I bought a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled, and ran into too many usability issues. They are not critical, but annoying, and it looks like I can downgrade my laptop to Windows 10 without losing the license. I will try it over the week-end.

• The task bar cannot be made “thin” (small icons) like in Windows 10. There is a hidden registry setting for that, but it leads to vertically misaligned icons on the right.
• There is no way to show just time on the task bar, without date.
• I cannot properly use FAR, my favorite file manager, because the support for custom console layout is completely broken.
  • Console applications run in the new Windows Terminal by default.
  • Custom layout is not supported with new Windows Terminal.
  • When you pin the application to the task bar, it shows the terminal icon, not FAR icon.
  • It is possible to set “Default Terminal Application” to “Windows Console Host”. In that case running far.exe works fine and you can set the layout.
  • However, running FAR from the pinned taskbar shortcut ignores that layout and creates a huge window.
  • You can change layout for the shortcut through the properties, but doing this magically resets “Default Terminal Application” to “Let Windows Decide”.

This is Beta quality software and I’d rather pass on it. I am sure Microsoft will get it right eventually, but I don’t want to be the one who bleeds on the bleeding edge.