One of the greatest complaints about Windows has been the amount of bloat Microsoft has introduced over the years. Sometimes this has involved misguided ambitions, like the Cortana voice assistant, or replacing the Start menu with a tile-based interface geared towards tablets. At other times, the only goal has been to push Microsoft's business agenda, regardless of what customers want. One older example is Windows Genuine Advantage, a Windows XP "feature" meant to reduce piracy that ended up flagging and sabotaging legitimate software. You haven't seen that one anytime recently.
The Widgets panel
Who is this for, exactly?
Widgets in general are a useful concept -- done right, they're a quick way of glancing vital info without having to launch an app. But Windows 11's Widgets panel just doesn't make sense. To access it, you mouse over a taskbar icon, so you're either going out of your way to see its contents or triggering it by accident. And by default, the panel is usually full of content I don't care about, like obscure Microsoft Store games, news stories picked at random, and stock data that -- as Lewis Black once said -- tells you that someone's getting rich, but it isn't you.
I shouldn't have to spend a few minutes telling Windows not to feed me with celebrity gossip or Fox News clips.
You can potentially get some value out of the panel if you meticulously curate your feed. But there are better sources of information out there, and I shouldn't have to spend a few minutes telling Windows not to feed me with celebrity gossip or Fox News clips. I'd much rather install purpose-built widgets directly to my desktop or else stick to the web. Often, the widgets on my iPhone are more practical than what Windows 11 includes.
Most people should just go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar and just disable Widgets entirely. In fact, the only reason I keep it on is that the panel's icon displays a weather thumbnail most of the time.
Copilot everywhere
Not nearly as useful as Microsoft wants you to believe
I have no doubt that for some people, Copilot -- based on ChatGPT -- is an integral part of their workflow, maybe even their entire digital existence. But Microsoft is so thoroughly convinced of Copilot's importance that it's not only built into Microsoft 365 apps, but Windows 11 as a whole. It's a tentpole feature. When I bought a replacement work laptop this summer, it was one of many new Windows machines with a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard.
I have used Copilot occasionally, but it just doesn't matter to me on a daily basis. I don't need it to improve my writing, and I certainly don't need it to summarize text. I do sometimes use AI as the starting point for research, but a start is all it can ever be, since I inevitably have to doublecheck its facts.
Copilot is mostly trying to please you rather than guarantee the authenticity of its answers. If you want to test this, try introducing astrology into a few queries. If you work on the assumption that astrology is legitimate, Copilot does as well -- but if you say you might think astrology is bunk, suddenly it changes its tune. If I can't trust it on astrology, I'm certainly not going to trust it on serious reporting. I'm sure Copilot is valuable for people who want it to draft presentations, spreadsheets, and the like, but I think the average person could drop it from Windows 11 and never notice the difference.
Unwanted ads, tips, and suggestions
I've already finished setup, thank you
Microsoft has a lot of features it wants you to try, and various apps and services it wants you to pay for. To nudge you along, Windows regularly drops ads and tips in places like taskbar searches or your lockscreen. I've also had Windows repeatedly suggest that I sign up for Xbox Game Pass, or buy a game on sale at the Microsoft Store. There are ways of reducing or eliminating these distractions, usually by exploring menus under Settings > Personalization, yet Microsoft seems to be counting on people being unaware they can clean things up.
Perhaps my most hated example is the "Let's finish setting up your device" wizard. This has a tendency to return from the dead after restarts and updates, and it's not really meant to be helpful -- it's meant to steer you into using things like OneDrive (more on that in a second). The fact that the only way to disable this permanently is by going to Settings > System > Notifications - Additional settings tells you where Microsoft's priorities lie.
Related to all this is the default inclusion of web content in taskbar searches. That could be genuinely convenient for some people, but like that setup wizard, it's really geared towards Microsoft's business aims. In this case, it means kicking you over to Bing so it can make ad revenue.
Dependence on Microsoft accounts and OneDrive
It's still possible to use Windows without signing into a Microsoft account, but it's increasingly difficult, to the point that most people shouldn't bother trying. An online account is not only simpler, but handy for tasks like single sign-on (SSO) into other Microsoft services, or syncing files and settings between PCs. Without an automatic OneDrive backup, I might've lost some critical files when my old work laptop died.
Microsoft only offers 5GB of OneDrive space for free, so unless you carefully manage things or opt out entirely, you're liable to need a Microsoft 365 subscription.
This isn't fair to people who have limited needs, or simply want to minimize their dependence on Microsoft. Indeed, people have complained about the "OneDrive-ification" of Windows, which rearranges its folder structure and steers you into some degree of OneDrive backup by default -- regardless of whether you'd rather use another cloud service or none at all. Microsoft only offers 5GB of OneDrive space for free, so unless you carefully manage things or opt out entirely, you're liable to need a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Some sort of cloud backup is usually essential these days -- but I'd recommend Google Drive unless the convenience of migrating from PC to PC is as important to you as it is to someone like me. I depend on my computer for a living, so if something goes wrong, I need to be able to hit the ground running when I've got new (or newly wiped) hardware.