Windows 11 First Impressions - a Mac/Chromebook Mashup in MS clothing

Hey Folks...

It's been quite some time since I've written anything about Windows.  It was way back in March of 2019 when 19H1 was being released and a new Windows org was being announced.   

Quite frankly I haven't written much be was because little if anything really changed from 19H1 onwards.  Sure there was News and Interests, People and some continued updates to things like Settings - but little else and so nothing much to write about.  Windows 10 was effectively dead after 19H1. 

Yeah there was the Duo/Neo announcement and release of the Duo foldable in the fall of 2020 - but as I have suspected the device just did not sell and pricing has already dropped by 30 - 40% or more.  MS can't give them away.  The Neo was killed entirely and it was actually the unit I was most interested in.   

But now here comes Windows 11.  A bright shiny new version of Windows that may have been the result of that reorg back in 2019.

One of the big caveats that MS announced with Windows 11 was the need for a "modern" CPU and TPM 2.0 and they provided an app called PC Health Check to help you determine if your device was good to go.    

I ran the health check on the two target devices I was planning on using an Intel NUC8i5BNH and a Dell Inspiron 5482 2-in-1.  Both ran Intel Core i5 8th gen CPUs, NVMe, Intel WiFi and Iris Plus graphics - so I figured I was good.  Unfortunately my old Dell Venue 8 Pro that is currently running Windows 10 20390 21H2 isn't supported - so will have to stay on W10...but it supported every build of Windows 10 up to today. 

But I got a surprise when the Inspiron came back as failed due to lack of TPM which seemed odd as the device fully supported Windows Hello both fingerprint and camera.  When I looked in Device Manager I noticed there was no TPM 2.0 security device listed....hmmm

After a little checking I noticed that the Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT) was disabled in BIOS - so as soon as I enabled and rebooted - a TPM 2.0 device showed up and the health check passed.   So a tip - some devices have dedicated 3rd party TPM modules in them - other use Intel's PTT which provides the same TPM functionality so if it's enabled - you should be good to go.

Yesterday I upgrade the devices to the new 22000.51 build from the previous 21H2 21390 build.   In both cases the upgrade worked flawlessly albeit slow taking over an hour with each.  But the good news is no errors, failures - all apps seems to show up and work.  So even corp apps like Webex and stuff all worked fine - so far I've not had any failures that would prevent me from using the build every day.

Now let's talk about the experience - the new screen layout is very similar to both my Google Pixelbook and Apple Macbook Air - the Start button and pinned taskbar apps are centered vs starting on the bottom left and yes there are all new icons - albeit most have been slowly showing up in Windows 10 over the last year.

But there were some oddities - for example - both machines had Office365 installed and while Word, Excel & PowerPoint showed up in the new start menu, Outlook, Visio, Teams and others didn't - you have to go to All Apps - find then then right click and pin them to either the "pinned" start menu apps or the taskbar.   There are new shapes to things the taskbar calendar and wifi / bluetooth connections, etc and apps like Office now start with a rounded corner splash rather then the previous square (think Word, Outlook, etc).

MS claims that Windows 11 is faster - but I don't notice it that much - maybe on a low powered device like a Surface Go or something - but seems about the same as Windows 10.   

I hate to say it - but I do miss live tiles.  It was one of the few things that separated Windows from a Mac or Chromebook. MS replaced the news, weather, sports apps with what they call Widgets - effectively the same as iPad OS.   But I hate MS feeds - they're typically junk and full of ads..  Plus the amount of content is limited and all it really is click bait to launch Edge - which I don't use.     

Also in the task bar you now see small underlines under the app Icon if it's running much like the dot you see on a Mac.  

But some old stuff still remains - you can still find control panel - some items in settings still go the the same UI that they did back in Windows XP or Windows 7 - so in reality what is Windows 11 - a typical UI refresh of the same OS we've had for 15 years.   Is it better than Windows 8/8.1 was when the Aero UI came out - yes - does it really change the way I do things - no.  Am I more productive - no. Is it better than a Mac or Pixelbook - no - in fact it just seems like mashup up of some UI concepts of both.  Did they get rid of some stuff they should have - yes - Cortana is gone - finally.   Are updates still really slow - yes...

Would I run out today and buy a new laptop/pc just to run Windows 11 - no.  Should you ?  I say no.   There is an updated version of Office Insider coming out that will provide complimentary look to Windows 11 - do I care - no.   

So the question to me is - what happens to Windows 10 21H2 - I assume it will be a maintenance release and that that will be it.  

While I can applaud MS for trying to freshen up things - and providing a pretty easy transition from Windows 10 - overall - I don't see Windows 11 being a huge catalyst.  

I'll write a few more posts as Windows 11 progresses - but I'm already on it and I think it will mostly be bug fixes though out this summer and a release in the fall - maybe October to try and drive Holiday PC sales.   

More to come...

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