Microsoft Admits Windows 11 is Bloated ?

Hey everybody, it's Lyman. It looks like Microsoft is beginning to acknowledge that Windows 11 might be a little bloated. They had a post the other day on their blog about making a new commitment to Windows quality. And I thought what I would do is guide you through some of the headaches that I have with Windows 11 because I install it at least once or twice a week when I'm reviewing mini PCs. And I've been seeing this creep happening for quite a while now and I thought you might like to see what I have to struggle through. So, why don't we get into it right now? Now, today's video is being brought to you by all of you. That includes everyone who watches and subscribes to this channel on a regular basis along with those of you who have contributed to the channel either through my donor box page at l. tv/support, through the YouTube membership program, through Patreon or floatplane, and of course the super thanks down below. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps keep the lights on around here and it keeps this channel going. So, thank you all for your continued support. So why

don't we dive into this blog post and see what it's all about. This was written by Pavan Davaluri from the Windows Insider program team. Shortly after he posted this, a bunch of other people on the Windows team went on Twitter and started reiterating what Pavan had posted. So they're trying to demonstrate some commitment to debloating Windows to some degree, but the bullet points they put in the blog post here don't cover a lot of the complaints that I think are still out there. The big one they focused on was more taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions. So, they want to allow you to move things around like you used to be able to do. And they posted some examples of what it might look like when your taskbar can be moved around. For me, the biggest issue was moving the start button to the center, but of course, that was something you could fix right out of the gate with Windows 11. They're also talking about integrating AI where it's most meaningful with craft and focus. So, they're going to take the co-pilot icons and some of the co-pilot nudges out of certain applications where it's not necessary. This is certainly welcome because I think we've been overloaded with C-Pilot, especially because it doesn't quite do everything that I think Microsoft would like it to do and certainly users are not finding a lot of utility with it in many cases. They also said that they're going to reduce disruption from Windows updates. I bet you could do an economic impact study of badly timed Windows updates, especially on corporate PCs. So, they're going to offer some ways to get around having to update in the middle of your workflow. They're also going to make it quicker to get Windows installed. And this is something that I deal with on a regular basis, setting up new PCs. It's often an hour plus just to get the PC out of the box and started. And that, of course, is a pretty bad introduction to a new computer. So they will be having updates update in a different way. Now another thing I've noticed with Windows when you're first onboarding Windows 11 is that there will be a huge update during the install process. After that's done, there's another pile of updates waiting for you. And what happens is these new PCs come up. They're running these updates in the background. So the computer's sitting idle, but you're hearing the fans going. You do get some performance degradation. Maybe there's drivers that are out of date. So that first experience with the PC when you take it out of the box is degraded significantly I think when you have to go through all of these update processes that might give you a bad first impression. So it's good to see them looking at that. There's also a promise of a faster and more dependable file explorer. I don't know what file explorer does, but when you open it up sometimes it sits there and just chews on stuff forever, even when you're just trying to look at a directory. So, I don't know if it's trying to build previews of stuff, but that's certainly an area that could use some improvement. They're also talking about more control over widgets and feed experiences. I will show you some of my widget annoyances in a few minutes here as we go through my demo. And they're also talking about a simpler and more transparent Windows Insider program. I remember trying to demo a feature on Windows not that long ago. I ended up not making a video about it and I had to join like two different rings and it was hard to know if I got the update or not. It wasn't easy to figure out how I can test new features. So, it looks like they're going to make things a little bit easier to engage with the team and they're also going to improve the feedback hub. So, why don't we step

through some of my Windows annoyances? Although I use a Mac for a lot of my day-to-day work, Windows is a part of my production workflow. I test Windows computers all the time, as I mentioned. So, uh, Windows is a part of my life, even if it's not all of my life. And

here's a great example of some of the aggravation that I run into. So, this laptop just got an update. And after I booted it up, following that update, now I've got a confirmation screen here. Now, I could skip this, but what it's trying to do is force me into backing my files up on their secure cloud storage. I don't want to do it. And if I just dismiss this warning here, it comes back in 3 days. So there's a constant funnel of trying to extract more revenue from me using this operating system. And of course, most people these days don't purchase Windows as a retail product. It comes pre-installed and then Microsoft kind of owns you after that. But this is the kind of stuff that I hope they focus on in addition to the things that they mentioned. I'm going to click continue here. I forgot what happens next here. Um, and then I can customize my experience. And it's trying to narrow down the sorts of things that I want to do with my computer. I'm going to skip this and then go on to the next step here. And again, this computer's been operating for the better part of a year at this point. Um, but I'm having to go through this flow again as they add new features that presumably make them more

money. Now, this next screen really bugs me because what they're trying to do is get me to use their backup on one drive or whatever they call it. And if you look over here, there's an option to save files only on this PC. In other words, not use the backup. But this option is the smallest one. What's a general consumer going to do? They're kind of ingrained these days to click on next to go on to the next step. And here you've got this cloud thing that's going

to take over a lot of your documents. And there's no configuration to this either. It just takes it. And then you are good to go. And then I can have my phone back up to this if I want by scanning the QR code. I'm going to skip that. Again, this is just an update here. And then I can use my phone on my PC. I have no interest in doing any of this stuff. I'm gonna skip this. And

then I've got the upsell here. Uh so I can upgrade to Microsoft 365 Premium. I think I'm already a customer of this, at least on this account, but I'm going to decline this. And again, just an update.

