I have been running Windows 11 on a second machine since the preview came out. It is an old Dell Latitude from 2011 or so. A 3rd generation Intel i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a Samsung 250GB SATA SSD. It runs Windows 11 very well. It ran Windows 10 very well just for reference.

I have no complaints about the stability of Windows. Windows 10 had always been very stable and reliable and Windows 11 continues that. At least during the previews.

There are some nice new features such as the new 'windows snapping' UI when you hover over the maximise button however this hardly seems worthwhile of revving Windows up from 10 to 11.

There are also a lot of frustrating changes. Take for example the new context menus. For many years people have made fun of the inconsistencies in Windows context menus. It isn't a big deal in reality but it became a bit of a meme that Microsoft were incapable of solving it.

So is this solved in Windows 11? No. If anything it is worse because rather than solving the inconsistencies they hide it behind yet another context menu design.

For example if you right click on a zip file because you want to access 7-Zip or WinRAR's context menu options you no longer get them. You get this new context menu with a "show more options" item at the bottom. Select this and then you get the old context menu that contains the application extended options for 7-Zip, etc.

On the surface it looks cleaned up but in reality they just made it worse by covering it up and adding another step to the users workflow.

They did some work on a new Settings app which is nice but again many options just throw you back into old properties windows for advanced settings such as some keyboard and mouse options, etc. Sure not a big deal as you hardly ever need to go there but that is true of most settings so why bother at all.

I hate this "let's improve 60% of things but leave that old 40% as it is because it's just too much work now" attitude Microsoft has had with regards to consistency since the release of Windows XP.

By far the worst aspect is the removal of so many customisation options. The new taskbar is trash. As is the new Start Menu. Sure you can left justify the icons but you can't do much else with the taskbar/dock. Use multiple monitors? Sorry you can only see the date and time on your main monitor for some reason. Want to put the taskbar on the left side of your screen rather than along the bottom? No sorry that is no longer supported.

Want to drag and drop a file onto an app icon? Hah! No sorry that 25+ year long UX doesn't work with the new taskbar.

Overall Windows 11 certainly feels like a step backwards for Windows as a whole. It seems Microsoft just don't know what they want from Windows so just slap a new coat of paint on it and call it new while they struggle to see where it fits moving forward.

To me it isn't backwards compatibility or native (Win32 eek!) applications that keep business on Windows but remote management. Windows may be kinda crappy from a UX perspective but it is stable and easier to manage on scale than anything else out there, in a business setting anyway. For education Chromebook's and iPad's work great due to the hub and spoke nature of schools and IT management, which is why we have seen those devices eat away at Microsoft's market there.

I feel the fact that Windows 11 will release next week with little interest shows how it doesn't really matter anymore. I suspect Apple's October update to macOS with the release of Monterey will receive just as much, if not more, press and praise and that happens every year like clock work.

Anyway I think I have written enough. I hadn't planned on this mini-essay when I opened this thread so I guess congratulations and thanks if you made it this far on a Saturday evening.