Friday, December 3rd 2021

Windows 11 a Flop, Survey Claims Less Than 1% Upgraded, Microsoft Improves Start Menu

Microsoft Windows 11, now nearing its third month since release, is for all intents and purposes, a flop. Market research by Lansweeper, which surveyed over 10 million PCs across the commercial and personal market segments, reports that less than 0.21% of the users it surveyed, had upgraded from Windows 10 to the newer operating system. The upgrade is free of charge. There may be several factors contributing to this lukewarm market response, but one of them is certain to he the steep hardware requirements. Windows 11 requires a trusted platform module (TPM 2.0), which disqualifies PCs older than 2018 for upgrades, unless the user is willing to try out workarounds to the limitation. Another factor could be the clunky user interface (UI), a less functional Start menu than Windows 10, and several UI-related bugs.

According to Lansweeper's data, there could be more people running outdated Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, etc., than Windows 11, and this poses a great security risk, as these operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft for regular security updates. Windows 10, on the other hand, is eligible for them until mid-2025—plenty of time for people to upgrade hardware to meet Windows 11 system requirements, or to simply make up their mind on switching over to the new operating system. In related news, Microsoft could give the Windows 11 Start menu a functional update. Test build 22509 introduces the ability to add more pins to the menu, or make room for more recommendations. The UI could see many such minor updates.
Sources: Tech Radar PRO, HotHardware
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393 Comments on Windows 11 a Flop, Survey Claims Less Than 1% Upgraded, Microsoft Improves Start Menu

#76
Bubster
XP Service Pack 2 was fantastic, i still use it in virtualization to play older simulation games like Blazing angels 2 and F-22 Lightning 3
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#77
Metroid
In my view with few modifications, windows 11 can become very good. I have done it and I'm very happy with it.
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#78
bug
R0H1TExcept when it's not broke don't fix it! Windows has been arguably the more superior platform to Mac for eons, you don't want to break it just because someone likes or doesn't like the new UI :shadedshu:
Which Windows would that be? 98? 2000? XP? Vista? 7? 8? 10?

Superior is in the eye of the user, the point is you don't change UI just to make it look like you have a whole shiny new OS.
AusWolfEverybody cries about the UI. Whether you're a fan of it or not, let's be honest - there's barely anything else that Windows 11 offers over 10 at the moment. At least I can't name anything from the top of my head. This is exactly the problem, imo: Windows 11 is essentially Windows 10 with a (badly executed) UI overhaul and a TPM 2.0 requirement. Who needed this, honestly?
That's not true at all. Win11 also comes with a requirement for a Microsoft account and some arcane requirements for memory protections. Those memory protections can be worked around the same as the TPM requirement and are not turned on for the time being anyway. But they do come with a hefty performance penalty for CPUs that don't have the hardware for it.
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#80
Yraggul666
No surprise at all.
When a CEO and most recently board of directors chairman makes a statement like the following "The Microsoft of 2021 is very different from the Microsoft of 2000" "To me and to everyone at Microsoft, our focus on our culture, our diversity, our inclusion, in particular, the everyday experience of our people is super important, it's a huge priority." i can't expect anything good from him or the company he's leading.
He said nothing about working harder to not fuck things up;or about how they "mined" enough data from everyone and about six years later allowing the user to turn off telemetry; or about working harder for updates to work correctly; or about updates not reverting settings and destroying some drivers; or about making the end user's experience a better one, nooooo, it's all about diversity and culture and other overused clichees and platitudes.
GG nadella.

Checked out win11 on a buddy's rig. Hated it.
First thing i did after finding out that an upgrade will be offered to win10 users, was to enter BIOS and make sure that TPM and Sec Boot were disabled;
we don't want M$ forcing their crap down our throats again, now would we!?

I'll be on modded win10 'till they drop support for it in 2025 and after that i'll be switching to Linux by the looks of it.
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#81
RoutedScripter
Alternate reality: Roadmap 2022: Windows XP Remastered
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#82
rutra80
bugThat's not true at all. Win11 also comes with a requirement for a Microsoft account and some arcane requirements for memory protections. Those memory protections can be worked around the same as the TPM requirement and are not turned on for the time being anyway. But they do come with a hefty performance penalty for CPUs that don't have the hardware for it.
I got seriously annoyed when lately I was preparing a laptop for a small company which uses Azure Active Directory - on Windows 10 I was skipping creating Hello credentials when logging in as an user for the first time, so he could do that oneself at next logon. On Windows 11 it is not possible to skip - you need to create Hello credentials or it is not possible to log in at all. Had to resort to some GP tweaks to log in, do the customizing, and then revert the tweaks to bring back the Hello requesters.
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#83
bug
rutra80I got seriously annoyed when lately I was preparing a laptop for a small company which uses Azure Active Directory - on Windows 10 I was skipping creating Hello credentials when logging in as an user for the first time, so he could do that oneself at next logon. On Windows 11 it is not possible to skip - you need to create Hello credentials or it is not possible to log in at all. Had to resort to some GP tweaks to log in, do the customizing, and then revert the tweaks to bring back the Hello requesters.
I'm pretty sure they still have to provide all that, otherwise enterprises wouldn't be able to preinstall anything. But yeah, it was there for everyone before :(

Not to mention Hello works so well, it can't recognize my fingerprint about half the time. I have already given up trying to use it.
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#84
TheinsanegamerN
Windows 11 changes the UI, which is an immediate non starter for many. It doesnt support 7th gen or older platforms, which wipes out a LOT of legacy hardware. It needs TPM 2.0, which wipes out yet more of the applicable hardware. It offers nothing to the end user in terms of useful software updates or features. Is it any surprise people dont touch the damn thing?

