Windows 11 performs worse than older Windows versions in nearly every benchmark

[KnightSayNI]

Yeah, Vista was way worse than 11, great big stinker. Microsoft didn't force everyone to use it though by cutting off security updates for XP.

Vista was cool it had that Robot game, Last Windows to have native support for video backgrounds. It was okay after the service packs came out, it just started off badly.

 

[jpvalverde85]

M$ has gone over stuff they cant control and took control of things advanced users dont want them to have, also putting a lot of garbage inside the default installation. W11 is in the same ballpark than 8/8.1, clunky, bloated, quirky and bug ridden. Start screen/menu is utter garbage and often "hangs" all of it or some features, this cannot pass on something used all the time on every system. I tryed 2 times W11 on my old laptop, first was semi succesful till it got bloated, then moved back to 10, then gave a new try at 22h2 or 23h2, got bloated again, and moved to Linux (Bazzite first, clunky also, CachyOS now, lean and gaming friendly), and so far I cant believe how much more performance was left on that laptop. I'll stick to John Malcovich words at Space Force about M$.

 

[TheBigT42]

Good thing I'm on Windows 10 IoT, innit?

ME TOOO!

 

[TheBigT42]

Its an inferior OS developed by Microsoft to bake additional telemetry directly into the operating system and to implement an extensible framework for integration with and reliance on external services. It is the worst operating system (contextually) that Microsoft has ever created and compared to its peers is the least secure and worst performing. There are people out there who have looked deeper and know way more about this than I can remember, but Windows 11 was never created to help you compute better. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

Get 'em 9

 

[ZedRM]

Your context and thinking are dated. Windows ME existed an entitely different, tiny world of computing compared to where we are now and Microsoft wasn't pushing the same predatory forced update schemes it does today. Windows ME was entirely skippable and less than a blip on the radar of most computer users, hence Windows 11 is objectively worse than Windows ME. Your security context is also dated as you are thinking about malware as it was during Windows XP days. Today, we live in a world where external service data breaches are the primary threat to your security and if you didn't know before, now you do.

In reality you're both right and you're both wrong, depending on the subject context being discussed..

 

[Win7User]

I, went to Linux, because Windows 11 Pro is GARBAGE, period! I still, use my Windows 7 Pro on my Acer laptop though. It's, still, better than Windows 11! Microsoft, doesn't care about the very people who made them what they are today, the end user!! F, Microsoft!

 

[arrowflash]

M$ has gone over stuff they cant control and took control of things advanced users dont want them to have, also putting a lot of garbage inside the default installation. W11 is in the same ballpark than 8/8.1, clunky, bloated, quirky and bug ridden. Start screen/menu is utter garbage and often "hangs" all of it or some features, this cannot pass on something used all the time on every system. I tryed 2 times W11 on my old laptop, first was semi succesful till it got bloated, then moved back to 10, then gave a new try at 22h2 or 23h2, got bloated again, and moved to Linux (Bazzite first, clunky also, CachyOS now, lean and gaming friendly), and so far I cant believe how much more performance was left on that laptop. I'll stick to John Malcovich words at Space Force about M$.

Windows 8 is pretty good other than the *****ic start screen, for which there were third-party tools that could bring the start menu back and you'd never see it again, since just a few months after the OS launched. It has better optimization than Windows 7 (faster, more responsive and uses less ram), and it brings some improved power user and sysadmin features like improved dism. I also became rather fond of the Windows 8 overall desktop theme (minus the start screen). Windows 8.1 polished a few minor rough edges that 8 still had.

Most Microsoft OS'es have always been pretty bad at launch, including beloved ones like Windows XP (people fondly remember XP SP2/SP3, and forget how buggy and unstable XP RTM was). Windows 7 dodged this because it's Windows Vista SP3 with a rebranding and a new default desktop theme.

What's baffling about Windows 11, is that the OS has been launched more than 4 years ago, and even after multiple major updates/service packs, it's still terrible in every aspect. Most updates bring nearly as many new bugs as they fix, and more anti-user changes that nobody wanted or asked for. This has never happened before. Every other Windows version became alright at worst, after 4 years of updates, bugfixing and polishing.

