Windows 11 has been out for over a month, but due to its staggered rollout, it's not available to everyone just yet

While Microsoft recently stated that it's speeding up the pace of availability due to "positive" feedback regarding the OS, that doesn't mean that Windows 11 is perfect

The Taskbar in Windows 11 is extremely stripped down, so much so that it actually ditches some very useful functionalities that were present in Windows 10 for no apparent reason other than simplification

This results in a Taskbar that is arguably aesthetic but crippled for a lot of use-cases

You can't drag and drop apps to pin them to the Taskbar, which means that you have to rely on context menus

The context menu for the Taskbar is essentially gone too, but you can still use its capabilities by right-clicking on the Windows/Start icon

Then there's the Taskbar clock, which has seemingly lost the ability to display time to the accuracy of settings based on Microsoft's whims

In the same vein, the Taskbar is locked to the bottom for some weird reason as well

You can't adjust its height, show labels and never combine apps, or even change the size of app icons

Even the Agenda view for the Calendar in the system tray is absent

There's hope that Microsoft will eventually listen to all the negative feedback with thousands of upvotes in its beloved Feedback Hub and restore at least some functionality, but the fact that it thought that the launch version is good enough is just unacceptable

Oh boy, if you thought this list was going to go easier on Microsoft, you couldn't have been more wrong

Default apps settings is yet another change in Windows 11 that I highly despise

In Windows 10, Microsoft allowed you to set default apps for categories like Email, Maps, Music player, Photo viewer, Video player, and Web browser

Check the screenshot above to get an idea of what I'm talking about if you haven't gotten around to using Windows 11 yourself

Granted that it's a one-time activity, but it's so much extra effort just to change your default browser or any other app, really

The new context menu (or the right-click menu depending on what you call it) is an interesting experiment into making a UI element more accessible and simplified while still retaining all functionalities via workarounds

Essentially, as you can see in the screenshot above, Microsoft has grouped some common items such as cut, copy, rename, share, and delete to the toolbar at the top of the context menu while some other functionalities are at the bottom

But you'll notice that many third-party apps that gave you an "open with" option or other similar to that are not visible by default

You actually have to click on the "Show more options" at the bottom of the context menu to get the Windows 10 version back which will have all the verbs

In an effort to organize the context menu a bit better, Microsoft now expects developers to update their apps according to a new integration mechanism through which their app's verbs will be grouped neatly in the taskbar

I don't see a fault in the approach itself, but the issue is that this puts way too much responsibility on an app developer to update all their old apps to integrate with Windows 11

So if a developer has moved on to newer projects or abandoned their software completely, you as a user will be out of luck unless you implement some workarounds to integrate verbs to the native context menu

You could use the "Show more options" button to just utilize the old context menu, but it obviously requires an extra click that is not good for a streamlined user experience, and there's actually no knowing if Microsoft eventually decides to do away with it completely and leave old apps and their consumers out in the cold

I actually like the look of the updated context menu, but given that Microsoft seems to have sacrificed functionality for aesthetics in so many elements of the UI already, I fear that the old context menu will get the ax soon as well, which makes the updated context menu a very difficult sell for me

When I initially talked about the Start menu in my Closer Look piece several weeks ago, I mentioned that since I don't use it much, its deficiencies don't bother me a lot

However, I don't know why, but I have been using the Start menu considerably more in Windows 11 compared to Windows 10

I don't know if it's something to do with the centered position of the Taskbar which encourages me to click on the Start menu more than usual, or if it's something else, but that's just how it is

The problem with the Start menu in Windows 11 is the same

Aesthetically, it's very pleasing to look at but in terms of user experience, it leaves a lot to be desired

There is no way to group apps which means that you'll potentially have to scroll a lot if you have lots of apps pinned that you actively use

The other downer is that "Recommended" section that takes up the bottom section of the Start menu to show you files that you recently used

Microsoft doesn't extend the Start menu's app list to utilize all the whitespace, it's just left unutilized, which seems like a major design and engineering oversight

But perhaps the worst culprit is the search bar that has been integrated into the Start menu

The integration is so jarring that you can only gaze in wonder about how Microsoft thought that it was good enough to ship

Let's get one thing out of the way: I don't hate the idea of Widgets, I just hate how Microsoft has implemented them in Windows 11

While you can customize it to your liking, to show you topics that interest you, I do have to talk about the integration between Calendar and Widgets

You can only sync your calendar agenda to Widgets if you use an Outlook.com account

If you're using any other email provider, you're out of luck

Given the lack of integration of the Agenda view with the Calendar flyout in the system tray, what this means is that if you want to view your daily agenda with a third-party email provider, you necessarily have to open the dedicated Calendar app because Microsoft has decided that it's not going to help you out

Have you started using Windows 11 yet