News I’m Sticking With Windows 10, but Microsoft Won’t Stop Nagging Me to Upgrade

[mhmarefat]

With all of that in mind, Linux distros tend to better appeal to 2 categories of people.
1: People who have a deep understanding of the underlying OS, and can adapt to changes nearly instantly.

2: People who use their PC for very basic tasks, where they rarely need anything beyond a web browser, such that the software center has more than they will ever need.

Very basic tasks such as handling a spacecraft on Mars? Are Linux based systems such as Steam Deck not completely user friendly? How about Linux Mint or newer distros such as Nobara? Is limiting one's understanding of Computer to simple "point-and-click" and be happy with it in an age when technologies such as AI or Quantum Computers are rising reasonable!?

 

[Newb888]

I upgraded to W11 from W10. I found it was slower than 10 (obviously) and no major improvements for me. I also found more resources running than I'd like.

I know many love to tinker with StartIsBack and other utilities from Sordum other developers. For me, regardless of which Windows version I use, there's instability.

There's a bug with W11 not present in W10 where one time my W11 wouldn't startup, and I had to do a startup repair. In the process, it created an annoying Drive Z.

I'm currently waiting until my system became very unstable and I'll downgrade (free install) to W10. I might also upgrade to W12 come Xmas 2024 to see if MS made improvements to the File Explorer et al and in particular bringing back the ability to link recent folders/items to apps (open from my recent folders within an app like Word). MS removed that after Windows 8 I believe.

 

[Newb888]

Very basic tasks such as handling a spacecraft on Mars? Are Linux based systems such as Steam Deck not completely user friendly? How about Linux Mint or newer distros such as Nobara? Is limiting one's understanding of Computer to simple "point-and-click" and be happy with it in an age when technologies such as AI or Quantum Computers are rising reasonable!?

I avoid Linux like I avoid a lot of things ...<Mod Edit>

 

[Newb888]

I just added a couple of Stardock programs like Start 11 and now my computer functions like a blend of Windows 7/ 10 and is much faster than Windows 10 now on my system. a couple registry hacks and all my context menus are back to what I consider normal.

I initially tried that, but I soon regretted it within a few weeks. I reinstalled it after performing a fresh clean install, only to encounter the same stability issues once more.

With age, my preference leans towards stability and simplicity. I desire things to function as intended without the need for extra effort or tinkering. I understand that the current culture emphasizes adventure, risks, and experimentation, but I've moved past that phase.

 

[RedBear87]

I feel the pain... My solution was* simpler: disable the TPM module in the BIOS.

Regards 😛

This. But honestly this is only a solution for fellows who don't need a TPM module in the first place. On a laptop you could want to keep TPM and encryption enabled, because it could get stolen/lost while you're on the move.

Ehhh, honestly, I've upgraded to 11, and its so similar to 10 that I haven't looked back. I don't see intrusive ads anywhere, TBH, but I've disabled a bunch of things like notifications that might normally have had them.

I think the hate for 11 is a bit overblown vs 10.

And of course, there's always Ubuntu which is downright simple to install and use unlike Linux distros decades ago.

Privacy was thrown out of the window with Win10, so it's not really my main concern. Personally I'm more concerned about the increased RAM usage (my main system has 32GB, which is more than enough with Win10, but I don't want to throw out my spare system resources for an unnecessarily bloated OS) and bugs like this one that keep being reported every so often which don't seem to bother Win10 users. Like most people I will probably upgrade when forced, most likely when games that can only run on Win11 will appear.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Honestly, with ExplorerPatcher, I've noticed nothing but improvement with 11 vs 10. Things like resizing windowed games no longer causes them to freeze. Without ExplorerPatcher (or another shell tweaker that rids Windows 11's huge step backwards) I wouldn't use 11, there's no reason to since Microsoft refuses to officially support Google Play in WSA.

However, there are lots of people who, like me, can upgrade to Windows 11 and don’t see a compelling reason to do so.

