It’s a bit bonkers, got a laptop with WIndows 11 on for lab and evaluation purposes. Before I start this rant I would like us to be at the same place in the room. This is an operatingsystem which I’ve (willing or not) payed for. Thus, you should be able to count on some kind of premium feel and possibly that it works better then something free. I totally get that free and open soruce software might not contain all features that I want, that it might lack GUI for some tasks and that the developer from project to project might want to have some way of getting compensated. That’s all fine, this is however not that. I’m also aware I work in the IT-security field and can probalby get around most problems given enough time, this is however not the usual customer. For us there’s always options and most roads lead to Linux, but let’s also set that apart. This is a product I’ve paid for which is produced for normal people and thus I expect it to hold some kind of standard. Now let’s start.
The problems are never far away, about four clicks in it asks for internet, no option to go passed this step. No real argument on why this is needed, it just is. Thus I can’t install this OS on anything offline. Maybe not a large problem in itself but it beggs the question of why. If it’s för security updates, it’s probalby not a an issue before the laptop is connected to the internet out of free will. If it’s to verify the license there are other ways, plus a laptop not connected to the internet ever is useless in 99 percent of the cases. I just can’t seem to figure out why this would be so very important to do directly out of the box. Most laptops will get connected at some point anyway, not getting pasted the install screen without it is bonkers.
For the next part Microsoft is only partially to blame. The laptop is filled to the brim with bloatware. MacAFee and SurfsharkVPN is probalby HP whom has bad some deal with but for Amazon and Lastpass they are moreless impossible to uninstall. Again probably not impossible but for the normal user if one clicks install the “Uninstall program”-menu appears which is part of the controllpanel. The problem is, the apps(?) are not listed there. No matter what you do it seems you can’t get rid of them. I’ll probably keep trying. This time I ask myself, why can’t I as user choose what programs are installed om the operating system I paid for? I do get there are hel programs to the OS which I can’t uninstall because they are critical for the operatingsystems core functions to work, but these are clearly not that.
After spending roughly an hour removing crap I never asked for and fursiosly trying to connect to my mobile hotspot I reinstall the hotspot and remove any Swedish symbols from both SSID and key, without that it won’t connect. This has worked fine on both my linux machine and my iPhone but it’s apperently an edge case Microsoft has forgott to test. At least one can now move the start menu back to the left (it’s however unclear if one cloud choose to have the task manager in portrait mode instead).
On Microsofts side there are a ton of apps now installed. I’m not sure what half of them does and thus have no idea if they are really needed or not. I could probably spend some time looking into this but at this point I think I rather just run Windows 10 instead. Whatever happens to Windows programs I will from time to time need to use then is uncertain but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.