I’m feeling old. And it’s not that I’m all that old, but this past week I realized that I had been doing personal computing for a very long time. I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with Microsoft abandoning support for Windows 10, so the other day I (almost on impulse) bought a new Dell Win 11 desktop. I got it home, connected it to my primary keyboard and mouse, and gave Win 11 a spin.
I honestly don’t understand why Microsoft keeps screwing around with its UIs. The Win 11 desktop is no better than Win 10’s, and in many ways quirky enough to demand close attention to what you’re doing, or trying to do. I’m sure Win 11 has improvements in terms of security and use of resources and other back-of-the-screen stuff, but why the hell do I have to learn the UI all over again?
The biggest question was whether the software I depend on will even run on it. A number of (ok, ancient) utilities refused to run on Windows 7, which will probably always remain my favorite version. So I installed a few significant packages, and they all worked just fine. Plus, the new machine has an SD card slot in the case near the USB ports, which my older (but not ancient) Optiplex 5070 does not. I also found that the new machine did not have a speaker audio port on the back panel. That irritated me at first, but I now understand why it isn’t there. (More on this later.)
As I always do, I popped the side panel and took a look inside, figuring I’d order an M.2 SSD for the empty slot. Except…there was no empty slot. There was one M.2 slot, with a terabyte SSD in it. The machine was misrepresented by a sales person: She said that it had two M.2 slots on it, and one of them was empty. It wasn’t empty. It simply wasn’t there.
And another thing wasn’t there: The machine could not put video into my Samsung 214T 21” 1600 X 1200 4:3 flat monitor, which I bought around 2007. It didn’t support that resolution at all. My Win 10 machine has no trouble with 1600 X 1200. The new Win 11 machine, I discovered, was configured to do a wide-screen 1920 X 1080. I swapped in my only widescreen monitor and boom! There was 1920 X 1080. It would do lower resolutions, but most of those were not 4:3.
By now I was in part disappointed and in part annoyed. My older widescreen monitor is a Dell 22” diagonal and works very well. But it’s not especially large, and I wanted something to make the type larger to reduce eyestrain. I require at least two mass-storage units in my primary machine, so after two days of messing with the Win 11 box, I uninstalled the half-dozen packages I had installed, put it back in its box, and trucked it back to the store. As I expected, they accepted the return, and were very courteous about it. While I was there, I took a close look at a larger Dell monitor, an S2725H. It’s a 27” diagonal, and has almost no bezel around the top and sides. It’s basically all screen but for a small strip on the bottom edge. So I had no trouble fitting it into my computer table setup, which includes the 5070 mini-tower and a laser printer plus other odd junk. It was inexpensive and can display two manuscript pages side by side. Video adjustments are done with a sort of mini-joystick: a little nubbin on the back of the monitor selects which aspect you want to change, followed by a line graph showing how much. Push the nubbin in the right direction and you’re there. Push down on the nubbin to press Enter. Clever, and a lot easier to do than I expected.
My venerable 214T has DVI input, and once I bought my Win 10 machine several years ago (2021?) I needed to use an HDMI to DVI adapter. DVI is long extinct. Desktops are now either DisplayPort or HDMI. (Or in some cases, both.) What I guess I knew in the back of my head but didn’t think about in terms of personal computers is that HDMI (and DisplayPort) carry sound as well as video. And yup, inside that new monitor is a pair of formidable hi-fidelity speakers. Heretofore I had used a cheap set of mini-speakers that sounded, well, cheap and small. Once I played several classical MP3s and some videos into the new monitor, the sound was terrific compared to what had been.
So there was no little green audio jack in the back panel of the Win 11 machine. It had a headphone jack on the front panel, but all the speaker audio went out through HDMI.
I learned a few things in this recent adventure:
- Don’t buy a computer on impulse. Research the hell out of it before you slap down your credit card. Dell, at least, has all of its manuals available for free download as PDFs. Look for machines that appeal to you and then go through their manuals. Repeat until you find what you like the most, and will do the jobs you need it to do.
- A lot of monitors, by now probably most of them, contain stereo speakers. Audio comes out the same cable video does.
- 4:3 monitors, like rear-panel audio jacks, are extinct.
- Win 11 is inevitable, as much as I’d prefer it to be seriously evitable.
I’m still wrassling with the last point. I suspect I will run a full backup on the 5070 sometime soon and install 11 on it. It does what I need it to do. I only hope and pray that Win 11 won’t hide anything important or paint me into any corners. We’ll see.
Jeff, as I’m a fairly hard-core penguinista, have to ask how many of the software packages you use are available (or readily replaceable…) under Linux, and whether that even came into consideration as an option for your Win 10 laptop.
It was a consideration. I have a decent SFF Dell machine with Mint on it, which I used for updating my assembly book back for 64 bits in 2022-23. However, I’ve been using MS Office and InDesign for a lot of years now and don’t much feel like learning Linux-based alternatives. That said, I need to be familiar with Windows 11 because it’s ubiquitous. It occurred to me last night that I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the Windows UI. Most of the time I spend in this chair I’m looking at Office, InDesign, web browsers (of which I have several), email, Visio, Google maps, or other full-screen things.
I’m also looking at the new open-source version of Classic Shell, which I’ve been using since Win 7. It jiggers the Windows UI to look more like older versions, and after using it for ten years without issues, I’m going to try it on Win 11. For those who haven’t heard of it, this is now Open Shell:
https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/
If Open Shell can make Win 11 look more like Win 10 or even Win 7, it’s a slam-dunk. Take a look.
