A couple of weeks ago, I was left without a screen on the one external monitor that my work MacBook Air can run. So I switched to my five-year-old Windows desktop and connected another monitor. I love it. Productivity through the roof. But it means I'm finally spending a lot of time on Windows 11 and My God, Is he crazy?
There are some things that Windows does very well compared to macOS and Linux. All the games are there, for one thing, and Windows runs on all types of hardware without much tweaking. You don't have to spend a minimum of a thousand dollars on a non-upgradable machine to use it. There's usually no need to download a bunch of drivers or spend six hours at the command line manually assembling the damn operating system either.
But for every headline like “Notepad in Windows 11 will finally have a spell checking feature,” there's a “Microsoft is inserting pop-up ads into Google Chrome on Windows again.” For each Windows subsystem for Linux, which governs, there is a message “Microsoft begins testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu.” Microsoft seems determined to fill Windows 11 with “features” that steal your attention or try to convince or trick you into using some Microsoft product instead of the one you were going to use. I'm 30 or 40 years old and I don't need this.
I grew up with Windows 3.1, NT, and 95. I finished college with a Dell desktop computer. I worked for maximum PC magazine for five years, for God's sake. I've built dozens of PCs. I'm writing this on my main personal computer, a mini-ITX gaming rig that I lovingly hand-built in 2019. I'm still using Windows.
But for the past few years, I had spent more than 40 hours a week using the relatively quiet macOS for work, and my non-work hours were spent as little time as possible in front of a computer. So even though I upgraded my desktop to Windows 11 about a year ago, I hadn't spent much time with it. When I used my PC, it was mainly for home administration or (rarely) gaming and therefore I didn't interact much with the operating system itself. I am a frog that has escaped from the pot; I jumped again and got burned.
I am a frog that has escaped from the pot; I jumped again and got burned.
At some point, a button appeared next to my Start menu. Clicking on it or even hovering over it covers a full third of my monitor with stuff I never asked for and don't care about. A hose of news. Stock prices. The weather. (That's a handy one, but I can get it a lot of places.) There is also now a system tray button for Copilot, my everyday ai companion, which is now present in all Microsoft products in inverse proportion to its usefulness.
The Start menu has been mostly garbage since Windows 8, but now it's almost completely useless in its default state. Half are pinned apps that I didn't pin or install. And I don't blame the OEM. I'm the OEM and I didn't put them here.
At some point in the last few versions, Windows seems to have forgotten how to index the files on my computer. So if I try to open a program, file, or setting the usual way (by pressing Windows and starting to type), it mainly shows me results from the web, which are useless because it uses Bing to find them.
Microsoft has done something really also notable with the supporting documents. That information used to be built into the operating system. Now, if you are in the display settings window (for example), go to the support section and click “Set up multiple monitors”, Microsoft Edge opens, even if it is not your default browser, the phrase “How to add multiple monitors to your Windows 11 PC site: microsoft.com”, and displays a page with a single result: an information box extract from the corresponding support page on the Microsoft websiteplus a link to open the exact Settings screen you just arrived from.
This is a) crazy and b) still a significant improvement over last time i tried this when a similar link returned zero results. This is Microsoft corporate synergy in action. Why keep all those Windows users alone when, with a single click, you can make sure Bing and Edge computers eat too?
Edge used to be a slightly improved version of Chrome. It is now packed with sidebars and bloatware. (Arguably still an improved version of Chrome.) It keeps asking to change my default search engine back to Bing (I won't), and its default home screen is, yes, full of junk.
Why would one of the biggest tech companies in the world release an operating system that is so… wacky? Well, part of it is surely due to the more than 30 years of building each new version of the operating system on top of the previous one. That doesn't really explain why things like that used work well seems to be replaced by new systems that don't work, but something else might.
Windows is tremendously successful. Generate money. Has More than 70 percent of the desktop computer market worldwide.. Edge, which is still a pretty decent browser, and Bing, which is a search engine, have much smaller portions of their respective markets. Every Windows user that Microsoft can badger, harangue, or trick into switching to Edge, Bing, or Copilot over the competition is great for Microsoft, so it makes sense to take advantage of as many synergy opportunities as possible on a spreadsheet. calculation.
It's not fair Windows, obviously. Every damn app wants to steal your attention a million times a day. And many budget phones and Windows computers come packed with preinstalled adware and bloatware that companies pay OEMs to insert there. Ritually banishing bloatware is a time-honored tradition among Windows users.
But before, that garbage was separate from the operating system itself. Samsung's version of Android has a lot of bloat, but that's Samsung's version, not Android itself – there's a reason why the phrase “a clean version of Android” is common among many phone reviewers and why Reviewers praise Pixel phones at a much higher rate than they are purchased by customers.
Ars Technique I already wrote a good practical guide for turning off most of the junk that comes with Windows 11. And this isn't my first rodeo. Yo can Turn off most of this garbage. Most people will never bother, won't know how to do it, or won't realize it's optional. They'll just learn to tune out, for the most part. Every once in a while, they might click on something and then a part of Microsoft gets some money.
