Honestly, that kind of over-the-top, artificially up-beat, valley-girl style video narrative just turns me right off.

I'm glad they managed to find someone that doesn't overdo the vocal fry. That would just make my skin crawl.

Are they really trying to appeal to real people?

Like, oh-em-gee! What is your damage!? That is sooooo uncalled for!

Can they shut up, release security backports for Windows 2000 and be done with it?

Why would you want that? Windows 2000 doesn't understand the difference between multi-core and multi-CPU setups, just as one major technical deficiency. It's a subtle, but very important, distinction on the performance front. The driver model on 2000 was also about as secure as a leaky sieve, which is why MS has worked on hardening with every release starting with Vista. It still had a shitty 2D software rendered GUI instead of a 3D hardware accelerated one like every version of Windows since Vista. It had a lot of issues dealing with apps that weren't written for a multi-user environment.

I'd be willing to bet 10% of your income that if you loaded Win2K into a VM, you'd find it's rather clunky and not at all like you remember it. It's like how people romanticize the 1950s, but you had diseases like Polio running rampant, racism was socially acceptable, sexism was socially acceptable, people didn't know the dangers of smoking, cars didn't necessarily have seatbelts, and if you lived to be 70 it was like the equivalent of living to 100 today. The past is never as good as you remember it.

"...diseases like [1]Polio running rampant , racism was [2]socially acceptable , sexism was [3]socially acceptable , [4]people didn't know the dangers of smoking , cars didn't necessarily have seatbelts, and [5]if you lived to be 70 it was like the equivalent of living to 100 today ."

Apart from the bit about cars not having seatbelts, you could be describing the 2020s.

[1] https://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2023/03/17/why-is-polio-making-a-comeback-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/us/politics/republicans-racist-language.html

[3] https://www.afmd.fr/en/stope-barometer-2023

[4] https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/home/topics/smoking/as-vaping-among-teens-young-adults-increases-so-do-health-concerns/

[5] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/whats-behind-shocking-u-s-life-expectancy-decline-and-what-to-do-about-it/

I would love to be able to dispute that, but the best I can do is quibble that racism and sexism are seeing a resurgence in certain quarters as opposed to being considered universally acceptable.

I'm reminded of something I saw, given that I'm a Warhammer 40K fiction fan... In the 40K lore, they say how 2,000 people are sacrificed every day to keep the Emperor in his lifeless state. This was intended to be a shockingly horrific figure, but more people than that were dying every day because a few assholes couldn't be bothered to wear a mask and take a few other basic precautions during a global pandemic.

Hey it wasn't a criticism of your comment, just my own tongue-in-cheek observation. Please feel free to dispute my comments whenever and wherever you see them :D

> I'd be willing to bet 10% of your income that if you loaded Win2K into a VM

I do all of my office work on an offline Windows 2000 VM (and RDP). The office 2007 ribbon was a broken concept and adobe pdf tools were better around this era.

I recommend (everyone) giving it another shot.

> It still had a shitty 2D software rendered GUI instead of a 3D hardware accelerated one like every version of Windows since Vista

Removing the blurry effects on any version of windows (under accessibility settings) make any version of windows feel more snappy and responsive. This just comes default in 2000. It also means RDP can work more effectively in enterprise / office settings.

I do all of my office work on an offline Windows 2000 VM (and RDP). The office 2007 ribbon was a broken concept and adobe pdf tools were better around this era.

I recommend (everyone) giving it another shot.

Aside from sounding like it's ridiculously and needlessly complicated, I'll take you at your word. So, feel free to take 10% of whatever you find in your wallet and award it to yourself for winning the bet. Congrats!

Removing the blurry effects on any version of windows (under accessibility settings) make any version of windows feel more snappy and responsive. This just comes default in 2000.

Maybe you need to get your eyes checked. Unless you're conflating ClearType and AA with the GUI as a whole. I always find it fascinating. In the gaming world, people want MORE antialiasing. You can basically never have enough, and if people see a single jagged edge anywhere, they piss and moan about it endlessly. But then you take the exact same thing and apply it to productivity software, and suddenly you're not a real man unless you can see each individual pixel on a font. I know people are complex beings capable of holding multiple, sometimes contradictory, views on a subject, but this isn't a particularly complex subject. It's not like, say immigration, where there are good and bad aspects to it depending on what you're looking at. It's whether fonts look smooth vs jagged. There's not a lot of complexity in there.

Why would you want that?

What's Running in production stays running in production, and I get to use my time constructively

Windows 2000 doesn't understand the difference between multi-core and multi-CPU setups, just as one major technical deficiency. It's a subtle, but very important, distinction on the performance front.

Let's see what the VM options are for that ...

