The lengthy advertisement for Windows 11 was highlighted by Windows Latest after it installed the optional January update (in preview) on a Windows 10 machine.
Every time I’ve tried to upgrade Windows major versions in place, it’s been a terrible experience. And not on potatoes, either!
From XP to Vista, everything broke. This was long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly how it broke, just that it made my computer unusable and I had to reinstall from CD. I mean, that makes sense though, right? Vista was terrible. From Vista to 7 (on a different machine), I just did a fresh install.
I skipped 8. After that, my Windows 7 machine (a third machine now) kept begging me to upgrade to 10, so I tried it. But even though Microsoft’s own tool told me everything would work just fine, the install was absolutely trash. I was stuck at 1024x768 (on a 16:9 monitor). Performance even with no programs running was so bad—on a machine that could easily run Adobe Premiere and Photoshop simultaneously under Win7—that it took ±30 seconds to open Task Manager. Exactly zero drivers for any USB peripherals worked; I had to dig out my PS/2 keyboard to revert the install.
At this point I must just be out of my mind, because last fall I let Windows 11 install on my Windows 10 computer (a fourth machine). The installation took several hours somehow, and when it was done wifi didn’t work. There were a few other annoyances, like stealing back defaults and reverting my Firefox default on every reboot. Being in no mood to deal with the nonsense, I switched back to Windows 10. And guess what? Wifi was still broken. Windows 11 broke network connectivity on Windows 10.
These were all good computers, and I don’t do anything particularly odd or unusual with them.
I’m never doing an in-place Windows upgrade again. No way, no how. Not gonna happen.
Every time I’ve tried to upgrade Windows major versions in place, it’s been a terrible experience. And not on potatoes, either!
From XP to Vista, everything broke. This was long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly how it broke, just that it made my computer unusable and I had to reinstall from CD. I mean, that makes sense though, right? Vista was terrible. From Vista to 7 (on a different machine), I just did a fresh install.
I skipped 8. After that, my Windows 7 machine (a third machine now) kept begging me to upgrade to 10, so I tried it. But even though Microsoft’s own tool told me everything would work just fine, the install was absolutely trash. I was stuck at 1024x768 (on a 16:9 monitor). Performance even with no programs running was so bad—on a machine that could easily run Adobe Premiere and Photoshop simultaneously under Win7—that it took ±30 seconds to open Task Manager. Exactly zero drivers for any USB peripherals worked; I had to dig out my PS/2 keyboard to revert the install.
At this point I must just be out of my mind, because last fall I let Windows 11 install on my Windows 10 computer (a fourth machine). The installation took several hours somehow, and when it was done wifi didn’t work. There were a few other annoyances, like stealing back defaults and reverting my Firefox default on every reboot. Being in no mood to deal with the nonsense, I switched back to Windows 10. And guess what? Wifi was still broken. Windows 11 broke network connectivity on Windows 10.
These were all good computers, and I don’t do anything particularly odd or unusual with them.
I’m never doing an in-place Windows upgrade again. No way, no how. Not gonna happen.