UnknowingFool writes: In October 2021, PC World reviewed Windows 11 and labeled it as an "unnecessary replacement" to Windows 10 and did not recommend it for Windows 10 users. PC World noted that it was a "mixed bag of improved features and unnecessary changes." Six months later they reviewed it again. While MS has made improvements, PC World does not feel the improvements warrant a recommendation for Windows 10 users to upgrade.

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"A new survey claims Windows 11 adoption is so low it's actually less popular than the 20-year-old Windows XP," reports PC Magazine: The survey comes from an IT management provider called Lansweeper. Through its own software products, the company scanned 10 million Windows devices this month to determine which OS they were using. The results found that only 1.44% of the devices had Windows 11 installed, which is lower than the 1.71% for Windows XP. In contrast, Windows 10 maintains a dominant share at 80.34%. Although Windows 11's adoption is low at 1.44%, the number actually went up almost three times from 0.52% back in January. It's also important to note that other surveys have found much higher Windows 11 adoption numbers. Last month, the app advertising platform AdDuplex found Windows 11 usage was at 19.4%, although this represented a mere 0.1% growth from the previous month. Meanwhile, the Steam hardware survey from Valve estimates Windows 11 usage has reached 16.8%.

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Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham combed through Steam Hardware & Software Survey data "to see how Windows 11 is fairing with enthusiasts." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Steam users are migrating to Windows 11 about half as quickly as they moved to Windows 10. Six months after its release, Windows 10 ran on 31 percent of all Steam computers -- nearly one in three. As of March 2022, Windows 11 runs on just under 17 percent of Steam computers -- about one in six. Three-quarters of all Steam computers in 2022 are still running Windows 10. It's easy to interpret these results as an indictment of Windows 11, which generated some controversy with its relatively stringent (and often poorly explained) security-oriented system requirements. At least some of this slow adoption is caused by those system requirements -- many of the PCs surveyed by Steam probably can't install Windows 11. That could be because users have an older unsupported CPU or have one or more of the required security features disabled; Secure Boot and the firmware TPM module were often turned off by default on new motherboards for many years. But there are other compelling explanations. Windows 11's adoption looks slow compared to Windows 10, but Windows 10's adoption was also exceptionally good. Windows 8 and 8.1 were not well-loved, to put it mildly, and Windows 10 was framed as a response to (and a fix for) most of Windows 8's user interface changes. And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added. You can see that pent-up demand in the jump between July 2015 and September 2015. In the first two months of Windows 10's availability, Windows 8 hemorrhaged users, falling from around 35 percent usage to 19 percent. Virtually all of those users -- and a smaller but still notable chunk of Windows 7 users -- were moving to Windows 10. Windows 11 also got a decent early adopter bump in November 2021, but its gains every other month were much smaller. In contrast, Windows 11 was announced with little run-up, and it was replacing what users had been told was the "last version of Windows." Where Windows 10 replaced one new, unloved OS and one well-liked but aging OS, Windows 11 replaced a modern OS that nobody really complained about (Windows 10 ran on over 90 percent of all Steam computers in September 2021 -- even Windows 7 in its heyday couldn't boast that kind of adoption). It's also worth noting that Microsoft didn't try to re-create that initial burst of adoption for Windows 11. Following some turbulence after early Windows 10 servicing updates, Microsoft began rolling updates out more methodically, starting with small numbers of PCs and then expanding availability gradually as problems were discovered and ironed out. Windows 11 only entered "its final phase of availability" in February, ensuring that anyone with a compatible PC could get Windows 11 through Windows Update if they wanted it.

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If you are waiting for Windows 11 side-taskbar support before upgrading to the latest operating system, you may be waiting for a long time, according to a recent Microsoft Ask Me Anything (AMA) session. BleepingComputer reports: As first reported by Neowin, in a recent Microsoft Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, a user asked whether Microsoft would be bringing back the ability to move the sidebar to the sides. The response was not very promising, with Tali Roth, Microsoft's Head of Product, explaining that a small amount of Windows users use the feature and that it is unsure whether the feature will ever be brought back: "When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge. And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around. It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we would, actually build the side taskbar." You can watch the entire discussion about this feature on YouTube.

