Windows 11

[maflynn]

If you liked Windows 10 then 11 would be also fine. No critics here so far. Works and runs pretty well.

The OS is solid in many respects, It has solid bones, as someone may say. Its the add-ons that is destroying its reputation. Putting copilot everywhere, and its impact to how people work. Installing a glorified key logger (Recall), advertisements, changing apps that never needed changing making them less useful.

 

[MacMorrison]

Recall is far more than a key logger... I think Microsoft and enterprise IT realized it is impossible to make it secure.

 

[maflynn]

I think Microsoft and enterprise IT realized it is impossible to make it secure.

Enterprises certainly has, but I'm unsure Microsoft realizes

 

[boppin]

The OS is solid in many respects, It has solid bones, as someone may say. Its the add-ons that is destroying its reputation. Putting copilot everywhere, and its impact to how people work. Installing a glorified key logger (Recall), advertisements, changing apps that never needed changing making them less useful.

Honestly never seen this before. Where do you see this?

Glad to see that Microsoft did optimize compressed memory in Windows 11. Everything runs completely smoothly here.

 

[maflynn]

You mean Recall?
Check this video out

It was making waves in the summer of 2025, the point is that every action you do, is recorded, and while the data is now encrpyted, we also came across news that MS stores your keys online and will hand them over to law enforcement, and maybe in the future will it for its own data collection

 

[MBAir2010]

Recall?
 probably has the same sneaky plan on our macs as well.

perhaps my next computer will be a book and a candle.

i might go back to 1970 ways of submitting articles and scripts as i can now type on a ribbon typewriter, have a employee scan my freshly typed pages in a computer and they can decipher what is feasible for publication though the hammering of those keys might break my fingers and wrists since we humans have become weak in the bones.

do they still make white-out?

 

[maflynn]

probably has the same sneaky plan on our macs as well.

Apple is generally more privacy minded, I'd say its highly unlikely that apple will capture each and every action just like what MS is doing. Microsoft has a clear history of collecting and selling data, and now between the idea of collecting everything you do, and they have your decryption keys, its only a matter of time, where they will be collecting that stored information

 

[MBAir2010]

Apple is generally more privacy minded, I'd say its highly unlikely that apple will capture each and every action just like what MS is doing. Microsoft has a clear history of collecting and selling data, and now between the idea of collecting everything you do, and they have your decryption keys, its only a matter of time, where they will be collecting that stored information

even with a firewall activated?

this summer, my neighbor's iPad had a nasty yahoo mail log in problem
as the only way to activate that was she had to scan her state ID.
i insisted she delete yahoo, dont scan and get an  icloud account
just for security purposes, since  is better for this reason.
she used to pay bills, transfer $ on her yahoo account, which had problems last year, she claimed.

i "love" how on Windows 11 if you buy a cat themed wall calendar from amazon,
the homepage of Edge News contains cats tips, cat products and cat videos
scattered next to the many current events stories hours after the purchase.

i wondered if someone purchased a book and a candle?

 

[M4th]

This editorial is from a few days ago, but I thought it was an interesting take (especially coming from a site dedicated to the OS) on the current state of where MS is going with Win11...

That site is also reporting on a rumored new OS from Google that may lure folks away from Win11. If the rumor becomes a reality, it'll be interesting to see this play out going forward.

 

[maflynn]

That site is also reporting on a rumored new OS from Google that may lure folks away from Win11. If the rumor becomes a reality, it'll be interesting to see this play out going forward.

I’m skeptical that the market would ever seriously adopt a new operating system—especially one from Google, which has a long track record of launching products and then quietly killing them off.

ChromeOS is a perfect example. Between Google’s inconsistent support and weak adoption, it never really caught on. The only reason Chromebooks didn’t completely flop is because Google essentially dumped them into schools. And if you ask the students who had to use them, most of them hated the experience.

At this point, the market is already spoken for. Businesses run Windows. Gamers use PCs. Creatives use Macs. Travelers and students largely choose Apple as well. That leaves the general consumer market—and even there, it’s basically Apple vs. Microsoft. There’s just not much room left for a newcomer to succeed.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I know MS has the lion's share. Just as a counterpoint, there are tons of Mac only businesses in Houston, from one owner to several hundred seats. They're out there!

 

[M4th]

Yes, with that lion's share, it would really have to be an endless series of major stumbles at MS for there to be even a hint of business movement away from Win11. Though an alternative for some may be available, it's just too big of an ask for most to jump ship including consumer as well.

Whether Google can create an OS that gives either business or consumer a compelling enough reason to even consider, well, we'll see if and when that happens but as @maflynn rightly points out, their history is not great in that regard.