If you define "people like you" as moderate to advanced PC users, then there are only two reasons not to upgrade when annoying UI issues are easily fixed by any one of several pieces of software, some (like ExplorerPatcher) are free, and that is that Windows 12 will be out before Windows 10's support end date and may bring back a proper UI, and that it should also be a free update for Windows 10 users as well.

 

[Andrew Fox]

The widgets can be removed from the taskbar. So can the search field. And the start menu icon can be moved to the left, and it can have up to 24 customizable shortcuts on the first page. And when opening File Explorer, there is also the option to customize shortcuts on the Start folder there.

I use Win11 on all of my machines and have learned the funny ways to access settings I used to but like the author of the article there are a few things I am missing from 10.

On win10 start menu you can see your shortcuts and all apps at the same time, I had my win10 tiles nicely grouped by some categories I created and could very quickly scroll up and down them.

On Win11 start menu you can create folders but they require an extra click to see into so it's no replacement for the grouping.
On Win11 start menu you must click "all apps" to see the list of your apps and this hides your shortcuts, it's just less usable overall. I'd prefer if I can disable the first screen entirely and have the start menu always open as "all apps"

On windows 10 I would make the most of my widescreen monitor by disabling window grouping, enabling the setting to always show the window title text and then drag my start bar up so it has 2 lines to display everything on instead of one. All of those options are missing from Win11 so the taskbar is less usable.

Ignoring any settings screen reworks these are the two things Microsoft definitely needs to address. Bring back start menu tiles and fix taskbar.

 

[brandonjclark]

Thankfully I'm on Windows 10 Pro at home so just pushed out a GPO that sets the global target to Windows 10 22H2 and all that Windows 11 nagging goes away. Microsoft is hoping to avoid another Windows 7 situation, where everyone stays on something they like and prevents Microsoft from collecting even more information to sell to advertisers.

You "pushed out" a GPO?

Is your home machine domain-joined or are we talking local group policy?

 

[Andrew Fox]

If you define "people like you" as moderate to advanced PC users, then there are only two reasons not to upgrade when annoying UI issues are easily fixed by any one of several pieces of software, some (like ExplorerPatcher) are free, and that is that Windows 12 will be out before Windows 10's support end date and may bring back a proper UI, and that it should also be a free update for Windows 10 users as well.

ExplorerPatcher was good and let you use the Windows 10 UI, it even brought across your start menu tiles layout directly from what you had previously used in Windows 10.

One of the Windows 11 updates stopped the tiles from displaying at all in the Win10 style start menu and then worse is that none of the "modern apps" are listed in the Windows 10 start menu. For example if you have Halo installed from Xbox app it won't come up in the start menu, if you open the start menu and start typing Halo it will come up in search results though, really bizzare.

A more recent Windows 11 upgrade has broken ExplorerPatcher entirely, only way to get back into your system is to open task manager, open appwiz.cpl and uninstall it. It had a good run of around 6-12months at the beginning but has sadly stopped working correctly. There might be some way to Frankenstein it into working by using an older Windows 11 explorer.exe and shell dlls but I don't want to start messing with system files like that as it may break other Windows Updates.

 

[Hella_D]

My solution is Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC no annoying adds, popups, or "upgrade" notifications, no BS windows store, no unimportant updates, and best of all good till 2028 😀

On top of that Windows 11 has much higher resource usages, is restrictive on hardware (Artifically) and is an utterly pointless "upgrade", i like my machines lean and mean not fat and cantacerous......

 

[dalauder]

Wait, why do you get Windows 11 notifications? I don't get any.

 

[dalauder]

If you define "people like you" as moderate to advanced PC users, then there are only two reasons not to upgrade when annoying UI issues are easily fixed by any one of several pieces of software, some (like ExplorerPatcher) are free, and that is that Windows 12 will be out before Windows 10's support end date and may bring back a proper UI, and that it should also be a free update for Windows 10 users as well.

I reject "End of Support Date" as a reason to move to a bad operating system. Microsoft keeps on hiding admin features more and more. I want Windows 7 to be honest, when I was the actual admin.