And guys, look, lets gets oen thing clear here. Can the TPM requirement be worked around? Absolutely, just like windows 10 can be tweaked to boot on a pentium III. That does not mean the vast majority of users will do that. Most users do not know how to bypass TPM 2.0, fewer want to try and modify windows 11 so it will boot. Of the tiny percentage of end users who DO know how to do this, even fewer want to. Could I bypass the requirements ot get this to load on my PC? absolutely. Do I want to? HELL NO. If I wanted to tweak and bypass stuff to get my OS to work, I'd use linux (which I do, for the most part, since if I'm putting that work in I'm avoiding MS at all costs).

MS shot themselves in the foot restricting windows 10.1 so harshly. Backwards compatibility is a big selling point for windows.
bugWhich Windows would that be? 98? 2000? XP? Vista? 7? 8? 10?

Superior is in the eye of the user, the point is you don't change UI just to make it look like you have a whole shiny new OS.


That's not true at all. Win11 also comes with a requirement for a Microsoft account and some arcane requirements for memory protections. Those memory protections can be worked around the same as the TPM requirement and are not turned on for the time being anyway. But they do come with a hefty performance penalty for CPUs that don't have the hardware for it.
By "hefty performanc penalty" you mean 1%? Because those who HAVE worked around the restrictions have reported almost no difference in performance.

Requiring TPM 2.0 is just a dog and pony show to work witht he like of netflix, amazon, et al that want to stop those eanie pirates recording their content. And if you believe conspiracy theories, a way to ban people who say no no words from ever using a computer again.
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#85
WonkoTheSaneUK
WTF? Why have they hidden "Rename" two sub-menus down?? :kookoo:
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#86
MEC-777
Guess I'm one of the lucky ones that hasn't had any issues so far? I waited until it had been out for a while and after some major fixes were implemented and it's been fine (knock on wood). So idk... I don't use the start menu much either so that doesn't bother me much. I think some people like to complain for the sake of complaining and jumping on the band wagon, so to speak. I'm also running it on my Ryzen laptop and Ryzen gaming rig with no discernable performance issues, what-so-ever.
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#87
rutra80
TheinsanegamerNWindows 11 changes the UI, which is an immediate non starter for many. It doesnt support 7th gen or older platforms, which wipes out a LOT of legacy hardware. It needs TPM 2.0, which wipes out yet more of the applicable hardware. It offers nothing to the end user in terms of useful software updates or features. Is it any surprise people dont touch the damn thing?

And guys, look, lets gets oen thing clear here. Can the TPM requirement be worked around? Absolutely, just like windows 10 can be tweaked to boot on a pentium III. That does not mean the vast majority of users will do that. Most users do not know how to bypass TPM 2.0, fewer want to try and modify windows 11 so it will boot. Of the tiny percentage of end users who DO know how to do this, even fewer want to. Could I bypass the requirements ot get this to load on my PC? absolutely. Do I want to? HELL NO. If I wanted to tweak and bypass stuff to get my OS to work, I'd use linux (which I do, for the most part, since if I'm putting that work in I'm avoiding MS at all costs).

MS shot themselves in the foot restricting windows 10.1 so harshly. Backwards compatibility is a big selling point for windows.

By "hefty performanc penalty" you mean 1%? Because those who HAVE worked around the restrictions have reported almost no difference in performance.

Requiring TPM 2.0 is just a dog and pony show to work witht he like of netflix, amazon, et al that want to stop those eanie pirates recording their content. And if you believe conspiracy theories, a way to ban people who say no no words from ever using a computer again.
Agreed, except that I wouldn't call "legacy" something that isn't even 5 years old. Especially in such an "eco" times where everything is supposed to be recycled, reused, etc.
Also, I believe that performance penalty will be indeed substantial if you want to enable all the security features like Memory Integrity etc. Some penalties are hard to measure though (i.e. you may be measuring bandwidth while there's latency penalty etc).
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#88
bug
rutra80Agreed, except that I wouldn't call "legacy" something that isn't even 5 years old. Especially in such an "eco" times where everything is supposed to be recycled, reused, etc.
Also, I believe that performance penalty will be indeed substantial if you want to enable all the security features like Memory Integrity etc. Some penalties are hard to measure though (i.e. you may be measuring bandwidth while there's latency penalty etc).
The question isn't whether you want to enable the security features, but rather whether Microsoft will continue to allow you to disable them. Looking at what they did to updates and now online accounts, I'm inclined to say the answer is "no".
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#89
windwhirl
RoutedScripterAlternate reality: Roadmap 2022: Windows XP Remastered
... If only. I'd have that with a few of the UI features from the newer OS versions (like Aero snap, for example).

