WINDOWS 11, WHAT DO WE KNOW SO FAR?

Everything We Know About Windows 11

Hey fellow readers, so Windows 11 unveiled and let’s talk about the key features of this new operating system. Without further ado, let's talk about the 4 main features of Windows 11, Let's get started...

1. The Visual Design

So, this windows 11 aesthetic has more of a glassy, very transparent like look, much like the early windows vista look. All icons and windows have rounded corners, which is actually aesthetically pleasing, the tiles have a more modern look to them. And, all taskbar icons are now centered, unlike all previous left-sided windows buttons and other icons. This is super cool, to be honest, I always centered my taskbar icons. Now the start menu icon is also centered. I love symmetry and symmetry is everything. More importantly, this version is touch friendly for tablets and other touch screen laptops. 

The next useful feature is window management, so apparently, you can select window snap presets for all your tabs to manage them simultaneously. Also, you know when we connect our laptops to an external monitor and working with several tabs and when disconnected from the monitor all tabs unpredictably appear on the laptop screen. Now, in windows 11 it minimizes and will not mess with the tabs, Windows will remember the placement. Which is actually very useful for users with external monitors. 

2. Gaming on Windows 11

All productivity stuff aside, what about gaming improvements in windows 11? Well, they made two major upgrades to the gaming experience.

The first one is Microsoft said that when gaming on windows 11 it can automatically convert SDR content to HDR, which is called Auto HDR in the presentation. Microsoft has been trying to pull off HDR for a while now and previous implementations were not that much good. We will see how they manage to implement the Auto HDR feature in windows 11.

The next feature for gaming is the "Direct Storage Support", which basically means previously, games bogged down CPU when loading assets to the graphic card. But in new windows 11, games can access quickly to load assets to the graphic card without loading the CPU, which will technically be able to provide a better gaming experience without long loading times. This feature was used in their X box consoles and it is very refreshing to see in PC gaming too. Nice job Microsoft.   

3. Other Improvements

So, what are the other improvements in Windows 11? The main headlining feature is now windows can run android apps natively, kind of. Yeah, you heard it right. But here’s the thing, to download an android app for the first time, Windows users need to go to the Microsoft store, then download the Amazon app store, and create an Amazon account then you can download Android apps to your Windows device. It’s not smooth rt? There’s much more friction to this process. They mentioned that it works using intel bridge technology. 

As you can see this is kind of like a drug dealer situation, rt?? They are saying oh do you want an android app? Well, I know a guy who knows a guy and you can deal with him to get it. Anyway, it's cool to see we can run android apps from windows without using blue stacks or any virtual machines. I don’t think all android apps gonna work well with windows since it is not developed for windows, there may be some issues. I think Microsoft has a long-term goal, if the android app developers see the potential in windows they might develop apps directly for windows someday.

And another improved function is now the voice typing can punctuate for you, unlike previous attempts. I use voice typing in word, and it’s like this. It can detect what we’re saying really well but no punctuations here. But in the new Windows 11 voice typing has this punctuating feature which is very helpful in my opinion. 

And there are some widgets customized to your needs, I really don’t like the widgets Microsoft provide. We will see if this time it gets better.

Another feature is now Windows 11 already integrated with the Teams App directly. And surprisingly Skype is also belonging to Microsoft, they bought it several years ago, but the Microsoft teams app is actually good for professional use and can manage teams as it says in the title. But I think Microsoft is trying to expand and integrate teams for more casual usage. When looking at their presentation it is obvious, but the thing is many other apps can do it better sometimes. Like facetime, now people can send links to join a facetime call from a windows device or android device, zoom, google duo. There are plenty of apps to choose from, but this integration might help windows users to be more familiar with the Teams app. I guess we already know Skype sucks and Microsoft also knows it too.

4. System Requirements

System requirements for Windows 11 is a little bit confusing, but according to their website,

• It requires the secure boot feature

• 64-bit processor with 2 or more CPU cores.

• 4 GB RAM

• 64GB or more storage drive

• The graphic card should support Direct X 12 or later with WDDM2.0 driver

And there are compatibility checking tools available to see whether your device is supporting windows 11 or not. This windows 11 will come as an update for windows 10 users or they can buy the operating system directly.

Finally, this new Windows 11 operating system is not a huge upgrade from the previous windows 10. But incremental updates are good because sometimes big updates can ruin the entire experience for the user, and these early versions seem to be very stable according to most users. Microsoft has a track record of delivering good and bad operating systems for windows. Like, Windows XP was good, Windows Vista was terrible, Windows 7 was great, windows 8 not so much, windows 10 was good, will see about how windows 11 performs. They might break the pattern this time. So, yeah that’s windows 11 for you. I think we pretty much covered all important parts of the announcement. Thank you for watching, leave a comment and share this with your friends, if they find it useful. See you soon…