 

[acrossthestars]

At this point, the only value proposition for Windows 11 is that it officially receives security updates...provided your hardware supports it. The fact that many people are opting to install Windows 10 IoT is a damning indictment of Microslop's utter shortsightedness.

Once a juggernaut of the corporate world, they have put themselves in a spot very few companies would envy: even though enterprise runs on their product catalog and switching is basically not an option (because too many systems depend on their infrastructure)―which means they have a captive audience that cannot say "no" to their BS―they also don't have a diverse product portfolio. If businesses rejects their offerings (because they sure aren't concerned with the average, every day person abandoning Windows), then they stand to lose billions.

No amount of playing musical chairs, with paper notes of future, spectulative shares of generative AI profit, is going to save a company that has bills to pay today.

 

[DirtyLoad]

So you proved that Win 11 doesn't belong on old HDD and 2 core processors from 15 years ago.

 

[acrossthestars]

So you proved that Win 11 doesn't belong on old HDD and 2 core processors from 15 years ago.

What this test proved is that Windows 11 is a worse product than everything that came before.

In order for it to be an improvement, it has to be better than Windows 10 in some way that shows potential for future utility beyond being the newer thing: it has to be faster, leaner or just better optimized, and it's none of those things. The install size is bigger,it consumes more RAM and does nothing with it and it's constantly receiving feature updates―not even to provide a better user experience, but just to achieve parity with Windows 10. The fact that it doesn't run well on decade-old hardware is not surprising, but what it suggests is that the higher-ups are banking on ever more powerful computers to just brute-force the bloat, using "performance requirements" as a smoke screen to hide its obvious shortcomings and inadequacies.

That's not "the future", that's yesterdays tomorrow. It's a bad time, from worse people, and the response bears out that reality. Microslop is so focused on trying to turn Windows 11 into an agentic, interaction-less autonomous platform, that they either forget regular people (not just enterprise) have to use it or they don't care, and now their OS is facing a torrential downpour of spiraling public opinion and deflating user retention.

 

[Taroo]

I hate the Windows 11 experience since the very beginning. And never used for my own machines, but had no choice at work...
The taskbar and start menu, especially, are backsliding.
I was still using Windows 10 on the HTPC, until last week, now it runs Linux Mint like every other computer I own.
Bye bye Microsoft. And thanks Proton.

 

[LimyG]

Yeah, I'm back on Ten. Not due to speed. Didn't test in detail, but couldn't feel a difference.

The reason is simple. I Hate Windows 11. I've tried and given it many hours, but IMO, it is the worst piece of junkware ever.

Everyone is entilted their own opinions, and I envy those who like W11. I detest it.

 

[LimyG]

^^^ Lololol!!!

Heh. Careful what you wish for. Y'all could end up with somebody even MORE "blinkered" and self-absorbed than Nadella..!

Miq.

Hard to imagine, but that is the kind of thing - the only thing really, that MS are any good at now a days.
So I agree. A CEO who gave any consideration to anything that customers want would be entirley contrary to MS in 2025/2026. Screw them.

Edit: Having said that, I wish Nadella would just.... go away, never to be seen or heard of again.

 

[Win7User]

Windows 8 is pretty good other than the *****ic start screen, for which there were third-party tools that could bring the start menu back and you'd never see it again, since just a few months after the OS launched. It has better optimization than Windows 7 (faster, more responsive and uses less ram), and it brings some improved power user and sysadmin features like improved dism. I also became rather fond of the Windows 8 overall desktop theme (minus the start screen). Windows 8.1 polished a few minor rough edges that 8 still had.

Most Microsoft OS'es have always been pretty bad at launch, including beloved ones like Windows XP (people fondly remember XP SP2/SP3, and forget how buggy and unstable XP RTM was). Windows 7 dodged this because it's Windows Vista SP3 with a rebranding and a new default desktop theme.

