Windows 11

[Antoniosmalakia]

I use Windows 11 Arm with Parallels, mostly running a piece of intensive 3D jewellery design software, and it runs smoother than on my partner's Surface Pro (which I believe has an i7 and 16GB RAM) running Windows natively.

I'm not a huge fan of Windows, but I can't get the job done on macOS because the software has never been developed for it, so here we are.

I use Windows 11 ARM on a regular basis using UTM and it's fine for my purposes. Performance is comparable to my i7-10700 which is pretty good though I'm sure that the experience is poor compared to 12th or 13th generation Intel machines. I will run Windows 11 x86 on Bootcamp if I need a non-virtual system remotely and I still have my 2 Windows 10 systems.

Yes, the UI feels like a mish-mash. I think that they tried to get something like Apple's dock for launching programs. Windows 11 is kind of like a Swiss army knife though the UI on my Swiss army knife feels more consistent. Most people have to use Windows so Microsoft can still make mistakes or look a bit crappy and they will still get a ton of revenue.

 

[maflynn]

WSL and the Android Subsystem are different though or am I mistaken

Yes two different animals, though I believe it was built on the same framework, i.e., Windows virtualization. I could be wrong, I've not fully followed the android stuff simply because I have no need for android apps

 

[inuragon]

I have an ultrawide monitor that included utilities to snap windows (this predated windows 11). I hated it, and windows 11's version of that as well. I want to manually place and size windows for my own needs.

The fun part with windows is if you hate some feature you can most likely turn it off.
I wish the windows 11 new window snapping feature supported custom layouts like fancyzones in powertoys.

Microsoft is killing Android apps on Windows 11

I was never really saw the value in this and it looks like most people didn't either. The PCWorld article seems to indicate that while support is ending next year they're already killing the store, meaning you can't install anything new

Well, that's a bummer.
Was actually excited about this so to see them kill it off before even launching it here in Finland is annoying.

 

[derekamoss]

The fun part with windows is if you hate some feature you can most likely turn it off.
I wish the windows 11 new window snapping feature supported custom layouts like fancyzones in powertoys.

Well, that's a bummer.
Was actually excited about this so to see them kill it off before even launching it here in Finland is annoying.

As I said earlier, maybe they did this since emulation wasnt good enough and since the new surface's are supposed to get a big jump arm processor wise they canned it and decided to allow it natively on the new surfaces.

 

[xxFoxtail]

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit and X talk about ads in Windows 11. I got to my work PC this morning and saw my first Windows 11 ad. Microsoft changed the desktop wallpaper to a giant Minecraft ad, with an icon in the top left corner “Learn about this picture.” Links to this Minecraft page.

(I covered up the left side of the desktop, business files).

 

[polyphenol]

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit and X talk about ads in Windows 11. I got to my work PC this morning and saw my first Windows 11 ad. Microsoft changed the desktop wallpaper to a giant Minecraft ad, with an icon in the top left corner “Learn about this picture.” Links to this Minecraft page.

(I covered up the left side of the desktop, business files).
View attachment 2370734

I have two uses for Windows.

One is exporting Word files to PDF. If I do that in Word on macOS, all sorts of things don't work as expected. So I edit them in Word on macOS then hop over to Windows to produce a functioning PDF. (I spent ages trying to overcome the problems - things like emoji and table of contents not working properly but I'd have to check for sure what was so wrong.)

I have a number of files I've been working on for years. Converting them individually to Pages or Libre results in a big mess. I really have to re-develop them from scratch to get away from Word and these issues.

But there is no way I will ever accept advertising within Windows such as you and others have shown.

Maybe if there were two versions - paid-for and advertising supported, it could be a more reasonable option.

And I think some large companies might get very annoyed when adverts for competitors appear on their own computers.

And imagine if this happened in a court system which started displaying adverts related to one of the parties involved in the case?

Maybe we'll see advertising embedded within PDFs produced by Microsoft products? People open a PDF and spend 30 seconds being force fed an advert before they get to see the document?

