Why Windows 11 is a Big Deal to Me

I responded to a post that Kari made a short time ago where he expressed some enthusiasm regarding Windows 11. In my response I noted that I too was enthusiastic about Windows 11 even if a lot of the changes were small subtle things.

Since making that post I've been thinking about this a lot more. It brought to mind something that a member of the media recently said. Bear in mind, this individual is someone who covers Microsoft for a living. He basically asserted that no one really cares what the underlying operating system is, and that the operating system is just there to facilitate the apps that a user wants to run to accomplish their daily tasks.

That statement has been grating on me for a while.

However, it was the previously mentioned posting here on ElevenForum that drove this point home to me:

Windows itself IS the app that drives my productivity. In a very real way, Windows itself is why I enjoy computing so much.

Back in the old days (think DOS), I can understand that the OS was really pretty much something that facilitated the ability to run and manage your apps and handle the file system for you and the apps. The OS itself was not something you might spend a whole lot of time using.

But that has changed.

Today, many of us run many applications at once. We need sophisticated yet simple ways to manage all those applications and switch between them. The simple keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks we use are all handled by Windows. We rely upon security protections provided by the OS, the ability to network locally and over the Internet, if you have Windows Pro or higher you likely use tools such as Remote Desktop, Hyper-V, etc. If we are working with someone else, we might guide them to use simple bundled tools like notepad to perform simple tasks because we know that whatever their choice of apps, this is a tool every Windows user will have on their system. We might provide a user a document in PDF format because we know that the capability to read that document is baked right into the OS.

Also, so many of the facilities that apps make use of are functions built into the OS. WYSIWYG is a huge example of this. Imagine if everyone implemented this differently and it wasn't a core part of the OS?

If you think about it, the sheer amount of capability built right into the OS is amazing. I've spent a couple years alone just playing with and learning as much as I can about automating Windows installation and managing and updating Windows images. But there are so many other avenues that one could explore: PowerShell scripting, Networking, storage management, encryption - and the list goes on.

I'm pretty sure that I can safely say that for a lot of us geeks, Windows itself IS THE APP that we are most interested in. It's not Word, or Adobe Acrobat, or Macrium Reflect - Windows itself is where we spend most of our time.

After all, when I look at what the true gurus like Kari, Brink, and so many others are putting their efforts into, it is Windows. Granted, you would expect that on TenForums and ElevenForum, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot more research goes into delving deep into Windows than how to make a better looking Word document .

But maybe that's part of the magic of Windows; for those people who really don't care about the OS, it just goes about managing things for you that you don't even think about, letting you use those apps most important to you to complete the work that you need to get done.

I sit in front of and interact with a computer for many hours. Every day. So for me, seeing changes that will improve security, enhance how Windows interacts with and manages other apps, and generally makes my work more enjoyable, that's a pretty big deal.

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of you who have joined ElevenForum already feel the same way.

hsehestedt said:

Since making that post I've been thinking about this a lot more. It brought to mind something that a member of the media recently said. Bear in mind, this individual is someone who covers Microsoft for a living. He basically asserted that no one really cares what the underlying operating system is, and that the operating system is just there to facilitate the apps that a user wants to run to accomplish their daily tasks.

Click to expand...

I fully agree with that. Windows is not an "app". To be honest, I'm very old-fashioned, I don't like the word "app". To me, it's not even a word, it's a shortcut from "application" and that's what's typically developed for phones. On a desktop I use programs. Yes, strictly speaking Windows is a computer program, any OS is. However, the purpose of this program is to facilitate other programs.

In the early days, DOS was the OS and Windows was the GUI. At some point, the distinction disappeared, since Microsoft merged these two programs (OS and GUI) into one, that we now know as Windows. Moreover, there is a tendency (has been for a long time already) to grow computer programs into all-in-one suites. This way Windows comes with its own means to create and edit texts (Notepad and Wordpad), make basic operations with images (Paint), access the internet (before - Internet Explorer, now - Edge), etc. Now Windows can "natively" open zip archives, exhibit pdf files, and so on.

As far as I am concerned, none of these additional features are an integral part of the OS. In fact, the EU has proved just that by forcing Microsoft to provide the "N" versions of Windows, which are stripped of media related programs (Media Player, Skype, etc.). In the past there was also an "E" version of Windows 7 which came without Internet Explorer. In both cases the OS is the same and works just fine.

