Normally, feature updates are a no-brainer. Updating your PC from one Windows 10 version to another typically offers you security updates, bug fixes, and new features, justifying the hassle. You don’t really have the freedom to opt out of a Windows 10 update, either—you can only delay it for a short time. But Windows 11 offers you a true choice. Microsoft says that it will support Windows 10 until 2025, giving you the option to remain on it for a few more years before it goes end-of-life.
We’ve reviewed Windows 11, and we think you should decline the upgrade and remain on Windows 10 for now, for several reasons.
Familiarity
Knowing your way around an operating system or a supermarket or a car’s engine matters, especially if you can instinctively navigate through it. Windows 11 offers the same Taskbar and Start menu and File Explorer as Windows 10, but with unfamiliar layouts, icons, and navigation. You simply won’t be as efficient as you are in Windows 10 until you learn the ins and outs of Windows 11.
This also matters in such mundane apps as File Explorer. Microsoft’s navigation system for performing such basic tasks as renaming files has been replaced by obtuse icons that simply aren’t as memorable as Microsoft probably hopes that they’ll be. Microsoft has every right to rework and update Windows, but if you have to devote conscious thought to how to do something, you’re justified wondering if changes were made for sake of simply changing things.
Functionality
Windows 11 is usable in its present form, without a doubt. But there are little issues littered throughout the OS which will certainly irritate new users.
Take the Taskbar and the Start menu, which are both less functional than in Windows 10. Windows 11’s Taskbar is dynamically centered, which pushes the Start menu icon further and further left as more apps are opened. The Taskbar can’t be resized, or moved, and users can’t view the icons in tabbed mode with text explanations instead. When you install new apps, you can pin them to the Taskbar, but not directly to the Start menu; those apps appear in the “All apps” menu within Start, where they can then be pinned to the main Start menu. Did we mention the Taskbar’s weird badging system? Or the Notifications calendar that doesn’t do anything but sit there?
|