Windows 11
Windows 11 is Microsoft's second stab at an operating system since Bill Gates ditched Redmond for greener pastures. Having slunk out of its labs in 2021 (albeit not after a series of leakages), the OS is the latest product of the tech giant's ongoing psychological experiment to see how many times they can redesign the Start menu before the public starts waving pitchforks. Having already tested the waters of public tolerance with the unholy Start menu purge of Windows 8, Microsoft started to double down and settled on centering the Start menu and implementing an option to reposition it back to its original locus in the taskbar settings so as to stave off a mass exodus of folk to the wilds of Linux.
Billed as the heir to Windows 10, an OS Microsoft once swore on their pyres would be its last much like Hollywood's quondam insistence that Shrek Forever After would end up being the ogre's final swamp romp, Windows 11 lumbered onto the scene clad in pillowy, rounded corners and an only slightly less glossier interface than the glassy-eyed optimism of Vista and 7.
Release[edit | edit source]
Similarly to its predecessor, Windows 11 was bestowed by Microsoft upon the masses as a free upgrade, provided of course that said masses were already in possession of hardware forged no earlier than the late Holocene, complete with arcane relics such as TPM 2.0, UEFI firmware and the blessed Secure Boot incantation. This bold maneuver was widely perceived as a way of gently coaxing, cajoling and eventually forcing users against their own will into discarding their creaky, carbon-dusted Lenovo ThinkPads running Windows 7 in favor of newer, shinier, telemetry-ready vessels of commerce before Steam eventually drops support for any device still clinging to a DVD drive in the big '21, where by then Netflix had already declared optical media a war crime.
The integration of installation assistants into all Windows 10 devices culminated in users who had been beaten into submission by years on end of update notifications clicking "Accept" before fully realizing they had agreed to trade their autonomy for auto-updates, forced reboots and a mandatory Microsoft Store account just so they could access Minesweeper and Solitaire.
New features[edit | edit source]
Microsoft Copilot[edit | edit source]
Launched in 2023, Copilot serves as Microsoft's hottest new probing sidekick since Cortana was left in the lurch for flunking in its endeavour to vie against Siri in terms of virtual assistant surveillance superiority at the same point in time that the AI revolution engendered by ChatGPT was taking the globe by storm.
Initially introduced as a built-in Edge feature, its raison d'être was ostensibly to aid Grandma in parsing whether the ominous headline she encountered on the MSN homepage was in fact a ruse wrought by dark UX wizards to funnel them, like lambs to monetization, into the sacrificial altar of the Microsoft Store. However, what was known "Bing Chat" back then got tipsy on its own metrics and concluded that "market share" meant having a divine mandate to colonize Notepad, Paint, the taskbar, the brightness slider, the shopping list (now filled with monthly Office 365 subscriptions galore) Grandma eventually became too idle-boned to write, and before long, Windows 11 in its entirety.
Spyware[edit | edit source]
Following in the footsteps of Cortana, who was caught eavesdropping on users' karaoke sessions, and Clippy, who knew a user's Word document's every typo to a T, Copilot takes Windows 11's spyware game to new heights.[2] Lurking in every OS crevice, it logs a minor percentage of sickos' Edge searches for "Postman Pat Rule 34" while pitching a 34 million-word porn fanfic established in a post-Brexit sorting facility, supposedly to tank their job prospects with HR-unfriendly prose. Browser histories zip to Satya Nutella's data-hoarding drug den faster than gossip at a tabloid press, all cloaked as "enhanced experiences".
Microsoft, apparently deciding subtlety is for Mac users, unveiled Copilot+ PCs in 2024, swanky excuses for laptops with Neural Processing Units (NPUs) buzzing like overworked interns to run AI tasks. Enter "Recall", a feature sold as a so-called "photographic memory" built by executives to assist the demented and chronically alt-tabbed in tracking down their PIN code assuming they can somehow log in without the need for a post-it note with said password scribed onto it in the first place. It snaps screenshots every few seconds, storing them in an allegedly encrypted local database for AI searches, but then again it also captures every Postman Pat porn fanfic draft, bank statement or private chat unless apps or sites are manually excluded.
