Making Windows 11 Suck Less in 2026 ⭐

I've dedicated my adult life to helping others use Windows as efficiently and effectively as possible. But my focus has shifted, decidedly, in recent years thanks to the enshittification of the product and how Microsoft's escalating bad behaviors in Windows put customers on the defensive. Today, much of my time is spent figuring out how to reverse or at least workaround those behaviors and force Windows 11 to work the way we need it to.
⁉️ How did we get to this point?
Microsoft released Windows 8 in 2012 to nearly universal criticism and disdain. The biggest issue, of course, was the forced usage of a new and half-baked full-screen and "touch-first" user interface that didn't make sense on the traditional PCs of the day. But Windows 8 was also notable for another negative reason. It was the first version of Windows to include advertising directly in the product, in the form of web-based display ads in MSN News and some other bundled ("in-box") apps.

At the time, I described this shift, subtle at the time, as "a slippery slope." What I meant was that Microsoft including ads directly in Windows was just the first step in a broader campaign to improve the software giant's ability to monetize each Windows user. And that it didn't put a limited set of ads in Windows 8 to only put fewer ads in the next version. No, this was going to get worse. Much worse.

I'm not much of a prognosticator, but I could not have been more right on this count. Things did get much worse.

When Windows 10 debuted in 2015, it fixed some of Windows 8's most egregious and obvious problems, most notably by backing off from that touch-first interface and returning to a classic Desktop UI with a Start button, Start menu, and Taskbar. It was also the first truly free upgrade for a major Windows version, giving those still on Windows 7, Windows 8.x, and even some recent Windows Phone versions a way to move forward at no cost.

Well. No overt cost. As it turns out, Windows 10 escalated the bad behaviors that Windows 8 had only hinted at. That free upgrade came with hidden costs in the forms of far more in-box advertising, bundled crapware apps from third parties, forced feedback telemetry that could not be disabled, and a dramatic scaling back of one's ability to configure a default web browser and other apps. Worse, customers who adopted Windows 10 would be required to let Microsoft keep it up-to-date using a system called Windows as a Service (WaaS). This wasn't just a buggy and unreliable system, it was a running monthly commitment that would fix bugs and add new features to Windows 10. And customers would need to upgrade to a new Windows 10 product version twice every year, a major, disruptive processthat led to a string of major issues over several years.

Microsoft released Windows 11 in October 2021, another free upgrade that was perhaps most notable at first for its modern look and feel and a promise of fewer updates, with major product versions now...