Microslop is going to spend 2026 improving Windows 11. It comes after Windows update quality issues and complaints about the operating system.
I have a strong feeling they won’t be removing the spying, AI everywhere, ads, and bloatware. Microsoft views those as positives.
Seems they’re figuring out you can’t sell ads and AI on your platform if nobody wants to use your platform.
If Microsoft walks back their use of AI in the development of Windows, that would be a major admission of failure on their part.
But it will probably help prolong their market dominance a great deal. Because up until they started destroying their own OS, all they needed to do to remain on the top was literally nothing.
Okay, that’s easy: remove all the LLM slop. That’ll start fixing it. Then get the ads out of the UI. Get rid of the MS account requirement, and make all updates optional. For a stretch goal, go back to making an OS that only does what the user tells it to, and doesn’t have any function to phone home without direct user input.
Too funny. They’d need to go back to Win95 for all that.
XP would be enough.
Think back… XP had many complaints at release too, wasn’t till sp2 or sp3 it was actually decent.
XP is also when they introduced the activation server.
Also true
You couldnt unzip 2 files at once. Not untill service pack 1.
Wait, you didn’t just use PKWare zip & unzip? Or WinRAR?
Tip: use 7-zip, it is the best on windows by far. https://www.7-zip.org/
I couldn’t afford WinRAR
I think there might be around 10 people in the whole world that has ever bought WinRAR. The rest of us just kept closing the nag box and used the free trial indefinitely.
No, man. Windows 7 for lyfe!
I think W7 would be the very last option, everything after that has been shit, and getting worse. I still prefer XP though, except for the hideous UI.
I thought it’s the best version out there.
Don’t get me wrong, it is (Jesus, I have a hard time using this word for ANY Winblows, but I can’t think of anything else before coffee) good, no real complains other than the ridiculous resources usage, and the UI certainly beats the hell out of XP. But resources use is my issue, unnecessary background shit running all the time, whereas XP remained way lighter. As I said, anything after 7 has been consistent crap and has just been getting exponentially worse.
Anyway, Linux and Gnu has been my life for way too long now. I only know about Winblows issues because I come in here and hear my circle of acquaintances complaining, which only makes me laugh because they choose to keep dealing with that crap when there are so many options.
98SE would mostly work.
Fix the task bar!!!
That’s the secondary goal. I feel like there’s enough 3rd party tools to fix that, that I want the repairs done in the backend and trust power users and user-devs to handle the UX.
No there’s not. I tried several things, for my use there’s no fix. It’s not the point though.
I think we want the same thing ♥️.
Marketing bullshit. Microsoft isn’t going to actually reverse any of the enshittification it’s inflicted on Windows.
If you don’t have any customer mandated software that requires Windows, I’m looking at you AutoDesk, then do yourself a favor and go ahead take the week to install and learn Linux Mint.
Enshittification, as always, is the word here. It’s important to point out because to disenshittify(?) the product would need to turn back the wheel, including profits. Line go down.
With all the other lines going down, they literally cannot course correct here in any way that would matter to the consumer to rebuild trust. So much of their model is built off of force feeding users and directing their behaviors, the thing they absolutely hate.
I’ve been wanting to install Linux, but I don’t have a drive large enough to back up my windows installation.
Do you really need the entire installation? Would only the user folder(s) (C:\Users) suffice?
Alternatively, you could install Linux mint on a large enough USB stick and run it off there, if you don’t mind the longer read/write times. You’d also need to change the boot order for it too.
You can install on an external USB drive. As long as it’s USB 3, there will be little performance difference vs an internal HD (SSD likely slower, but good enough for everyday work)
Rebuild trust?
- remove all telemetry
- remove all ai bullshit
- remove ads
- open source the whole code
Then, and only then, we might start to trust again.
Please dont do step 4. Devs will get heart attacks left and right if they see that piece of shit code.
No, it’s a long-known fact that the Windows code has been shit for decades. That’s been known since at least XP days I think. Pretty sure I first heard about it on TechTV
They can’t open source their code because then people would rather rapidly discover all the backdoors they’ve built in for various US LE and Intelligence agencies.
To add to this list
- Remove WebView apps. Eat our own dogfood and use MAUI.
- Go back to the classic Start Menu. Use API to make the whole UI available for customizations
- Get rid of the whole shitty “Settings” menu and go back to the Control Panel.
- Drop backwards compatibility for a bunch of crap. Stop pulling the 1980s forward, let that shit die.
- Address real modern issues with compatibility and performance with current CPUs
- Undo all the vibe coding.
- Focus on stability and performance, not trying to be “An experience”. Windows runs apps, make it do that the best it can.
- For the love of everything holy, take a risk and modernize the OS. This goes back to 8. But as someone who makes Windows Server golden images for multiple platforms, FUCKING CHRIST. Having to use the Autounattend to even get anything started, and that’s often (Even in Azure) just a minimal thing to get some client to do the real work, should tell you there’s a problem. The Autounattend is poorly documented. I learned more from just building a basic VM on different providers and seeing what they figured out. I could write a god damn novel on the shortcomings of the initial installation and customization of Windows, but it’s especially embarrassing for their Server platform
- Stop dropping support for the crap that works. Just so you can sell an inferior subscription version. WSUS being sunset is stupid. Having on-prem WSUS is always going to be faster and easier. You should focus on making that better instead of letting it limp along and then “Oh, we have an overpriced and slower option!” Get bent.
