"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWindows 11 is finally here and I'm going to tell you whether you should rush and download it on day one or just wait a while with the next version of the Microsoft PC operating system called Windows 11. everyone's pretty much expecting a spinal chat joke but I can't go there because this really feels more like Windows 10.5 but there's really not anything wrong with that because an operating system whether it's Mac OS for your MacBook iPad OS for your iPad Google's wear OS for your Smartwatch the more transparent it is the better the more it gets out of your way the more you're gonna like it but maybe the ship from Windows 10 to Windows 11 feels very subtle because the jump from Windows 8 to Windows 10 was so gigantic it was so big actually that Microsoft skipped an entire version number and that's because Windows 8 was really a complete from the ground up rebuild and wanted to make laptops and Windows tablets feel more like iPads with big Square apps all over the place on the home screen and people really didn't want that they wanted their iPads for fun tablety stuff and they wanted their Windows systems for work and PC gaming and email and things like that another reason everybody liked Windows 10 was because it was the era of the free operating system upgrade before that you had to actually pay some money in order to do that whether it was an OS 10 update for your Mac where there was a Windows update for your PC you'd be shocked to hear that for the privilege of going from Windows 7 to Windows 8 usually had to give Microsoft 120 dollars that's crazy now you'll hear me and a lot of other people talk about Windows 11 as a fairly subtle shift from Windows 10. the big visual cue there is that that taskbar on your desktop has moved from being left aligned to being in the center of your screen along with the start button and the search button I'm pretty sure they did this just so you'd notice something was different and didn't think this was still just Windows 10. there's a lot more going on underneath but you need some sort of subtle UI shift that is not too intrusive to get people to understand that they're getting something new in Windows 11 it doesn't remake Windows it adds a bunch of new features it streamlines some others it makes others more complicated oddly enough although it's Microsoft so maybe not oddly enough but for casual and mainstream users you're going to run into a few new things but you're not going to notice a world of difference one of the big selling points for Chromebooks is that modern Chromebooks can run just about any app from the Google Play Store in a special Android compartment on your Chromebook that's really handy and makes your three or four or five hundred dollar Chromebook feel a lot more versatile and like it can do a lot more Microsoft is adding similar functionality to Windows 11 you will be able to eventually download and install and run standard Android apps from there but here's the catch that feature is not included with the launch version of Windows 11. Microsoft is rolling this out as part of a preview program at some point in the coming months and I would not expect it to be a mainstream part of Windows 11 until sometime next year now that's a shame because it would have been one of the biggest changes about Windows 11 that could actually get people excited about it there are ways to run Android programs on your PC now there are programs like BlueStacks that are emulators there's a your phone app from Microsoft that I think works with Samsung phones but none of it is particularly easy to use not intuitive and it's not built right into the OS a couple of other new features I spent some time with are snap groups and multiple desktops now these are not new Concepts in previous versions of Windows you've been able to take a a window that you're messing with and give move it right to the corner give it a little shake and it would snap to let's say half the screen or you could move it around here in snap groups you can take a whole bunch of apps you hover over the maximize button and you get a little layout option you choose where you want that to go you repeat that with a few more apps and then you have a nice tiled screen with everything that you want if you minimize those you may think I have to set them all up again but no you just hover over one of the minimized apps in the taskbar and you can snap them all back up into place multiple desktops is where you can let's say put all of your work browser windows and work programs on your desktop then get a new Fresh desktop and put all your gaming stuff on there or put all your creative stuff on another one and then you swap between them on the Fly the programs are not shut down they're basically just hidden from your view now Windows has had multiple desktops before they were kind of hard to get to Mac OS has done it for a long time works fairly well there but I have to say by putting that multiple desktops button right in the taskbar as a default and make it very easy to jump between them it's actually easier to do on Windows 11 than it is on a Mac and that's not something you're going to hear me say very often that said this is going to be more useful if you're working on let's say multiple monitors or just one gigantic monitor or you need to have a whole bunch of let's say browser windows open and narrow slices to see things if you're a regular laptop user you're probably just looking at one window maybe two on your little laptop screen at once and did you hear Windows 11 has widgets now what's a widget well everybody loves widgets your iPhone is widgets your iPad has widgets it's like these little mini apps like a clock or the weather that just kind of hang off on the side in their own little Zone Microsoft actually used to have widgets they called them gadgets and I think they dined with the end of Windows 7. well now widgets are back they're built in there's a little button you press right in the taskbar in a semi-translucent panel pops out from the left side of your laptop screen by default and again it's got the clock it's got the weather it can show you some photos from your OneDrive if you store photos in your OneDrive it's