While I will be staying primarily with Windows 10 for the time being, I still do want to familiarize myself with 11. So, I did a little cleanup on my C: drive, took a backup, and gave it a go.
Test run 1 only lasted 5 minutes before I got all I need for now, and rolled it back to 10.
Moving all the icons to the middle of the taskbar is the first noticeable change - which for me doesn't add or remove anything. Ok - center it for some sort of visual appeal - perhaps I can get used to this. Nevermind that the start button and icons have been to the bottom left corner since 1995, we're all used to it there, it has been perfectly functional, and no one ever asked for that to be moved - but at least it isn't like a new version of office that takes the same toolbar menus, and shuffle them all around to make it impossible to do any work without having to look for the same functionalities in different places.
I click the start menu button - and up comes a start menu with pinned items, and recently opened documents. If I want to look at my applications, I have to click a button to change the display to applications. I shouldn't be surprised - the start menu is something that Microsoft keeps trying to change in ways that people don't want and never asked for, so this is just another step in this game Microsoft plays with us. It really does remind me of the Windows 8 start screen. What a disaster that was, click a button to bring up a menu - and THE WHOLE WORLD DISAPPEARS, and this menu comes up with a bunch of tiles, and with nothing useful to you. At least they seem to have given up on the full screen thing - that really was disorienting and jarring - but this start menu feels more like that screen than a useful menu. I hate it!
Whatever - probably can find ways to fix that. After all, I spent years knowing that part of an XP install required setting the display to windows classic, and the start menu to classic menu, to get back to normal. I can start investigating ways to fine tune this to my liking - I know better than to expect Microsoft to build a system that just works right out of the box. So, I go to open an explorer window to look at my drives, and, the screen blinks, the explorer window opens up, and the task bar goes completely blank.
I bring up the task manager, I hit the windows key - no fiddling brought back the task menu. Just a blank bar at the bottom of my screen.
I reboot - task bar is back. I open explorer, task bar is blank. Ok - lets google that.
Yup - it's a known issue. Will need to research it more, but Microsoft has "workarounds" at this time, not a fix. One registry hack later - now when I would open the explorer window, the screen blinks, the taskbar goes blank, new icons slide in from the bottom bringing back the taskbar. Uh - well - that......that looks sloppy. But ok, at least it fixes itself now.
Now then - lets look at some wallpaper. I right click on a blank part of the desktop - screen blanks, no menu loads.
Ok. I'm done! Rolled it back to 10.
Now, I don't know if this is hardware specific, but I have fairly decent hardware bought within the last year brand new. Perhaps it's an upgrade thing - generally I do clean installs rather than upgrade installs, and every system migration I've done professionally I've always found a ton of reasons not to do in place upgrades, and the convenience of in place upgrades is outweighed by the multitude of problems I'd have to deal with, and it always lands on it being a far better option to do new builds, swap machines, than to just roll out an update. Microsoft has yet to get a Windows upgrade right! But, at this point - I don't care what the issue is, took me 5 minutes to see that a straightforward upgrade install gave me 2 major functionality bugs that effected my ability just to get to the damn menus! Say what you will about ME and Vista, at least I could set wallpapers on them!
And then even if it does work - I don't like the changes so far. Microsoft seems unable to take a hint that WE DON'T WANT THEM FUCKING WITH OUR START MENU!!!!
My name for Windows 11? The new Windows 8.
but windows 7 didn't need registry hack
