Question is windows 11 worth a try?

[rynftw]

Hello, I'm currently using windows 10 so I'm here to discuss whether windows 11 is worth a try?

 

[Endre]

Its not quite that simple.

Consider how it came to be sold to you that cheaply.

Some guy selling a single license he no longer needs? No problem.
Some guy with 500 of them, for $10? hmmm...How? What is his special inroad to the cheap place at Microsoft?

Frequently, this is associated with money laundering.

Purchase 50x stolen credit card numbers. Valid cards, but stolen.
Now...how to turn those cards into cash?
Well, you can't buy physical items and sell...too much work, and too much paper trail.

So, digital goods. OS and game licenses.

Buy a bunch of 100% valid OS licenses, for actual retail price (using the stolen cards)
Then, turn around and sell them for cheap, to you.

No money out of the perps pocket, no physical goods, the only trace is a throwaway email address.

G2A has even admitted that the keys sold there are often obtained illegitimatly.
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2020/5/20/21265275/g2a-confirms-it-sold-stolen-game-keys


You can justify this all you want. Doesn't make it legal.

I get your point, but I believe that Microsoft is, actually, OK with that.

Remember that upgrading a cracked license of Windows 7 to Windows 10 was, and it still is, possible!
Microsoft cares a lot about market share.
They prefer people using Windows (even if they only paid $10 for it) instead of them using Linux.

Also, there are hundreds of YouTubers out there advertising Windows licenses on sites like URCDKey, TopKeyShop, eBay, etc.

Microsoft could ban all of those licenses, but they will never do it!

 

[USAFRet]

I get your point, but I believe that Microsoft is, actually, OK with that.

Remember that upgrading a cracked license of Windows 7 to Windows 10 was, and it still is, possible!
Microsoft cares a lot about market share.
They prefer people using Windows (even if they only paid $10 for it) instead of them using Linux.

Also, there are hundreds of YouTubers out there advertising Windows licenses on sites like URCDKey, TopKeyShop, eBay, etc.

Microsoft could ban all of those licenses, but they will never do it!

Its not that MS is OK with it, but rather you may be supporting illegal activity.
I don't know about you, but I'm not OK with that.

As far as upgrading a cracked OS from 7 to 10?
That was a concept early on, and did not last.

The utubers advertising these cheap licenses?
People will say anything if you pay them.
https://kotaku.com/shady-market-g2a-offers-to-pay-journalists-to-run-pre-w-1836186979

 

[USAFRet]

I think this cheap license key thing has run its course in here.
Let's just agree to disagree, and table this discussion.

 

[Alabalcho]

Windows 11 has some differences. Here are some of my notes. I just got Win 11 with a new PC, I didn't have an option to avoid it.

• When setting up Windows 11 for the first time I logged in using my Microsoft account. They were able to get my network password from this account and set up my network connection automatically. This sounds like a serious security breach to me.
• Lots of extra "trialware" software installed like McAffee antivirus 30 day trial version, which shows me an ad about every 5 minutes.
• Right click menu is different and omits many items like SendTo. You must click on the Right Click menu "More Options" to see Open with and Send To.
• Icons in task bar are now centered along with windows button. Weather is now on the far left of the task bar.
• They have PIN now so when you type your 4 digit pin you log into the PC and don't have to hit ENTER. All PINs must be exactly 4 digits.
• I am unable to associate an app with JPG files and JPG files are not listed in the Windows Default App control panel.

• While I am not Microsoft advocate, some of your concerns are not valid:
• If by "Network password" you mean "WiFi password", Microsoft "knows" it because at some point in the past you let Microsoft keep it with your account;
• The trialware is not supplied by Microsoft but by your PC manufacturer. McAffee can be uninstalled withouy traces;
• There are easyhacks to restore right-click functionality;
• You can use longer PIN, and not just digits, or you can not use PIN at all, and use passwords / biometry / pictire password;
• You can choose any .EXE file to handle JPG (or any other file type)

 

[bacca400]

• You can choose any .EXE file to handle JPG (or any other file type)

While true on most Windows machines, this is not true on my machine. There's something wrong with it. I've tried a bunch of things to fix this and cannot get any of them to work.

What that means is, if I have problems, it's certainly possible, but not certain, others will have the same problem.

 

[Colif]

I wish they would just bring back the way you could set defaults, from Windows 10.
a different area above where you set the defaults for some app types, like browsers.
Not how it is now, where they don't want you doing that... just do what we say... peasants

I wonder why I have Firefox twice, I wonder how I tell them apart.

 

[mollyvaynerchuck]

If you don't have sufficient RAM, then Windows 11 will be a great option for you. There is no such difference between the performance of Windows 10 and 11.

 

[lvt]

I'm currently using Win10 21H2, I guess that I won't be bugged with this question until 2025 though 😊

 

[joeldf]

Tossing in my 2 cents...

I built a new machine almost a year ago. Got Win 10 Pro for it, and it's been running fine. When Win 11 first came out with the security requirements, I had checked out how my PC would fare. That's when I came across the TPM issue. It was off by default on my motherboard, of course, but a quick settings change in the BIOS resulted in the Win 11 Compatibility Check giving me the OK. I never changed anything else. Didn't touch the secure boot thing (capable, but not enabled), and my drives were all GPT partitioned when I set it up.

I waited a while after the initial Win 11 release to see what comes up. I downloaded the ISO and burned it to a DVD for a future install, but ended up never using it. I did buy a new Dell for my son at Christmas time, and it came with Win 11, so that gave me a change to study the OS on a fresh machine. And, I made sure it stayed up to date as fixes came along. Around early February, the update page on my PC showed that Win 11 was ready for me. I just left it alone until I was ready.

Over this past weekend (from the time of this post) I finally decided to update my machine through the update page (it's why I didn't use the DVD I made). This machine has several versions of AutoCAD and Revit (a building information modeling and construction document drawing program), a VPN client to access a work computer, MS Office programs, MS Teams, older (pre-cloud) versions of Photoshop and Adobe Audition (sound editor), DOSShell for older DOS games, and a bunch of smaller things.

Between the time I clicked "update" to the time it was done probably took about an hour and a half - that includes the download time and initial "install" before the first re-boot.

I was ready to redo it all as a fresh install if I needed to, but the in-place upgrade actually finished without a hitch. And, so far, no errors have occurred as I went through pretty much every program to see if things open without any problems. All desktop icons are in the same spot. User account stayed put. Even Firefox stayed as the default browser. Almost every common user settings stayed in place - like all the privacy settings previously set. I did go through to see if anything new had to be checked out.

The only things that were reset (so far that I've found) were:

1. The soundcard EQ settings.
2. Turn off passwords for my one shared folder so my wife could access it from her computer. Every big OS update seems to reset this every time.

I've been happy with it so far.

I'd say, if you have a recent enough machine, and you are aware of the changes, it should be fine.

If you have years of stuff on your PC, then maybe just wait until you're ready to just start all over.