Yes, there are workarounds, but there's always file permission problems. If I had a couple months of free time, I'd be on Ubuntu, which more and more seems like the right choice.

 

[Colif]

Ehhh, honestly, I've upgraded to 11, and its so similar to 10 that I haven't looked back. I don't see intrusive ads anywhere, TBH, but I've disabled a bunch of things like notifications that might normally have had them.

I think the hate for 11 is a bit overblown vs 10.

And of course, there's always Ubuntu which is downright simple to install and use unlike Linux distros decades ago.

I swapped to Win 11 3 years ago and at time, wondered what difference was... I still do.

Staying on 10 when MS are probably releasing 12 next year is funny. How long are you going to hold onto the past for?

Hating the new thing seems to be a pattern with Windows all the way back to ME. It was the same when 10 was new and people wanted to stay on 7. I am not old enough to remember if it happened when WIndows 2 came out.

 

[Zorth]

After decades of using MS Windows, I just switched to a Linux distro called "Zorin" on my 3 yr old laptop. I found this to be similar to Windows 10 and 11 and it runs many Windows apps too. Yes, I still have a Win 10 desktop (which cannot be upgraded to Win 11) for games but for basic home office purposes I am using the same programs that I used in Windows including printing, scanning, spreadsheets, etc. on Linux.

 

[razor512]

Very basic tasks such as handling a spacecraft on Mars? Are Linux based systems such as Steam Deck not completely user friendly? How about Linux Mint or newer distros such as Nobara? Is limiting one's understanding of Computer to simple "point-and-click" and be happy with it in an age when technologies such as AI or Quantum Computers are rising reasonable!?

It seems you are misunderstanding what was posted. To be more clear.
The reason for #1 is extremely basic users whose primary use involves at best using a web browser for basic tasks such as checking email. For them a bare minimum UI, a web browser and the software center for package management.

Since linux is extremely flexible, it also works well for the extremely high level user who lives and breathes CLI.

For those in between, it becomes less appealing compared to an OS like Windows. The reason for that, is the likelihood of encountering use cases where the software center will not meet your needs, in which case, you will encounter tar.gz packages, dependencies, tons of commands, editing files with nano, etc. and at that point if you are not proficient with CLI, then you will have to pray that for the package you are trying to install, either has up to date instructions for their distro, or that the old instructions written for an older distro still works when copied and pasted into terminal on a newer distro.

This in no way implies that linux lacks the function for their needs, it simply means that the guided yellow brick world in the linux distros doesn't meet the needs of those users in the middle.
On the other hand, windows, while designed to be exceedingly easy to a point where steps have to be taken to get people to stop installing stuff.

For example, in windows, most programs can be installed via a simple exe file or they can be standalone and simply be extracted and run.
Beyond that in cases when an application is produced that lacks a straightforward setup process. For example, stable diffusion and various other AI tools. Since the design culture in windows is around automation and ease of use, in boiling things down to being guided point and click operation. Thus there are now GUI based tools that will take the application, and set up all dependancies and get it configured to bring it to a ready to use state, without tons of fidgeting with python or other stuff. Simply put, windows offers the advanced tools but the culture surrounding it allows for someone else to do all of that work for you and through the design, of windows, those automatons can work across multiple versions of windows, thus it satisfies the needs of a basic user who will just use a web browser, as well as the user gets 99% of their needs handled by basic double click to setup packages, and for the occasions when they need a CLI tool from github, odds are highly likely that someone else produced a GUI frontend for it or at least a batch file to take the guess work out of the commands. And for the more advanced users, who understand the system well, they have access to all of the GUI intuitive enhancements from 35+ years of development, while also having the ability to dig into the CLI if they want. For everyone in the middle, there is the full panlply of control, with the ability for hand holding without having to bed for it on a forum and wait days or weeks for a response.

 

[dalauder]

Hating the new thing seems to be a pattern with Windows all the way back to ME. It was the same when 10 was new and people wanted to stay on 7. I am not old enough to remember if it happened when WIndows 2 came out.

In fairness, ME was the king of Blue Screen of Death. It literally shipped with a corrupted kernel32, IIRC.