Widgets[edit | edit source]
Implemented into Windows 11 as a persistent left-panel reminder of the user's geographic location and the meteorological indignities associated with it, Widgets are especially convenient during screen sharing sessions; whether in a job interview on Microsoft Teams[3] or, more realistically, during a three-hour Discord call with online friends (provided said user believes there exists such a thing) who never asked to know that it's 57°F and mostly cloudy in Sioux City but now know and cannot un-know. It is kudos to Widgets that one's locality is a mere accidental screen share away from being pinned in #announcements for the whole server to see and examine.
Widgets occupy a left-pand pane dedicated to micro-curated miscellany such as hourly weather for a location that is occasionally correct, sports scores from teams the user has never expressed interest in, and finance tickers tracking currencies that have not existed since the Maastricht Treaty. Hovering over the innocuous weather icon with the cursor reveals this here tableau, alongside rotating headlines from MSN and sponsored content modules that treat Candy Crush Saga and Block Blast as urgent breaking news.
Integration of Microsoft Teams[edit | edit source]
To save users from having to install Zoom as a backup (and thereby risk exposure to fully functional software), Microsoft made the executive decision to integrate not one, but two entirely separate versions of their "Microsoft Teams" application, the christened successor to Skype that has long since taken up residence in every crevice of a device running Office 365 that is especially set to automatically open on startup by default in order for more of that succulent keyboard activity to be recorded and tracked with the finest of precision, directly into Windows 11; one version for personal affairs, and the other for enterprise suffering, i.e., professional communications.
These two versions, although both inexplicably named "Microsoft Teams" and marked by the same double-dreidel logo and vague disdain for UI responsiveness, they are spiritually distinct. The personal Teams app is light-weight, pre-installed, and impossible to uninstall without engaging in ritual registry purging. It idles in the background until summoned by accident (nine times out of ten via a rogue taskbar click) with the sole function of reminding users that nobody has ever voluntarily used Teams for leisure. By contrast, the work version arrives via Microsoft 365 installations and boasts enterprise-grade bloat including a baffling meme emoji ecosystem especially organized in an attempt at pandering to the younglings.
Removal of Internet Explorer and Skype[edit | edit source]
Internet Explorer was never so much a browser as it was an adequate tool for downloading Firefox, hand-coded in 1997 and duct-taped together by Microsoft through every Windows instalment. With the advent of Windows 11, however, Internet Explorer has been formally and finally removed. Not hidden, not deprecated; removed, wiped off the face of the system as though it owed a share of shekels to itself. Attempts to launch the application now result in an immediate redirection to Microsoft Edge, a browser introduced in 2015 as Microsoft's long-awaited challenger to Google Chrome. Since then, Edge has been fully integrated into Windows 10 (for as long as it remains relevant) and Windows 11. Microsoft got so keen to compete that after an intense edging session among executives Nutella got carried away and abandoned Internet Explorer's legacy in favor of Chrome's very DNA, Chromium.
Likewise, Skype was given the boot on May 5, 2025, four years after the COVID-19 pandemic halted during which teachers paved the way for more mental harassment of their students via Microsoft Teams. This shift proved particularly vexing for PE teachers, who found remote sessions a poor substitute for more physical and in-person coaching.
Increased hardware requirements[edit | edit source]
Windows 11 demands a TPM 2.0 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, UEFI firmware with Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, and DirectX 12 compatible graphics with a WDDM 2.0 driver. Older rigs get a shove to upgrade or cling to Windows 10 until its slated 2025 sunset; by then they will be shelved like dusty, crusty, schlusty floppy disks. So, if the dream involves dodging bloatware by installing a fresh, lean copy of Windows XP on that trusty Lenovo IdeaPad, tough bloody luck. Whispers on the tech grave pine suggest that with the looming release of Windows 12, devices running it might block Linux installations entirely, cementing Satya Nutella's monopoly dreams like a digital dictator hoarding all the bandwidth for the empire of Edge.
See also[edit | edit source]
Footnotes[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Microsoft was likely inspired by Burger King whose retro-minimalist rebrand predated Windows 11's reveal by months.
- ↑ Seriously, what is it with Microsoft and implementing spyware virtual assistants that begin with C into their operating systems?
- ↑ Regardless of whether or not one is ultimately hired, that is.
