Windows 11 Official Annoucement

[bmoc]

Windows 11 will be officially announced in about 2 hours. You can watch the event here. It starts at 11am EST.

If you have been following the news, you probably have a good idea what to expect since any early build was leaked. Personally, I am just hoping for a consistent Settings interface so I don't have to bounce back and forth between Control Panel and the Settings app to do certain things. If the upgrade is free that would be pretty swell too. I think there is a good chance that will happen as Microsoft seems more focused on selling services (Office 365, GamePass, etc). Naturally, I am also interested in any new gaming features.

What are your takes on the new OS?

EDIT: The live stream keeps craping out on me. Guess I will wait for the recording.

[bmoc]

Native support for Android apps is pretty cool as is having Teams built-in.

As an IT guy, I very much appreciate having only one feature update a year. Speaking of updates, they said updates are 40 percent smaller and "happen in the background". I wish I knew what they meant by that because Windows Updates have been installed by the BITS service since the Windows XP days (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Does that mean no forced reboots or fewer reboots? It is just an odd thing to say when they have been installed in the background for almost 2 decades now.

That TPM 2.0 requirement might actually force my workplace to upgrade some of our more ancient PCs. We already have a few that won't take anything newer than Windows 10 1909.

New gaming features are kind of meh. If you have an NVMe drive and the game developer utilizes it, DirectStorage is kind of neat depending on what the performance gains are.

[Ziggy]

I noticed the video is 45 minutes. I'll give it a watch when I get the chance. I did skip through it a bit, and noticed the new UI. Mainly, the start bar. I really hope there's options to customize the task bar and start menu. I still like the classic style task bar, with non-collapsed buttons. I saw in the video that the new taskbar is justified center. Hopefully you can change it to classic, with the windows button in the left corner and the taskbar buttons justified left and NOT collapsed.

If there's a free upgrade, I may consider going for it depending on what the options are. I stuck with 7 until it lost support just because I didn't feel like messing with a new OS and getting everything "just right." I've been on 10 since 2019, so it's only been 2 years for me. I may be too lazy to upgrade this soon LOL. I guess it all depends. If there's a ton of new features I want (not likely) then I'll go for it. If I get no gains, and can't make the new UI look like the old one, then I may stick with 10 for a while longer.

But also, I don't like doing "in place" upgrades to new OSes. Even when I took A+ prep courses, they teach you that clean installs are always better. So if that's not an option in some way, I'm not sure I want to do a straight upgrade from 10 to 11. Also, I wonder what the activation key is like. Does my 10 key become my 11 key? I just want to make sure I can clean install 11 down the road if I need to, without having to worry about activation. I had a headache activating "upgrade" versions of Windows in the past, but perhaps it's different now.

[bmoc]

The upgrade will be free. I believe you can left justify the Start Menu assuming that feature remains from the leaked build.

[MrPopo]

Having Teams built in strikes me as a bad thing, as it means companies might switch to that over other options like Slack, and I have never seen someone prefer Teams to the other popular communications tools.

Also, the "a clean install is better" is a very overstated thing. Yes, it is objectively better, but practically speaking upgrading in place won't be a problem for 90% of people.

[Ziggy]

The upgrade will be free. I believe you can left justify the Start Menu assuming that feature remains from the leaked build.

If 11 works the same way as 10 did, where you can install it and use it without activating, I might mess around with it first by installing it on a spare HDD in a spare PC. If I like it, then I can upgrade my 10 computers.

Also, the "a clean install is better" is a very overstated thing. Yes, it is objectively better, but practically speaking upgrading in place won't be a problem for 90% of people.

I think it's one of those things. Like, "don't use your cell phone at the gas pump," or "don't go swimming after you eat."

[bmoc]

So I checked my desktop at home and sure enough, it doesn't have a TPM chip built-in but it does have a header for one. I snagged a $10 TPM module from eBay but the prices for some are insane. I think scalpers are starting to snatch them up. If you plan on upgrading, I definitely recommend checking to see if you have TPM 1.2 or higher sooner rather than later. TPM 1.2 is the hard requirement but Microsoft is recommending TPM 2.0.

[fastbilly1]

Having Teams built in strikes me as a bad thing, as it means companies might switch to that over other options like Slack, and I have never seen someone prefer Teams to the other popular communications tools

I prefer Teams.