HandyAndy Tech Tips
In this video, I’ll give you a tour of Windows 11 Insider Preview (build 22000.51), showing its new features and improvements. Incredibly, I was able to run it on hardware that is very much ‘unsupported’ – a laptop with a 3rd generation ‘Ivy Bridge’ Core i7 processor and TPM 1.2 chip.
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Microsoft has just released the first official Windows 11 Insider Preview, build 22000.51. And I’m currently running it on a PC with a TPM 1.2 chip!
Now, Microsoft’s official requirements specify TPM 2.0 and an 8th generation Intel processor, but this PC only has a 3rd gen Ivy Bridge CPU – a Core i7-3520M. And Windows 11 seems to work OK, with some minor bugs.
To get this to work, I didn’t need to do any unofficial workarounds. I simply signed up to the Windows Insider Program with my Microsoft account! Even though it gives me a warning about my device not meeting the minimum requirements, I was able to successfully install Windows 11 without a hitch.
Of course, this is no guarantee that the final release of the OS will support this hardware – far from it. But for now, it’s working. So what are the major changes?
Probably the most obvious one is the fact that the taskbar icons are now centre-aligned, like the OS X Dock. The Start menu also has a new look. The Live Tiles are gone, and they’ve been replaced by some pinned apps and a selection of recommended files. Clicking on “All apps” in the top right corner gives you an alphabetical list of your programs.
As someone who hated the Windows 10 start menu, I think this redesign is a very welcome improvement. It’s so good that I might be able to ditch Open-Shell, a Start menu replacement which I’ve been using for several years.
Now, if you don’t like the centre-aligned taskbar icons, you can always go into the Settings app and move them back to the left. But once I got used to it, I found the new UI to be quite aesthetically pleasing, so I’ll leave it as-is.
Talking about Settings, it’s also had a facelift. The categories, which were represented by large buttons in Windows 10, have now been moved into a column on the left side, with sub-categories and individual settings appearing on the right. This makes better use of screen real estate, especially for mouse users.
Unfortunately, the duplication of settings between the WinUI settings app and the legacy Control Panel is still an issue. It’s a bit weird having settings in two places at once, and I hope Microsoft can eventually eliminate the classic Control Panel altogether.
Elsewhere in the system, File Explorer looks very different. The Ribbon interface, present since Windows 8, has been replaced by a sleek series of icons. Unfortunately, many of the more advanced options are now hidden away in submenus and options dialogs, which I’m not a fan of, and there’s some bizarre changes that may break people’s workflows.
In terms of the Microsoft Store, not much has changed. It still looks quite similar, and there are no Android apps in there yet. Those will reportedly be coming in a future build. It should be interesting to see how well they work.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the widgets working on my installation. It may be a compatibility problem with my graphics hardware.