Windows 11 seems okay

Microsoft’s next version of Windows, Windows 11, is coming October 5th. In many ways, it’s already here — the free update has been available for Windows Insiders to download and test for months, and recent versions like the Release Preview will likely be indistinguishable from the final operating system.

We’ll have a full review from Tom Warren next week, but in the meanwhile we thought we’d give you a look at how The Verge at large feels about upgrading to the new OS — by asking every other prominent Windows user on the team to install the most recent version on their own home computers, and gathering their impressions.

Here’s how it’s going so far.

ON A HOME-BUILT DESKTOP (CORE I7-7700K, RTX 3060 TI) AND A 2017 DELL XPS 15 LAPTOP (CORE I7-7700HQ)

Windows 11 insists my desktop’s 7th-gen Intel CPU isn’t good enough, despite having practically every feature (and quite a bit more performance) than the lowest end 8th-gen chips on the company’s compatibility list. But that didn’t stop me from installing a copy of Windows 11 right over my copy of Windows 10 by using the ISO image — I just needed to turn on my TPM module and enable Secure Boot in my motherboard’s BIOS, and click through a scary warning message. (Windows disqualified my 7th-gen laptop and forced me to do a clean install, though, so I did a dual-boot there.)

Since then, it’s been a practically painless upgrade. Almost everything was exactly where I left it, and almost everything works just the way I’d expect, including PC games. (Wallpaper Engine did forget how to load new wallpaper at first, and there were a few times my system failed to wake from sleep.) My XPS 15’s fingerprint reader and nose-hair webcam are still terrible, but they’re no worse than they were on Windows 10 — Windows 11 pulled down all the drivers I needed automatically once again.

But nothing feels much better, either, so I don’t see any reason to upgrade. HDR is still a mess, and I’m with Tom on the Windows 11 taskbar: it’s a giant step back. It’s annoying to have to launch an app before I can pin it to my taskbar, and annoying to have to manually toggle on every icon I want in my system tray. Why do I have to launch an entire new window to adjust the volume mixer? Is there a reason why my audio devices are in a different place? But I haven’t found enough wrong with Windows 11 to bother uninstalling it and going back.

ON A LENOVO THINKPAD T480 LAPTOP (CORE I5-8250U)

Since my Windows 10 install is filled to the brim with things that would be a pain to re-set up and various hacks that keep everything running, I decided not to risk anything and installed Windows 11 on a separate partition. Switching between them, I can say that Windows 11 looks much nicer to my eye — except for the fact that you can’t put the taskbar on the top, because Microsoft hates me.

I don’t have hours and hours of stability testing, but throughout the beta it’s been mostly fine except for one infuriating bug — if I plug or unplug my computer from power, it’ll freeze for a few seconds, and the screen will flash black a few times. This doesn’t happen in Windows 10, and it’s been a problem since I first installed the preview. I’ve also just recently started having issues with my LG UltraFine 5K as well. It’ll go black for a few seconds every minute or two, though Windows doesn’t seem to register that it’s dropped off. I get that it’s a Thunderbolt display mostly made for Macs, but these issues haven’t cropped up in Windows 10. Until they’re gone from my test install, I’d really rather not upgrade to Windows 11 on my main partition. Other than those issues, though, it’s been like using a prettier version of Windows 10.

One last quick note though: one of the things I was most excited about for Windows 11 was Visual Studio’s Hot Reload feature, where you’d be able to quickly test changes to your code without having to rebuild it. It turns out that I have it on Windows 10 now, and it hasn’t worked the few times I’ve tried to use it. Ah well. — Mitchell Clark

Sourcce: TheVerge