I do have two computers at home (as mentioned elsewhere on this site): a MacBook Pro, and a 2015-era custom built computer. I didn’t realize the custom built was that old — but I guess I must have done a good job when I ordered it! (To be fair, the computer *has* had its Windows drive upgraded twice from a 250 gig SSD to a 1 gig SSD, and I do have a bit of storage on there for photos and other things.)
What I find amusing is that Microsoft won’t “officially” let me upgrade to Windows 11 on the Windows-only machine, but I not only can – but was encouraged to do so – on my MacBook Pro running Parallels 17. Parallels actually suggests going straight to Windows 11 when installing their software.
Both are essentially the same vintage as far as processors go – the MacBook Pro is a Haswell machine; my Windows computer is Devil’s Canyon. Yeah, so much for being current and updated – it’s called being a professor! 😉
Yet Microsoft allows the Haswell to install Windows 11, but not the Devil’s Canyon, which is newer. 🤷🏻♂️
But most academics don’t like change in their machines – and don’t play around with them much. [1] I’m not like most academics. I think most are not going to like the Win 11 interface, with all of the icons in the middle of the screen. [2] Yes, I know you can move it back, but it takes 5 steps to do so: Settings—>Personalization—>Taskbar—>Taskbar Behaviors—>Taskbar Alignment—>Left. I have a feeling that I’ll actually be using Windows more on the MacBook than on the regular machine. Why? Because my Windows machine gets quite a bit of use from my son… 😉 And more importantly for my purposes, some accessibility checkers are Windows-only for now. More about that in an upcoming post.
In future posts, I’ll comment more about the experience of running Windows 11 on this kind of machine.