What's baffling about Windows 11, is that the OS has been launched more than 4 years ago, and even after multiple major updates/service packs, it's still terrible in every aspect. Most updates bring nearly as many new bugs as they fix, and more anti-user changes that nobody wanted or asked for. This has never happened before. Every other Windows version became alright at worst, after 4 years of updates, bugfixing and polishing.

"Most updates bring nearly as many new bugs as they fix, and more anti-user changes that nobody wanted or asked for." Exactly!! Nice comment, well said...

 

[captaincranky]

Yeah, Vista was way worse than 11, great big stinker. Microsoft didn't force everyone to use it though by cutting off security updates for XP.

People always seem to overlook the one feature of Vista of value in Vista. It offered native SATA support. However, at the time,SATA 1 was the only serial bus available. Well, SATA 1 really isn't that much faster than the ATA 125 PATA of the time. I have an ancient Toshiba / Celeron laptop of the time. I swapped out its HDD for an SSD, which offered absolutely no improvement in boot speed or anything else.

OEMs at the time were typically disposed of running SATA ports as PATA, or at its speeds. (As I said, there wasn't much difference.)

As for Vista, (at least for my laptop), Vista functioned at least on a par with XP. I never had a stitch of trouble with it.

As we all, or should know, Windows 7 was just polished version of the Vista "beta" offering. Windows 7 "adds bloat", albeit "welcome bloat", in the form of Windows media center and the "Aerogloss" GUI.

By the time Win 7 was released, hardware manufacturers had caught up with Vista/Win 7's native SATA support, which was SATA 2 at the time. Enter SSDs, and you get cold start boot times of about 30 seconds, even on junk from as early as 2011.

 

[onebignerd]

What I really don't understand is why it takes SOOOOOO LONG to boot and be usable when it fundamentally doesn't do anything more *that's useful to the user* than even Windows 7. W7 would boot in like 8 seconds. W11 for my laptop takes no joke 20 times that, but why? What do I gain?

I mean honestly, to the average end user besides security and app compatibility, what did we gain since the XP days?

Just timed my tower PC booting from power off is 45 seconds to the login screen, on a .M2 1 gig drive, 13 gen i9 processor, 32 gigs DDR5 RAM. I don't find that unreasonable or lengthy. I am suspicious of your 8 second boot time. Worked with PCs for 35+ years, don't remember Windows 95 booting that fast.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Yet the subheadline :

is considered fair by the author. The clickbait nature of this article is pretty obvious and a poor showing.

--

If we're being objective, this is a mobile Sandy Bridge system that was irrelevant years before Windows 11 launched while also being unsupported.

Storage testing alone shows the weakness of this. SSDs launched 8 years after XP and anything pre Win 7 doesn't support TRIM so it's a disadvantage to 2000s era systems. It's also unfair to test Win 11 on a HDD system when it's expecting to take advantage of an SSD for boot. The tests simply favour older operating systems by default with that methodology.


A bold statement made to fit a narrative, rather than based on sensible evidence, testing and methodology. Compare era appropriate, and supported, hardware on era appropriate OS's, then we would get a more realistic answer for real-world experiences. Otherwise it's simply poor journalism from both the video creator and this website.

My thoughts exactly. The only way I see you can test this scenario, given that hardware and software change in concert with one another, is to locate a laptop for each generation that shipped with that particular version of the OS, benchmark that computer with its shipped OS, and then try installing and benchmarking every other OS (on every single laptop).

You have to build a matrix, of every combination of hardware and OS, and benchmark them all. Some probably won't even boot (e.g. trying to put Win 11 on an XP-era laptop will be a real challenge, I suspect), but that alone is effectively part of the benchmark, no?

 

[captaincranky]

MS needs a new CEO. I hope so.

I\d like to suggest something a step further..!

ICE needs to stop murdering US citizens, and deport this a**hole Satya Nadella.