Windows 10 is Windows 7, except you're automatically a guest user, which REALLY sucks. Windows 11 is a stupid right-click menu that hides what you want and nests a few other similar features (like volume) under additional clicks as well, for no reason. Windows 11 has other similar wastes of time. I expect Windows 12 to similarly arbitrarily shuffle menus and add clicks for the sake of change, not because they're a good idea. I also expect it to further make an admin account hard to use.

I don't want to be unable to transfer files from old hard drives because I'm a different user account. I don't want User Account Control to be unable to be adjusted. I don't want to enter a password just to rename or delete files. I don't want to have to sync all of my Windows 12 desktops across all devices. This is all what I expect from Windows 12, based on what I've seen with the direction of 10 & 11. They're going to lock it up like an Oculus Meta Quest. So no, I'm not excited at all.

I miss Windows XP, when I was truly king of my own PC.

 

[tamalero]

I want to keep my desktop PC on Windows 10, but Microsoft’s attempts to convince me to upgrade to Windows 11 keep getting more aggressive.

I’m Sticking With Windows 10, but Microsoft Won’t Stop Nagging Me to Upgrade : Read more

Every single of your complains resonate with me.
One that made me furious. IS that so many things needs double or triple click for no reason at all.
Like forcefully grouping all programs instances together. Even in very large monitors.

 

[lordmogul]

The biggest thing that keeps me away is the worse UX. Hiding stuff behind even more menues, removing even more features.
The fact alone that it doesn't allow to place the taskbar at different sides reduces usability.
The start menu shows less pinned links than the one in Windows 7
The cut down context menu, the amount of ads, the wasted space (Something 10 is already guilty of), especially the gigantic bezels around everything.
The suggested need for bigger monitors to display the same information (because of said wasted space)
The completely blind UI that makes it hard to distinguish what is interactive and what is purely informational. (How should I know that one piece of grey on grey text leads me to a different menu but a different piece of grey on grey text just tells me the name of the menu I'm in)

 

[Roo Stew]

11 is the new 8

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

"I also can’t find a single, must-have feature in Windows 11 that I don’t have in Windows 10."

Tabs in Explorer vs multiple windows in 10. That's a godsend. But oh my life the right click menu in 11 is asinine.

 

[Tac 25]

One that made me furious. IS that so many things needs double or triple click for no reason at all.
Like forcefully grouping all programs instances together. Even in very large monitors.

really? well, thanks for posting that.
looks like one more reason for me to avoid upgrading one of my pc to W11.

 

[WrongRookie]

There's that thingie called Linux you know

There is a thing called god mode you know.

 

[razor512]

If needed, you can run windows 11 in a VM. Nearly all of the complaints early on, have not been addressed.
The experience becomes extremely frustrating if you use many different folders open at the same. Time because it combines them on the task bar entry and doesn't offer text labels thus a process that takes. A single step on windows 10, especially when set to the smaller size with no combining and text labels enabled, takes multiple steps on windows 11, along with time wasting hover actions.

The OS wastes a lot of vertical screen space for no reason, and there are no proper ways to fix it.

Most of the right click use that I do, especially when working with log files, requires me to always click the option to show more options. Virtually everything I interact with regularly in the windows GUI has been degraded from a UX standpoint. I can't have 5 different folders open, and minimized, and go to a specific one in a single motion of moving the mouse cursor to the labeled entry of the specific folder on the Taskbar and directly click it. While I keep the task bar at the bottom.

Under windows 11, if you want to maintain the vertical user space you had under windows 10 with the compact options turned on, you would need to move. From a 16:9 monitor, to a 16:10 monitor.

Furthermore, in many ways, the UI of windows 11 has gotten worse over time since early on, you could restore some. Of the windows 10 UI features via a registry edit. After a number of updates, Microsoft went out of their way to make sure those registry edits no longer work.

