MORE of your worst Windows 11 irritations solved

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PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston We’ll all eventually be forced to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Microsoft says it’ll end security updates
[See the full post at: MORE of your worst Windows 11 irritations solved]

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oldfry, fisher75, lmacri

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Lol the sooner Win11 is foisted upon me, the sooner I’ll be a 100% Linux shop.

 

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I see that sentiment often on the Linux Mint forums since I switched to it from Windows 8.1 back in Dec. 2022. Every week there is often at least a couple of new users to Mint that say they have had enough of Microsoft.

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I wouldn’t worry too much about upgrading from Windows 10 to 11.  There are some irritations that you can clear up.  If you take the time to upgrade (about 2 hours on slow machines), then you can take a few more to visit Settings and make the changes you want.

For example, any privacy settings will be migrated forward.  You don’t need to worry. But you will have to set these:

• Device Encryption: yeah or nay.  As a PC repair tech, I see the encryption partially set without customers’ knowledge.  Backing up a drive before repairing, say, a corrupt Windows update, will fail if Windows thinks the drive is encrypted.  If you log in with a Microsoft account, it will be encrypted fully.  If you don’t, it still will be seen as encrypted.  No repair for you!  I hope you have backups.
• Power options: We used to have them.  The options we can set have been reduced, and quite often Windows might hibernate when I really set it to be always on for virus scans, windows optimizations, etc.  I wish Windows had the options my iMac does to automatically sleep/shut down at a time I set, and automatically start at a time I set.  SO…set the power options before you upgrade.  These will stay set.
• Viewing hidden files: It’s different, but in some ways, it is easier.  If you click on the View tab, you simply move the mouse down to the more options area and then slide down to show hidden files.  This is helpful for copying data from an old to new machine.
• You can also change the taskbar’s start menu back to the left.  The option is in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, I think. Turn off Widgets, Chat, and Task View here if you don’t use a Microsoft account or virtual desktops.
• The start menu is not a single list; it is more of a grid.  Right-click and uninstall the app suggestions that irritate you.  I don’t want to see Kindle, Spotify (I Love Spotify but don’t want it in my start menu automatically), Netflix, etc. This is no different from Windows 10.  You can ignore the start menu items without harm.
• Turn off select Notifications!  I cannot believe my coworkers aren’t more irritated by Chrome or Edge pop-ups on the right corner, or Dell Partner Promo or   (shudder) Dropbox Promo.  You do want the printer out of ink or antivirus scan notification, but who needs these others?
• Open Task Manager and click on the startups icon (click them all until you find it; it’s not obvious!): Turn off Teams if you don’t want it to pop up first, OneDrive if you don’t use it, Edge or Chrome (hello, pretend virus alerts!).

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AlexEiffel, Andy M, tom m

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B. Livingston wrote:

We’ll all eventually be forced to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

Oh, I’m not so sure about that.  When my Win 10 22H2 system reaches EOL I’ll probably do the same thing I did with an older system when Vista reached EOL.  Install Linux Mint!

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Microfix

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My curiousity caused ‘the men in white coats’ to take me away..
only to release me, on the premise I re-imaged back to W10.
I did and I now have a release certificate from the psychiatrist 🙂

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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Alex5723, PKCano

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Forced to upgrade? No. I happily/safely/productively ran Windows 7 for a year+ past when Microsoft thought I should stop. By the time I choose to buy a new PC, it’ll come with Windows 11 (or whatever MS calls its OS then). Or, as others have noted, I’ll switch to something avoiding the MS tax on computing.

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Cybertooth

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We’ll all eventually be forced to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Microsoft says it’ll end security updates for Win10 on October 1, 2025, as I wrote in Part 1 of this two-part column.

Yeah yeah, we all know that “normal” versions of Windows 10 will be out of support after October 2025.

You are saying that I will be forced to upgrade to Windows 11 eventually? You know what? I won’t. Not in a few years, anyway. I am still running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on my computers alongside Windows 10 1809 LTSC and Windows Server 2019, the latter two of which will still be supported until January 2029. So I will be still be “supported” after October 2025, for a few more years at least.

Also, it seems to me that Windows 10 has finally settled down with its last version, 22H2. I have one computer running it at present and I can see myself continuing to run it well past October 2025. I may also consider upgrading some of my systems that is still on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to it later.

Besides, I am always of the opinion that the effects of most, if not all, of the security vulnerabilities reported are massively overblown. I do NOT agree with those people who essentially say that you must upgrade to a supported OS or you are doomed. I WILL continue to run unsupported operating systems on my computers if necessary until they are really no longer viable, the determination of viability being entirely up to me and no one else.

I WILL avoid Windows 11 for as long as I can, and I hope I will never have to deal with it. Why should I have to deal with its frustrations when I have alternatives, even though they may be “older”?

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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Cybertooth

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