I take advantage of Home windows 11 day by day. These 6 points want fixing ASAP

Give credit score the place it’s due: Microsoft acknowledged a few of its greatest issues final week, hat in hand. But it surely’s time to leap headfirst into this new environment of openness and encourage Microsoft to take much more motion.

Sure, possibly Microsoft has sufficient on its plate for proper now with its dedication to resolve Home windows’ issues. However there’s much more to do. Listed below are six fast solutions that come to thoughts, with out a lot contemplation.

Did I miss something? Inform me, positive — however attain out to Microsoft your self!

Carry again native accounts

You’re simply not escaping this one, Microsoft. Anonymity and privateness matter greater than ever, and the very last thing some customers need is to need to affiliate themselves with a Microsoft account. PCs are private, and there’s actually no motive that Microsoft must know every little thing about you.

Every time I arrange a brand new PC, I all the time set it up as a novel, particular person gadget. If I would like something from one other PC, I can shortly seize it from there or the cloud. Apps will be arrange by way of WinGet or just downloaded and put in. I’m conscious that Microsoft desires to make my life environment friendly and sync to its companies, however that’s not all the time the way it feels. In any occasion, testing a PC is sophisticated by knowledge syncing backwards and forwards. I typically wish to have a machine that I management, and Microsoft’s accounts complicate that.

OneDrive and Home windows Backup want to sit back

The worst side of tying a PC to an account continues to be OneDrive. I can’t inform you what number of instances OneDrive tries to seize every little thing off my PC’s desktop, backing up a whole lot of gigabytes into the OneDrive cloud — which, in fact, Microsoft desires you to pay for, finally. I’ve complained earlier than that Microsoft is behind the instances in solely providing a measly terabyte of cloud storage. Don’t you assume that it’s time to alter?

Let’s not get distracted, although. Customers ought to be capable to pause, halt, or in any other case take away OneDrive — and people preferences ought to persist after you reboot the PC. I like the flexibility to retailer my knowledge within the cloud, from PC to PC. However OneDrive has no chill. Whereas we’re at it, might we get some deduplication or storage evaluation instruments to assist clear every little thing up?

Mark Hachman / IDG

For that matter, my out-of-the-box expertise is constantly marred by preventing off OneDrive’s cousin, Home windows Backup, which desires to revive different apps and knowledge transferred from a earlier machine by way of the OneDrive Cloud. I can see what Microsoft is doing right here. For a median person, migrating from one PC to a different does require knowledge to shift from one PC to a different, and a software to try this is smart. However…

Make Home windows 11 Professional imply one thing

Greater than half the PCs that come throughout my desk embody Home windows 11 Dwelling. Some embody Home windows 11 Professional, however I hardly ever ever discover. Why? Nothing a few Home windows 11 Professional working system alerts that it’s a Home windows 11 Professional working system. And it might!

Home windows 11 Professional could possibly be the house for native accounts. It could possibly be a light-weight, thinner OS that’s targeted on utility, with higher controls for managing the working methods. A “Professional” PC shouldn’t need to be for an IT division, however an fanatic with larger freedom to tinker and tweak. A Home windows 11 Professional PC already builds in Home windows Sandbox, a solidly skilled characteristic. However comply with my considering right here: Sandbox…isolation. To date, the Sandbox has been used to guard the PC from malware and dodgy websites on the web.

Mark Hachman / IDG

However, Microsoft, you’ve been speaking about this idea of agentic AI. Why not code in assist for brokers in a “Professional” model, and provide the safety of a sandbox, in addition? Give it some thought.

I imply, come on. What number of screens does a right-click menu really need? Certainly you possibly can edit these down into one thing manageable, similar to coding a Taskbar that may be put on the prime of the display.

Severely, it’s like Pitfall or Journey or another Atari 2600 recreation the place you progress from display to display to display. Sooner or later you virtually count on some pixel dragon to swoop in and swallow your cursor.

Mark Hachman / IDG

UI coherence

Perhaps this one is a bridge too far. Home windows all the time begins out on the floor wanting crisp, vivid, and clear. However then you definately seize your rope and your 10-foot pole and begin descending, down into the Management Panel, into file properties menus, deep into networking utilities from the final century. Your torch begins flickering…what lurks at midnight? Gah! Home windows 8’s UI??

Finally, Microsoft goes to have to ascertain a purposeful and aesthetic coherence throughout all of Home windows, not simply the components that odd customers see. The WinUI3 framework, described in Microsoft’s plans to make Home windows quicker, seem to supply one trace at how Microsoft might do it. I hate to counsel (gulp) automating it by way of AI, however one thing must be performed.

Thiago Trevisan / IDG

The advertisements have gotten to go

Let’s assume that Microsoft is certainly going to cut back the quantity of Copilot Copilot Copilot that we see inside Home windows. That also leaves advertisements.

I’ll be sincere: I’ve mentioned earlier than that it advantages customers and Microsoft alike to inform customers about what’s new. Letting customers know of a brand new characteristic is an effective approach to allow them to discover and check out it out, after which either side can resolve whether or not it’s of worth going ahead.

Apps have a built-in feature-discovery technique: a changelog or checklist of recent options that opens when the app launches, after which will be reviewed or shortly dismissed. I perceive that, say, the Settings menu or one thing like Home windows Search would possibly lack that simple discoverability. However what we have to agree on is a few mechanism by means of which these further adjustments are conveyed to the person.

Microsoft

The Ideas app was a method of doing it. Once more, I’d counsel a pop-up — however one which can be simply dismissed and turned off completely. If a person doesn’t wish to be bothered by new options, they shouldn’t need to be — particularly in a Professional configuration.

These aren’t deep ideas by any means. But when Microsoft is taking intention on the most problematic options of Home windows, let’s not neglect about these!