Window 11 Upgrade?

My recently bought refurbished Dell laptop – a 2021 Latitude 5520 is getting an onscreen prompt to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11.  Is this a must  do or is there any disadvantages?

Win 10 is consisted better for gaming, though 11 is catching up fast.

Win 11 has better HDR support. I’m sure there are other pro/cons but they are likely to be with legacy programs and drivers at a guess.

As you can see, my knowledge is more entertainment/gaming based that running Office.😉

Looks slightly different.

At home I use it.

My work laptop doesn’t but that’s because until mid last year we used a programme that ran on internet explorer and windows 11 doesn’t allow internet explorer

I wouldn’t bother until security updates stop if if the cpu is pretty new.

I run win11 on my newer machine as it has support for Performance cores and Eco cores, so in theory it makes better use of newer Intel processors by delegating low priority workloads to the eco cores.

My i5 13600k, for example has 6 Performance cores and 10 eco cores. And better HDR so theoretically better gaming performance or performance for certain types of workload, whilst using less power and generating less heat if you are just surfing the net or whatever.

Windows 11 also has several annoyances with the user interface too, but that’s a matter of opinion I guess.

Is the laptop working to your satisfaction at the moment?

If so: Don’t fix it!

I mean, if you were to do the W11 upgrade at any point in the future, it’d be easier now than then – just in terms of files, settings and all that palaver.
But it’s not a massive step on – it’s not like the switch to W10 from W7 (or Windows 8 if you had the misfortune to use that nonsense)

Windows 10 support ends 14 October 2025, I would upgrade.

Thanks all. Laptop working fine. So I’ll leave it just now until security updates stop next year.

Run the W11 upgrade compatibility checker. Your BIOS may not even support W11 if it’s an older laptop…

Windows 10 support ends 14 October 2025, I would upgrade.

That’s interesting and concerning. We’ve a couple of little Dell optiplex micros…. they’re brilliant for just internet browsing & ms office based stuff; very fast, quick boot, no issues. But the windows 11 health check says their processors aren’t supported. I don’t want to get rid of them but equally don’t want to run them without updates

That’s interesting and concerning. We’ve a couple of little Dell optiplex micros…. they’re brilliant for just internet browsing & ms office based stuff; very fast, quick boot, no issues. But the windows 11 health check says their processors aren’t supported. I don’t want to get rid of them but equally don’t want to run them without updates

If it’s just used as a web browsing /media player then just put Linux on it.. Mint or Ubuntu are pretty easy to get to grips with.. And you can boot different flavors of Linux from a USB stick to try them out before you go all in whilst keeping your windows system intact.

To be honest the only reason I’m still running windows At All  is because I use it as a gaming machine as well, so I want DX12, and HDR etc.

Windows 11 compatible check OK.

TPM 2 enabled

11th gen core 5 processor

8Gb ram

512 SSD

But I’ll leave the upgrade meantime.

Windows 11 seems fine to me on both home and work laptops. The window control is a great feature – prearranged groups so I can have YouTube in left side of the screen and Twitter in the right without having to adjust sizes or positions manually (just right click on the window control icon in the top right hand corner). Also good for Excel and Word on the works laptop :-)

The single biggest and most annoying thing for me is a cannot park the start bar vertically on the left side of the screen.  You can left justify the icons, but not the entire bar.  Since I run a 35″ Ultrawide monitor I have plenty of horizontal space and would rather maximise vertical space.  But no, Windows won’t allow that. So I’m not upgrading until Oct ’25.

Personally, I’m not keen on W11 for petty reasons which would interest no-one who isn’t me.

If you can, the reasons to do so massively outweigh any reasons why you shouldn’t.  For now you can always roll back and ultimately it’s inevitable, how many people are still running Windows 95?

There’s some bits that are just annoying, like right click menus are different.

And I swear they’ve just made control panel so difficult to navigate with each iteration since XP that the only way you can find stuff is by searching for it (which to be fair does work really well).

The single biggest and most annoying thing for me is a cannot park the start bar vertically on the left side of the screen.

This is a minor annoyance. I have a laptop that came with W11 installed and two desktop machines with W10. It takes me a few minutes to adapt to whichever I’m using. The main reason I stick with W10 on the desktops is that I have an old app that I use for work that is apparently not compatible with W11 and I don’t have the budget to upgrade to the newest version. Apart from that, they both work fine, I’d probably upgrade if it was me. When W10 support runs out, I will dual boot and use W11 for everything except running legacy apps for work stuff.

thisisnotaspoon
Free Member
There’s some bits that are just annoying, like right click menus are different.

