Windows 11

[MR]

Thanks - I've always tried to avoid being a guinea pig and have a seppo 'acquaintance' (used to call him a mate until the 'Trump effect' came into play) who will sit there all day long, according to his VN partner who occasionally seeks Linh's advice on how to manage relationships with foreigners(!), pulling apart all manner of operating systems to find out how they work and, better still, warning me about any specific issues he finds along the way. He's just starting on W11 as we speak, so between his advice and yours, it sounds like we'll be on W10 with both laptops for some time yet - ho hum!
But talking about strange things happening within various OSs, I realised yesterday that my contact list needed tidying up, so went through several hundred email addresses and updated/deleted the obvious ones. The very last entry was "Yahoo customer service" so I opened it up and - lo and behold - there was a pdf file within the 'email address' field that I'd argued with the sender (Sydney Water Board) to say I'd never received it when they swore it had been sent more than a year ago! I can't even imagine how anything like that could happen, but it certainly did.....................

[LeeB6430]

I would counsel extreme caution, certainly in the short term. I've seen reports, mainly on Youtube from reasonably reputable bloggers and tech experts, that Win 11 is doing some very strange things (inter alia generating vast quantities of random empty folders, folders not showing in the file explorer when they patently do exist, considerable (up to 30%) performance/speed downgrades especially with AMD processors, etc). I am not aware of anything overtly dangerous, but, it would appear that, they really haven't a very good QA job on this product.
The option to revert to Win 10 period has been reduced to 10 days, rather than 30 days, as was the case when upgrading to Win 10 from 7/8/8.1.
Lastly MS are in a major push to collect user information to 'on-sell', (which is how they make their money!!). They do this by setting up the OS to assume approval to harvest info from users if that approval is not specifically denied. Considerable set up operations are required to ensure that MS cannot get at your info. Beware!! Google employ the same strategy.
Have you run the 'Can I run Windows 11 App'? (free download from MS) Google it. Your Laptop may well be too old. On the upside W10 updates will be available till 14 Oct 2025. They should have Win10 sorted out by then, it will have only taken a decade to get it right - so your laptop should be good for another 4-5 years after that

[MR]

We were invited to update to W11 on Linh's laptop that we use for Sunny's home learning, but too worried that we might lose some of the 'very difficult to find' Vietnamese-language apps so decided to wait at least until schools restart properly and we have a bit of time to re-build if necessary.  I haven't received the same offer yet, so my poor aging laptop must be nearing its "use by" date - which will be a shame because it's the best I've ever had (Asus Zen). Only ever had one problem - about 2 years ago it just suddenly went black. Couldn't pinpoint the problem because it wouldn't turn on again, so took it to our local computer shop run by two really nice geeky sisters. No idea what they did to it but it's worked like a charm ever since!

[PamMcD]

I downloaded W11 about an hour ago Lee.  Its just a bit new look as far as I can see. File Explorer and Control Panel (a must for me) are till there thank goodness. I thought that I would be deleting stuff for ages like I had to do in Edge, when I first used it. It remembers what I want which is just a plain and bare browser with no fancy stuff. I looks nice though.

I am still not able to connect my JBL Bluetooth speaker to my laptops or my PC so could it be broken.  It was in the conservatory when my youngest   6 years old grandson was there. Did he drop it I wonder? I will never know.  It lights up and the bluetooth icon comes on and waits to be discovered - but it never is found.

Anyone any ideas?