Windows has been a part of our lives for decades now whether we like it or not
since we left humble Windows 3.1 behind we've been on a constant cycle of good
and bad releases of Windows like check this out Windows 95 good 98 bad 98 SE
good me bad XP good Vista bad seven good
eight bad 10 good 11
huh what will 11 be that's a bit of a
difficult question to answer on one hand it looks a lot like 10 on the other
there are far more changes than we originally thought so today I'm going to
take you on my personal tour of the Windows 11 beta and show you everything
I think is cool as well as everything
that's not but first let's take a look
at this video's sponsor zoha projects thanks to Zoho for sponsoring today's
video Zoho projects is a project management tool that has everything you
need for your business and integrates with your favorite apps get a 30-day
trial of their Enterprise Edition by using the link in the video
description sure most of the changes in Windows 11 appear superficial and in
many ways they are but when there are enough superficial changes eventually
that coalesces into something much bigger so let's talk UI our first look
at the updated fluent UI was a very incomplete one and while that old leak
did have the fancy new rounded window Corners it was running in a virtual
machine and Not only was the performance bad the UI clearly still resembled
Windows 10 not So Much Anymore the start
menu is significantly more polished now and far from laggy search which has a
dedicated bar in the start menu now is ridiculously quick so no waiting a
second or two for Windows to catch up with what you typed it's pretty much instantaneous
the dedicated space for pinned and recommended apps hasn't changed and now
that live tiles are gone it should make pinning apps a lot more straightforward
than it used to be in Windows 8 and onward I swear I've seen this menu
layout in Linux before though in case you don't like it there are already
third party Replacements popping up so don't worry too much about that anyway
the all apps button on the top right brings you to an alphabetical listing of
all the apps on your system just like the start menu does by default today
folders at least for now still seem to
work as they do in Windows 10 but
Microsoft says that they're going to be removing folders entirely from the start
menu for the final release the taskbar
itself yes it's centered however you can
change that by right clicking on it and clicking on taskbar settings though
you'll note that right clicking no longer gives you any window controls
task manager or toolbars to play with and you can't change the position that's
located on screen either I'm sorry no more vertical taskbar for you Aime you
can also turn on and off the dedicated search button which despite it being the
same thing as the start menu search is actually kind of useful now because it gives you recent search results as you
hover over it that's pretty cool you can
also turn on and off the integrated teams chat and the widget panel button
speaking of the widgets panel that's a thing they made a big deal about it but
frankly I don't see it being all that useful
by default you've got your weather your money your sports and your news but I'd
haard to Guess that most people aren't using Microsoft services for those there
doesn't seem to be a way to personalize it outside of Microsoft Services there's
no there's no widget store so basically the only way to
manage your Newser interests is to go to
MSN your mileage May vary here hopefully
Microsoft allows third party widgets to exist here too otherwise I see it being
completely overlooked by almost everyone sort of like that news interest button
that Windows 10 recently got notification center meanwhile has been
significantly updated with a very Apple like view of Stacked Cards that includes
the calendar as well as your notifications the controls that used to
live here like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth toggles now live in the same area as the
network and audio icons in the system tray which is now called taskbar corner
I guess and they similarly slide in as cards including controls for any media
that's currently playing like Windows 10 you can choose which quick settings are
visible here if for example you want a keyboard layout
switcher there it is unlike Windows 10
right clicking on most objects in the OS the desktop included now brings up a new
glassy context menu with bigger more spaced out items with uh this show more
options button here which uh
just chose the old Windows context menu
uh you can't win them all I guess that's going to be interesting for people with
say seven zip in their right click menu who now are going to have to make
extensive use of this show more options
button have fun with that but hey it's not all bad in folder views there's now
an open in Windows terminal item a feature that I you legit use in Linux
all the time it's a nice touch Windows terminal by the way is is a brand new
app it's Hardware accelerated and it can run any kind of command prompt at all in
a tabbed interface keeping your workspace yeah a little bit more
manageable than it has been in the past where Windows 10 only has Powershell and
command prompt and these are available here as well you can add your own here
we go we can use any command line we want so if I had bash for example with
subsystem for Linux that would work here too oh and like many Linux terminal
emulators it can detect URLs and make them clickable this is all pretty sweet
if you ask me and long overdue File Explorer has been completely redesigned
with a simplified UI that only has the most common features right there on the
top bar it's not a ribbon anymore instead Contex sensitive options like
formatting or optimizing drives and mapping Network shares live in this see
more menu and incidentally map network drive isn't an option in the rightclick
menu anymore much too much suarin there's no rightclick control to
customize the top panel either at least not yet but the familiar options window
is still there so you can tweak how everything works almost all the options
here are the same as in Windows 10 but there's one standout setting decrease
space between items AKA compact view you