Win7 is the latest version of Windows I use. I hate the forced upgrades and pointless relearning.
I use linux when I can, but so many programs only come in Windows versions, or require too much extra time to figure out how to find or make a linux version.
I want to be a tool USER, not a tool maker or tool re-learner.
Same here. I am considering getting a couple of Windows 10 refurbs for things that HAVE to use windows. Trying to move as much as I can to linux.
Been working with these beasts since 1971 mainframes and IMHO Windows has gotten worse since Windows 7
The issue you raise is a good one: The software may belong to some big coporation, but the skills I have in dealing with that software belong to ME. There was no need for Windows 11 but we’re kind of stuck with it for the sake of security.
I’ve been using the Avast antivirus suite for a few years. It still works with Win7, and is (hopefully) keeping me safe from malware. It certainly reports a lot of blocked viruses, tracking attempts, and other malware.
I have been living with Windows 11 for work for a few years now, and Windows 10 at home. I’m not looking forward to retraining my family to use 11 on the main computer when I upgrade it. But, the biggest change is the start menu is centered on the bottom, but it can be switched to the left side where early GUI designers realized it made sense to have it.
Other quirks for me are largely solved by the fact that since windows 7 I’ve started loading programs by either pinning the icons to the task bar or hitting the windows button and typing their name. 95% of the time that just works and I’m focusing on the application again.
Best of luck with whatever your next steps are.
My main objection to Windows 8 and later is that Microsoft has redone almost every part to look like it is a cellphone “app”. Yes, I remember that Microsoft once wanted to get into the phone market, but that was long ago, and there’s no reason to use a crippled “touch” style interface when you have a mouse.
Windows 11 Update is a pestilence. I have used VirtualBox for 16 years now, but just after 1/1/2025, a Windows Update on Windows 11 broke the screen interface for VirtualBox. It still ran, and still showed the guest OS, but the maximum resolution on the guest OS was 1024×768. My Win11 laptop has a 2560×1600 screen, so I was left with an essentially unusable VirtualBox system.
Meanwhile, on my Windows 10 desktop machine, VirtualBox continued to work just fine, and therefore became my only option for using VBox.
Along the way, I engaged in conversations with the generally helpful VBox community, where no one had any solution. In July, I tried a query on Grok — currently the most reliable AI engine I have tried — and it suggested a number of steps using the VBoxManage command line app. Lo and behold, I got the video working properly! Unfortunately, the changes made in those steps did not persist after the next VBox update, I also filed a support ticket with Oracle, but it was never updated.
In mid-August, a new release of VBox was published which finally resolved the problem.
I am reminded of a similar situation many years ago. I was a fan of HomeSite for web site design. It was inexpensive and a joy to use. This was on Win95, I think And then one day it no longer worked. Specifically, the visual design was no longer operational. MS had “updated” one or more DLLs critical to HomeSite, removing support for functions on which HomeSite depended,
Another item: In August, I received notice that MS would renew my subscription to Office 365. I did not want to renew, so logged into my account to opt out. Despite much searching, I found no mechanism to cancel the renewal. Instead, I removed the credit card from my account, A few weeks later, they renewed it anyway, charging the card I had used before,
A final anecdote: A few years ago, I retired a desktop machine, using it to replace my wife’s then rather decrepit PC. The only problem I could not resolve was that Windows 10 was registered to me, In their great wisdom,, it seems that MS considers a phone number to be a wonderful primary key, I lack the words to describe just how horribly stupid that is. That machine had been registered with a phone number which was no longer available, Their “solution” to that problem is to require the user to provide a collection of personal info then wait 30 days (!!!) and log into another link where it will then be possible to make the change, Seriously?
I am very seriously considering a move to Linux Mint, which is very easy to use, and also well supported by the user community, I can use VBox on Linux to run my collection of VMs.
I am so done with MS.
OK, in fairness, let me add that I shudder to imagine the complexity of managing the development of Windows.
However, MS do seem to enjoy shooting their toes off. So much tinkering with things which are not broken. And a surprising measure of what seems to be ignorance with respect to making capricious changes to a TOOL (Windows) on which people rely.
It is decidedly NOT a feature to find one day that the UI has been significantly altered. Or that Outlook, for example, is now replaced by the New Outlook, an item which immediately calls to mind the New Coke.
Therein lies my dissatisfaction with Office, as well. The “improvements” made in recent years have resulted in confusion over where to find features which i use infrequently. I really don’t want a tool to become an adventure,
“ The machine could not put video into my Samsung 214T 21” 1600 X 1200 4:3 flat monitor, ”
I also have a Samsung 214 T. I bought a mini PC at Amazon for about $140 to play around with windows 11. I connected my Samsung to it with my HDMI to DVI cable. it works fine. I can even set it to portrait mode, which is my favorite orientation. It looks like your problem is more to do with the hardware on your Dell and not generic to Windows 11.
You’re right about that–but it remains more than a little bit of mystery. I’ll be doing a whole ‘nother entry on this topic in a few more days, once I wrestle the rest of it to the ground. Stay tuned.
Am I the only one who misses the intuitive UI of WinXP?
Ah, but “intuitive” means it works like something you’ve used before. WinXP made sense for people raised on previous GUIs. But for people raised on a smartphone interface, it is hopelessly confusing. A computer UI that works like a phone is “intuitively obvious” to them.