And I swear they’ve just made control panel so difficult to navigate with each iteration since XP that the only way you can find stuff is by searching for it (which to be fair does work really well).

There’s a registry edit to bring back proper right click menus – I have it in my notes as “reg.exe add “HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32″ /f /ve”

Control panel Microsoft has been trying for ages to shift everything over to the simplistic Settings hierarchy and away from Control Panel; and they just seemingly can’t do it. So each iteration they add more of it to Settings, with Control Panel there for the actual detail you might need (like Device Manager etc)

I’ve got it. It’s not a “must do” by any stretch.

-Performance is slightly worse than 10 in some scenarios, but security is slightly better.

-Some niche applications like Virtual Box are facing issues.  But mostly all applications work flawlessly.

-I only have one reliability issue, and that’s the Realtek sound driver (or could be the linked Dolby driver) which crashes sometimes. You have to reboot to recover it. Had no issue with this on 10.

-Tabbed explorer windows are nice

In summary, if you don’t need any of the new features, I’d say it’s not really worth it.

Microsoft has been trying for ages to shift everything over to the simplistic Settings

I find it vaguely hilarious you get so far down into Settings before you realise you have to then find the old Windows NT interface in the Control Panel to do what you actually want to do.

Generally though I’ve taken to W11 quicker than when switching to W10 so no real issue with it, the most annoying thing being right click changes.

I find it vaguely hilarious you get so far down into Settings before you realise you have to then find the old Windows NT interface in the Control Panel to do what you actually want to do.

I just find it amusing when you go looking for a setting or a feature, click through umpteen screens and then up pops a grey window that could have (and probably did) come straight from windows 95, “hello old friend, nice to see you again”.  It’s like  they’ve written a new OS. Applied the bulk of the 95/98/XP GUI, then had a graphic designer round it off a bit “make it look more Mac like, but not like Vista”, but not quite paid them enough to go through and apply the theme to every window.

I know there’s a lot more to an OS than the GUI. But it feels like XP was the last time they actually finished it well.

7 – XP with soft edges and blue bars

8 – well they finished it, it was just unusable

10 / 11 – it’s like those skins you could download for XP to make an old PC look like 7/8 until you opened anything.

I like the taskbar at the top…. so I don’t like 11

I’m also nervous to update… mainly because of the Windows versions pattern of user experiences (IME, at least) :

3.1: 👍

95: 💩

98: 👍

2000/ME: 💩

XP:👍

Vista: 💩

7: 👍

8:💩

10: 👍

11: 🤔

Also, it mildly amuses me that 10 was meant to be the last ever major version of Windows. Didn’t they make a big deal of this at the time? That there’d never be another version and 10 would just receive updates forever? Then a couple of years later here’s 11 and hopefully everyone’s quietly forgotten about this.

The right click thing is annoying, however if you shift & right click you get a more W10 right click menu.

how many people are still running Windows 95?

Dunno, I’m still on Win 3.1 – I love a bit of Minesweeper :-)

I was VERY upset when they ditched Minesweeper 😢

cerrado-tu-ruidoFull Member
Windows 10 support ends 14 October 2025, I would upgrade.

When was the last time you called Microsoft support??

When was the last time you installed a Windows Security Update?

When was the last time you installed a Windows Security Update?

In about 2009 🙂

In about 2009 🙂

Thankfully, unless you’re on a mac/Chromebook and joking, it mostly does it automatically in the background so you don’t have to.

Either that or you’ve been hacked and could be anyone 😂

I’m also nervous to update… mainly because of the Windows versions pattern of user experiences (IME, at least) :

3.1: 👍

95: 💩

98: 👍

2000/ME: 💩

XP:👍

Vista: 💩

7: 👍

8:💩

10: 👍

11: 🤔

Also, it mildly amuses me that 10 was meant to be the last ever major version of Windows. Didn’t they make a big deal of this at the time? That there’d never be another version and 10 would just receive updates forever? Then a couple of years later here’s 11 and hopefully everyone’s quietly forgotten about this.