 

[captaincranky]

You have to build a matrix, of every combination of hardware and OS, and benchmark them all. Some probably won't even boot (e.g. trying to put Win 11 on an XP-era laptop will be a real challenge, I suspect), but that alone is effectively part of the benchmark, no?

Discounting the fact that I'm far too lazy, unmotivated, and disinterested to ever undertake a fool's errand like this, here's some fun facts to back that position up.

Intel persisted in making 32 bit laptop CPUs, (IIRC), well into the Win 7 era. If I understand it correctly, Windows 11 is 64 bit only.

The average amount of RAM supplied with an XP machine was 2 GB. Windows 7 64 bit uses about 1.40 GB of RAM to run itself. A 32 bit machine will just barely navigate today's web. I tried it with 32 bit Windows 7, and Firefox cashed with maybe a half dozen tabs open.

Americans are complete suckers for anything supposedly, "free". Which is the reason that Nadella was able to ram Windows down your throats with the utmost of ease. He's been so emboldened by that, now you're getting Windows 11 in suppository form, with whatever bloat, rubbish, and telemetry included, whether you like it or not.

The bottom line is, Windows 11 >IS< malware, why else would it include a keylogger?

Compared to the piece of sh!t running M$ now, Bill Gates was a verifiable saint. We know who runs M$, but I question who was the principle Windows 11 programmer, George Orwell maybe?

 

[captaincranky]

Yeah, Vista was way worse than 11, great big stinker. Microsoft didn't force everyone to use it though by cutting off security updates for XP.

Oddly, I have a Vista laptop, and it never gave me a bit of trouble. Apparently it would seem that Toshiba's system integrators were better equipped to deal with Vista, than most of those bitterly complaining about it

For those of you who still don't know, Vista included native support for SATA, (AHCI) Drives.

The problem was, hardware manufacturers, either weren't looped in. or hadn't caught up with the tech at the time of its release.

BTW, I'm really sick of explaining this.

 

[LimyG]

Oddly, I have a Vista laptop, and it never gave me a bit of trouble. Apparently it would seem that Toshiba's system integrators were better equipped to deal with Vista, than most of those bitterly complaining about it

For those of you who still don't know, Vista included native support for SATA, (AHCI) Drives.

The problem was, hardware manufacturers, either weren't looped in. or hadn't caught up with the tech at the time of its release.

BTW, I'm really sick of explaining this.

Sad that you feel nauseous, hopefully my opinion, below, rarely utterered due to massive flaming attacks will settle your stomach, at least a bit.

I am also of the view that Vista, certainly after service pack one was pretty good. Never gave me any trouble either.

I actually have fond memories of it.

 

[captaincranky]

@LimyG Since Vista was released to the public way back in January, 2007, it gives one pause to wonder if some of the people bad mouthing it, actually even used it. Or, its alleged shortcomings are being recounted via rumor / gossip / legendary / or mythology, routes. Anyhoo, it gives me great comfort to know there's at least one other person who shared my mostly positive experience with that OS. So, a big thanks for that. The reality is, the only real issue I had with Vista is that its GUI was rather bland, when compared with Windows 7.

Below is an incomplete amateur psychological observational rant, concerning the current disconnect between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie in the US today. Dear god. now I'm starting to sound like Karl Marx. Read at your own risk.

Either that, or it's an in vain attempt to revisit the joys, trials ,and travails , of English comp 201. "Pat, I think I'd like to buy a vowel....."

I literally, actually, factually, and provably, first said that Nadella was a piece of sh!t just over a decade ago, coinciding with the release/forced adoption of Windows 10. Ditto for the length of time and my same sentiments toward Elon Musk, and he whose name may not be spoken. I all too clearly remember a firestorm of rebuke, in the form of a lush chorus chanting urgently, "but it's free, it's free, free, free, you silly troll".

In the meantime, the concept of "draconian ulterior motives", has been stirred into the colloquial, under the less fear inducing and anxiety provoking, PG-13 friendly term, "spin". A little bit of "spin" seems harmless enough, right?

