Someone realised they hadn't integrated CoPilot, advertising and user telemetry into the updated indicator.

Or perhaps there were too many colors for the marketing team to assimilate. After all, the Flatso style guide only allows for black, white and maybe two shades of grey, so actual color might be too much for the addled to handle, and so they withdrew it so they could clean up after the collective heads of their marketing dept. exploded.

Hey Bob, new account?

[/sarcasm on] ... Microsoft realised that this may actually be a useful addition to W11

... or else M$ programmers actually broke the simple bit of coding that is a battery level indicator [/sarcasm off]

But seriously, only M$ could make a complete hash of a simple piece of code.

My laptop has a simple white icon (on a dark blue background for me) and when it gets down to 10% the screen goes darker and it pops up a warning that the battery is low. How complicated can it be?

> M$ programmers actually broke the simple bit of coding

Which was already done for [1]deduplication+NTFS in specific nested-V scenarios , which they probably won't fix until I reproduce it in a non-nested-V scenario (they could reproduce that for nested). But I don't have so much time (aka real life exists too).

Which was already done for game compatibility [2](like Delta Force 1 & 2) ...

Which was already done for [3]long path support within Powershell ISE

There are TONS of undiscovered or "we don't care" bugs in that OS. What I really worry about is that Server 2025 has the same code base.

[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/windowsserverinsiders/nested-v-dedup-corruption-26100-1742-and-insider-26296-5001-and-server-2022-is-s/4263322

[2] https://steamcommunity.com/app/32630/discussions/0/4702413332606407808/

[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1688032/powershell-ise-illegal-characters-in-path-with-lit

...and a SQL Express backend to maximise the RAM usage.

. . . what techological breakthroughs we can expect in the near future!

It's helpful to review the history of everything happening in the past ... for example here's a very old quote that indicates how little we might expect ...

"Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the most reliable Windows ever. To me, this is like saying that asparagus is the most articulate vegetable ever." - Dave Barry

I'm still using Windows 7 Professional everywhere - these days "no updates" keeps everything working fine.

When will people stop using red and green to distinguish between two important things? A total of [1]8% of European Caucasian men (including me) are red–green colourblind . This is not a small number of people (and there are also smaller percentages of other groups). So many electronic gadgets I have seem to use something like amber and green to indicate charging status, and to my eyes, the two shades are all but indistinguishable. This can be incredibly frustrating, and in some cases potentially dangerous.* There does seem to have been some move towards red and blue, which is major progress (even if the blue can be a bit painfully bright), but red and green just seems to be the thoughtless default.

*Before you ask, no, traffic lights are not usually a problem because the "green" they use (at least in the UK) is actually almost white to my eyes and stands out notably from the red. The red and amber do usually look identical to me, but that's less of an issue.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22472762/

I'd also point out that traffic lights are in a fixed order, where as the chances of MS leaving something alone for more than a version these days is rare?

The order can help, but when approaching from a distance at night, colour is also very useful...

I always find it interesting that on the colour spectrum, green and blue are adjacent, but red is at the other end.

However for a reasonable percentage of the population, red & green are virtually the same whereas red & blue are completely different. Green-blue depends heavily on shades.

(plus if colour vision deficiency were a race/ethnicity/gender choice, it would be far more accommodated in legislation)

Green / Amber LEDs have been the bane of my existence. I is infuriating trying to set up a device and not knowing wether the blinking pattern you see is the "good one" (green) or "bad one" (yellow) because they are indistinguishable from one another. Usually looking at them through a phone camera works, but sheesh! is it not like there are no other color options.

As a kind of funny aside, the green traffic light in some US places look basically blue to me. Not sure if it your case but I always found it amusing (and great, as they are impossible to miss)

Traffic lights are not a problem because the bulb is yellow and the glass blue. (or the other way round, I don't remember)

They are not green until combined in the eye of a non-colour deficient person.

They will break it. Way too often you have to use Get-CimInstance Win32_QuickFixEngineering already, add Get-CimInstance Win32_Battery .

If you want better readability (yes two batteries in here, Fujitsu E746, and with AC plugged in endless runtime - and TheRegister kills some spaces on that table where they should not):

PS C:\> Get-CimInstance Win32_Battery | Select-Object Name,DeviceID,Status,@{Name="Power";Expression={if ($_.BatteryStatus -eq "1") {"1:Batt"};if ($_.BatteryStatus -eq "2") {"2:AC"}}},EstimatedChargeRemaining,EstimatedRunTime | ft

Name DeviceID Status Power EstimatedChargeRemaining EstimatedRunTime

---- -------- ------ ----- ------------------------ ----------------

CP700282-02 01A-Z170523015519ZFujitsuCP700282-02 OK 2:AC 100 71582788

CP709256-01 01A-W160220009833WFujitsuCP709256-01 OK 2:AC 100 71582788

They realised they weren't being 'disruptive' enough and needed to change the ol' RAG status to Cyan, black and magenta, create a downloadable app from the Microsoft store for it (500Mb), hide the setting 14 layers down in the control panel under hardware or via copilot request. And it'll only work with an internet connection

None of those things are M$.

And never were.

Embrace, extend, convolution, spy, extinguish. THOSE are M$ things.

I wouldn't have thought a battery charger indicator would be top of the list.

Might be easier to have the hardware designers add a multicoloured LED or LCD display that the platform firmware can control bypassing the MS clownware.

I am sure in future copilot enabled hardware will voice prompt the user in its best Jeeves RS with "Would sir [madam] please connect the power adaptor before I am unable to provide further satisfaction?" †

Actually after a full dose of Win11/Copilot/MS-AI I suspect the very much want to see happen would be pretty much along the lines of "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.‡"

† I just realised this sounds more like an AI enhanced sex toy with a voice interface. I am sure there is PFY beavering away in his parents' basement with some Raspberry Pi SOCs to make this the next big thing. Surprised that Apple, considering its target demographic, hasn't already penetrated this market.

‡ HHGTTG Sirius Cybernetics Corporation which every major Tech corporate seemingly wants to emulate. Douglas Adams... such prescience!

> † I just realised this sounds more like an AI enhanced sex toy with a voice interface.

Na, more like a Rolling Stones cover...

I guess they recalled it because the calculation of the remaining charge (all done by CoPilot based on Recall-generated screendumps) did not match the actual value.

Then people were surprised by a sudden shutdown while still "in the green".

No really, how hard can this feature be? It is not that laptops are new to the market, are they?

Let alone how "new" that feature is - Windows 2000, as long as the PC is ACPI / APM capable, could do it.

For Windows 2000, to display the power status indicator on task bar:

Open the Start menu and choose Settings, Control Panel, Power Options.

Click the Advanced tab.

Select the Always Show Icon On The Taskbar check box.

and Win 11 is the biggest pile of shite I've ever had the misfortune to use.

I lost hours today because an exe I was trying to run on the command line kept spawning a GUI window with a message that the program was not compatible (it was installed as part of Visual Studio). A window that I could not screenshot, copy or otherwise interact with except to dismiss it. WTF MS? I eventually got it to work, there was nothing wrong with that exe, but I still have no idea what Windows 11's problem was other than it is not fit for purpose.