got a little new section that frankly looks like it's curated by the same people who curate the terrible new section on the Microsoft edge browser lots of sports lots of Fox News lots of celebrity gossip Microsoft is making a big deal out of Microsoft teams integration into Windows 11 which basically just means again Microsoft teams has a button right at the bottom in the taskbar I think it's called chat when you click on it goes surprise we're not chat with Microsoft teams and that's Microsoft's version of you know Zoom or FaceTime or Google Hangouts it's fine to have it there I will say the only times I've ever been invited to a Microsoft teams meeting is by people who worked at Microsoft and probably had to use that for work so the big question at the end of all this is should I rush out and get Windows 11 right away or should I wait a while and see what happens or is it terrible and should I just skip it and stick with Windows 10 for as long as I possibly can if it sounds like I'm being a little lukewarm about Windows 11 at first that's because every operating system launches in an unfinished State Windows 8 became Windows 8.1 which added a ton of improvements was very different Windows 10 got the windows 10 creators Edition and many other updates after that it was really down the line that these os's came into their own that said I've been using Windows 11 on a bunch of different systems gaming laptops surfaces budget laptops for a while now in different preview versions and have never felt like oh I want to revert back to Windows 10. everything worked pretty fine for me once I figured out some of the UI eccentricities my general rule of thumb is if you're gonna buy a new laptop then it's just going to come with whatever the new operating system is you don't have to worry about it if you're going to buy a new one this month next month for the holiday season there you go you're gonna have Windows 11. that's it if you have Windows 10 now you can be the first guy to go out and download it on October 5th you know it's probably going to be fine I think Microsoft is going to let people download it incrementally some people today some people tomorrow some people next week so everyone's not all jammed in there at once if you want to wait for a while that's cool if you want to get it right away I usually say don't do that on your mission critical machine but I have not run into any game breaking bugs myself but I usually suggest you don't be the first person just because no matter how widely they tested this out in the real world they're such a huge expanse of different types of Hardware of configurations of combinations of graphics cards and processors and ssds and RAM and all the crazy peripherals people plug into their computers that there's going to be some combinations that Microsoft didn't check for or some combinations where things just don't work right and they're going to have to be patched my final word on the subject for now if you want to go out on day one or week one and download Windows 11 as soon as you possibly can I think it's probably fine if you want to wait a few weeks or a few months that's fine tooWindows 11 is finally here and I'm going to tell you whether you should rush and download it on day one or just wait a while with the next version of the Microsoft PC operating system called Windows 11. everyone's pretty much expecting a spinal chat joke but I can't go there because this really feels more like Windows 10.5 but there's really not anything wrong with that because an operating system whether it's Mac OS for your MacBook iPad OS for your iPad Google's wear OS for your Smartwatch the more transparent it is the better the more it gets out of your way the more you're gonna like it but maybe the ship from Windows 10 to Windows 11 feels very subtle because the jump from Windows 8 to Windows 10 was so gigantic it was so big actually that Microsoft skipped an entire version number and that's because Windows 8 was really a complete from the ground up rebuild and wanted to make laptops and Windows tablets feel more like iPads with big Square apps all over the place on the home screen and people really didn't want that they wanted their iPads for fun tablety stuff and they wanted their Windows systems for work and PC gaming and email and things like that another reason everybody liked Windows 10 was because it was the era of the free operating system upgrade before that you had to actually pay some money in order to do that whether it was an OS 10 update for your Mac where there was a Windows update for your PC you'd be shocked to hear that for the privilege of going from Windows 7 to Windows 8 usually had to give Microsoft 120 dollars that's crazy now you'll hear me and a lot of other people talk about Windows 11 as a fairly subtle shift from Windows 10. the big visual cue there is that that taskbar on your desktop has moved from being left aligned to being in the center of your screen along with the start button and the search button I'm pretty sure they did this just so you'd notice something was different and didn't think this was still just Windows 10. there's a lot more going on underneath but you need some sort of subtle UI shift that is not too intrusive to get people to understand that they're getting something new in Windows 11 it doesn't remake Windows it adds a bunch of new features it streamlines some others it makes others more complicated oddly enough although it's Microsoft so maybe not oddly enough but for casual and mainstream users you're going to run into a few new things but you're not going to notice a world of difference one of the big selling points for Chromebooks is that modern Chromebooks can run just about any app from the Google Play Store in a special Android compartment on your Chromebook that's really handy and makes your three or four or five hundred dollar Chromebook feel a lot more versatile and like it can do a lot more Microsoft is adding similar functionality to Windows 11 you will be able to eventually download and install and run standard Android apps from there but here's the catch that feature is not included with the launch version of Windows 11. Microsoft is rolling this out as part of a preview program at some point