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The full 90-minute keynote of the Windows 95 launch was uploaded this week by the Blue OS Museum YouTube account. As Gizmodo's Florence Ion notes, "clips from the presentation have floated around online for decades," but the full keynote "has been harder to track down." From the report: [T]he complete presentation is an absolute time capsule of technology culture as it existed on Aug. 24, 1995. It also features some incredibly cringe moments, most of which stem from Jay Leno's cheesy and problematic joke-telling. My face felt flush the entire time I watched this presentation from all the nostalgia pulsating throughout it. There are all the requisite hairstyles, khaki pants, and overly-used Bill Clinton jokes that make this a quintessential event of the '90s. In a slideshow, Gizmodo highlights the "best and worst parts" of the event, adding that if you do watch the entire presentation, "you will have The Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' stuck in your head for the rest of the day."

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Microsoft has rolled out a new security feature called Smart App Control with Windows 11. From a report: "Smart App Control is a major enhancement to the Windows 11 security model that prevents users from running malicious applications on Windows devices that default blocks untrusted or unsigned applications," Microsoft vice president David Weston explains. "It goes beyond previous built-in browser protections and is woven directly into the core of the OS at the process level. Using code signing along with AI, our new Smart App Control only allows processes to run that are predicted to be safe based on either code certificates or an AI model for application trust within the Microsoft cloud. Model inference occurs 24 hours a day on the latest threat intelligence that provides trillions of signals." Smart App Control is interesting because it will be enabled by default on new Windows PCs in the future. But if you upgrade to whatever version of Windows 11 that enables this feature on an existing install, you will have to use Reset this PC to reset Windows 11 and clean install it. That is, I believe, unprecedented.

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Microsoft is bringing tabs to the File Explorer in Windows 11 soon, alongside a refreshed design that makes it easier to quickly access folders or find favorite files. The highly requested tabs feature was first spotted in Windows 11 test builds last month, and now Microsoft is making it official at a hybrid work event for Windows 11 today. From a report: The updated File Explorer design includes tabs to navigate multiple folders in a single window and the ability to move tabs around. Microsoft first started testing tabs in Windows 10 apps, under a feature named Sets. This included support for tabs inside File Explorer, but Microsoft eventually canceled the project and never shipped it to Windows 10 users. Microsoft is also adding a new File Explorer homepage that includes the typical Quick Access folders, recent documents, and a new favorites option. You'll soon be able to right-click a file to add it to favorites, and it will appear pinned on the homepage of File Explorer. There are even improved sharing options for files, with an updated share dialog that lets you send to recent contacts or apps like Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive.

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Lucas Brooks, an avid Windows fan who digs through and analyzes its early iterations, recently shared his discovery of an easter egg that's been hiding in Windows 1.0 for nearly 37 years. PC Gamer reports: Brooks discovered the secret, a credits list of Windows developers and a "congratulations" message, buried in the data of a smiley face bitmap file that came with the OS. The data for the credits was encrypted, and according to Brooks, the tools he needed to extract the data didn't even exist at the time of the OS' release. There's also a name in the credits all PC gamers will recognize: Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. Newell began his career at Microsoft after dropping out of Harvard, and contributed to the development of the first three iterations of Windows. He also led the team that ported Doom to Windows from DOS, a crucial step in the transition between the operating systems.

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Valve shipped its $400 handheld gaming console, the Steam Deck, before all its promised features were ready -- but one of the biggest is now here. From a report: You can now install Windows 10 on a Steam Deck and actually expect it to work because Valve has just released the all-important GPU, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers you'll need to download and play games. Importantly, you'll need to wipe a Steam Deck to do this, there's no dual-boot yet, and Valve says you can only install Windows 10 since the Steam Deck's current BIOS apparently doesn't include firmware TPM support (which Microsoft infamously requires for Windows 11). Speakers and headphone jack don't work yet as there are no audio drivers.

