Notes From the Field: The Week That 23H2 Happened (Updated) (Premium)

UPDATE: Someone from Microsoft---but not Microsoft officially---was kind enough to confirm my findings that the Media Creation Tool described below has not been updated for Windows 11 version 23H2. Please read Microsoft Quietly Delayed 23H2 on MCT Until Mid-November and Didn’t Tell Customers for more information. --Paul

The past month has been a whirlwind of Windows 11 version 23H2 activity for me, for both the site and my book. And while I certainly have my opinions about the ridiculous way in which Microsoft communicated and then deployed this new version of Windows, here I'm taking a more pragmatic stance. I've installed this version of Windows literally hundreds of times now across both physical and virtual machines, have gone down some one-way, dead-end streets, and have made my share of mistakes. So let's discuss that.

First, and perhaps more importantly, Windows 11 is---for perhaps just this brief slice of time---finally in a good place. I feel cheap just writing this, but it's true: The Windows 11 we have today delivers the functional completeness and (with one glorious exception, noted below) reliability and consistency we all a right to expect. It's not perfect. But it is, if not very good, at least acceptable.

It's so easy to forget how bad it was. The first version of Windows 11 (21H2) arrived in incomplete form and with multiple functional regressions when compared to Windows 10, making it a non-starter for businesses and many users. Not helping matters, it also arrived with some egregious and arbitrary hardware requirements, further limiting its appeal.

And then there's the year I'd like to forget, the hectic 12-month slog during which Microsoft piled new features on top of Windows 11 version 22H2 at a frantic rate almost every single month, culminating in the silly and unnecessary confusion of releasing most of its successor's new features a month or two early, albeit only in preview form. Then only to dump the Windows 11 2023 Update---which updates Windows 11 version 22H2 PCs to Windows 11 version 23H2---on us earlier than expected. On Halloween, so perfect.

That the Windows 11 2023 Update has brought its own confusions was perhaps predictable. But I think it's fair to say that most Windows 11 users will be up in running with all the new features soon if they aren't already. And while we may never understand the way they got there---the magical combination of things that had to happen first---this weird time will be in the rearview mirror soon. We'll mostly be aligned from a new features perspective, at least for a while.

But I do have my questions about this thing. I came to Mexico City with two PCs running 23H2 in pre-release form and quickly updated the two PCs that I leave here to 23H2 as well (more on this below). I did this because I'm updating my Windows 11 Field Guide to support this release, and I had a goal of releasing a big 23H2 update for the book before we came home (and I was happy to ac...