in the coming months and I would not expect it to be a mainstream part of Windows 11 until sometime next year now that's a shame because it would have been one of the biggest changes about Windows 11 that could actually get people excited about it there are ways to run Android programs on your PC now there are programs like BlueStacks that are emulators there's a your phone app from Microsoft that I think works with Samsung phones but none of it is particularly easy to use not intuitive and it's not built right into the OS a couple of other new features I spent some time with are snap groups and multiple desktops now these are not new Concepts in previous versions of Windows you've been able to take a a window that you're messing with and give move it right to the corner give it a little shake and it would snap to let's say half the screen or you could move it around here in snap groups you can take a whole bunch of apps you hover over the maximize button and you get a little layout option you choose where you want that to go you repeat that with a few more apps and then you have a nice tiled screen with everything that you want if you minimize those you may think I have to set them all up again but no you just hover over one of the minimized apps in the taskbar and you can snap them all back up into place multiple desktops is where you can let's say put all of your work browser windows and work programs on your desktop then get a new Fresh desktop and put all your gaming stuff on there or put all your creative stuff on another one and then you swap between them on the Fly the programs are not shut down they're basically just hidden from your view now Windows has had multiple desktops before they were kind of hard to get to Mac OS has done it for a long time works fairly well there but I have to say by putting that multiple desktops button right in the taskbar as a default and make it very easy to jump between them it's actually easier to do on Windows 11 than it is on a Mac and that's not something you're going to hear me say very often that said this is going to be more useful if you're working on let's say multiple monitors or just one gigantic monitor or you need to have a whole bunch of let's say browser windows open and narrow slices to see things if you're a regular laptop user you're probably just looking at one window maybe two on your little laptop screen at once and did you hear Windows 11 has widgets now what's a widget well everybody loves widgets your iPhone is widgets your iPad has widgets it's like these little mini apps like a clock or the weather that just kind of hang off on the side in their own little Zone Microsoft actually used to have widgets they called them gadgets and I think they dined with the end of Windows 7. well now widgets are back they're built in there's a little button you press right in the taskbar in a semi-translucent panel pops out from the left side of your laptop screen by default and again it's got the clock it's got the weather it can show you some photos from your OneDrive if you store photos in your OneDrive it's got a little new section that frankly looks like it's curated by the same people who curate the terrible new section on the Microsoft edge browser lots of sports lots of Fox News lots of celebrity gossip Microsoft is making a big deal out of Microsoft teams integration into Windows 11 which basically just means again Microsoft teams has a button right at the bottom in the taskbar I think it's called chat when you click on it goes surprise we're not chat with Microsoft teams and that's Microsoft's version of you know Zoom or FaceTime or Google Hangouts it's fine to have it there I will say the only times I've ever been invited to a Microsoft teams meeting is by people who worked at Microsoft and probably had to use that for work so the big question at the end of all this is should I rush out and get Windows 11 right away or should I wait a while and see what happens or is it terrible and should I just skip it and stick with Windows 10 for as long as I possibly can if it sounds like I'm being a little lukewarm about Windows 11 at first that's because every operating system launches in an unfinished State Windows 8 became Windows 8.1 which added a ton of improvements was very different Windows 10 got the windows 10 creators Edition and many other updates after that it was really down the line that these os's came into their own that said I've been using Windows 11 on a bunch of different systems gaming laptops surfaces budget laptops for a while now in different preview versions and have never felt like oh I want to revert back to Windows 10. everything worked pretty fine for me once I figured out some of the UI eccentricities my general rule of thumb is if you're gonna buy a new laptop then it's just going to come with whatever the new operating system is you don't have to worry about it if you're going to buy a new one this month next month for the holiday season there you go you're gonna have Windows 11. that's it if you have Windows 10 now you can be the first guy to go out and download it on October 5th you know it's probably going to be fine I think Microsoft is going to let people download it incrementally some people today some people tomorrow some people next week so everyone's not all jammed in there at once if you want to wait for a while that's cool if you want to get it right away I usually say don't do that on your mission critical machine but I have not run into any game breaking bugs myself but I usually suggest you don't be the first person just because no matter how widely they tested this out in the real world they're such a huge expanse of different types of Hardware of configurations of combinations of graphics cards and processors and ssds and RAM and all the crazy peripherals people plug into their computers that there's going to be some combinations that Microsoft didn't check for or some combinations where things just don't work right and they're going to have to be patched my final word on the subject for now if you want to go out on day one or week one and download Windows 11 as soon as you possibly can I think it's probably fine if you want to wait a few weeks or a few months that's fine too\n"