In another more topical and context appropriate venue, I clearly recall myself opining of Nadella, "ICE should stop murdering US citizens, and deport that piece of sh!t back to the New Delhi ghetto bazaar where he belongs."

We're allegedly blessed with the highest intelligence of any creature that ever walked, crawled, slithered, or swam the earth. The tragic reality is, we surrender it willingly and easily to our mindless, inflexible, and inane, belief systems.

So what has my trip down the rabbit hole of my own making attempted to teach me? Well, if a politician or CEO's lips are moving, it has absolutely nothing to do with what they're thinking or planning to do. Or in the case of a certain individual, overtly and patently lying loudly to cover the sound of their own flatulence. (With a heaping helping of self aggrandizement thrown in for good measure.)

Mercifully, I'm going to stop now, before I slip up and tell you how I really feel. Which would in turn force you to bill me for a therapy session.

 

[LimyG]

@LimyG Since Vista was released to the public way back in January, 2007, it gives one pause to wonder if some of the people bad mouthing it, actually even used it. Or, its alleged shortcomings are being recounted via rumor / gossip / legendary / or mythology, routes. Anyhoo, it gives me great comfort to know there's at least one other person who shared my mostly positive experience with that OS. So, a big thanks for that. The reality is, the only real issue I had with Vista is that its GUI was rather bland, when compared with Windows 7.

Below is an incomplete amateur psychological observational rant, concerning the current disconnect between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie in the US today. Dear god. now I'm starting to sound like Karl Marx. Read at your own risk.

Either that, or it's an in vain attempt to revisit the joys, trials ,and travails , of English comp 201. "Pat, I think I'd like to buy a vowel....."

I literally, actually, factually, and provably, first said that Nadella was a piece of sh!t just over a decade ago, coinciding with the release/forced adoption of Windows 10. Ditto for the length of time and my same sentiments toward Elon Musk, and he whose name may not be spoken. I all too clearly remember a firestorm of rebuke, in the form of a lush chorus chanting urgently, "but it's free, it's free, free, free, you silly troll".

In the meantime, the concept of "draconian ulterior motives", has been stirred into the colloquial, under the less fear inducing and anxiety provoking, PG-13 friendly term, "spin". A little bit of "spin" seems harmless enough, right?

In another more topical and context appropriate venue, I clearly recall myself opining of Nadella, "ICE should stop murdering US citizens, and deport that piece of sh!t back to the New Delhi ghetto bazaar where he belongs."

We're allegedly blessed with the highest intelligence of any creature that ever walked, crawled, slithered, or swam the earth. The tragic reality is, we surrender it willingly and easily to our mindless, inflexible, and inane, belief systems.

So what has my trip down the rabbit hole of my own making attempted to teach me? Well, if a politician or CEO's lips are moving, it has absolutely nothing to do with what they're thinking or planning to do. Or in the case of a certain individual, overtly and patently lying loudly to cover the sound of their own flatulence. (With a heaping helping of self aggrandizement thrown in for good measure.)

Mercifully, I'm going to stop now, before I slip up and tell you how I really feel. Which would in turn force you to bill me for a therapy session.

A classic post! Loved it!
Beautifully rounded out with last paragraph about therapy session billing.

 

[jeffbert]

As W10 was nearing its end, I spent more than a few hours looking at W11 machines on Amazon.

I am soooo glad I stayed with my old machine, especially since MS decided to extend its support for W10!

 

[Win7User]

As W10 was nearing its end, I spent more than a few hours looking at W11 machines on Amazon.

I am soooo glad I stayed with my old machine, especially since MS decided to extend its support for W10!

Windows 10 was pretty good. But, I still LOVE my (Acer Laptop, age 14yrs) Windows 7 machine. It's, a bit slower, but it works! I, realize I could be at risk for problems using an unsupported operating system. But, then I use Acronis True Image. If, something does happen ( and has twice before) I'll be back up and running in a few hours at most. Losing, nothing. I, use Linux Mint on my (5 yr old, with Windows 11 25H2) HP desktop, Linux has been a learning curve to say the least.