 

[diamond.g]

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit and X talk about ads in Windows 11. I got to my work PC this morning and saw my first Windows 11 ad. Microsoft changed the desktop wallpaper to a giant Minecraft ad, with an icon in the top left corner “Learn about this picture.” Links to this Minecraft page.

(I covered up the left side of the desktop, business files).
View attachment 2370734

Did it eventually change, or did you have to change it manually?

 

[xxFoxtail]

Did it eventually change, or did you have to change it manually?

As of about 2 hours later, it’s still the same picture. I’ll probably keep it on, I’m curious if it’ll ever change back. This computer has always had the default Windows wallpaper, we never changed it. In the background settings, it’s set to Windows spotlight.

 

[pshufd]

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit and X talk about ads in Windows 11. I got to my work PC this morning and saw my first Windows 11 ad. Microsoft changed the desktop wallpaper to a giant Minecraft ad, with an icon in the top left corner “Learn about this picture.” Links to this Minecraft page.

(I covered up the left side of the desktop, business files).
View attachment 2370734

I haven't seen that yet but I haven't used Windows for a couple of days.

I hope that there's a way to disable it.

 

[maflynn]

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit and X talk about ads in Windows 11

Hopefully that's a mistake. I've yet to see any ads on my Windows 11 machines. I was using my razer laptop all weekend, and not a single ad. This morning I fired up my desktop and nothing - not saying it won't happen. I'll be looking to google to disable that if I start seeing it.

I did see this article: Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu and doing some more googling, I don't see any information about Microsoft changing someone's wallpaper to an advertisement. Can you link to that reddit where the discussion is going on

 

[pshufd]

Hopefully that's a mistake. I've yet to see any ads on my Windows 11 machines. I was using my razer laptop all weekend, and not a single ad. This morning I fired up my desktop and nothing - not saying it won't happen. I'll be looking to google to disable that if I start seeing it.

I did see this article: Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu and doing some more googling, I don't see any information about Microsoft changing someone's wallpaper to an advertisement. Can you link to that reddit where the discussion is going on

I just logged in and didn't see any ads.

I saw a support thread on it and someone responded on how to disable the ads so it's possible that my existing settings already takes care of them. Or maybe I'm not updated to the version which has them. Microsoft has been criticized for ads for a long time so I wonder why they persist. Even Firefox has been criticized for ads in the form of the start page but it's easy to get around.

 

[xxFoxtail]

Hopefully that's a mistake. I've yet to see any ads on my Windows 11 machines. I was using my razer laptop all weekend, and not a single ad. This morning I fired up my desktop and nothing - not saying it won't happen. I'll be looking to google to disable that if I start seeing it.

I did see this article: Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu and doing some more googling, I don't see any information about Microsoft changing someone's wallpaper to an advertisement. Can you link to that reddit where the discussion is going on

Yeah that’s the article and discussions I’ve been seeing about it. I haven’t seen people talk about their wallpapers changing yet. So, I was kind of surprised when I saw this change this morning.

 

[ackmondual]

And I think some large companies might get very annoyed when adverts for competitors appear on their own computers.

And imagine if this happened in a court system which started displaying adverts related to one of the parties involved in the case?

Forget seeing ads for competing companies... It's just bad to see them, period.

Maybe we'll see advertising embedded within PDFs produced by Microsoft products? People open a PDF and spend 30 seconds being force fed an advert before they get to see the document?

I can see that as some form of "demo version". However, in the past, they would just gimp such a version. Not inject ads.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Apropos the above comments --

https://au.pcmag.com/office-suites/...t-office-windows-for-open-source-alternatives

 

[ozaz]

Yeah that’s the article and discussions I’ve been seeing about it. I haven’t seen people talk about their wallpapers changing yet. So, I was kind of surprised when I saw this change this morning

Are you on a beta channel (the Verge article reports on ad testing in beta channel)? I use a Windows 11 PC as my primary PC every day and I don't notice any ads, but I'm not on beta channel.