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Microsoft's latest Windows 11 test build is another substantial one, adding two important features: payment information, and a new security feature called Smart App Control that will watch over new apps and games that you add to your PC. PCWorld reports: Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22567 for the Dev Channel on Wednesday with other changes, tooâ"including a tweak to Windows Update, so that now you can configure your PC to turn on an update when renewable energy is at its most plentiful. (Remember, code that Microsoft tests within the Dev Channel may make its way to your PC eventually -- or not.) Asking for credit-card information within Windows isn't that startling, as you've probably already entered payment information into the Microsoft ecosystem either for buying apps or movies on the Microsoft Store app or for making similar purchases via your Xbox. Still, those transactions are normally performed via your Microsoft Account web page, which manages all of that online and behind the scenes. (You can reach them via the Windows 11 Settings > Accounts > Your Microsoft account.) Microsoft considers the additional credit-card info as part of the subscription option it added last month. Now, if your subscription risks falling through because of an expired credit card, Microsoft will alert you. Conceptually, however, it implies that your PC is as much a tool to make purchases as it is to simply work and game. Another interesting addition is what Microsoft calls Smart App Control, or SAC. Microsoft describes it as a "new security feature for Windows 11 that blocks untrusted or potentially dangerous applications." What those applications are, apparently, is up to Microsoft. And yes, there's always a concern that SAC would flag otherwise innocuous applications that it simply hasn't seen before. But Microsoft is gently easing SAC onto your PC. For one thing, you'll need to perform a clean install to enable it. For another, SAC won't immediately insert itself. Other tweaks and changes include the ability to have Windows update your PC when clean energy is more commonly available (via Microsoft's partners electricityMap or WattTime) and better integration between your Android phone and PC via Windows 11 OOBE (Out of the Box Experience). Additionally, "Microsoft now offers wider availability of speech packs to improve transcription, the ability to choose a mic for dictation/ transcription, and the ability to mute your speakers by simply clicking the volume icon in the hardware indicator for volume," reports PCWorld.

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Microsoft is bringing new touch gestures, Start menu folders, a redesigned Task Manager, and lots more improvements to Windows 11. From a report: A new build of Windows 11 is available to testers today, and it's full of new features that look like they will significantly improve the usability of Windows 11 overall. The new Start menu folders will allow Windows 11 users to customize the pinned section of the Start menu into folders. You drag an app on top of another to create a folder, and you can rearrange apps within folders and remove them. The ability to rename folders is coming in future test builds, but it's good to see more customization on the Start menu, given Windows 11 launched without many ways to tweak the menu design. If you've always been a fan of the gestures in Windows 8, Microsoft is bringing five new touch gestures to Windows 11 soon that will make using tablets a little easier. The first is the ability to swipe up on the taskbar to bring up the Start menu and swipe down to dismiss it again. You'll also be able to swipe between pinned, all apps, and recommended / more on the Start menu. [...] Last but not least, the Task Manager redesign in Windows 11 is now official. It includes a new command bar and a dark theme, alongside an efficiency mode that lets you limit apps from consuming system resources.

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Microsoft is releasing its first big update to Windows 11 today, and it includes a lot of new additions. From a report: A public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will be available today in the US, alongside redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. The first big Windows 11 update will also include a bunch of improvements to the taskbar. The public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will allow users to install apps from Amazon's Appstore. The Verge points to workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11 unofficially. Back to more changes: The biggest changes in this Windows 11 update are related to the taskbar. The time and date will finally be available on multiple monitors in Windows 11, something that was missing at launch. The weather widget also returns to the taskbar in this update, and a new mute / unmute feature in the taskbar will be available for Microsoft Teams calls. You'll also be able to quickly screen share a specific app or window from the taskbar directly into a Microsoft Teams call. Microsoft has also redesigned the Media Player and Notepad apps for Windows 11. Notepad now includes multi-step undo, an improved search interface, and dark mode support. The new Media Player app is designed to replace Groove Music and Windows Media Player and includes support for both audio and video and a design that better matches Windows 11's UI improvements.

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Slashdot reader joshuark writes: Beware fake Windows 11 upgrades install RedLine malware, reports Bleeping Computer. "Threat actors have started distributing fake Windows 11 upgrade installers to users of Windows 10, tricking them into downloading and executing RedLine stealer malware." Bleeping Computer advises, "...these dangerous sites are promoted via forum and social media posts or instant messages, so don't trust anything but the official Windows upgrade system alerts." Bleeping Computer points out that hardware incompatibilities rule out upgrades for many Windows 10 users from official distribution channels — "something that malware operators see as an excellent opportunity for finding new victims." The timing of the attacks coincides with the moment that Microsoft announced Windows 11's broad deployment phase, so the attackers were well-prepared for this move and waited for the right moment to maximize their operation's success. RedLine stealer is currently the most widely deployed password, browser cookies, credit card, and cryptocurrency wallet info grabber, so its infections can have dire consequences for the victims. According to researchers at HP, who have spotted this campaign, the actors used the seemingly legitimate "windows-upgraded.com" domain for the malware distribution part of their campaign. The site appears like a genuine Microsoft site and, if the visitor clicked on the 'Download Now' button, they received a 1.5 MB ZIP archive named "Windows11InstallationAssistant.zip," fetched directly from a Discord CDN... Although the distribution site is down now, nothing stops the actors from setting up a new domain and restarting their campaign. In fact, this is very likely already happening in the wild.