The driver model on 2000 was also about as secure as a leaky sieve, which is why MS has worked on hardening with every release starting with Vista.

Stable builds stick with known good drivers. Although I certainly wouldn't run an access node on it

It still had a shitty 2D software rendered GUI instead of a 3D hardware accelerated one like every version of Windows since Vista.

So not good for gaming, but capable of running the desktop ? Function for the win.

It had a lot of issues dealing with apps that weren't written for a multi-user environment.

Is Windows multi-user ? Not named Administrator ?? I hadn't noticed

I'd be willing to bet 10% of your income that if you loaded Win2K into a VM, you'd find it's rather clunky and not at all like you remember it. It's like how people romanticize the 1950s, but you had diseases like Polio running rampant, racism was socially acceptable, sexism was socially acceptable, people didn't know the dangers of smoking, cars didn't necessarily have seatbelts, and if you lived to be 70 it was like the equivalent of living to 100 today. The past is never as good as you remember it.

I'm willing to bet that the particular combination of hardware, driver and app that I am running are not supported on any later version. Just like the one WinXp machine I still have up 24/7. Plus the level of support from MS is basically the same across all versions of Windows. At least I don't have to correlate a problem + fix to the build number.

LOL! StartAllBack saved my sanity.

If I wrote a powershell script that traversed your drives and deleted every instance of callofduty.exe, fortnite.exe and cyberpunk2077.exe, replacing them with the Freecell executable, would Microsoft make similarly gushing praise of it in a video?

Windows 11 is really only superficially different from 10, or just about any other version since Windows 95. Honestly, if you could magically transport through time someone from 1996, who used Windows 95, to today, and plop them down in front of Windows 11, they'd have little difficulty making the transition. A lot of the people complaining about Windows 11 are just repeating the exact same things other people say, so it's easy to see it's more about trying to signal their alignment with a certain social group than legitimate concerns.

There was a talk show I listened to once upon a time, and one of the hosts had been married several times. Some guy calls up asking the hosts to help settle an argument between him and his wife. The host who had been married several times says something to the effect of, "If there's one thing I've learned from being married multiple times, it's that you can either choose to be right, or you can choose to be happy." Put into context of Windows 11, it's rather simple. You have X amount of time and energy. You can choose to spend that time and energy in one of two ways. Either 1) bitching and moaning about everything, or 2) learning new habits that fit with Windows 11. So, I can only conclude that El Reg is read by a lot of people who are only happy when they're miserable and will go out of their way to find something to get all bent out of shape about.

The third option is to install Open Shell and Explorer Patcher and turn it back to something that is simple and easy to use.

It's not hard to use. It's a pile of irritating gratuitous non-compatible changes that make life more difficult using it, for no reason.

Why should I learn new habits? I don't want to move to Windows 11. I'm happy with Windows 10. Windows 11 does not do anything better, it does things worse.

Edit: and actually I don't use Windows 10 or 11. I moved to Linux and Windows 7 was the last Microsoft OS I used extensively. I know how to use the 3 programs I use on Windows at work, and I use Cygwin for everything else.

What exactly is "non-compatible"? Be specific.

Why should you learn new habits? 1) Learning new things helps prevent things like dementia in old age, 2) Windows 10 will be going EOL soon, so the alternative is running an OS that is an increasing security hazard, 3) because you're not that precious and/or important. And based on the fact that you claim you don't even use Windows 11, why should anyone give 11 shits about your opinion on it?

> Windows 11 is really only superficially different from 10, or just about any other version since Windows 95.

Well if that's true, why the unreasonable hardware requirements, and them going back on their previous commitment to a rolling Windows 10 evolution from then on?

What previous commitment? For all the tired jokes people make, there's no official commitment from MS that Windows 10 would be the "last" version ever. Show me a press release, sent out by the company's official channels, that makes this claim. Is there any official statement on the MS website that claims Windows 10 would be the final version ever? They claimed that they wanted to move Windows to more of a SaaS model instead of the waterfall methodology of major and minor releases every so many years, which they've done. I don't know why people get all bent out of shape about a stupid number.

Plus, this is taken directly from the command prompt on Windows 11 (emphasis added).

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22631.3155]

(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

It still is Windows 10. The 11 designation is just a marketing name. They slapped the unfinished (why?) 10X UI made for mobile (again, why?) onto Windows 10 and called it Windows 11. Call it Windows 21H2.5 if it makes you feel better. You want to make comments about the inexplicable decision to take an unfinished mobile UI and then slap it onto a new release, I'm right there with you. That is a valid technical complaint about the OS. Not only because it is like 80% finished, at most, but the fact that so soon after Windows 8 tried shoehorning a mobile oriented UI onto the desktop version they're repeating the same mistake. Complaining about a marketing name for a product, however, is just stupid.

