Windows 11 1st Impressions – ThinkPad T470

<p>In my experience using it, File Explorer in Windows 11 lags far more often and for longer than File Explorer in Windows 10 or Windows 8.1. It lags launching file manager windows, it lags displaying context menus, it lags beginning copy/move/delete operations. In short, no matter what you ask it to do, it take a half to full second for it to begin doing so. Annoying, but not a show stopper.</p><p><br></p><p>I just don’t care about the Start menu. I’ve been using Classic Shell/Open Shell for years and will continue doing so.</p><p><br></p><p>OTOH, the Windows 11 taskbar has shed most of the functionality of the Windows 10 taskbar. No way to configure the appearance of the clock/calendar (e.g., including seconds, NBD for me, but a constant source of whining on reddit), no way to hide the clock/calendar if one uses a desktop widget, awkwardness with multiple monitors, broken drag-and-drop onto pinned icons, no way to display multiple instances of the same program separately in the taskbar, no way to include labels next to icons, truncated context menu, no toolbars (that does affect me, I’ve used that for documentation files for years, maybe decades), no way to move the taskbar to left/right/top screen sides, no way to make the taskbar wider but use small icons to pack multiple rows of icons in it.</p><p><br></p><p>The Windows 11 taskbar is so, er, functionality-free that I’ve given up using it myself. Taskbar Eliminator to hide it completely and Nexus Dock to replace it works very well, providing all the functionality of the Windows 10 taskbar.</p><p><br></p><p>Then there’s Settings. I prefer the Windows 10 layout and navigation: I go from subtopic to subtopic within a given top-level topic more often than I switch between top-level topics. Then there’s things like Background Apps, which had its own subtopic in Windows 10, but in Windows 11 one must click on the 3-dot menus in Apps &amp; features, click on Advanced options, then change settings in the new screen which appears. Bonus: when done making such changes, no matter how you return to Apps &amp; features, Settings puts you at the top of the list rather than in the place when you selected Advanced options. I may be in the minority here, but Windows 11 Settings is a steaming pile of manure for me.</p>