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In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS. From a report: IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as "shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments)." In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management. "Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement accompanying Monday's announcement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Plenty of apps that you install on your computer have a setting that tells them to launch when you initially log in to save you the trouble of launching your most commonly used apps yourself. Leaving this setting on can also allow apps to check for updates or launch more quickly when you start them for the first time. The difference for some of the preinstalled Microsoft apps in Windows 10 and 11 is that they use some of these resources by default, whether you actually use the apps or not. Developer and IT admin Michael Niehaus drew attention to some of these apps in recent blog posts examining the resource usage of Windows 11's widgets, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Edge in a fresh install of Windows 11 (the Edge observations apply to Windows 10, too). Both Widgets and Teams spawn a number of Microsoft Edge WebView2 processes in order to work—WebView2 is a way to use Edge and its rendering engine without launching Edge or using its user interface. Collectively, these processes use a few hundred megabytes of memory to work. The widget-related processes don't start unless you actually click the widgets button, though they remain in the background afterward, even if you're not actively viewing your widgets. But the Teams processes all launch automatically, whether you actually use Teams or not. Uninstalling Teams will prevent this from happening, but Niehaus points out that simply removing the Teams icon from Windows 11's Taskbar in the Taskbar settings is enough to keep these WebView2 processes from launching when you log in. Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham also recommends disabling System Boost in the Edge settings if you don't use it as your default browser. Otherwise, it too will use a couple hundred megabytes of memory.

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According to a post on the Microsoft IT Pro Blog, Windows computers will need at least eight hours of online time to obtain and install the latest OS updates successfully. Tom's Hardware reports: Another revelation in the post is that Microsoft tracks how long PCs are connected to Windows Update, calling the statistics "Update Connectivity." The data is available to IT managers in the InTune app, a component of the Endpoint management suite. The post details Microsoft's attempts to figure out why some Windows devices aren't getting the latest quality and feature updates, and discovered that two hours of continuous connectivity was required to get updates. It then took six hours after the release of the patch for a machine to update itself reliably. Microsoft's figures show that 50 percent of Windows devices left behind by Windows Update and running a build of Windows 10 that's no longer serviced do not spend enough time connected to have the patches downloaded and installed in the background. This figure drops to 25 percent for customers using a serviced build of the operating system that lags behind in security updates by 60 days or more. The goods news, as noted by Tom's Hardware, is that "Windows 11 updates are smaller than their Windows 10 counterparts due to improved compression [and] new Microsoft Graph APIs," which should help speed up the update process.

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Windows Central got their hands on a pre-release build of Microsoft's canceled Andromeda OS running on a Lumia 950. As noted in the article, "Andromeda OS was never intended to ship on the Lumia 950, or any Windows phone on the market at that time." They're using a 950 because Microsoft used them to help develop Andromeda OS internally. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Andromeda OS is no longer in development. Android is the OS that will be powering future Microsoft devices, such as the future Surface Duo devices. Here's an excerpt from the report: Microsoft decided to do something rather unique with Andromeda OS, and build out OS experience around a journaling/inking experience. On the lockscreen, the user is able to begin taking notes directly onto the lockscreen UI just by putting pen to screen. You don't have to initiate a special mode, or enter an app first, just take your Surface Pen and begin writing, and the lockscreen will store that ink for you to see every time you unlock your device. [...] Unlocking the device would take you to your home screen, which on Andromeda OS is another inking canvas. This canvas is called the Journal (though this later became the Microsoft Whiteboard app) which acted as a digital notebook with the ability to take notes with a pen, add sticky notes, insert images and 3D objects, and more. The Journal experience would always be running in the background, with your phone apps running above it. Andromeda OS was also gesture based. The on-screen Start and Cortana buttons would disappear when opening an app to provide a full-screen experience, so to access those areas, you'd swipe in from the left for Start, and from the right for Cortana, which is also where your notifications were stored. Yes, Cortana and your Notifications were one of the same on Andromeda OS, with Cortana becoming your "manager" of notifications missed or stored for dealing with later. A swipe down from the top would reveal the Control Center, which is feature that's now shipping on Windows 11, but started life here on Andromeda OS. Feature-wise, it's exactly the same, with the ability to control things like Wi-Fi, brightness, volume, and music playback. It also features Fluent Design acrylic blur effects, as do many other parts of the UI, even in this unfinished state. [...] There was also an experimental "Radial UX Menu" mode, where instead of gestures swiping in things like Start and Cortana, swiping would present you with a UI full of circular buttons for things like Start, switching apps, and more. This may have been an alternative to on-screen navigation, as not everyone was familiar with full gesture navigation at the time just yet. Or, it could have been an alternative method of navigation for when you were using a pen. Who knows. One thing we're not able to show you is the Continuum mode that Microsoft was also working on for Andromeda OS, as unfortunately it appears to be broken in the build we have. That said, we do know what it was going to be like. Essentially, Microsoft was building out Continuum to be a true desktop experience, with windowed app experiences, the ability to store icons on the desktop, and more. If you'd prefer to see Andromeda OS in action instead of read about it, you can watch Windows Central's video here.