can also toggle this on the main bars view menu and what this does is restore
the old views for lists details and small
icons wait old views yep by default
Windows 11 adds extra spacing to these views including on the sidebar
presumably to make touch inputs less frustrating it's an interesting approach
to be sure but it's probably going to annoy you at first unlike our new water
bottle Lids super slick and you get a 50% discount if you buy it with or
already own an LTT water bottle at LT store.com what may also annoy you are
the new folder icons seriously they look like they were taken from a random Linux
theme with how mismatched the colors and iconography are not only that but the
indicator that a folder contains files is much smaller now being an itsy bitsy
sliver of white next to the folders tab
sure it looks neater and is more realistic I guess but it's tougher to
make out of the glance because rather than looking for a shape you're now
looking for contrast and the icons are already pretty bright so good luck with
that not only that but that also means you don't get any icon previews of files
in a folder as you do on Windows 10 I
can't say I'm a fan of of that and not all apps got the same makeovers that
Explorer and the terminal have either notepad is still as basic as ever and if
you dig around enough you'll find apps that date back to Windows 3.1 complete
with 16 color icons the old school
control panel is still hanging out here too if you look for it although unlike
the phone dialer they did give it new icons to Microsoft's credit there is
more functionality in the new Settings app than ever before so chances are you
won't need to dig through the old control panel as often as you used to
crucial toggles to enable and disable network adapters have been added to the
new Advanced network settings Pane and you can get all the relevant status info
here too it still opens up the old school network connections window if you
need to make any changes to the adapters themselves though or do anything fancy
like bridging there are a few other goodies in here like being able to restrict app access to download folders
as well as all the existing controls for documents pictures Etc and all of this
is laid out in a much easier to navigate selection of submenus than the sometimes
labyrinthine settings menu in Windows 10 it's still there it's just a lot easier
to navigate IMO even the system overview
that frankly isn't that useful in Windows 10 got an overhaul now showing
you the status of Office 365 one drive and Windows update the display section
got a significant overhaul too now multiple displays are hidden behind a
menu rather than having display Arrangement panel front and center like
if you have a single monitor why do you need it scale and resolution are higher up on the list of most items although I
would prefer the refresh rate to be adjustable here too rather than being
hidden under the advanced display settings to be fair I guess for most
people that really is an advanced setting so I guess I'll give it a pass
HDR though that has its own section that comes before all the others no longer a
little link hidden among all the other stuff the menu itself isn't
significantly different but it does include the auto HDR setting which we'll
get to later for now if we go back to the advanced display settings pane
you'll see that Microsoft has added lines about the HDR certification and
Peak brightness of your display which is is such a nice quality of life thing for
troubleshooting it really feels like HDR is finally becoming a first class
feature and it's About Time come on Linux time to pick up the pace it's not
to say that all the settings app changes are good changing your default browser
has become significantly more difficult now with the removal of common app types
like web browsers mail readers and media players instead now you have to change
the Handler for every link type and file type
individually which
Microsoft buddy listen this used to be a
criticism of Linux why do you want to make it a criticism of Windows where the
logical conclusion is that you're doing it so that people will finally give up
and use Edge it's all well and good that you want to give people more granular
control but as userfriendly as this UI is I don't want to spend 5 minutes
adjusting all of these settings every time I switch to using a new app can you
imagine what the new set is default browser prompts are going to look
like speaking of imagining how things look well using Windows 11 one of the
things you'll notice is that even apps that aren't designed around Windows 11's
rounded Corners design well they've got rounded Corners even things with custom
skins like steam this hasn't been a problem for me
yet but I guess we'll have to see if it reacts poorly to certain types of
Windows like skinned media players for example
what people still use those right Windows 11 is less consistent with other
Design Elements though it's still jarring to be in dark mode and load up a
classic app like notepad or device manager and see that it's still using
the old school Windows UI where even the title bar doesn't fit the new look at
least touch users should appreciate how much easier it is to drag stuff around
thanks to the larger touch targets as well as the new touchscreen gestures and
better auto rotation with SNAP Windows the new touch keyboard resembles most
mobile keyboards in both standard and small mode right down to the Emoji and
tener GIF button interestingly there's also classic emotes in camoji here
though while categorized these aren't searchable like Emoji are man these
classic asy emoticons bring back memories oh well what's
this Holy balls this video's gone on for
how long and I've only talked about the new UI see what I mean about lots of
superficial changes coming together to make something much more substantial the
crazy part is I'm not even done yet at virtual desktops got a lot of love and
you can set them up almost as completely different workspaces with unique
wallpaper and snap louts but what are snap layouts these let you create window
layouts like how you've been able to do since Windows 7 but with far more
flexibility than we've seen to date and thanks to the snap groups feature these