Now, many "real" computer programs - I personally use Mathematica a lot, just as one example - are available for more than one OS (in practice, Windows, Mac, Linux). While the implementations might differ a little bit, but in theory they should provide same functionality (although iTunes for Windows is really bad, as is Office for Mac). So productivity-wise, the OS is indeed irrelevant. We typically stick with one OS either as a personal preference or workplace requirement, but as far as real work is concerned, the choice of the OS is not important at all.

hsehestedt said:

I responded to a post that Kari made a short time ago where he expressed some enthusiasm regarding Windows 11. In my response I noted that I too was enthusiastic about Windows 11 even if a lot of the changes were small subtle things.

<snip>

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of you who have joined ElevenForum already feel the same way.

Click to expand...

I tend to agree with you on this, in particular if you look at how Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, and other OS vendors look at the OS as a whole. The OS is so much more than it used to be 30 years ago, hence the emphasis on usability, customizability (somewhat, in some cases, sure, but Windows 10 offers a native Dark mode - something I honestly would never happen directly from an OS vendor, ever. The emphasis has shifted from just being the base to being a usable, set of apps that the customer may (or may not) like (I'm looking at you directly, Cortana!) in order to enhance the user experience when interacting with the OS itself - not apps that you alter install, but apps themselves. It's also why Microsoft continues to bundle crap apps that I never use (Angry Birds? Really?) and apps that I still prefer 3rd party replacements for (IrfanView, WACUP, Xplorer², numerous others). But if the user was not the focus in their OS development, Windows, MacOS and many, many distros of Linux would not be focusing so much on the entire native GUI in each respective OS to begin with.

unifex said:

I fully agree with that. Windows is not an "app". To be honest, I'm very old-fashioned, I don't like the word "app". To me, it's not even a word, it's a shortcut from "application" and that's what's typically developed for phones. On a desktop I use programs. Yes, strictly speaking Windows is a computer program, any OS is. However, the purpose of this program is to facilitate other programs.

In the early days, DOS was the OS and Windows was the GUI. At some point, the distinction disappeared, since Microsoft merged these two programs (OS and GUI) into one, that we now know as Windows. Moreover, there is a tendency (has been for a long time already) to grow computer programs into all-in-one suites. This way Windows comes with its own means to create and edit texts (Notepad and Wordpad), make basic operations with images (Paint), access the internet (before - Internet Explorer, now - Edge), etc. Now Windows can "natively" open zip archives, exhibit pdf files, and so on.

As far as I am concerned, none of these additional features are an integral part of the OS. In fact, the EU has proved just that by forcing Microsoft to provide the "N" versions of Windows, which are stripped of media related programs (Media Player, Skype, etc.). In the past there was also an "E" version of Windows 7 which came without Internet Explorer. In both cases the OS is the same and works just fine.

Now, many "real" computer programs - I personally use Mathematica a lot, just as one example - are available for more than one OS (in practice, Windows, Mac, Linux). While the implementations might differ a little bit, but in theory they should provide same functionality (although iTunes for Windows is really bad, as is Office for Mac). So productivity-wise, the OS is indeed irrelevant. We typically stick with one OS either as a personal preference or workplace requirement, but as far as real work is concerned, the choice of the OS is not important at all.

Click to expand...

I get it. How one interacts with the environment is completely unimportant to some. The underlying functionality provided by the OS that even makes a lot of the features found in apps, or programs if you prefer, is completely unimportant to many. Just saying that for some of us, the OS that underpins everything is the most important piece, as if it itself was that killer app that makes us use a computer, even though, obviously, the OS is not an app itself.

It's kind of like back in the early PC days. There was often that one single app that was the only reason people owned a computer. For example, we had computers for the sole purpose of running Lotus 1, 2, 3. That was the killer app the made having a computer necessary. For others, it was something else.

For me personally, Windows itself is my driving motivation for having a computer. I want to develop expertise in as many of the core components as possible. Other stuff - Office, video editing apps, etc. are important as well, but Windows is that thing that keeps me glued to the keyboard and mouse.

To give you an example, I was once asked to format 20 floppies in DOS which as you can imagine took a long time back then on slow hardware. But the important thing was that you couldn't do anything else at all. You either had to wait it out or do something else away from the computer. Now with Windows of course you could format those floppies while doing something else.

Two things that annoy me intensely, calling programs apps and refering to a PC as a device, my PCs are not flipping phones and I don't think they will fit in my pocket!

swarfega said:

To give you an example, I was once asked to format 20 floppies in DOS which as you can imagine took a long time back then on slow hardware. But the important thing was that you couldn't do anything else at all. You either had to wait it out or do something else away from the computer. Now with Windows of course you could format those floppies while doing something else.

Click to expand...