Uh and now I'm getting sold on Game Pass for PC, uh which has gone up in price considerably. I'm going to not do that right now. Again, all of the negative options are the smallest ones, and I think they're relying on people accidentally clicking and subscribing on some of this stuff. And then I've got tips that I can do. I don't want to deal with that either. So, I'm going to click on done here. Now, I'm finally back to my desktop. Again, the desktop that I've been using for quite a while now. And this is been more the norm lately. And this kind of flow also happens upon

installation. Now, what I found happens on new PCs is that when you go through that one drive flow, even if you don't want it to back things up, it still does. And in order to get rid of it, you have to go over to the one drive icon here and click on the gear icon and go over to settings. And here you have to turn off everything. So, if I go to manage backups, thankfully it didn't start syncing up again because my preference was to turn it off. But I have to go in every time and disable each of these individually. And it pops up a warning every time I do it. So, for example, if I just turn on the music one here and click save changes. I'll come back over and I'll show you uh what this looks like. So, if we go back to manage backup, it takes a second for it to figure out what it's doing. And then if I click this off, it gives me a warning here about how I need to not do this. And I can say stop backups and I will choose only on this PC. and then I am good to go. But this is the workflow that I have to go through for each of these items every time I set up a new PC because they're locking you right into one drive. And of course, they're requiring a Microsoft account upon

installation. All right, so I made the screen a little bit bigger here so I can show you some of my other annoyances. Uh here we've got my start menu that's kind of in the middle and it gets nudged over as you add more icons. A lot of computers, of course, ship with icons attached to the taskbar here. Some of them come from Microsoft. Some might come from your PC manufacturer. So, of course, on this one being a Co-Pilot Plus PC, recall is front and center. I didn't want it. It put it on here after an update. Copilot is right next to it. I've got the Edge browser down here. Of course, I can take these things out and rearrange them, but still, it's what you get when you first log into it. And the start menu is a real point of aggravation for me. So, if I click on start here, I've got this pain on the side about the phone that I didn't want to add before. It comes back. And if you click hide this pane, it doesn't just get rid of it. You got to go into the menu here and disable it. One click would have been better than having to jump into a menu to turn it off. And again, they want to make it as hard as possible for you to turn things off that might make them money. Another issue is it's hard to find stuff because of course Microsoft will flood the zone here with all of their icons. There's something in here when you first boot it up. So, you've got to scroll down to get to your start menu. And if I click on show all, what I get here is just a bunch of files. Like, I don't even know how to get to the traditional start menu any longer. Like, my other Windows PC behaves differently than this one. And this is the sort of stuff that bothers me. I've got a bunch of different computers that I work on and everything is different from one to the next. And then if I accidentally click the search thing and hit the icon over here, I get a bunch of widgets that pop up and this is not something I have any interest in and it's all just AI nonsense here along with some games that I don't really need and news and whatever. And then over here, you can turn this off, but you also get like these stock quotes that have no relevance to me whatsoever. And if I happen to just mouse over it, then I get all this distracting stuff that pops up on here. And now it's got trouble loading. And so this is kind of like the base Windows experience. And it's good that Microsoft is starting to notice some of these things because it is just not good uh to just load up people with this stuff. And I think what's happening here is they're making so much money on advertisements and services that they can get people to click on. And most people just don't go through the effort to turn it off because it's so hard to figure out how to do that. And even some basic apps here have bloat added to them. So, like what the heck did they do to Notepad? So, Notepad used to be able to load up something and just work on stuff. Now, I've got tabs here that loads up all these other files that it had the last time I loaded it up and then if it can't find it, I get error messages. So, the last time I loaded up Notepad on my other computer, all the files were deleted, but Notepad just pops up a bunch of messages here warning me about stuff. They require you to have your Microsoft account now attached to Notepad. Notepad of all things. Um, but yes, you have to have your Microsoft account on there. It must be some cloud sync. And then they've got co-pilot here who can write you asky text if you want uh built right in whether you like it or not. Why can't we just have the simple notepad that we had for 30 years that seemed to be doing just fine? And of course, you can turn some of this stuff off, but again, you've got another thing to jump through to get all that situated. So, just lots and lots of bloat here. And there's other stuff that kind of sits in the background. So, the Xbox thing, whether you play games or not, is sitting here. Uh, your Xbox uh overlay. I'm not sure how much RAM this takes up, but again, just another thing that just happens to be running in the background. So, again, these are the sorts of aggravations that I run into the installation process with all the upselling, all the disabling of things to get the computer up to the right level of performance. There's just a lot here that has just scope creeped along the way uh as Windows 10 morphed into Windows 11. On my production machine here, I'm still running Windows 10. I will run it until I can't run it no longer just because it's not popping stuff up at me all the time when I'm

trying to get work done. Now, there are some utilities out there like Chris Titus Tech's Windows utility. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm probably going to play around with it a little bit. And these will let you turn off some of the extra stuff so that your computer might run a little better. Uh some utilities and I think this one too will let you burn an ISO that doesn't install all this extra junk as well. So

there are some options out there to debloat Windows yourself, but it would be nice for Microsoft to do some of this on their end and I think they have become more aware of this conclusion. Uh certainly that blog post is a step in the right direction, but those bullet points didn't cover a lot of the stuff that I encounter as I install Windows and test PCs with it and really try to get my head in the consumers that are using these machines on a day-to-day basis. They are bloated up and it's time for Microsoft to reel it back. We are seeing of course Linux installations getting a lot better uh for simplicity and general consumer friendliness. So I think Microsoft might be feeling that uh happening out there as well. So, that's what it is. I'd love to hear what your annoyances are down in the comments section. Also, if you've got any great utilities, uh, tell me about them down there, too. Maybe I'll do a video at some point where we debloat this Windows PC. That will do it for this one. Until next time, this is Lon Cybin. Thanks for watching.