator (So that the Insert and Calculator keys are not "lost", even though I never use them. They are effectively available with Fn+F11 and Fn+F12.) Maybe some variation of this will work for you. One more thing that I am not using is, I noticed that on Dell systems, if you press Fn+Windows it does a "right Windows key" press and not a "left Windows key" press. So, you could map "right Windows key" to something and then access that key with Fn+Windows. SharpKeys requires a logout/login (or reboot) every time that you make a change to the mappings. Mappings can also be lost when a Windows "feature upgrade" is applied, so keep a note of your config once you are satisfied with it. You could also try the keyboard remapping function in Microsoft PowerToys instead of SharpKeys, which works immediately, but I found that it doesn't work in all apps (Remote Desktop in particular is an issue).

Did you see this trailer from a couple days ago? I think the "mouthful mode" is pretty hilarious.

Nice, maybe they corrected this "issue" in Windows 11 ...... I have not checked that specifically.

Captured an hour or two before the site went down.

I like this one ... (think about it for a second) Courtesy of this awesome site which uses every possible bad web design technique.

Lemmings fan myself... Actually did some bugfixes for this engine recreation that runs on modern Windows (but behaves like the DOS version) if anyone wants to give this game a new play. 🙂 (Just download, unzip and run.) https://github.com/AaronKelley/LemmixPlayer/releases

No. It can go above 90W with dynamic boost. I'm not sure what the actual value is for the 7560 though. I know that the base TDP value for the RTX A5000 in the Precision 7760 is 115W, but with dynamic boost it can hit up to 140W. That said, you can assume that the GPU won't spend that much time in dynamic boost (especially if there is a moderate to heavy CPU load as well) as the system only has 180W total available to use.

Takes some muscle memory adjustment but you can still open Task Manager by right-clicking on the Start Button.

Pretty sure I read that they can work between circuits (depending on the “quality” of your electrical wiring) but speed will be reduced a good bit. (Seems pretty limiting otherwise as a circuit would just cover a room or two, probably adjacent rooms, and you might as well just knock a hole in the wall and put a real Ethernet jack on each side in that case.)

I looked into this before I ran Ethernet everywhere. Check to see if there are arc fault circuit breakers where you would like to put the powerline adapters. These are normal for bedroom power outlets in newer houses, and pretty much my entire upper floor has outlets behind arc fault breakers. I hear that powerline adapters can cause these to trip randomly, cutting power until you go flip the breaker back on. (No first-hand experience but I have had other arc fault issues... It scared me out of buying any powerline adapters.)

I checked on this yesterday when I rebooted for Windows patches. There are options for this under "Security". I don't see an option to "reset" the tamper protection. Turns out that I had just disabled it altogether. (Maybe disabling and then re-enabling it would reset it? Or maybe another button shows up there to reset it when it needs to be cleared? The text seems to indicate that there is a way to clear it.) No idea what's going on with the BIOS being pulled, but maybe there will be a hint in the release notes for the next version ...