- Azure Local is a really fucking cool idea. That was an god awful pricing as far as I can tell. But neat.
- Renew support for Windows 10.
I thought of some of those, but decided to add my point (4) and allow the community to do it right.
Oh no doubt, same. There’s so much to be said. More than any one person should.
I wake up to a bright flashing of my phone.
It is 3am, damn I forget to turn my phone to silent.
I can’t resist the urge, who would text me this time of night??!?
“hey I have been thinking about you, you know I think we could work it out together. I will spend 2026 improving myself I promise. Please baby I miss you”
“go to bed Microslop, you are drunk and you are the one that wanted the divorce because you left me for Al” I text back frustratedly and turn my phone to silent.
I want a divorce and I’m keeping Clippy
King/Queen (whichever you prefer, frigging royalty)
Rebuilding trust for most companies means some bullshit marketing campaign. New catch phrase. Some promotion. It rarely means admitting fault and changing direction. It would take something really huge for that to happen. Perhaps a combination of AI bubble burst, leadership change, shareholder revolt.
Everything anti-consumer in Windows is a deliberate choice aimed at extracting more revenue from customers. This isn’t unique to Microsoft. They exist to make money for their shareholders.
If like me you think a lot of companies have been incredibly short sighted and are burning their brands and customer loyalty for short term gains, just look at the stock prices. Short termism is making a killing for tech companies while the rest of the economy is treading water. Is it sustainable? I don’t think so. Does it matter for Microsoft or any of the other tech companies?
I have been a customer of companies that were awesome for years then sold out and their prices sky rocketed. They were clearly bleeding customers but every time they did they just put the price up more. Some people always stay for some reason. This can go on for years. As long as they keep screwing people faster than people leave they are probably making a lot more money in the short term than they would have made with a longer vision. That is business these days. People aren’t building products for the long term anymore. Now that thinking seems to have moved to companies. Modern business leaders are about gobbling revenues up like a locust plague then moving on to the next pasture.
Some people always stay for some reason.
It’s because they have such a huge market share that people don’t even realize there are alternatives. Or the alternatives are so far behind that they’re not really a viable option for most. What’s the alternative to Microsoft? Apple who also sucks, or Linux which is really hard to get into for the average person. What’s the alternative to streaming? Buying physical media, which is going away, or pirating and hosting your own shit. What’s the alternative to Amazon? Buying locally, but you have to get off your ass and the costs are going to be much higher and it’s going to be difficult to find a lot of niche items. Especially now that a lot of malls are dead. There’s countless other examples but those are the main ones that came to mind. These companies just have built up so much inertia in people’s lives that it’s going to be a long while before they feel the effects of their enshittification. There’s also a factor of a lot of people just do not think very hard about the products they buy. I’ve watched people by cars on a whim for fucks sake. They see an ad for something and it gets in their brain that they need to have it or think that a product must be better because it is more expensive without much critical evaluation. I think the economy going to shit is going to hit these companies worse than the consequences of their own actions will for a long time.
I read the statement as ‘We’re going to stop announcing controversial changes and spend more money on propaganda firms who will fill your social media with fake users who have a bunch of stories about how trustworthy Microsoft is’
They’ll never read nor act on this feedback, but here’s my list:
- drop the AI
- drop the ads
- stop pushing services, namely cloud
- stop requiring Microsoft accounts
Honestly win10 was great when it dropped. Not sure why we needed 11.
To be fair, I think they knew that. Which is why they said up front that windows 10 was the last windows you’d need. And then for some reason they kept going…
Somehow my 11 feels that way, being in EU, having it installed with the W7 license key that came with my laptop. Still, there are bugs that seem ludicrous to me, from a company like them, especially in the file explorer that cannot manage keyboard shortcuts properly when you move between tabs, or that don’t highlight the proper file or folder you’ve selected. Same thing with how buggy Excel has become, especially with rendering when you switch between multiple files. Selections are offset from were the mouse is, that’s crazy. Best solution I’ve found is a quick CTRL-N, CTRL-W that seems to reset it. Anyway, I’ve been using windows since 2.0 on MS DOS 3.30 or 5.0, Excel for about 20 years most of my life at work, and things are really not improving.
It should not be hard to browse local files on a computer.
Why are you using local files when you have a cloud???!
-Microsoft
Thanks. I think I just puked in my mouth.
“Everything will be a service. You will own nothing. You will accept this reality”
You will not just accept, you will embrace. You will feel cold and empty when you taste freedom, for you will not understand it or know what to do with it.
I mean, kind of. Not owning anything or being able to do what we want with our PCs will really free up a lot of time for other hobbies such as hunting billionaires for sport.
remote wipes ur db of billionaire addresses
MS is about to learn how hard it is to build trust in commercial markets, and why it’s a terrible decision to set that on fire for a short term profit. Honestly, it’s hard to find a better example of a company that had a more comfortable and ideal position in their market, that just decided to disrupt itself without any pressure or prompting. You wanna gamble, you gotta be ready to lose.
Meanwhile, Valve…
So true
Bullshit.
I already moved to Linux, and I’m not going back.
Migrating users might be a few, but they rarely go back. A few users monthly eventually become a lot!
“Fuck this shit…”
Rebuild trust… by integrating more mandatory and default-on server-based features?
And the fixes will be vibe coded too.
Way too fucking late for that.
lol
Lmao, even
Also, hi from bazzite, which runs the vast majority of games I’m interested in flawless, and usually with even better performance than W10 (let alone W11)