 

[maflynn]

Looks like Microsoft has heard the complaints loud and clear, and it looks like they're pulling back on the copilot stuff, and RECALL looks to be all but dead in its current state.

You won: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11’s AI overload

 

[maflynn]

Further reading on why copilot is a stinking pile of excrement
Microsoft Copilot is the new Internet Explorer

A recent report from SimilarWeb claims that Copilot website usage is at 1.1% of AI market share, behind ChatGPT at 64.5% and Gemini at 21%. Of course, that’s just the website and doesn’t include the Windows app.
...
The Verge’s Tom Warren, Anthropic’s Claude Code is increasingly favored internally at Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn’t even prefer Copilot, then why should anyone else?

 

[Cape Dave]

The OS is solid in many respects, It has solid bones, as someone may say. Its the add-ons that is destroying its reputation. Putting copilot everywhere, and its impact to how people work. Installing a glorified key logger (Recall), advertisements, changing apps that never needed changing making them less useful.

💯 💯 💯 💯 💯 💯 💯 💯 💯 💯

 

[boppin]

Well, never saw anything at all of Copilot in Windows 11 so far. How to activate this?

 

[pshufd]

I’m skeptical that the market would ever seriously adopt a new operating system—especially one from Google, which has a long track record of launching products and then quietly killing them off.

ChromeOS is a perfect example. Between Google’s inconsistent support and weak adoption, it never really caught on. The only reason Chromebooks didn’t completely flop is because Google essentially dumped them into schools. And if you ask the students who had to use them, most of them hated the experience.

At this point, the market is already spoken for. Businesses run Windows. Gamers use PCs. Creatives use Macs. Travelers and students largely choose Apple as well. That leaves the general consumer market—and even there, it’s basically Apple vs. Microsoft. There’s just not much room left for a newcomer to succeed.

I hope to try Harmony OS one of these days.

 

[pshufd]

Well, never saw anything at all of Copilot in Windows 11 so far. How to activate this?

I played around with it. If you have a copilot button, hit it and see what happens. It will probably want you to log in if you haven't set up Windows 11 to login already. I just asked it to make a couple of pictures of various things and it did so slowly. I couldn't personally think of anything that I could use it for in real life and uninstalled it.

 

[maflynn]

How to activate this?

MS has been throwing the copilot button everywhere - just look for it. For instance, the notepad app has the copilot icon. I think you can fire copilot up by hitting windows key + c

 

[maflynn]

A little hyperbolic but he hits on a number of really good points and a number of pertinent facts

As this YTer fires off point after point, I'm happier and happier that I've left the platform.

 

[maflynn]

Even, non-tech sites are dumping on Windows 11. I subscribe to this channel, they often cover a lot of interesting topics.

 

[pshufd]

Even, non-tech sites are dumping on Windows 11. I subscribe to this channel, they often cover a lot of interesting topics.

I see these and wonder what they are talking about.

I've not had any problems when my system had CoPilot nor after I removed it. I have not seen any of the performance problems that they talked about. I had more performance problems when Apple released their AI and I likewise went and removed it on my Macs and iOS devices.

Using Windows 11 is very close to using macOS Sequoia for me.

 

[maflynn]

Using Windows 11 is very close to using macOS Sequoia for me.

That has not been my experience, particularly when it comes to updating the system.

Gaming has been largely impacted by MS, just consider this, that Linux and the steamdeck is out performing windows in gaming. The bloat with windows is so bad, that an emulation is out performing running the game natively.

 

[pshufd]

That has not been my experience, particularly when it comes to updating the system.

Gaming has been largely impacted by MS, just consider this, that Linux and the steamdeck is out performing windows in gaming. The bloat with windows is so bad, that an emulation is out performing running the game natively.

I've had my Windows laptop for seven months. No problems with updates. I get Windows updates, Lenovo Vantage updates and Intel driver updates and that's about it.

With my custom desktop, it was a major pain to get it to Windows 11 but I blame Asus for that.

I don't really see any bloat in my Windows setup. It may be that the CPU and GPU are really smooth with Windows 11. But there are far faster processors and GPUs than my Lunar Lake and I've played around with some like the Ryzen 9900X and the 14900H and those are very nice.

On the other hand, I see complaints daily on macOS on Reddit about Tahoe performance issues. And I just tell people to stay or backdate to Sequoia and wait until Tahoe gets rid of the instability problems, probably by this summer.

 

[diamond.g]

That has not been my experience, particularly when it comes to updating the system.

Gaming has been largely impacted by MS, just consider this, that Linux and the steamdeck is out performing windows in gaming. The bloat with windows is so bad, that an emulation is out performing running the game natively.

I really so wonder what folks are doing on their systems to have so many issues.