Windows 11 has been on the market for a little over a year, and I honestly like it. As a long-time user of Microsoft systems, I can say one thing – this is one of the least problematic and most functional platforms of the company. But, as you know, there is no ideal in the world. There are several problems that really sometimes cause not just surprise, but also deep disappointment. Such mistakes are annoying and cause negative emotions.
That is why some users still do not want to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11. And here we are not even talking about the impossibility of such a switch due to hardware incompatibility. And about sometimes elementary, simple problems. Which we will discuss now.
1. The Taskbar and Start menu are still less functional than Windows 10’s
The biggest change in Windows 11 compared to the previous OS from Microsoft is the placement of the Start menu and the Taskbar in the center. Some people like this layout, some people instantly move them to the left to their usual place after Windows 10. But the biggest problem is that the Taskbar and the Start menu are still not as functional as we wanted.
I’m not convinced by Microsoft’s words that a much more modern solution had to be developed to take system support to the next level. But this is not the case at all. There’s a lot of problems with the Start menu, and I notice that I use it less and less. The Taskbar is generally not designed well. For example, the decision that now you can’t just drag the shortcut of the desired program to the Taskbar. Improvement for the sake of deterioration? It’s just strange.
According to the company, going back to the way it was before, that is, to more customization options for the Taskbar and Start menu, will not be possible, as it would require a very large-scale development that would take a long time. Seriously? On the Microsoft forums, this is one of the most common requests, and the corporation has decided that it cannot be done in a simple way and … will not do it. A large software company capitulates to such a task.
2. Microsoft Edge doesn’t always work properly
I love Edge for its great memory management, longer battery life on my laptop (it’s better optimized than Chrome), and a lot of touchscreen-friendly features. But I don’t understand why it sometimes behaves erratically and some web applications can “accidentally” stop working with it. There was a time when Outlook on the web just took forever to load – it would freeze while loading and I couldn’t access my emails. It really annoyed me and, to be honest, I had to look for a solution to my problem outside.
It was eventually resolved. However, with Chrome, there were never such problems. And it is interesting that the most difficulties arose precisely after the implementation of the Edge update.
Here I will go a little off topic and mention Bing AI, which recently appeared in Microsoft Edge. Yes, ChatGPT has been admired by hundreds of millions of Internet users. Now admit it, who changed the default search engine on your phone or laptop from Google to Bing?
Many experts say Bing doesn’t stand a chance. Not even because Bing AI is useless – the numbers contradict that. Only more than a million users gave it a chance, the rest, which are hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users, did not even check Microsoft’s implementation. The search engine is Google, it is already so deeply rooted in associations that the word “google” has been in the dictionaries for a long time in relation to searching on the Internet.
Even I, a Microsoft fan, am not particularly enthusiastic about encouraging people who have access to the new Bing. Although I suggest they experiment. I suggest they set Bing as the default search engine on all devices for, say, two days. I foresee two consequences of this experience. The first will be a surprise that Bing works quite well and is no longer that limited search engine, providing quite accurate results. The second will be to
return to the Google you are used to.
3. Windows 11 updates often break something
The infamous glory of Microsoft’s updates should have long since become history, but for now, this is our reality. Every time you read on the forums that either some hardware fails, or some system elements do not work (for example, the Start menu or sound problems), then the updates are not installed properly. Something bad happens to BitLocker and it asks for a recovery key, even though most users didn’t even know about it.
Of course, often you can easily fix these problems yourself, but it’s still annoying. Especially when you need to start working with your computer as soon as possible, but you can’t because the update failed. And again you need to look for ways to solve the problem, you waste time and nerves. Users are already tired of waiting year after year for a new OS to fix that.
4. Windows 11’s performance is sometimes lower
Sometimes this happens “accidentally” due to the incorrect operation of some drivers in laptops, or it is a consequence of installed programs that are not optimized for this system, or the lack of system optimization (or its insufficient level) for specific configurations.
People who have switched to Windows 11 have sometimes experienced a decrease in the speed of the OS, and these are not isolated cases. Exactly, after installing Windows 11 on the previous machine, I experienced first an increase in performance, and then a sharp drop in it for no apparent reason. If you also see this regression, you are not alone.
If you’re running Windows 11 version 22H2, you may have experienced slow speeds in some video games for some time.
Even the official Microsoft documentation confirmed, that some video games and applications may run slower than expected or freeze completely in Windows 11 version 22H2. The problem is now marked as resolved, but who knows what to expect from the new update.
Microsoft has set a high bar for hardware requirements, so people expect that if they meet the strict minimum requirements, everything will work fine. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and … there are disappointments.
5. Inaccuracies in the user interface
What was done to the Windows 11 context menu is the worst that could have happened. Moving the rename button to graphical elements that don’t appear to represent such a function, or completely non-functional widgets, dark mode elements that don’t match each other, or even broken Action Center UI solutions is something they should have solved with the updated Windows 11.
Windows users still expect Microsoft to listen to them. Unfortunately, this is not always the case – subsequent system updates indicate that the period when the giant could focus on the real needs of users has already passed. We are constantly being fed some kind of promises, constantly being promised something, but after the release of an update, we see something unnecessary or incomplete. Such is the fate of Windows.
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Of course, Windows 11 has some problems that can annoy you and cause negative emotions. I understand that too. But admittedly, it’s still quite a successful operating system, although the truth is that Microsoft is no longer competing with anyone. And that’s bad. First of all, for us, users of OS from Microsoft. After all, we’re all stuck on Windows, and I don’t see a global transition to macOS, Linux, or ChromeOS in several years. So I would like the company to pay more attention to user feedback.
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