During this blog post I will take a look at some of my previous statements on Windows 11, and comment on them based on my experiences with the Windows 11 Developer Build. Of course the dev build is not a final product, so Windows 11 may change upon release. I will later be comparing my initial impressions of Windows 11 to the product’s final release.
After Microsoft announced the newest version of Windows to be a free upgrade from Windows 10, critics focused on the large barrier preventing users from upgrading to Windows 11, the lofty system requirements that come with upgrading.
While Windows 11 has high system requirements which box out many older systems from upgrading, they can be bypassed relatively easily. However, even owners of new systems like myself have to trouble through enabling secure boot and TPM 2.0. While enabling TPM was no hassle, enabling Secure Boot required me to change my boot drive from Legacy mode to UEFI mode, a process that utilizes command line in the advanced boot options. For more information on how to successfully upgrade to Windows 11, I would recommend my readers to watch the video below.
Although many may find the new start menu an unnecessary change, Windows 10’s start menu was quite awful. Windows 10’s start menu had most of its space taken up by Microsoft recommendations and other Microsoft apps which seldom were helpful. Additionally, the start menu on Windows 10 provided a long scrollbar of apps that only took up a little bit of space. Windows 11’s start menu, on the other hand, puts apps and recent documents front and center, allowing users to access apps and documents much faster.
Although not as big of an improvement as I had anticipated, Windows 11’s new start menu is marginally better than Windows 10’s. The new start menu makes it much easier to access your desired application without having to search for it and makes a good use of space, but this is only helpful in minor ways. The new start menu is definitely a welcome improvement; however, it fails to provide the sweeping productivity benefits that I had previously imagined. This is definitely a nice feature to have, but it is no game changer.
Other UI changes have less obvious functions for the user, but could be quite beneficial in some circumstances (like widgets on touch devices). Overall, Windows 11’s UI changes are almost universally positive even though many of them only affect some users.
While the new widgets feature is nice to have, its reliance on Microsoft Edge for information makes it difficult justify using for Google Chrome users like myself. Despite my dissatisfaction with Edge’s integration with the widgets panel, I found myself checking it more than I expected. Many of the other UI changes are also beneficial, especially the modernization of the controls tab in the bottom right corner. However, the UI changes to the settings tab seem based more on form than function. Since I initially had trouble adjusting to the new settings tab, I will come back to this issue after spending more time on Windows 11.
Windows 11 will come with marginal if not significant improvements for most users, while drastically improving performance for gamers and those with rendering workloads.
While Windows 11 comes with some clear performance improvements, it will feel like a slightly nicer looking Windows 10 for most users. Windows 11 is no monumental change, but it will bring many small (and often unnoticeable) improvements for many users. For me, Windows 11 is still an improvement over Windows 10 although not a major one.
The Overclock 