Windows 11 - lightweight? fast? and Android?

[AmitG]

There is a big W11 update coming in H2 of this year which fixes loads of issues. It sounds (from the various press articles) like the product that they should have released in the first place. Including Android app support.

I'm waiting for that to land before upgrading.

[snuffy]

deckster said:

Pretty sure that three hours without a response on a Saturday afternoon doesn't mean that there aren't any people who have upgraded without issue.

I've been running since the public release without a single problem, as has almost everybody. As ever with new releases (especially for Windows, for some reason) people seem peculiarly keen to rubbish them and proudly proclaim how they aren't going to upgrade. It's all a bit odd.

I've been running W11 on my desktop since almost the first day of pre-release and I'm still running the latest pre-release (because I've set Windows to Insider Preview) still.

It's not caused me any issues at all.

I like the centred task bar, so much so that I have configured it to a single button - the Windows key. That's it. click on that and all my pinned apps are there. No clutter at all. But then my Windows Desktop has not one shortcut on it.

I've also been running my Laptop (which does not meet the minimum spec) on the full release with no issues either.

[xeny]

snuffy said:

I like the centred task bar, so much so that I have configured it to a single button - the Windows key. That's it. click on that and all my pinned apps are there. No clutter at all. But then my Windows Desktop has not one shortcut on it.

Presumably they all appear on the task bar when you start them though?

[snuffy]

xeny said:

snuffy said:

I like the centred task bar, so much so that I have configured it to a single button - the Windows key. That's it. click on that and all my pinned apps are there. No clutter at all. But then my Windows Desktop has not one shortcut on it.

Presumably they all appear on the task bar when you start them though?

Yes, that's correct.

[mikef]

I’ve been running the production Win 11 release on 2 AMD PCs without problems and I do like the experience and that so much has now migrated to the new UI from horrible old control panels and settings (a steady progression for the past few versions of Windows)

What I have read is that there can be audio breakup on AMD systems using firmware TPM

I can’t say I’ve noticed this at all. My systems are
Ryzen 7 5800X, Asus X570 MoBo, RTX 5070
Ryzen 5 5600X, Asus B550 MoBo, RTX 5060Ti

Has anyone personally experienced this? If so, what was your setup?

[indigochim]

I installed the update earlier in the week on a Dell laptop and so far I'm not loving it. I'm ignoring the interface for now as that's always subjective and often just a dislike of what I'm used to although there's a few areas I think defiantly don't work as well on a laptop as Win10.

My biggest gripe is performance I'm seeing video related slowness in a few areas of both the interface and also browser performance especially youtube. I'm also finding on the whole it's consuming more CPU and the device is running warmer with the fan kicking in more frequently, obviously this is causing a matching drop in battery life. I'm hoping this is down to drivers there's still a steady flow of updated Win11 ones being released from Dell.

[RVB]

Nimby said:

FWIW I've been using 11 for a couple of months on an unsupported i7. No problems or issues whatsoever, and I got used to the few differences very quickly. Performance is at least as fast as10, though the clean install probably helped.

I wasn't sure if Windows Update would work on unsupported h/w, but it does.

Yes, I've been running W11 on my main computer since it released, largely to get a good feel for it before all our other household computers need changing over once W10 support ends.

My computer is old (Yorkfield Core2 Quad) and W11 simply refused to install over W10, not even offering me the chance to accept the disclaimer for unsupported hardware. I modified the installer to exclude the hardware requirement.

Updates occur normally and I have no major problems or grumbles but plenty of minor ones (nothing to do with my old hardware) and in general I slightly prefer the functionality and ease of use of W10 and would suggest people stick with Windows 10 until it is no longer supported. Others in my household will be staying with W10 as long as possible.

Edited by RVB on Sunday 30th January 08:59

[eeLee]

I had some machines running Win11 before the release and on my daily driver, a Surface Pro 7, I installed it once it went Gold.

One word of advice I would give is to save your documents somewhere else and know your applications as it will be a better experience if you do this:

Upgrade - Reset - Download source from Cloud. You get an ultra-clean install of Win11. I had to reset my Surface for another reason and it felt "better" after that - so the in-place upgrade is not so brilliant.

[Vanden Crash]

I’m on a ryzen 5500 from memory and it runs faultless mine was of the earlier unsupported batch

[NMNeil]

deckster said:

Pretty sure that three hours without a response on a Saturday afternoon doesn't mean that there aren't any people who have upgraded without issue.