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Reader segaboy81 shares a report: When Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June of 2021, it was greeted with mixed reactions by the tech press. Some outlets praised the round corners and modern design elements, while others conjectured that visual elements from the remains of Windows 10x had simply been transplanted onto a stable, familiar base. All the while, Microsoft had been gaining a loyal following with what was purported to be last version on Windows. Windows, like Arch Linux, had essentially become a rolling release. That all changed with the announcement of the Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3, and Surface Laptop Studio. The road has been long for many users, mired with controversy regarding TPM 2.0, AMD Ryzen performance pitfalls, and more. We are a full two months into the official release of Windows 11, but driver support for Microsoft's Surface line of devices listed on the official compatibility list is still incomplete. Counting AMD and Intel variants of the Surface Laptop and the 2021 lineup of new hardware, there are 16 base Surface configurations that support Windows 11. Five of them still don't have a Windows 11 driver package two months after release. They are as follows: Surface Go 2, Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen), and Surface Studio 2.

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"Windows Me was unstable, unloved and unusable," remembered Computerworld last year, on the 20th anniversary of its release, calling it "a stink bomb of an operating system." Windows Me was a ghastly, slapdash piece of work, incompatible with lots of hardware and software. It frequently failed during the installation process — which should have been the first sign for people that this was an operating system they shouldn't try.Often, when you tried to shut it down, it declined to do so, like a two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum over being forced to go to sleep. It was slow and insecure. Its web browser, Internet Explorer, frequently refused to load web pages. But they ultimately argue that it wasn't as bad as Windows Vista, which "simply refused to run, or ran so badly it was useless on countless PCs. Not just old PCs, but even newly bought PCs, right out of the box, with Vista installed." And they conclude that the worst Microsoft OS of all is still Windows 8. ("You want bad? You want stupid? You want an operating system that not only was roundly reviled by consumers and businesses alike, but also set Microsoft's business plans back years?") Slashdot reader alaskana98 even remembers Windows ME semi-fondly as "the last Microsoft OS to use the Windows 95 codebase." While rightly being panned as a buggy and crash-prone OS — indeed it was labelled as the worst version of Windows ever released by Computer World — it did introduce a number of features that continue on to this very day. Those features include: -A personalized start menu that would show your most recently accessed programs, today a common feature in the Windows landscape. -Software support for DVD playback. Previously one needed a dedicated card to playback DVDs. -Windows Movie Maker and Windows Media Player 7, allowing home users to create, edit and burn their own digital home movies. While seemingly pedestrian in today's times, these were groundbreaking features for home users in the year 2000. -The first iteration of System Restore — imagine a modern version of Windows not having the ability to conveniently restore to a working configuration — before Windows ME, this was simply not a possibility for the average home user unless you had a rigorous backup routine. -The removal of real-mode DOS. While very controversial at the time, this change arguably improved the speed and reliability of the boot process. Love it or hate it (well, lets face it, if you were a computer user at that point you probably hated it) — Windows ME did make several important contributions to the modern OS landscape that are often overlooked to this day. Do you have any stories from the heady days of late 2000 when Windows ME was first released? Slashdot reader Z00L00K remembers in a comment that "The removal of real-mode DOS is what REALLY made ME impossible to use for most of us at the time. It broke backwards compatibility so hard that the only way out was to use any of the earlier versions of Windows instead!" Is this re-awakening images of the year 2000 for anyone? Share your own memories and thoughts in the comments. What do you remember about Windows ME?

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