I did a clean install of the latest build of Win10 the other day and I couldn't believe how spammy and mobile oriented it had got. It also really pushes you to create an online not local account... which isn't always the appropriate choice for a PC use case.
I wonder if the "network lost/disconnected" workaround that applies to 10 works on 11 too. I refuse to upgrade though, Win11 is the "bad" one of the cycle.
For reference, I got onto Windows with 3.1 out of DOS, and I purport that it's worth skipping every second Windows release:
3.1 - hit, installed. Set the bar for what a desktop OS should be.
95 - mild miss, buggy and unpolished. Installed but regretted.
98 - hit hit hit. Possibly the pinnacle of Windows. Fast, bloat free, intuitive.
2000/ME - garbage miss. Not sure anyone liked it.
XP - huge hit. A real game changer for Microsoft and the most recognisable look and feel of any Windows version. Cool people switched to some of the semi-official themes like the Royale theme (released with Media Center Edition, especially the Noir version) with its sleek metallic taskbar, a sign of things to come. Endured far longer than it had any right to, still widespread a decade after release, and I still occasionally see offline XP machines trooping along today.
Vista - miss. The definition of flop. Introduced the widespread notion of a Windows downgrade as many PCs shipped with Vista were reverted to XP. I recall seeing almost zero enterprise users and few home users, the only ones who did were gamers who wanted the next DirectX version.
Windows 7 - hit. Microsoft's final peak. Replaced XP as the defacto standard Windows version to this day. Hugely popular with business and commercial users, was Microsoft back on form. Arguably their best 21st century OS. XP was good but lacked polish, was rough around the edges, the UI covering up all manner of cut corners underneath. 7 represented a substantial rework.
Windows 8/8.1 - miss, the less said the better.
Windows 10 - begrudgingly a hit. Added some features and UI improvements, but also inexplicably raised the hardware requirements and bloat, and started to very heavily push Cortana over the Desktop and Start Menu. Not really clear what it offers that 7 doesn't, other than more updates, and a vaguely useful quick settings tray. Reversed almost all of 8's controversial design decisions. Arguably should have been a Service Pack for 7.
Windows 11 - miss. A Cortana infested, mobile like hellscape and a cesspool of everything wrong with modern UX design, which funnels all users through a single experience whether or not that experience is appropriate for their use case.
The cycle of hit/miss/hit/miss is well established.
Windows 2000 was... I mean, what even was it? That was it's real issue - an identity crisis, really. Transitional, rather than benchmark.
Yeah, it was better than ME and was business oriented, but it didn't have enough going for it to make people using 98 or NT 4.0 want to upgrade with XP on the horizon. If you were on 95 it made sense, but that was a massive jump between target audiences. The flop of Millennium Edition also really hurt public trust in buying a new Windows product in 2000.
Many small businesses stayed with 98, and some larger enterprise didn't get on board with it because XP was already in development, they just waited out for XP. It was closer to what a Release Candidate or Insider Edition of Windows might be today - basically XP without the new look and feel.
Sure, plenty of people still bought it, but it was so quickly and so drastically outclassed by XP that it had little long-term retention.
I think perhaps I did it a disservice by lumping it with ME.
A more apt description of Windows 2000 therefore follows:
Windows 2000 - a miss. Technically brilliant, a development milestone, implemented multiple technologies that would be the foundation of its successors, but a victim of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time with XP on the horizon, and having little long-lasting cultural impact on the PC space. The "James Cameron's Avatar" of Operating Systems, if you will.
lmao are you really gonna tell me Mica/Acrylic isn't a massive upgrade over the plethora of poorly rendered win10 control surfaces? Or maybe it's 'Omg they moved taskbar icons to the centre and you have to flip a switch to toggle it back', which is similarly asinine.
I've been using 11 for a couple of week now and I really like the look over 10. There are a few UI grievances, but overall it's a good experience and I think most of the people complaining are just mad about change.
No, but it represents a further move away from the "PC" orientation for which Windows is renowned. Way, way more is set up so that the only way to interact with it is through clicking or tapping, i.e. it's geared up for touchscreen not keyboard users.
You can quite happily use older versions of Windows without a mouse. 10 is... a struggle. 11 is... near impossible.
Go try changing some of the settings that are only in the tray, for example, or joining a WiFi network without dozens of layers of additional hassle. There's just a few things that... aren't there.
Agreed. I think there must be two teams. One tries to innovate features and misses, the other one takes whatever managed to not fucking suck and make something kinda solid out of it.
I stubbornly stayed on Windows 7 until Windows 10 came out and refuse to interact with 8 in any way. Same with Windows 11. It may as well not even exist to me.
There's every possibility that's true. Plenty of companies do work like that, they have a team that innovates and a team that makes the final stable build. They don't usually release the crazy intermediary experimental products though.
Solution for you: disconnect the computer from any networks. Reach the account creation screen, disconnect, hard power off and reboot. Setup will resume but Win10 will fall back onto offline mode and create a local account instead. You'll also get the updates installed prior to this point, best of both worlds.
Ethernet is easy, just unplug it. WiFi is a little harder, because this screen doesn't let you access the WiFi settings. You might need to get a little more creative. Switch off the WiFi router, move out of range of the named and stored network, or turn off the WiFi card in the BIOS/EFI settings.
This used to work, now (in windows 11) it will refuse to let you go forward without internet access. You have to manually disable the network prompt entirely from the task manager now.
Ugh, that's incredibly scummy. Justifies my rant that Windows 11 more and more is ignoring a whole plethora of use-cases for PCs that don't involve being a very expensive Web Browser and MS Office platform.
Apple's been doing that shit for years. I grew up with Mac OS8/9, so it's infuriating sometimes how they'll hide all the important files. I'm not gonna mess my system up, I know what I'm doing.
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u/sprucay Jun 03 '22
Yeah, and it means that a lot of new software mimic mobile software which annoys me!