 

[opeter]

Interesting posts.

Well, I don't see ads like that in Windows, because:
1.) Cortana, Bing, Xbox etc. services doesn't support/work in my country
2.) I am using an off-line account, not Microsoft account for login and everyday usage of the computer

 

[xxFoxtail]

Are you on a beta channel (the Verge article reports on ad testing in beta channel)? I use a Windows 11 PC as my primary PC every day and I don't notice any ads, but I'm not on beta channel.

No. As it's a work computer, I wouldn't risk it with beta builds.

 

[The Clark]

I have two uses for Windows.

One is exporting Word files to PDF. If I do that in Word on macOS, all sorts of things don't work as expected. So I edit them in Word on macOS then hop over to Windows to produce a functioning PDF. (I spent ages trying to overcome the problems - things like emoji and table of contents not working properly but I'd have to check for sure what was so wrong.)

I have a number of files I've been working on for years. Converting them individually to Pages or Libre results in a big mess. I really have to re-develop them from scratch to get away from Word and these issues.

But there is no way I will ever accept advertising within Windows such as you and others have shown.

Maybe if there were two versions - paid-for and advertising supported, it could be a more reasonable option.

And I think some large companies might get very annoyed when adverts for competitors appear on their own computers.

And imagine if this happened in a court system which started displaying adverts related to one of the parties involved in the case?

Maybe we'll see advertising embedded within PDFs produced by Microsoft products? People open a PDF and spend 30 seconds being force fed an advert before they get to see the document?

I work in IT for the Ministry of Attorney General and Xbox ads have once again popping up in the pro version of windows with GPOs applied to block all ads. Such a joke.

 

[maflynn]

Here's a handy guide to stopping most (all?) of the advertisements in windows 11
How to remove advertisements from Windows 11

All of it, is done via the settings app, so no mucking around the internals of windows

There's also O&O ShutUp10++ which has some settings for advertisements but I think overall the role of that application is to manage how much or how little telemetry is being sent by windows 10 and 11.

 

[diggy33]

If ads start popping up on my father's Windows 11 system, then maybe that will convince him to switch over to macOS or some version of Linux (I'm thinking Mint or Zorin for him). He has continued to use Windows simply for a version of Solitaire that he really likes.

 

[drinkingtea]

I am trying out the new 2024 Zephyrus G16 with the Ultra 9 chip, and it's insane to me how even doing the most basic tasks on this laptop causes the fans to start spinning. This laptop is constantly hot no matter what I am doing.

Am I doing something wrong? I thought these chips were supposed to compete with Apple's M3 chips that are on the MacBook Air...?

Also, Windows 11 is just clunkier than MacOS in general. Sigh, Windows... I want to love you.

 

[rin67630]

it's insane to me how even doing the most basic tasks on this laptop causes the fans to start spinning. This laptop is constantly hot no matter what I am doing.

That just isn't normal.
Windows11 runs fully silent and cool even on 12 years old notebooks.

 

[drinkingtea]

That just isn't normal.
Windows11 runs fully silent and cool even on 12 years old notebooks.

That’s what I’m thinking. I reset the entire laptop. I’ll see if that helps. Maybe I have a lemon.

 

[maflynn]

This laptop is constantly hot no matter what I am doing.

Yes that’s normal. If I got the specs right you have a Core Ultra 9 185H with a rtx 4090. Both the CPU and GPU run really hot. Put them in a small enclosure like a laptop and the only way to keep them from melting is aggressive fans

I have an older razor and the fans are pretty loud as well

 

[drinkingtea]

Yes that’s normal. If I got the specs right you have a Core Ultra 9 185H with a rtx 4090. Both the CPU and GPU run really hot. Put them in a small enclosure like a laptop and the only way to keep them from melting is aggressive fans

I have an older razor and the fans are pretty loud as well

I have the Ultra 9 with the 4070. Setting up the laptop as we speak. Hopefully it will be better this time around.