Who was complaining that it's hard to use? It's irritating to use, not hard.

In Microsoft Entra (no idea why it’s called that made up name) you can check the version of windows on every device you manage. Any W10 device shows a version of 10.0.1xxxx. Any Windows 11 device shows a version of 10.0.2xxxx. I would not be surprised in the slightest if Win12 turns out to be 10.0.3xxxx. Under the rules of Semantic Versioning, by only incrementing the patch level, Win 11 should not involve any functionality that breaks compatibility, yet it requires new hardware.

There’s clearly some infighting between engineers and marketing going on at Microsoft!

Or... you know, Windows 11 is just a brand name. It's like the difference between a regular Snickers candy bar and a promotional Valentine's Day one they put out that has heart shapes etched into the chocolate coating and has special promotional packaging. They're both still Snickers candy bars, and getting so upset that you spend years complaining about the fact that you bought one that had heart shaped in the chocolate coating is something a batshit crazy person would do. Same as complaining about a version number on software.

For reasons none of us were privy to, Microsoft decided that they wanted to make a clean break because it would be less confusing for consumers. Maybe it was because Intel was launching their 12th gen chips with their P and E cores, and this required a pretty substantial overhaul of the process scheduler. Maybe it was because they wanted to start using functions like those in SSE 4.2 (just to use a couple recent examples) or like when Linux dropped support for the 386. Maybe it was both of those reasons, maybe it was another reason, or reasons, or maybe it was some combination of the above. Saying "Windows 11" is a lot easier than "Windows 10 24H2 or later" don't you think? It's just like a branch name on a github repo. Why people insist on getting their panties all in a wad over it just baffles me. There are plenty of legitimate technical issues to complain about with Windows 11, but everyone just focuses on the version number.

Quote

"There’s clearly some infighting between engineers and marketing going on at Microsoft!"

I just wish the engineers were winning...........

"actually moving was super easy."

Perhaps so. Not moving is easier still.

"This new Start Menu is a game changer."

No it isn't. It's an app launcher. That's what operating systems do.

-A.

... but of course it doesn't. FFS MICROSOFT IF I WANTED TO SEARCH THE INTERNET I WOULD BE USING A BROWSER

But the search on the W11 Enterprise (and Pro) edition is excellent. It's fast, clean and doesn't bring in internet search, but that might be the good work of our IT team removing the crap defaults.

Ermagawd! I watched that ad and I was irresistibly reminded of this classic AMV reversioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdqOIju4lL4

Just one question?

Why does it take ten minutes to start up a windows 11 machine with a core i9,16 gig, and a 4060 gpu?

Answer: Because we're Micros~1, and we can!

Next question?

This is a serious question.

Why do Windows installations slow to a crawl over time?

I've got a few running in virtual machines, and they seems to be roughly as performant as when set up. Relatives and acquaintances who bought machines pre-installed with the cancer reliably report slowdown to unusability.

How does that happen?

-A.

Mine doesn't. About 1 minute - and half of that is waiting for the Bios to do whatever it does. AMD 9 processor, 64Gb memory and a 4070 graphics card.

Because you have something very wrong with your computer. Mine goes from powered off to Windows login screen in roughly 1 minute. I've never actually timed it, so it could be a little more or less, but that's probably a pretty good estimate. The part of the whole reboot process that takes the longest is waiting for the computer to establish a wifi connection and then my VPN client to connect. Still, I'm generally up and back to work in under 5 minutes. Again, never timed it, but if I had to guess, I'd say 2-3 minutes on average. If I had a spinning rust drive instead of NVMe SSD, maybe 5 minutes would be more the average.

Maybe you have your BIOS set to do a full memory test every boot? If you've enabled BitLocker, Windows defaults to software encryption because a surprising number of mobos don't have things like AES-NI enabled, so that can slow things down too.

It's decoration. Power users search for what they want. Civilians either have desktop icons or pin what matters to the taskbar.

Very true. I can, to an extent, forgive people who may have tried using Windows search in the 9x-7 days when it sucked donkey balls. But starting with Windows 8, it actually became pretty useful, and it's generally only gotten better with each subsequent release. With Windows 11 (and probably 10, though I can't remember for sure) you can even search for specific things like control panel settings. If you use the PowerToys search it includes other functionality like being able to do basic mathematical calculations.

Most of the apps I use on a regular basis I have pinned to the taskbar, and the rest I just search for. Only when I can't remember even a few letters of the name do I resort to using the old folder hierarchy method. If Google ever got one thing right, it's "search, not sort" is the superior way of doing things.