We’ve all been there before. They unpack yours shiny new PC, all pre-installed, and you’re so excited that you’re practically sitting in your chair waiting for it to boot up. You’re so engrossed that you forget that there’s a ten-ton gorilla lurking just around the corner. It’s Windows 11, a mammoth operating system, that does that everything you want And everything you don’t do to the same extent.
I brought out a brand new budget scale PC from iBuyPower to start a review (don’t worry, that’s coming soon). When I connect a DisplayPort cable to my monitor, the constant flickering reminds me that I’m using Windows and sometimes things don’t work without troubleshooting. Of course, the PC is crammed with bloatware and I had no option to reinstall. And all I have left to do is disable pop-up notification options, go through the settings menus to set my default browser, uninstall apps I don’t need, and so on.
Instead of trying to forge its own path as a more open operating system compared to Apple products, Microsoft has desperately tried to create its own walled garden so it can get a bite of the Mac lunch. Despite their best efforts, the company eats away at the table, much to the detriment of those who actually just want to eat. We constantly have pop-ups and recent ads for Windows services. Microsoft wants its proprietary account system to be the artery for your entire PC, but that just makes the experience worse. Heck, half the time the Microsoft account doesn’t even work as intended upon startup.
The Redmond, Washington Pursue latest update This month introduces some positive changes to Windows 11, but none of them are obvious. With the Moment 5 update, users can finally uninstall system apps, including Microsoft Edge and applications like Paint or Photos.
Microsoft made this change So, in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, don’t think that Microsoft did this out of the goodness of its heart. Still, it’s a step in the right direction, and there are a few new additions, such as better snap layouts, that give me hope that the current or future version of Windows will be more accommodating to users. However, the worst aspects of Windows 11 right now come from Microsoft redirecting users to its own services.
Windows 11 is by far the most user-friendly operating system Microsoft has ever created, and yet it annoys me more than the much-derided Windows 8 or even Windows Vista. That’s because of how hard Microsoft tries to force you to use its own products and services. It bombards users with relentless pop-ups about OneDrive, Microsoft 365 and newer versions his new obsession, copilot. Windows now wants every laptop and keyboard to have a Copilot key for quick access to AI, and we’re still waiting to see if this is a worthwhile addition to Windows or if it will make a bloated operating system even more unwieldy.
There are some things that Windows 11 is good at. It runs on a whole lot of hardware (although it still requires a modern CPU from the last three years) and it supports games far better than pretty much any other operating system. But things could be a lot better if Microsoft stopped treating its users like a captive audience or, worse, like a piggy bank.