Windows 11 has achieved what previous tech predictors thought impossible: It matches the performance of a TRS-80 with cassette drive memory, or the first PC with 144k floppies.
Fine work, Microsoft!
Sardonic off. I’ve been using Win 11 for several weeks now, so I have a good idea of how various programs run. Absolutely everything is VASTLY slower than previous versions. I’m not using any new programs, so it’s all comparable. Many of my old tools were written (by me or others) around 2000 and revised up to around 2012. Nothing ‘phones home’ via the web, nothing uses AI or any other external source. They ran equally well when the web was connected or disconnected.
Before Win 11, all of these progs started, ran, and stopped INSTANTLY. They performed instantly on the earliest PCs with much slower processors, and continued performing instantly on a modern machine with Windows 7. They only took a noticeable time when loading a long video or audio clip.
On Win 11, each of these progs takes a GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING ETERNITY to start up, sometimes 5 seconds, with the GODDAMN wheel icon rolling. It fools me into thinking I didn’t properly click on the desktop, so I click again, which then loads a second or third copy and takes even more GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING time, not counting the extra blood pressure when I cuss and growl.
A separate bitch: the keyboard repeat delay is wrong, but there’s NO WAY TO SET IT. Looking up this problem on Reddit, apparently Microsoft is “gradually migrating” these basic settings into a harder-to-reach place but they haven’t finished the “gradual migration” yet, so right now these basic settings aren’t available at all.
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Later, found fixes for both.
The keyboard delay fix is as follows: Hit Windows-key-R for Run, then fill in CONTROL KEYBOARD in the blank. This immediately brings up the familiar panel with sliders for keyboard delay and repeat rate, where you can set both to fastest.
The overall slowness turned out to be Windows trying to sync everything with OneDrive. I figured this out when one shortcut stopped working entirely and gave an obscure warning about “failed sync.” I uninstalled OneDrive entirely, and now everything starts up somewhat faster but still not as fast as Win 7.
I think this crap started more than a year ago when I first tried to set up this computer. I was trying to transfer all the material via OneDrive, and in the process a few programs ended up “residing” on OneDrive in a mysterious way. After uninstalling OneDrive I rebuilt the shortcuts so they refer to the ACTUAL program where it ACTUALLY RESIDES on my hard disk.
Polistra's Mill 