I've been running since the public release without a single problem, as has almost everybody. As ever with new releases (especially for Windows, for some reason) people seem peculiarly keen to rubbish them and proudly proclaim how they aren't going to upgrade. It's all a bit odd.

It's just that every time Microsoft releases a new product it's got more bugs than a junkyard dog and requires seemingly endless fixes, patches and updates.
I'll stick to Linux.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2022/01/1...

[NMNeil]

deckster said:

Pretty sure that three hours without a response on a Saturday afternoon doesn't mean that there aren't any people who have upgraded without issue.

I've been running since the public release without a single problem, as has almost everybody. As ever with new releases (especially for Windows, for some reason) people seem peculiarly keen to rubbish them and proudly proclaim how they aren't going to upgrade. It's all a bit odd.

It's just that every time Microsoft releases a new product it's got more bugs than a junkyard dog and requires seemingly endless fixes, patches and updates.
I'll stick to Linux.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2022/01/1...

[AJB88]

NMNeil said:

It's just that every time Microsoft releases a new product it's got more bugs than a junkyard dog and requires seemingly endless fixes, patches and updates.
I'll stick to Linux.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2022/01/1...

I have the miss pleasure of having to use Windows on my work Laptop, Windows 10 (company has only just got Windows 10 as well).

Daily I'm asked to restart, close things etc so they can update, then restart again.

Just done a Manjaro update in about 2 minutes, no need to close or restart.

[NMNeil]

another reason to avoid Windows 11 like the plague.
https://techunwrapped.com/windows-10-11-it-takes-a...

[xeny]

AJB88 said:

I have the miss pleasure of having to use Windows on my work Laptop, Windows 10 (company has only just got Windows 10 as well).

Daily I'm asked to restart, close things etc so they can update, then restart again.

Just done a Manjaro update in about 2 minutes, no need to close or restart.

That's great and all, but with something like a web browser, unless you quit and restart the application, the executing code isn't actually updated, which is rather the point of the update.

Yes, it is perfectly possible to patch a running kernel, but on clients I'm typically more concerned about application vulnerabilities.

[TameRacingDriver]

NMNeil said:

another reason to avoid Windows 11 like the plague.
https://techunwrapped.com/windows-10-11-it-takes-a...

Apart from the fact it refers to Windows 10 also, but I have to ask what kind of crap computer takes 8 hours to install an update? my last one put my machine out of action for 4 whole minutes.

[Order66]

TameRacingDriver said:

Apart from the fact it refers to Windows 10 also, but I have to ask what kind of crap computer takes 8 hours to install an update? my last one put my machine out of action for 4 whole minutes.

Since I've had W11 I've not noticed any updates - a lot of it done more transparently. So while it can take 8 hours to do it's thing, it doesn't mean your machine is out of action for that length of time.

[TameRacingDriver]

Order66 said:

Since I've had W11 I've not noticed any updates - a lot of it done more transparently. So while it can take 8 hours to do it's thing, it doesn't mean your machine is out of action for that length of time.

I'm aware that it will take time to download updates but that's not quite the same as actually applying those updates.

Even at work an entire feature update generally only takes 2 or 3 hours tops from start to finish, including the download. 8 hours is certainly not the norm let alone average.

[robbiekhan]

2-3 hours to do feature updates?! Surely that's something dictated by your systems admins. I recall my Windows 11 upgrade from 10 taking an hour or so to do the upgrade itself. All other Windows updates since have taken minutes.

[xeny]

robbiekhan said:

2-3 hours to do feature updates?! Surely that's something dictated by your systems admins..

It's essentially dictated by SSD vs HDD and speed of access to download the update files. With a HDD, feature updates on an otherwise capable machine (3GHz 8 core with 32 GB of RAM, gigabit internet access) can easily take a couple of hours.

[TameRacingDriver]

robbiekhan said:

2-3 hours to do feature updates?! Surely that's something dictated by your systems admins. I recall my Windows 11 upgrade from 10 taking an hour or so to do the upgrade itself. All other Windows updates since have taken minutes.

That's exactly my point, the office ones are st slow, so the suggestion that the average upgrade time is 8 hours is clearly BS, or a lot of people are using ancient computers.