I'm still pissed they changed the normal behavior of the backspace key in Explorer in Windows 7 lol
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#90
shovenose
My one computer new enough to support it officially is a Lenovo laptop I use as a Plex server. I downgraded back to 10 because despite selecting never go to sleep or hibernate in settings Win11 would hibernate at some random point.
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#91
bug
shovenoseMy one computer new enough to support it officially is a Lenovo laptop I use as a Plex server. I downgraded back to 10 because despite selecting never go to sleep or hibernate in settings Win11 would hibernate at some random point.
Strange behavior indeed, but I thought you'd keep a server in wake-on-lan mode or smth.
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#92
rutra80
shovenoseMy one computer new enough to support it officially is a Lenovo laptop I use as a Plex server. I downgraded back to 10 because despite selecting never go to sleep or hibernate in settings Win11 would hibernate at some random point.
Even funnier is that my wife's Windows 11 laptop intermittently wakes up for a second or so to do hell knows what, probably querying if there are new News and weather to show immediately when she wakes it up :kookoo:
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#93
trparky
Considering how I'd have to use third-party software (StartAllBack) to get Windows 11 to be anywhere close to being useful when compared to that of Windows 10, I don't blame people for not upgrading. The whole UI seems like someone went on a redesign spree yet forgot to re-add all the important things that we've had for nearly three decades. It's not at all polished and there's still lots of bugs. Yes, I acknowledge that Microsoft is fixing and improving things with Windows 11 and it'll soon become on par feature-wise with Windows 10 soon but that only lends credence to the idea that if the UI wasn't ready, why release the damn thing? So yes, I don't blame people for not upgrading to what is essentially a half-baked product.
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#94
windwhirl
trparkyMicrosoft is fixing and improving things with Windows 11 and it'll soon become on par feature-wise with Windows 10 soon but that only lends credence to the idea that if the UI wasn't ready, why release the damn thing?
Let's be honest, the Start Menu was fine as it was in Windows 7. Or even better, XP. Windows 10 is just meh, and 11 made it worse.
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#95
bug
windwhirlLet's be honest, the Start Menu was fine as it was in Windows 7. Or even better, XP. Windows 10 is just meh, and 11 made it worse.
Let's be honest, I haven't been using the start menu since I discovered Win+Q. They can revert that to the Win8 looks and I wouldn't care.
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#96
WhitetailAni
Absolute shocker.
It's almost like Microsoft should fix their crap before releasing an OS, that at best, is still in early beta stage.
They released the OS with Snipping Tool broken somehow, their "File Explorer update for Windows 11" was a shell extension that can be disabled with a few commands, their Android support didn't release with the OS and has been delayed to 2022, the taskbar is centered without activation so you have to home in on the start button instead of just dragging to the side, etc.

Essentially it's Windows 8 all over again, where they made it nice for touchscreens but forgot a lot of people don't have touchscreens. Similar to Amazon's Kindle (non-Fire) update where they made the UI a lot like the app, but didn't realize most Kindles don't act like phone touchscreens?
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#97
dayne878
I'm not surprised by this survey. When Windows 10 came out I was under the impression it was the "final" version and they would do it as a live service model (like they would update it 1-2 times per year to keep improving it). They'd be better off just renaming it "Windows" and just updating it every year or whatever instead of changing versions every few years.

I tried Windows 11 but had too many problems (like a disappearing taskbar) and I went back to Windows 10 with no regrets whatsoever. I won't switch to 11 until I am forced to.
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#98
Vayra86
R0H1TOk, I don't see a contradiction there. I said the same thing in both the posts. If you want a simple workaround just Google "windows 11 no TPM build" ~ that easy enough for the plebs?

It would be a problem if MS enforced that but clearly they're not doing it.
So its required - or Intended - design. Like 'required minimum specs' with applications, Im sure you can work around it, but the software owner then basically places you out of official support. Shit failing or buggy because you miss the checkbox or actual TPM module is bound to happen. So it IS a requirement to have the intended experience.

Enforcing isnt the issue here.

Do you know why I never suffer any Windows shenanigans? I dont tinker with it. Use as intended keeps you within regular troubleshooting steps if anything ever fails. That, and maximum delay on updates. 11 fails on both counts atm.
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#99
Psychoholic
I have been on windows 11 since i picked up my 12900k on launch day.
Switched over to "get the most" out of my 12900k and expected teething issues with win11 (or the new cpu arch) but its been flawless.

I hardly ever use the start menu, and on windows 10 I was using software called "taskbarX" to center all my icons, so centered by default is not much different on win11.

I'm definitely in the minority, actually enjoying win11, that said.. if it wasnt a free upgrade i probably would have stuck with win10.
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#100
demian_vi
I was really looking forward to install Win11 early like i did with Win10, but not being able to disable combination of tabs and drag and drop is a dealbreaker.
daily tasks have become much more troublesome cause of this on my laptop, so I will wait until all these changes are fixed before upgrading.
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