Saturday morning, I woke up at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep no matter what so I did what I remember as advice from a while back and got up to do something. I have to chose wisely because if the dog wakes, I’m in trouble. So, I got on my computer to start blogging. After all, there will be two posts that come out on Sunday.
I did my regular routine and logged in and checked for updates and there wasn’t something there as an update for virus checking so I let it do its thing and flipped back to my browser to do some blogging.
About 4am, I looked at the notification tray and noticed that there was a notification so I checked it out. I was eligible for the upgrade to Windows 11. Wow.
Since the announcement of the release of Windows 11, I check daily to see if Microsoft had decided if I was eligible for the upgrade. I had run the upgrade checker and my computer was indeed eligible but not yet, apparently. I even switched to the Edge browser to see if that had any influence. Nope.
I back up regularly as a routine so I jumped at the opportunity to do the upgrade.
My time had come. I’m guessing Microsoft has logic like:
“if some.loser.is = awake@3am.EST then give it to him”
Unlike other major upgrades in the past that could take a day or two to download, I was really anticipating downloading over the fibre connection. It was quite impressive as it sped through the download. I wasn’t going to be able to get my blog posts done in time for the installation. I’d read that there would be a reboot or two during the process. I counted three and I was plopped in front of the ready screen.
It was newist looking but basically had the same details as Windows 10. I hit ENTER and was prompted for my PIN. It worked so things had carried over and I was logged in. Sort of. The desktop wallpaper was the same as my old one but it was rotated 90 degrees. This didn’t sent warm fuzzies about what was coming. Right clicking and I was able to replace it with a stock image from Microsoft. It was there that I decided that I would go pretty easy on the operating system to get started.
Later, I decided to give it another shot and load the original image and it fit into place nicely.
It’s a different approach since I normally customize the heck out of everything to make it mine and to fit into the way that I work with a computer. My default browser was still Brave but I switched to Edge just to be conservative in my approach.
Then, there was the damned taskbar that I’d read about. It does indeed look like the standard Macintosh one. It was at the bottom of the screen and the icons that were in my previous configuration were still there. Surely I could change that so I started poking around in the settings menu. There was nothing to be found although I could left align the icons if I wanted. For years now, I’ve put my taskbar on all my computer to the left of the screen. In these days of wide screens, it makes so much sense to get a little more real estate for reading on the screen. Ironically, I do it on my Macintosh but can’t do it here now. The best I could do to reclaim the real estate was to hide it.
The best thing is that everything is working well except when I came to write my weekly summary of things post. There are a lot of links in there and CTRL-C / CTRL-V worked differently in Edge. In fact, the first time I tried to do it, I was prompted with a message that that the rules had changed and it was more that the link that would be copied / pasted but the entire title of the article as well. I could see the value of this but that would require some rejigging of routine here and I’m not up for that. Edge did let me change the default but CTRL-C / CTRL-V was still doing something behind the scenes to slow things down. Rather than figure it out, I switched back to the Brave browser.
Particularly with the weekly roundup post, I have two windows open for the review and then the post to the new document. I gave the new Snap feature a workout. It worked nicely on my widescreen monitor. Only a thin blue border lets you know which was active. I did lose track during the back and forth and so the “Find my cursor” feature came to my rescue.
Eventually, I got the two blog posts done, walked the dog, and then started to poke around and see what there was to see. The taskbar was indeed discomforting. It seems to be the one thing that Microsoft changes with every operating system when I start to think about it. I’ll get used to it but I sure like the simplicity of the ones that I’ve written for myself or the ones that come with Linux. After all, it’s just there to start the program.
The Settings area was intimidating. Instead of the old familiar approach, there was actually a great deal of explanation as to what would happen if you changed a setting. I smiled; you could become more computer savvy by reading things while working with your computer! My first run through basically was looking for privacy stuff. I’m not a fan of settings that let you help the developer by sending feedback when you’re doing something or something that doesn’t work right. If it’s a problem, I want to be the person who decides to communicate my lack of knowledge.
In the meantime, I’m still running kind of a “Stock” Windows 11 and quite like it. Logging in seems faster, the default widgets are interesting, the interface is familiar now that I’ve hidden the taskbar, it recognized all the things that I have attached with a problem that I’ve seen, and it just runs like an operating system should.
That’s not to say that I’m done. I have a bunch of research tucked away for when I decided to customize things.
- Windows 11 tip and tricks you want to know
- Is Your Windows File Explorer Not Responding? Try These Fixes
- How to Use the Microsoft Authenticator App
- 5 Ways to Fix the “Can’t Reach This Page” Error on Microsoft Edge
- 11 Worst Features of Windows 11 and How to Fix Them
- Microsoft PowerToys Gets New Updates as Part of Windows 11
- Windows 11: More Windows 10 PCs get the new OS, but don’t expect a fast roll out
- The Windows 11 start menu moved: How to put it back where it belongs
- How to Move the Windows 11 Taskbar to the Top of the Screen
I may end up doing a deep customization as time goes by but so far, so good.
doug -- off the record 
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