Wudang
BOFH
The only use I ever had for widgets was I liked having a nearly transparent clock floating in a corner as I lose track of time easily. I would still use that.
Windows 11
- Thread starter William Parcher
- Start date
I am sure a senior exec in Microsoft has a fetish for widgets as they keep trying to get them into Windows only for them to be removed in the next update as useless.
I suspect this version of widgets is because they want to make the OS as similar on different form factors as possible - so if you are using a tablet that runs Windows 11 you have the expected widgets that go with that form factor.
You have time on the taskbar these days. Indeed I think it is what makes the centred taskbar icons in Windows look so ugly - the far right one is a double line of plain text, they should have created a style for that that links into the iconic style of the rest of the taskbar.
Wudang
BOFH
I also like to auto-hide my taskbar. Yes, I know it's not Burger King "My way" but I like as few visual distractions as possible when coding. Since I also have a family life I need low profile clock as a necessary distraction.
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
Wudang
BOFH
Thank you! On my iPad just now but that looks good.
Childlike Empress
Banned
I guess you haven't tried it since a decade or two. Linux 2021 is not what it used to be. Trivial to install and run on a desktop. No need to go under the hood, at least not more often than with this Windows nonsense.
But I digress. I just HAVE to put a penguin in threads like this.
Nope use it a lot and nope no way is someone going to cope with moving to Linux if they can't cope with this Windows upgrade.
But I digress. I just HAVE to put a penguin in threads like this.
Of course. Waiting for the apple.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
I don't disagree with that. But the difference this time is the rather significant number of machines that are unable to upgrade to the new version.
As I mentioned. My two year old laptop has TPM 2.0 enabled and is still not able to install Win 11.
One can but hope.
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I think there will be a lot of feedback like yours and from the general beta release which starts I think later this week. I expect a lot of these strange incompatibilities will be ironed out before release.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Like I said. One can hope.
CORed
Penultimate Amazing
Well, I think the reality is that OS's expand to fill available disk, memory, processor cycles and hard drive space. Microsoft OS's for sure, though others are not completely exempt.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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I never see my desktop, so it would be useless to me. Even more so now that you launch the widgets from a button on the task bar...which also has a clock on it. I have the task bar hidden, but I have a clock on my browser, and it's easy enough to move my pointer to the bottom of the screen to activate the task bar or, more commonly, to simply look at my watch.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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I think it's more that people in companies come up with ideas that they think are great and can't quite imagine other people wanting anything different. I think that pretty much explains why everybody at Microsoft was so excited for Windows 8, even though it was clearly a terrible OS packed with features that people didn't want.
I think it also explains many of Apple's bizarre choices - there's this idea of the "Apple culture", that some of the more fervent customers buy in to as well, which is sort of "our opinions are the correct ones" and it's very hard to turn the ship. Which is why, for example, you only got a dark mode on ios less than two years ago, despite it having been standard on every other OS for years.
I think there's a lot of that "corporate culture" stuff that goes on in big tech, where the people who make the decisions or who are in positions to get their ideas listened to are rather out of touch with how people actually use their machines and/or have a "no, it's the children who are wrong" attitude about it. It's an "I think a widget with the latest stock prices on it would be really cool, therefore it's a good idea", even if most people don't invest in stocks and the majority of those who do wouldn't be using a widget on their desktop to monitor them.
Squeegee Beckenheim
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As for Linux, it's something I've always been interested in trying, but I've never had the impetus and there's always the "I have programmes that wouldn't run on it" problem. My current machine isn't compatible with Windows 11, apparently, but I'm not bothered enough about upgrading to find out why. I expect it's that security chip thing, but I also expect I do have one installed. Perhaps in 4 years, when Windows 10 will stop getting updates I'll look in to Linux. My brother is an IT guy who specialises in Linux, so even if I get stuck it should be pretty easy. But I'll definitely look into what I'd need to upgrade first because, as I say, I've got plenty of programmes that wouldn't run on it.
And, yes, I know that there are equivalent programmes but, for example, GIMP isn't Photoshop, even though I use it for a couple of things here and there because there are some things it does better. And, yes, I can create a virtual machine that runs Windows, but if I'm going to do that, then wouldn't it be simpler just to run Windows?
And, yes, I know that there are equivalent programmes but, for example, GIMP isn't Photoshop, even though I use it for a couple of things here and there because there are some things it does better. And, yes, I can create a virtual machine that runs Windows, but if I'm going to do that, then wouldn't it be simpler just to run Windows?
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
Not being able to move the taskbar is a little disappointing to me. I like having it up the left side - vertical real estate is for me more valuable than horizontal, since my monitors are invariably oriented in landscape.
Teams is better than Skype in every way. I think if Skype had been allowed to continue being supported and developed, it eventually would have ended up much like Teams is now.
gnome
Penultimate Amazing
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Attached is an image of Microsoft considering your proposal.
Attachments
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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I've not used either so I can't speak to that but it's certainly not uncommon for a big corporation to buy a smaller company's product, take what they want from it, and then kill the original app (see Apple buying Dark Sky), or just scrap it all together to kill a competitor.
The point is that they're not reducing bloatware by getting rid of Skype, they are in fact increasing it by making Teams an integral part of the OS which you can't get rid of, even if you don't use it. It'll be more like Cortana than Skype.