Windows 11 25H2 – I'm so happy to not be using this

It still has weird stuff where sometimes the win+x menu doesn't have keyboard accelerators and sometimes it does, and I still hate right mouse in explorer, but it's tolerable.

The dedoimedo website is from a very advanced long-term user of Windows who is finally throwing in the towel and joining the crowd turning to Linux and now Macs.

There are loads of helpful Windows articles on this site, I sure hope they can remain posted for those of us who still deal with some of this stuff in the future.

You will find extremely helpful Windows posts, including good stuff for Windows 11, right up until version 25H2. After that what's the point?

The latest software for the lab instruments I am using is a couple years old and it gets updates from the vendor when new instruments are introduced. Supports almost every instrument in the field, except the very oldest from before the late '90's, so this version will be with us for a while to come until their software group undertakes another multi-year project as massive. What they have now requires a fairly recent version of Windows 10 minium and also supported Windows 11 since before 2024. Which I tested but did not deploy since the established systems were working nominally. Now with the same software recently validated to support Win11 25H2, as usual for test deployment I dual boot it on the same PC that already has Win10. Using an actual machine in routine operation under real-world conditions.

Back-to-back on the exact hardware, no changes in instruments or wiring, analyzing the same chemicals either way. The only change is the Windows version. This is actually a very controlled test under laboratory conditions like it should be for real meaningful results. Most of this gear is in testing labs where isolating individual variables is table stakes anyway, so testing-R-us.

If it was a chemical, I would say 25H2 fails to measure up to the performance which the hardware is capable of, so badly you could legitimately certify that it sucks.

Your processor, your memory, drive space, unbelievable amounts of network traffic and writing to the drive completely nonstop so much of the time. Wasting more resources than the instrument itself has remaining for scientific work is basically simply disgraceful. It was already through the roof a year ago and now it's about doubled and growing fast with no end in sight.

How is there supposed to be any hope that Windows will ever be more like older versions, at least Win10, and not materially worse for so many millions of users than Win11 is now, as it continues to get more annoying faster than ever?

That's a lot of momentum that would require the most massive effort Microsoft has ever made if they wanted to turn it around.

"This is by design" is the excuse so often seen over the decades from Microsoft when the most useful aspect of a feature is just not quite capable of doing the main thing people would really want it to do in the first place. When they want people to quit trying to do what the hardware is obviously capable of. So they don't get more frustrated for "no reason". Lots of times when they put excess effort to curtail brilliant engineering so it could not participate in a launch. The kind of time when you're going to expect excuses.

Surely this is a point when you can logically extrapolate and say "this is by design . . . misguided design."

Oh, well.

No, Windows really will mess with your file associations after an update. Recently happened to me.

The bar is on the fucking floor, I guess, if you think that would be an acceptable excuse. It’s not. But it doesn’t even matter since you’re imagining a scenario here that isn’t even necessary - windows will HAPPILY overwrite your file preferences when it installs updates.

That being said, we’re never going back to what we had in the past. Fixing it would be nasty business.