I downloaded Windows 11 a few months ago but promptly noticed “snip tool” doesn’t work and couldn’t figure out how to fix that so I switched back during the trial period. Perhaps that’s been rectified or at least will be by the time I’m forced to download it.
When I bricked my HP laptop last month I bought an identical replacement at CostCo. The old one had nagged me a couple times to upgrade to 11 a couple times and I declined. The new one came with it installed already.
It has been. It was an issue with Microsoft not updating the certificate for the snipping app.
Mallard- An option= While working on something a part of which you wish to capture, open a Word doc, blank page, go to the Insert (upper left one) button, then Screenshot , then Screen clipping & then highlight the wanted area and copy it. Tada! I only have W10 and do not know if this works on W11.
I upgraded one of my machines to Windows 11, and for the most part, it’s OK. It’s not very different to Windows 10.
I don’t particularly like the rounded corners and some of the other graphical elements (particularly the representation of progress dialogs in the taskbar, which used to be green, is now grey and not so noticeable), but eh. Whatever.
The central placement of the icons and start button in the Taskbar is just stupid. For mouse users, it’s very easy to hit the start menu when it is in a corner of the screen (like bottom left in Win10 by default). Windows 11’s central placement of the start menu at the left of a centred group that may vary in width, means the mouse user has to aim much more consciously.
The process for powering down the machine (via mouse) is also now broken:
Click on the start menu
Move the mouse a considerable distance to the right, to click the power button icon, which is at the far right of the start menu.
Click said button (nothing happens - seemingly because the focus was elsewhere)
Click said button again - the shutdown/suspend submenu appears
Click shutdown.
That’s a total pig’s ear.
I’m normally one to argue for leaving an OS in as close to vanilla UI configuration as possible, just because trying to make it behave like the previous version is a recipe for greater pain later, but for I think the first time ever (and I used Windows 8 without any plugins to reinstate the start menu) I felt the need to reconfigure Windows 11 to put the start button back in the corner. I haven’t figured out the nonsense with the powerdown sequence yet.
You can change file explorer to open This PC. A lack of This PC was my biggest gripe. Requiring an extra click to get to copy and paste sucks.
I believe the trouble I am having with the scanner function of my old HP printer is due to Windows 11 and HP being morons hand in hand. At least it still prints OK.
Agreed, agreed and agreed.
I hate the pressure that I feel to “upgrade”. I hate having to figure out new ways to do things that used to be easy. I could make WIN7 do anything but put out the cat, but I’m still struggling with aspects of 10.
When I was given the prompt to upgrade, there was an option to say that I wanted to stick with Windows 10. I chose that option and have heard nothing further about the upgrade. So, in short, no pressure.
You can change the taskbar alignment (Settings → Personalization → Taskbar behaviors → Taskbar alignment).
In addition, there is a program called Explorer Patcher which essentially restores the taskbar to the Win10 look&feel, and provides much more customization. Between that and Open Shell — I’m a Luddite who still thinks hierarchically — Win11 is now much more usable for me than it was out of the box.
It was a program you could download in Windows 10. Left a little “scissors” icon on the task bar and it was called ‘snipping tool’. It didn’t work in Windows 11 so I put Windows 10 back. However, maybe that’s fixed now.
I have yet to see any reason to move to Windows 11.
It seems an OS specifically designed to be a tablet OS and also kinda work for the desktop.
MS wants one OS to work for all things and it suffers for it by being mediocre at best.
Not to mention I have some legacy apps that simply do not work on Windows 11. Losing them would be either impossible to replace or very expensive.
My view has always been that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I do not see that anything has been “fixed” here. Or even improved.
My issue with the taskbar is that it completely removed the option to never combine icons, or to show the labels for the icons. If you have, say, two Firefox windows open, there’s no way to easily see that, or to easily see what they are; you have to click on the icon and then there’s a popup to choose between the windows. I don’t remember what exactly the default is in Windows 10, but I know I changed it, proving @Mangetout’s point about that just making it harder later (I was also probably the only person to switch Windows 10 to the Windows 8-style full-screen start menu). There are third-party tools to fix this, but I’m reluctant to rely on some janky program that will, I assume, be broken by every update.
You also can’t drag a file onto a taskbar icon to bring up the program so you can drop the file into it.
It’s faster if you just right-click on the start button. It’s the second option up. (This was there in Windows 10 too.)
I’m the same way. If changes “improve” things then yes, I’m all for it, but “change, for change’s sake”, I’ve never been with that at all and that’s why older folks struggle with electronics.
I think Microsoft has been trying to make PCs work like smart phones since Windows 8.
I tried it, briefly, but it was a pale imitation of the Windows 8 Start screen (which had horizontal scrolling, which I liked)
Thanks! - I’ll see if I can train my muscle memory to do this (gonna be hard since I’ve been doing it the other way since Windows 95)
I have discovered accidentally that if you press ALT+F4 from your desktop, it brings up
the “shutdown windows” menu and you can just hit return to default to “shutdown”.