Possible if you had 20 floppy drives on your system, leaving you 6 more drive letters to do whatever else you needed, but otherwise, you would be swapping the disks in and out as fast as Windows could process them, which is precisely as fast as the drives could format and check each of the disks in turn. Floppies were a slow technology, much slower than the systems running DOS that you used way back then. The hardware was not the bottleneck, the floppy drives were.

Many interesting words, but I'm still sitting here, after reading all that, with my original question......
Why would I or any PC user want or need Windows 11?

TM

Indeed they were.

TechnoMage2021 said:

Many interesting words, but I'm still sitting here, after reading all that, with my original question......
Why would I or any PC user want or need Windows 11?

TM

Click to expand...

Need? I doubt anyone needs it given 10 will be around for 4 more years. It's a want more than a need. I want the new GUI and interface also it's going to be the OS that's going to be receiving the greatest development effort by MS.

hsehestedt said:

I get it. How one interacts with the environment is completely unimportant to some. The underlying functionality provided by the OS that even makes a lot of the features found in apps, or programs if you prefer, is completely unimportant to many. Just saying that for some of us, the OS that underpins everything is the most important piece, as if it itself was that killer app that makes us use a computer, even though, obviously, the OS is not an app itself.

It's kind of like back in the early PC days. There was often that one single app that was the only reason people owned a computer. For example, we had computers for the sole purpose of running Lotus 1, 2, 3. That was the killer app the made having a computer necessary. For others, it was something else.

For me personally, Windows itself is my driving motivation for having a computer. I want to develop expertise in as many of the core components as possible. Other stuff - Office, video editing apps, etc. are important as well, but Windows is that thing that keeps me glued to the keyboard and mouse.

Click to expand...

I'd agree with you that Windows is akin to glue. It connects the user to the process that they want to perform, and over its evolution has held people like me, who used DOS on PCs years before Windows existed, to use the same family of machines, in many ways for exactly the same things we did way back then. Of course our use evolved to newer ways of doing things with greater flexibility, expanding our abilities to network, interconnect, and speed up data and communications. Other users use a different type of glue, MacOS, Linux, Android etc. I will stick with Windows out of preference!

Hi, what I hated about 11 is the compability. Here in my country, PC parts is tend to more expensive than flagship phones, and I hated it!

And, we on an pandemic.. And in issues on graphics cards because of bitcoin mining.. As I couldn't find a better graphics card because it is expensive, even second hands and older ones.

But, there's an working workaround for installing W11 in an bearbones hardware. Great!

If not for Windows 11, I will just keep putting off upgrading my 7 year old PC.

badrobot said:

If not for Windows 11, I will just keep putting off upgrading my 7 year old PC.

Click to expand...

Same here.,. I had to find a reason to get some new bits and here it is

TechnoMage2021 said:

Many interesting words, but I'm still sitting here, after reading all that, with my original question......
Why would I or any PC user want or need Windows 11?

TM

Click to expand...

Anyone can skip it. But 11 makes a lot of people excited with hardware upgrades.

TechnoMage2021 said:

Why would I or any PC user want or need Windows 11?

Click to expand...

For many people, there may be no reason to switch whatsoever. However, for a lot of power users who are really familar with Windows and make use of a large number of the OS features, these can make a big difference.

Here are a few of the things that I particularly like:

I like the easy access to various split screen configurations. I use this feature from PowerToys constantly, but the way it is integrated into 11 is far simpler. I probably use this a hundred times a day so it's a big time saver for me.

I spend a lot of time in Settings while I test and research things that make me go there frequently. The new settings layout is FAR simpler to navigate.

I am an android user. Being able to use Android apps on my desktop will be a huge advantage to me.

Of course there is more, but this simply illustrates a few of the things that I would use extremely frequently.

swarfega said:

To give you an example, I was once asked to format 20 floppies in DOS which as you can imagine took a long time back then on slow hardware. But the important thing was that you couldn't do anything else at all. You either had to wait it out or do something else away from the computer. Now with Windows of course you could format those floppies while doing something else.

Click to expand...

Well, that would be both hardware and software. No matter how much your OS can multi-task, if your hardware is lacking, then you are stuck.

If you ran DOS on a modern machine, and were able to open multiple shells, do you think you could format more than one floppy simultaneously? It's something to consider.

clam1952 said:

Two things that annoy me intensely, calling programs apps and refering to a PC as a device, my PCs are not flipping phones and I don't think they will fit in my pocket!

Click to expand...

App is short for application. Which ALL programs are.