IIRC, Windows 2000 was NT5.0, XP was NT5.1. Vista was 6.0, Win7 was 6.1, Win8 was 6.2, Win8.1 was 6.3, then Win10 abandoned those version numbers and was called Win10.0. Win11 is apparently Win10.0.2, so Microsoft can claim that Win10 is the final version of Windows.

Vista was fine if you had decent hardware, problem was that it was loaded onto cheap PCs that couldn’t run it properly. Win7 was really just Win Vista Service Pack 3, it was just a tidied up version of Vista. Win 8 was tidied up again and worked fine if you took the time to customize the start menu (which end users shouldn’t have had to do, but it ran perfectly well). Win 8.1 improved on that and Win10 was basically what Win8 should have been when it was released, so basically Service Pack 3 and it had amazing backwards compatibility. Win11 seems to be an attempt at ditching the legacy stuff and moving on. Was a bit half-baked when it was released but seems to be steadily improving. If you don’t need to run legacy apps or hardware, I don’t see any reason not to upgrade.

I like the taskbar at the top…. so I don’t like 11

This is one of my primary gripes. I’ve had the taskbar at the top – clue is in the name, “pull-down menus” – since the Atari ST. There’s a registry hack to move it but the W11 taskbar utilises pop-up information which still pops up into nowhere if you do.

the Windows versions pattern of user experiences

I’ll agree with most of that, though you missed W8.1 and this isn’t Star Trek movies. But I will fight you over Vista. It was half-baked (oh look, W11) and much maligned but it was a paradigm shift in technology and vastly vastly superior to XP. Hardware requirements have barely changed between Vista and W10, which is over what, 15 years? That’s astonishing.

Also, lumping 2000 and ME as one thing is a catastrophic error.  2000 Workstation was (finally) NT for the masses, ME was a dumpster fire of the highest order.

Win11 seems to be an attempt at ditching the legacy stuff and moving on.

This is my conclusion also.

Which makes a lot of sense, Microsoft really should take a leaf out of Apple’s playbook and do this more aggressively.  But it bollockses people like me who are trying to keep Vista-era hardware spinning.

thols2

Vista was fine if you had decent hardware, problem was that it was loaded onto cheap PCs that couldn’t run it properly.

Upon release it also had some very visible bugs, such as file copies being extremely slow or stopping mid way through. A lot of drivers were broken as well.

A lot of drivers were broken as well.

That wasn’t a Microsoft problem.  If anything it was the opposite.

With the advent of Vista, MS stomped down hard on shite third-party drivers which had been the cause of “Windoze is shit” narratives for years.  You want to write a kernel-mode keyboard driver which can bluescreen the entire box if you unplug the keyboard, well it sucks to be you any more.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time but it was a wholly necessary step.

I expect at some point in the future I’ll be saying the same of W11.  But as of right now I still don’t like it.

I’ll agree with most of that, though you missed W8.1 and this isn’t Star Trek movies. But I will fight you over Vista. It was half-baked (oh look, W11) and much maligned but it was a paradigm shift in technology and vastly vastly superior to XP. Hardware requirements have barely changed between Vista and W10, which is over what, 15 years? That’s astonishing.

Also, lumping 2000 and ME as one thing is a catastrophic error. 2000 Workstation was (finally) NT for the masses, ME was a dumpster fire of the highest order.

Yes, well, that’s just because you’re more nerdy than me 😁

The list was only my impressions and experience, some of that being “not very much”.

“Windows 10 support ends 14 October 2025, I would upgrade.”

**** it I’m going straight to 12

When was the last time you called Microsoft support??

Why only this morning they called me out of courtesy as they had spotted a problem with my “Microsoft computer”. They needed to remote on and do some stuff as apparently horrible hackers were trying to access my banking details. Fortunately once I had shown them my banking so they could run some very techy looking checks all was well and the hackers had been caught.

That reminds me – I need to ring my bank actually as in a completely unrelated issue I went to the shop just now and my card was declined. Most odd…

Seriously though, when they say support ends they don’t mean you can’t ring them any more. They mean they will stop releasing software updates for it.

Seriously though, when they say support ends they don’t mean you can’t ring them any more. They mean they will stop releasing software updates for it.

You will be able to pay to receive security updates until 2028, apparently, but it won’t be cheap.

 you’re more nerdy than me

I get that a lot for some unfathomable reason.