Windows 11 😲: the major, major go.!
“If you don’t jump on the new, you don’t survive.” — Satya Nadella
In the past, I have been a Windows Insider preview user for a few years. Before switching to Mac os, my excitement towards windows insider updates was unmatched. This wasn’t too surprising because it was just improving a few bugs and adding some new features. It is a revamp of Windows 11 that will make the biggest difference. Indeed, Windows 11 is not an ordinary update. Instead, it is the ultimate metamorphosis.
Last week I was able to install the windows insider preview with the latest update parallels 17(a virtual machine) and have since maintained it and thought I would share my experience. As soon as the update was installed, it showed a lot of beauty over the design. In the same way, Samsung bought resolution with one UI, Windows 11 will be similar. Throughout this article, I will mainly focus on the user experience associated with simple and minimalistic interfaces.
Improvements and changes
Just take a look at the desktop, It looks so elegant with its tiny icons. As compared to the old taskbar with large icons occupying only the left side, this made more sense, even though users had options, but they weren’t being used as much. Using this desktop for a prolonged period of time is now more compelling to the regular user as well.
Calendar windows are separated from the notification panel here, actually, this little bit of difference is quite significant when it comes to using it. We can close the panel that isn’t required, and it also provides an easier way of organizing notifications rather than stacking them one on top of the other. Again, it’s all about beauty, elegance, and simplicity. Their goal was to make everything as neat and clean as possible. Furthermore, the wallpapers in Windows 11 were also really cool, yes, Microsoft made a big leap.
I liked how the start panel looks, On the left side, you can see the user’s profile picture and on the right, there is the power button icon which lets us restart, sleep, and shut down the computer. The revamped UI makes it easier for users to keep track of their most frequently used apps by pinning them on top instead of scrolling. Search, however, works as usually. Icons in particular look extremely attractive.
As you can see, right-click options are pretty well arranged with icons beside them. Furthermore, they keep the option to show more choices at the bottom of the menu. The reason why it makes sense is that, on average, users tend to go with the most popular choices. In the picture it appears that there are no copies or paste options, rather there is a copy icon, which I highlighted hovering. When you select a piece of information to copy, the paste icon will become available. That illustrates how Microsoft makes an effort to provide its users with a more sophisticated and seamless experience.
There were no changes to the vertical scrolling search bar, which displayed applications alphabetically. It’s sufficient for the user, and the icons placed left of the title on right speak for themselves. However, all of the apps panels appear to be aligned at the center, which is very interesting because it gives more room for notifications.
Widgets are available in Windows 11, and they can be customized based on the user’s needs. These are useful for giving a summary of topics we need to stay current about. You can get all the necessary feeds here, like stock markets, sports updates, weather, to-do tasks, etc. Anyway, it will make the user feel like they are using a sticky note for their feed.
Taking a look at the image in dark mode, yes, the settings panel also looks pretty appealing. Since I do not have an official Windows license, I am limited in the features I can use. However, the padding and margins of each option are nice. When it becomes palatable for the users, it is worthwhile to try something new. Besides the wallpapers, they have also added some new ones that will vary with time. This insider preview so far has impressed me.
I will share a lot of my experiences after I have been using it for a month in my next article. The reason I did not mention performance or battery is that it is running in a VM inside a Mac os, so commenting on performance would have been pointless. Despite assigning only 4GB of RAM to windows 11, I did not notice a leak in my battery or any performance issues. And finally, kudos to all the team members who contributed greatly toward creating such a spectacular product. for windows users — cheers😊
Thank you to all my dear readers, please feel free to leave feedback or suggestions & a virtual clap won’t make you exhausted😇 — Narendra Janapati
