After more than a month of usage, I have now wiped my Windows 11 boot drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 10. Here is my journey.

Back in the beginning of August when people were freaking out about the purportedly leaked Windows 11 super secret alpha/beta, I managed to get into the Windows Insider program, configured my desktop to match the specs requirements (TPM and secure boot), and upgraded to Windows 11. My first impressions of Windows 11 are mostly positive: it has nice eye-candies, revamped system UI and dialogs, and a genuinely smooth and fast experience without too many bugs.

Then, I opened a can of worms… Windows 11 is littered with anti-consumer tactics designed to lock the user into the shitty first-party software offerings from Microsoft. I am looking at Edge. Although Edge has gone Chromium for a while and might be even better than Chrome in terms of performance. I’m giving quite a big benefit of the doubt here. However, that is not my qualm with Edge, it is the hinderance of free choice, or plainly lack thereof. The evil big corporation has struck end-users once again. Changing default programs is now done at the protocol/file type granularity, one is no longer able to change the default programs for a set of functions (e.g. web browsing, music player, etc.) with just one click (or 3-4 clicks in the Windows 10 case).

I might be cherry-picking this particular fault. But after using Windows 11 extensively for various tasks and workflows, the default program was the tipping point. Prior to that, there had been already many stupid UX decisions. Perhaps one of the more noticeably annoying change is the simplification of the right-click context menu. Want to extract with 7z? At least 3 clicks. Want to do anything that is not copy-paste or whatever the basic functions are? At least 2 clicks, and I am being generous here. Other than requiring more energy and time to perform an action, such design inhibits one’s performance in their workflow, (in)effectively increases the time during which the user is being yanked out of the thought context in order to extraneous auxiliary steps.

Last but not least, the Settings app. God why? I’ll now have to use God Mode, launch .cpl and .msc via Win + R, GPO, and regedit to modify configurations that are now completely hidden out of plain sight.

Conclusion, while Windows 11 mgiht be a cute little face-lift for the now aging Windows 10, it also robs users of their productivity by oversimplifying and overcomplicating certain aspects the interface into a dumbed-down fiasco of rigid proprietary piece of software gore to make their shareholders happy campers. At this rate, when the number of users starts to dwindle because of the illogical business decisions, will they able to keep the shareholders which they hold so up high on the greedy pedestal?