"Evil genius" widget location

From a recent podcast (WW, I believe), I remember Paul mentioning something about the ‘evil genius’ of an engineer at Microsoft that elected to put the widgets/weather button/panel on the left where the Start menu used to be located. This would naturally boost Bing/widget numbers as people clicked it out of muscle memory looking for the start menu.

Well…

Have you seen this behavior? From Tech Radar….

Windows 11 Start menu is disappearing for some people in new update | TechRadar

Conversation 5 comments

  • anoldamigauser

    Premium Member
    01 March, 2022 - 10:22 am

    <p>To be clear, this is a known bug in pre-release software. "I am shocked," I say, "shocked."</p><p>In a world going to hell in a handbasket, this is hardly something to worry about.</p>

    • justme

      Premium Member
      01 March, 2022 - 10:59 am

      <p>Lol – perhaps I unintentionally overstated the case? I’m not particulalry worried about it as, as you rightly point out, its pre-release software. The whole reason I brought it up was that I had remembered from WW Paul mentioning and discussing the location of the widgets/weather thing was located where the Start menu has traditionally been. At the time, I got a good chuckle out of his "evil genius" description, which is why I used it in the post title.</p><p><br></p><p>Was really just curious if folks were seeing this regularly in the wild. I dont run 11 or Insider builds, so for all I know this could be patched already. </p>

      • anoldamigauser

        Premium Member
        01 March, 2022 - 8:45 pm

        <p>It is almost funny, that Microsoft is having so much trouble with the taskbar now that they are changing it. I am reminded of the old saying that if it isn’t broken, you should not fix it. That they are breaking it with Widgets, their crass push to increase use of Bing and MSN is even better.</p><p>That said, I am tired of the tech media pushing stuff like this. Beta software isn’t meant to be buggy, but it is, and if you are using it, then you should expect issues. The headlines make it sound like a huge problem, but no one is affected except those who understand, or should, what they are doing.</p><p>Like you, I am unaffected by this. We have just one computer running 11 here, and while it is visually more interesting, it doesn’t offer anything that makes me want to upgrade the only other computer that is upgradeable. I always had an older box running on the Insider Dev builds until Windows 11 put a stop to it. I am not going to sacrifice a newer machine for the privilege.</p>

        • justme

          Premium Member
          02 March, 2022 - 2:41 am

          <p>I suspect the other thing that attracted my attention to the article was that I am a heavy Start menu user – always have been. I’m not particularly keen on what Microsoft has done with it in 11 so should I make the jump to 11, I know I’ll be running a replacement like Start11 – because I do not believe Microsoft will ever of their own accord give us a Windows 7-style Start menu back. Seeing Microsoft have problems with the Start menu, even on Insider builds, does give me pause as I remember Windows 8 all too well.</p>

  • sherlockholmes

    Premium Member
    02 March, 2022 - 12:09 pm

    <p>I deactivated widgets in the group policies. Problem solved 🙂 </p>

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