PC hardware these days is fast enough that the higher resource requirements of windows 11.will not make the OS noticeably slower outside of the bad UX making things take more separate suer actions to complete, thus while less efficient under the hood, it is not really noticeable unless you open task manager, and see the OS actively using 5 to 6GB of RAM on a system with 64GB of RAM installed, rather than 3.2GB on windows 10 (in both cases, not mentioning the cached memory use or other prefetched data) .

 

[sonicscooter]

I don't think Linux is a good alternative to Windows 11.

I'm not sure Linux's solution of "force users to navigate an ancient ugly terminal, memorize the name and location of every file, re-navigate to an already-open folder, and memorize/type dozens of characters to perform simple commands or even launch apps with a usable level of permissions", Is an actual alternative to Window's 11 problem of "This thing that used to take two fast clicks now takes 4 slow clicks, a precise mouse move, and noticeably slower animations".
Both options are a slower than they need to be. A waste of time. and energy compared to the better versions of Windows.

I would love to switch to Linux (or I would if any software I used actually supported enough to run at full speed, or in general). But the Linux desktop GUIs (I've tried many) are still all very bad (slow and inconvenient) at being GUIs. They're just a radically different kind of bad. Linux is still just a skin of a text-based OS. That's an advantage for a small niche of people who need it, but a problem when it comes to providing general users with a fast and intuitive interface.

I want the GUI to get out of the way as quickly as possible so I can do something real. It should never block me or slow me down. It should be like the background sound in a movie or the controls in a video game: If you are consciously aware that it exists, if you're actively thinking about it... then it's done something fundamentally wrong.

Maybe someday Linux will get a fundamental UX rewrite where I don't need to drop everything to open up a terminal and fumble around with sudo and -flags multiple times a day, but I've been saying that for over 20 years. I don't think it's going to happen.

The problems with Windows 11 are very frustrating, because it's an obvious regression. They solved a lot of these design problems a long time ago. They could literally copy-paste some of these features... not even copy-paste, because the better GUI is sill burred deep in its bloat. You just need a 3rd party app to use it. It's a problem easily solved for 95% of people with a couple checkboxes and an animation-speed slider, or just give us a "classic" skin. But the art-student level novices who made this GUI think their way is best, and stubbornly want to shove it down people's throats.

Sorry, but I think you have the wrong mindset for Linux and I think that's your biggest barrier to switching to a Linux distribution – and this is coming from someone who used to be a ‘dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft fanatic’ according to some of my friends.

For starters, it's not been “force users to navigate an ancient ugly terminal, memorize the name and location of every file, re-navigate to an already-open folder, and memorize/type dozens of characters to perform simple commands or even launch apps with a usable level of permissions” for a good few years now, in my experience since using Linux from 2018. If anything, a lot of the ‘common’ configuration changes can be done via a GUI these days. It's only in rare/complex instances that you need to dive into a command-line interface, plus I've seen numerous Windows users having to run a command, batch/VBS file, PowerShell script, or dive into the registry, especially as Microsoft hides/removes more and more configuration options, so let's not perpetuate an outdated rhetoric. The fact you call a terminal/command-line interface ‘ancient’ and ‘ugly’ says more about your prejudice towards text-based interfaces, which is a such a pity because I think you then miss out on understanding and appreciating the power of a command-line interface, including the various ones within Windows itself.

Speaking of Linux desktop environments, they are usually considerably more customisable out-of-the-box, and support many different desktop paradigms, so I'd rather have more options to make it more suitable to my workflow needs. For instance, I have grown accustomed to the GNOME desktop environment, mainly because I prefer its philosophy of a ‘distraction-free’ user interface, but I appreciate it's not for everyone. I disagree that Linux desktop environments are all slow and unintuitive, as I've found them easier, quicker and more intuitive than the default Windows 10 and Windows 11 interfaces which almost continually nag me with notifications, even when I've set notifications to ‘priority only’.

Either way, it's “each to their own” as they say, but I hope this helps explain my thoughts and opinions 🙂

 

[criticaloftom]

Sounds like a migrated from windows 7 problem to me. don't pretend you didn't know what you were getting into when you said yes to OS as a blatant subscription model.