Windows 11

Microsoft’s latest version of Windows has been out for a while now, and many of my customers have asked whether they should upgrade. Some have heard that Windows 10 is done and have questions about that that means. So lets talk about the new operating system a bit. I’ll start with the changes you might notice in the new OS, and then advise whether you need/should upgrade.

What’s new?

At first glance, Windows 11 has a bit of a different look to it. Fortunately, it’s not as much of a departure from traditional Windows design as Windows 8, but nevertheless there are some things that stick out. The most noticeable change is that icons on the taskbar - including the start button - are centered instead of flush to the left. The whole system also has a very bright white aesthetic to it. You might also notice a button for widgets on the bottom left, as well as icons in the middle for chat, tasks, and search.

Fortunately for people who have a hard time with change (myself included), everything mentioned so far can be switched back to how they were in Windows 10. Icons can move to the left, all those new things in the taskbar can be disabled, and you can set the operating system to have whatever color theme you like.

Once you’ve either adjusted to these changes (or reverted them), the biggest change you’ll see is the start menu, which Microsoft has decided to change pretty significantly. By default, the start menu is basically a recommendation engine, attempting to present what it thinks you need. Fortunately, you can pin applications so that they always stay in the menu, and it’s still possible to click through to see all your apps, but it’s not quite as good as it was before. This is, in my opinion, a step back for Windows. Fortunately, most people pin applications to their taskbar or put a shortcut on their desktop, so the start menu isn’t quite as essential as it was before, but it’s still a little annoying.

For most people, this is where the new aspects of the operating system are likely to end. There are smaller changes here and there, such as a revamped right-click context menu. But for the most part, Windows 11 looks and feels a lot like Windows 10, plus some minor tweaks, many of which can be changed to look like Windows 10 again.

Should I upgrade?

For the most part, not really. I mentioned earlier that some of you might have heard that Windows 10 is going away. Every so often, Microsoft ends support for older operating systems so they can focus on their newer ones. The old operating systems don’t stop functioning, but the main reason to upgrade is that security flaws don’t get patched because there’s no updates being released for them. **This is the current status of Windows 7 and 8, so if you’re using either of those, you should upgrade**

Windows 10 will lose support from Microsoft in October of 2025, which means it has 2 and a half years before it’s obsolete. For now, there’s no urgency to upgrade and there’s also no reason not to. Almost all new computers will come with Windows 11 so we’ll all be upgraded eventually. If you want to stay on Windows 10, you have time. If you want to upgrade your current computer, you can see if Windows 11 will run on it by going to Windows Update (Start button > Settings > Windows Update). Or, as always, you can contact me for advice.

Understanding Technology: The Workspace Metaphor

Have you ever wondered about the difference between memory, storage, and processor? Some of you might already be familiar with these terms, but many aren’t, and over the years I’ve developed what I think is a pretty tidy metaphor that describes what these different parts of the computer do:

The Workspace Metaphor

First, imagine an office. There’s a small desk and a closet and nothing else (for the purposes of this exercise, there’s no computer on the desk! Shocking!).

Lets say you have a project to work on. For a timely example, we’ll say it’s your taxes. You open up your closet and start rummaging through various boxes, bins, and stacks of paper for the records that you’ve thrown into the closet over the course of the year. You take out a bunch of the things you need and start putting them on your desk so you’ll have them to refer to.

You start working, but you’re finding that you don’t have enough room on your small desk to organize the things you brought out, and you weren’t even able to bring everything that you needed because of how little space you had. So, you go and either get a bigger desk to work on or maybe a folding table so you can lay everything out and be able to find whatever you need at a glance. Now you don’t have to make repeated trips to the closet, and you have everything reachable at a moment’s notice.

You’ve finished your task, and now you start putting all your things back in the closet, trying to figure out where you took each thing out from in the first place. Was this in that shoebox? Was that in the stack of papers on this shelf or that shelf? You put it back in, but you’re not really confident you’d be able to find it again.

Next year, you decide to get a filing cabinet full of carefully-labelled folders. Now you know exactly where everything is, and the process of finding and retrieving everything to lay out on your desk and folding table is far faster than it was last year.

What does this have to do with computers?

In this metaphor, the closet is your storage (hard drive), the desk is your memory (RAM), and you are the processor (CPU).

In simplest terms, the CPU instructs the computer to retrieve data from the storage, and loads that data into memory to work on it (this data could be your files or an application you’re opening). This is because RAM is far faster than hard drives. Your CPU doesn’t have to keep going back and forth to the closet every time it needs to work on that paper, it just looks at it on the desk. Things start to slow down when the RAM gets full and the CPU starts having to rely on the hard drive more, much like your workflow slows if you keep having to walk back and forth to get what you need. If you get more RAM (or a bigger desk), you’ll be able to have more things at-hand, which speeds everything up.

In the metaphor, the closet is a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and the filing cabinet is a Solid State Drive (SSD). SSDs are an incredible step up in computer performance. They also don’t get defragmented like their HDD cousins. Fragmentation happens when a file is stored on the physical disk but needs to be split up because there’s not enough physical space on the drive platter where the computer wants to save it. So the next time you want that file, the drive needs to spin to all the locations where parts of it have been stored. This is like a messy closet where things have been thrown into it through the year. An SSD can access any data on it with equal speed. It’s as though you’ve sorted and organized all your files into a filing cabinet with a well-kept labeling system.

Lastly, you are the processor/CPU. You are the one who is taking the data that’s pulled out and using/manipulating it to create new data. And much like the vast majority of computers out there, it’s almost impossible to upgrade or replace the processor!