Similarly, PCs are only one type of Personal Computing Device, shortened to devices. Because, in case you missed it, Windows 11 is being developed for more than just 'PCs'.

fafhrd said:

Possible if you had 20 floppy drives on your system, leaving you 6 more drive letters to do whatever else you needed, but otherwise, you would be swapping the disks in and out as fast as Windows could process them, which is precisely as fast as the drives could format and check each of the disks in turn. Floppies were a slow technology, much slower than the systems running DOS that you used way back then. The hardware was not the bottleneck, the floppy drives were.

Click to expand...

Well, no, but even my original Tandy 1000 EX had dual floppies - but I could only format one at a time because of the limits of the OS and the hardware. With modern hardware and the ability to open multiple shells, I could format diskettes in both drives simultaneously. Still twice as fast compared to one at a time.

TechnoMage2021 said:

Many interesting words, but I'm still sitting here, after reading all that, with my original question......
Why would I or any PC user want or need Windows 11?

TM

Click to expand...

Why? Because of improvements. Some like aesthetically pleasing improvements, some like back-end improvements, some like new capabilities (like Secure Boot and TPM), and some don't like change at all (and continue to use XP, to boot)....

It's a matter of personal choice.

fafhrd said:

I'd agree with you that Windows is akin to glue. It connects the user to the process that they want to perform, and over its evolution has held people like me, who used DOS on PCs years before Windows existed, to use the same family of machines, in many ways for exactly the same things we did way back then. Of course our use evolved to newer ways of doing things with greater flexibility, expanding our abilities to network, interconnect, and speed up data and communications. Other users use a different type of glue, MacOS, Linux, Android etc. I will stick with Windows out of preference!

Click to expand...

Spot on. I'd much rather be in a shell, but watching a streaming video isn't exactly easy in a shell environment.

I use multiple types of your glue - Android, MacOS, Linux, and Windows (no iOS though). I stick with Windows on my PCs because MacOS is not licensed for home built PCs and I refuse to buy a pre-built device if I can help it (smartphones being a notable exception, of course).

jbcarreon123 said:

Hi, what I hated about 11 is the compability. Here in my country, PC parts is tend to more expensive than flagship phones, and I hated it!

And, we on an pandemic.. And in issues on graphics cards because of bitcoin mining.. As I couldn't find a better graphics card because it is expensive, even second hands and older ones.

But, there's an working workaround for installing W11 in an bearbones hardware. Great!

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, people who continue to use older hardware and use unpatched OSs and apps and don't learn enough on how ot protect their PCs all over the world - regardless of rich or poor, developed or developing countries, East or West, North or South - keep allowing criminal cartels to mass disseminate malware to the world. I understand that old PCs are sometimes the only way to go - I have old desktops builds going back to ...2008, and old laptops going back almost as far as well.

But I also know when to give up on using Windows (and especially unpatched Windows) OSs on old hardware and install something more appropriate for them - Win10. Linux. ChromeOS. And if you take gamers out of hte equation, the vast majority of home users who are not gamers who use Windows at home don't have a majorly pressing need to be running Windows over another OS. Don't need Windows to check get on Facebook, WhatsApp, check email, open websites, or stream videos and / or watch movies.

hsehestedt said:

For many people, there may be no reason to switch whatsoever. However, for a lot of power users who are really familar with Windows and make use of a large number of the OS features, these can make a big difference.

Here are a few of the things that I particularly like:

I like the easy access to various split screen configurations. I use this feature from PowerToys constantly, but the way it is integrated into 11 is far simpler. I probably use this a hundred times a day so it's a big time saver for me.

I spend a lot of time in Settings while I test and research things that make me go there frequently. The new settings layout is FAR simpler to navigate.

I am an android user. Being able to use Android apps on my desktop will be a huge advantage to me.

Of course there is more, but this simply illustrates a few of the things that I would use extremely frequently.

Click to expand...

Have to agree that, if it works as intended, being able to use Android apps natively will be a huge bonus. After installing 11, I *finally* connected my Android phone to Windows' YourPhone' app. It's awesome, for what I use it for - watching for notifications on my phone that I might miss because I am watching a video, with a headset on, and not hear my phone notification sound.

it's certainly basic, but it works.

johnlgalt said:

Well, that would be both hardware and software. No matter how much your OS can multi-task, if your hardware is lacking, then you are stuck.

If you ran DOS on a modern machine, and were able to open multiple shells, do you think you could format more than one floppy simultaneously? It's something to consider.

Click to expand...

Indeed it would but at the time that is what we had to put up with.

Lol yes. Formatting 1.2 MB 5.25 disks was always time consuming.....

johnlgalt said:

Lol yes. Formatting 1.2 MB 5.25 disks was always time consuming.....

Click to expand...

Installing OS/2 on a PC and hitting disk 13 of 52 and having to start over with disk one.. time consuming