Windows 11 is honestly not as exciting an upgrade as we had hoped; Windows 10 felt like it saved us from the touchscreen-skewing horrors of Windows 8, but as long as there are no serious problems with the current OS, Windows 11 appears more modest.

That said, there is one major change I'm looking forward to: the new touchscreen. For this alone, I will probably take advantage of the free upgrade from Windows 10 as soon as the finished version is released.

Yes, opening from the middle of the taskbar in Windows 11 is a bit odd and may require a few decades of muscle memory readjustment. But for a feature that has served as the very backbone of Windows since its inception, it is an entirely sensible and practical upgrade.

To really understand why the UI elements are worth the fervor, we first need to understand what is wrong with the Windows 10 Start menu. And to demonstrate this, here is a screenshot of my own PC's Start menu, totally candid and unchanged:

In other words, take a look at this. I vaguely remember choosing to have as few live tiles as possible, but this just leaves a gray blank space of digital acres. And why are most of the remaining tiles there? I haven't used Microsoft Edge since I last installed Chrome, and even though I've never owned an Xbox console, I have "Xbox Console Companion" I think the Blue app is on me - probably pinned by accident - but I don't even know how to play solitaire.

Thus, 70% of the Windows 10 Start menu is functionally useless to me. There is nothing offensive about the alphabetical list of apps, but note that it breaks off when you barely get to B. If I want to find an app that has been deemed not worth pinning to the taskbar or has a shortcut on the desktop, it is faster to start typing the name into the search bar than to scroll.

The Windows 11 Start menu seems to be a much better use of space in my eyes. Removing the live tiles altogether, leaving more space for pinned apps and placing them in a cleaner, more readable grid is the smartest move.

I suspect this will lead to more active use of pinning apps. I have some work-essential software tacked to my taskbar, but I never felt that the ugly and unintuitive Windows 10 Start menu was an ideal alternative.

Windows 11 will have a more orderly 3 x 6 arrangement of apps that I use often but not enough to put on the taskbar. There would be no need to use search or scroll through an alphabetical list.

Another interesting new Start menu feature is the recommended grid of apps and individual files. This appears to show recently opened items that are not currently pinned elsewhere, so it may be useful to jump back to a previously unfinished Word document or media editing project. in Windows 10, the "recently used files" section of the file explorer also provides quick access to the "Recommended" items of pinned apps, but it makes sense to integrate them under the umbrella of "Things I probably want to open."

The Start menu may not be as overtly flashy an upgrade as some of the features in Windows 11, like automatic HDR mode for games or support for Android apps. However, it could well be one of the most important improvements of the new OS in terms of actual day-to-day use.