windows gaming on handhelds

I love gaming and since a couple of years I have been very attracted by handheld gaming. The possibility of playing everywhere really multiplied the opportunities I have to game. After using a steam deck for a while, I recently purchased a legion go 2. It’s an amazing device, I love the hardware, it has the best screen I ever used and it’s powerful enough for most games. However, my frustration with windows has grown immensely. One thing is to game on windows in a desktop/laptop environment when you always have mouse and keyboard available. On a handheld it’s a completely different story, there are some problems that make the experience, at least for me, unbearable:

1. Updates: the update process is clumsy, buggy, happens in different places. Hardware makers offer they own update systems that conflict with windows update and it’s unclear which ones to use and when. Windows offers “optional” updates that it’s never known if they improve performace or break everything. On the computer I use to run office for work I don’t care about these updates at all but on a gaming device it’s essential to use the latest drivers.

2. Popups: windows several notification systems seem unstoppable. Small windows just pop up in an unpredictable way in the middle of a game breaking the flow and sometimes there is no way to close them because there is no keyboard or they are in the background.

3. Security: does a gaming device really need the full-fledged windows security systems? I don’t have a password on my steam deck (beyond the root password) and I don’t feel the need for it. FIngerprint sensors are hit or miss and an unnecessary cost. Moreover, they regularly fail and windows behaves erratically. Just this morning windows asked me for a pin but when I clicked on the textbox no on screen keyboard came up. Not having a physical keyboard with me, the only solution was to restart the device.

4. Sleep function: this is probably the biggest issue. The ability to suspend any game at anytime and resume seamlessly was the single factor that allowed me to play more and made the steam deck a perfect gaming device. I don’t even want to describe how badly this essential feature works with windows.

Will Microsoft wake up and do something about these problems? For now my legion go is a dual boot device with linux/windows and I almost never use windows any longer. The Xbox FSE does very little for these issues and to be honest, if the situation doesn’t improve I see a dark future for a PC based Xbox. Windows is still important for two main issues: possibility to install gamepass games and multiplayer games requireing anticheat. I believe Valve will solve the anticheat problem sooner or later and gamepass being so expensive makes it less and less attractive.

I wonder what experiences you have and if I am being too negative here.