During the past few days a leaked ISO of Windows 11 appeared on the internet available for download and bloggers of IT and computing in general started to make their various comments on it. A number of alternative download sites have sprung up and have been very busy providing the Windows curious and others, with the facility to download the ISO.
Microsoft did say that Windows 10 was going to be the last Windows, but even having said that, they produced Windows 10S and were all set to release Windows 10X that the pundits said was meant to go head to head with Chrome OS. Then they apparently ditched the idea of Windows 10X, followed shortly by the leak of the Windows 11 ISO.
It seems that some of the features that were to have been part of Windows 10X have been moved over to Windows 11. It is always disturbing when companies like Microsoft become capricious, and one is bound to ask ‘Why’?
I hope that Microsoft are not about to repeat the Windows 8 debacle for the same reasons. Microsoft wanted to make an operating system that would work across all device types from phones, to tablets to laptops and desktop PCs. Windows 8 was a huge failure for precisely this reason. Phones, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs are NOT the same and do not substitute for each other. That is not to say that there isn’t some overlap in functionality, but they are quite different devices!
It seems that Windows 11 is going to be more suited to touch-screen devices than Windows 10. Sounds familiar? In fact, touch screen devices are clumsy, unhygenic and awkward devices. The mouse and keyboard are the best ways to enter data and to control applications (I hate the term ‘App’). Microsoft have invested in the production of their own touch-screen laptops, and this is fine for certain specialist applications where the screen and a stylus may be the best way to enter a different type of data such as a drawing. However, to centre the whole operating system around touch screens sounds like the same kind of madness that gave rise to Windows 8!
In a few days time, Microsoft will be holding an online event to reveal the future of Windows so this will, hopefully, tell us a lot more.
Having said all of the above, at the time of writing, we just don’t know anything other than what is in the Windows 11 that has been leaked.
We downloaded and installed the Windows 11 ISO on a laptop that had previously run Windows 10 Pro. It installed normally and activated correctly as the Windows 11operating system.
Apart from curiosity about what the future of Windows might hold, we wanted to know if our software, AstroDMx Capture for Windows would run on Windows 11. It does!
There are a couple of things that I quite like in Win 11.
The items on the taskbar have been moved to the centre so that it looks a bit like macOS and a lot like Chrome OS. Running ‘winver’ clearly shows that the OS is Win 11.
An icon on the taskbar gives quick access to the virtual desktops which show at the bottom of the screen, each of which can be given its own background. These are features that I find useful.
Testing the SV305M Pro with AstroDMx Capture for Windows on Windows 11
An SV305MP Pro prototype camera was placed at the Cassegrain focus of a Skymax 127 Maksutov, mounted on a Celestron AVX mount.
AstroDMx Capture for Windows was used to capture a 5000-frame SER file of the alpine valley region of the 47% waxing Moon.
Click on an image to get a closer view
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Windows capturing Lunar data on Win 11.
The best 30% of the frames in the SER file were stacked in Autostakkert. The resulting image was wavelet processed in Registax 6 and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.
The alpine valley region of the 47% waxing Moon
The craters Aristoteles, Eudoxus, Aristillus and Autolycus are prominent in this image as are the Caucasus and Apennine mountain regions.
So, AstroDMx Capture for Windows worked well in Windows 11.
The new Start menu, (which looks a lot like Chrome OS) is something I could get used to, but at the moment, I prefer the unique Windows tiled Start menu.
Of course, we must remember that this was a leaked version of the OS which leads one to ask ‘why was it leaked?’ It seems to me that maybe Microsoft is flying a kite and waiting to see what the response will be from the computing community.
My response is mixed. The most important things I can say at the moment are that AstroDMx Capture for Windows worked fine, and that I could live with the new desktop environment if that is what the release version of Win 11 is like.
