Why I won’t be upgrading to Windows 11 too soon
“They say the early bird get the worm. Well, that’s exactly true for tech as well — The early adopter gets the bugs.”
Update season is just around the corner and much like Christmas, Diwali or Chinese New Year, you can feel it in the air.
Every tech media outlet is talking about the latest sneak-peek they got of the upcoming Windows 11 OS; all YouTubers marginally associated with electronics, have uploaded videos of them reviewing the leaked release. If you’re a sentient being mildly interested in computers, admit it, you’ve considered the compatibility of your hardware with the new generation.
I am very excited for this too and although, aesthetically, it appears to be a mere reskin of the current OS, the announced specifications reveal a few decent upgrades under the hood.
As eager as I am to get a taste of the latest, I am not in any rush to actually consider it as a replacement for my current daily driver that is Windows 10. Here’s why.
They say the early bird get the worm. Well, that’s exactly true for tech as well — The early adopter gets the bugs. Software bugs are something that, if you use your computer for doing anything productive at all, you’ll know encountering one can turn your bad day into a bad week. Ideally, you should wait a few months (or even years) for software to be tested in the real world, so that “gamebreaking” issues can be patched and processes ironed out.
Don’t believe all the sales pitches saying that Windows 11 will be the most secure OS ever. Tech vendors say that for everything they sell. And while I certainly don’t doubt the developers have done all they can to ensure security, remember the keyword here is “can”. A good thing to keep in mind is that as the people working on securing things improve, so do the people who are looking to break those things.
Just look at the Print Nightmare scenario that happened last week. New issues will arise and vulnerabilities will always be discovered. So, it’s much better to be using a familiar, time-tested software that you and the developers know the ins and outs of so that issues that pop up can be dealt with sooner and with less hassle.
Windows 11 needs to have existed in a publicly available, production state for a reasonable amount of time before any serious computer users can begin to entertain the idea of completely moving on to it. And even though we may all luck out and find that the first version of the OS is a really solid build, I’m sure that no sensible systems administrator is even considering upgrading their office computers to it before 2023.
Only after software has been exposed to the storm and all the easy holes have been patched up, should you consider fully adopting it.
The same is true for most other things too, actually. Look up the fancy 10-speed automatic transmission that Ford motors came up with a few years ago. They made a lot of noise about it, even put it in their new Mustangs and F-150’s. But oh, what a disaster that was.
I don’t mean to be a party-pooper or sound like a pessimist. If you want to try out Windows 11, you should. It’s just important not to be caught up in hype and expectations. As someone in cybersecurity, I can say that the best practices with software are often to keep past lessons in mind and stick with what’s proven.
Also, Windows 11 still doesn’t come with tabs in File Explorer. Definitely a no for me.