Minimum Specs (April 2020)

I’m always happy to work one on one with my clients to find the computer that’s right for them. But in general, here are the minimum specifications I recommend for everyone looking to buy a new computer. I’ll lay out the cold numbers and then explain them a little more:

• CPU: Intel Core i5 processor, 9th generation

• RAM: 8GB for desktops, anything more than that for laptops

• Storage: 250GB SSD

That’s it! As long as your new computer has those things as a minimum, I honestly don’t think you can go wrong. Allow me to go a little more in-depth on these recommendations:

• CPU: Intel releases a new processor roughly once a year. The way you can tell the generation is that there will often be a 4-digit number after the “Core i5” part, and the first digit is the generation. For example the “Intel Core i5-9600k” is a 9th generation processor. They’re just starting to come out with their 10th/11th generation processors, so those will have 5 digits and the first two will denote the generation.

• RAM: 8GB is the minimum for any computer these days and you’ll be hard-pressed to find less. I’ll explain why you’ll want more in the next section.

• Storage: I simply cannot recommend anything other than a Solid State Drive (SSD) for any new computer purchase. They’re quite possibly the biggest advancement in personal computer of the past 10 years. They’ve been around for a long time, but it’s only been the last few years that the prices have plummeted to a level most people can afford.

But naturally, you might need more than just a “minimum.” Here’s some upgrades you might consider:

• CPU: honestly, I don’t think 90-99% of people need anything more than a Core i5 processor. Home computing has come so far that we’re long past the days where a faster processor will make any difference for the VAST majority of computer users. The primary people who need a Core i7 (or even the very new Core i9) models are gamers, CAD users, and generally the kind of people who are buying super high-end systems who are already not thinking about the “minimum” needs for any part of their computer.

• RAM: this is the place where I recommend the most splurging. My 8GB recommendation was the most difficult spec for me, and I stuck with it because often - especially on laptops - you might not get an option for more than 8GB on some builds. The reason I recommend 8GB on desktops is that every desktop will allow the option to add more RAM later if you find that you need it, whether right away or further down the road. But it’s becoming increasingly common for laptops to be non-upgradeable. You’re stuck with the RAM that came with it. So get a good amount now just in case. 12-16GB is about as much as any home or small business user is going to need. The biggest RAM hog on the average computer these days is the web browser. Google Chrome - while far and away my preferred browser - is a notorious RAM hog. It takes up more RAM for every open tab and browser extension/plugin. And because it likes to keep a memory of closed tabs just in case you want to re-open them, it rarely lets go of that RAM until you close the application entirely (which very few of us - myself included - tend to do).

• Storage: like I said, SSDs are practically a miraculous improvement in personal computing. But you’ll need to asses your current disk space usage and see how big a drive you’ll need on that new computer. If it’s a laptop, you often only have the option of a single drive, so 250GB might not be enough space. Unfortunately, companies like Dell and HP still charge a ton for larger SSDs - far more than market prices, unfortunately. But it’s worth it, in my opinion.
  Still, if you need a lot more storage, many laptops and most desktops will have the option of using an SSD for the main drive (where your operating system and programs live), and an HDD for all your files. This is sort of a “best of both worlds” situation, where the things that really need the speed will get it, and the things that don’t can be located on very inexpensive storage (a 2TB SSD is around $330, but a 2TB HDD is around $50!). For a desktop, I recommend this two-drive system, and you can either buy it configured this way or add the HDD later.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to call for personal recommendations. As always, I’m happy to help with recommendations, and also with the transferring of data to your new computer.

Windows 10 Initial Cleaning

I like Windows 10, but Microsoft tends to get overly excited about all the features available to you. Most of them you’ll never use or are actively annoying. Here, I’ll describe the steps I take when I set up a Windows 10 computer for my clients.

Bloated Start

The first thing I do is clean up the start menu. This is actually very simple to do, though Microsoft could make it a little easier. The simplest way I’ve found is to open the start menu, then for each icon you want to remove, right-click on it, then hit the space bar. By default, this will “un-pin” the icon from the start menu. Keep doing this for all the items you want to remove. For me, that’s often nearly all of them. Sometimes I leave nothing but the weather app, which I then right-click > resize > large. I then add back in the applications I use most often by finding them in the alphabetical list of applications, right-clicking on them, and selecting “Pin to start.”

Taskbar

The taskbar is the bar at the bottom of your screen. By default, it has a lot of stuff on it that you either don’t need or takes up too much space. I like to minimize what shows up there to reduce clutter. I usually right-click on a blank area of the taskbar, and un-check every item that starts with “Show…” You can only do one at a time, so you’ll need to keep right-clicking. I can almost promise that you won’t miss them. I’ve never met anyone who uses them. Lastly, I right-click, go to “Cortana,” and either choose “Show Cortana icon” or “Hidden.” I’ve hidden it on my own system, because searching in Windows 10 is as simple as clicking on the start button or pressing it on your keyboard and starting to type.

Uninstall junk

Windows 10 comes with a larger than normal amount of junk software. It’s not the end of the world, but I prefer to remove it. Click on the start menu, then the little gear icon to get into settings, then click on Apps. Now, you have to be careful not to uninstall anything your computer might need. Sometimes this menu includes essential drivers that come from the manufacturer. But you’re safe to uninstall some of the junkware that’s easily identifiable. For example, any game that ends in “…Saga” can be safely removed. Simply click on the application and choose uninstall.

If this is a brand new computer, chances are that it came with a trial version of some sort of antivirus software - usually McAfee. I’m not a fan. Uninstall this here and use the built-in Windows Defender - which should kick in once the included AV software is removed - or purchase a better antivirus program from Eset or Bitdefender.

These steps cover the majority of what I do to clean up a fresh Windows 10 install. I typically do this for all my clients, and you can do this too or you can hold off until the next time you have me over to work on something else.