layouts can be saved and restored when you connect an external display for
example snap groups keep these layouts in a single place on the taskbar so it
can be minimized and maximized wholesale you can kick this P process off by
either dragging your window to the side of the screen as usual or by hovering
over a Windows maximize button and selecting a layout you need a 1920 pixel
wide display in order to access these triple snap layouts but overall this
whole feature set is a serious Improvement for not just laptop users
but anyone whose desktop layout randomly
shifts when their monitors go to sleep like mine my workstation monitors do
that to me all the time I use a program called czer to shuffle Windows around
but this could mean I no longer need it now all I need is alt dragging
integrated into Windows I Can Dream right overall though
the UI feels much smoother and more responsive than Windows 10 and a lot of
that probably boils down to faster smoother animations particularly in
modern UI apps but even something as small as launching file explorer feels
more responsive than it does on Windows 10 and aside from potential
optimizations under the hood and what Microsoft calls a new storage stack mys
ipon is that Windows 11 is leaning on its heavier RAM requirement in order to
more aggressively cash recently and frequently used programs I don't have
any solid proof of this however now let's talk new features running Android
apps is the big one many people are looking forward to but unfortunately
I've got nothing to tell you about them cuz they haven't been enabled in Windows
11 yet not even by downloading the APK
files manually I I did try the Microsoft store looks pretty much like it does in
Windows 10 right now so presumably once that gets updated we'll be able to get a
peek at how this all will work for now we'll just have to hurry up and wait I
suppose the other big headliner feature is direct storage although it's no
longer Windows 11 exclusive direct storage basically accelerates the
loading of textures and assets into your graphics cards memory without having to
bother with the CPU at all so the CPU is free to do its own thing it makes things
a lot faster or at least it should we
just don't know yet what it will supposedly be in Windows 11 is faster
than it will be on Windows Windows 10 as a result of that new storage stack
although again how this works in practice is anyone's guess because we
don't have a baseline for how it runs on Windows 10 yet either once game
supported we'll be checking it out so make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss it there are some features we
can test today and the big one is auto HDR this debuted on the Xbox serieses
and as the name suggests this requires an HDR Monitor and can automatically
generate HDR metadata for SDR games running DirectX 11 or 12 it works by
generating a heat map for high intensity pixel and translating that into extra
brightness data that can be displayed as though it were HDR the effect is
honestly shockingly good it doesn't Crush blacks or blow out whites and it
doesn't feel like the color space is artificially extended like in some
scenes the HDR effect doesn't look any different from SDR at all but in others
the difference is night and day and this is going to be what makes people keep HDR enabled instead of toggling it on
and off all the time it's not quite on the same level of native HDR supporting
games but it's it's pretty dang impressive nonetheless
this split screen effect by the way is unique to the beta version of Windows 11
and it's hidden behind a registry key frankly I think they should put a toggle
in the HDR settings page so people can test their games and displays but what
do I know Windows 11 is expected to launch sometime in the holiday season
current rumors suggest October and when it does you've got a bit of prep work to
do before you can upgrade we've already done a dedicated video on how to install
Windows 11 but the short version is that you'll need to enable your systems
trusted platform module either physical or built into your firmware and you'll
need to enable secure boot without these prerequisites the official installation
methods won't allow you to proceed because these features together allow
for a significant security Improvement this security which can be enabled in
Windows 10 as well by enabling your TPM and secure boot is also why Microsoft
isn't officially supporting Intel's kbl link or AMD's ryzen 1000 processors
those CPUs lack the instructions necessary to do this security and
Hardware meaning you'll take a performance hit here are the full
official system requirements in case you were curious we've marked everything
that can be worked around with an asterisk the upgrade is going to be free
for all current Windows 10 users just like Windows 10 was free for Windows 7
and 8 users but we still don't know if it'll cost anything for New builds if it
does presumably it'll be the same price as Windows 10 right now which is 109 for
home and 149 for pro but should you
upgrade if you've got a very recent PC
and you can't bear the thought of leaving Windows chances are yes but if
not or if you just don't want to until the bugs are ironed out Windows 10 is
going to stick around until October 2025 which should give you plenty of time to
weigh your options and plenty of time for this segue to our sponsor Micro
Center thanks Microcenter for sponsoring this video you can get the best prices
and selection on anything Tech at any one of microcenter's 25 locations across
the United States if you use microcenter's custom PC Builder you can
spec out the best PC at any price point and once you're done in the PC Builder
just add your computer and setup to the the Microcenter custom build showcase
which is a great place for people to gather and discuss each other's builds
and get inspiration for their next PC so don't wait head to the link in the video
description to check out Microcenter and get a coupon code for a free pair of
wireless bluetooth headphones thanks for watching guys go check out our recent
video on how to install Windows 11 for a little more on those workarounds I
mentioned and uh see some of these changes for yourself