I’ll admit it: I’m often pretty critical of Microsoft. But honestly, the frustration usually comes from real-world experience. Case in point, I was setting up a client’s brand new Dell laptop running Windows 11 the other day, and the whole process reminded me just how inconsistent things have become, how poor Microsoft’s product quality is.

First, I did a standard setup in English, then added French with the Multilingual French Canadian keyboard. Simple enough, right? Except when I logged in, the Settings panel popped up… in French and yet the Taskbar was correctly displaying in English, so I had some hybrid version of Windows. Everything had been configured to English (keyboard, regional settings, …), the keyboard was correct, and yet Windows decided to get creative.

Then, on first launch of Edge, I wasn’t greeted by a clean homepage or a helpful intro. Nope, straight into a survey. Not sure if that one’s on Dell or Microsoft, but either way, not exactly a great first impression on a new machine.

And the fun didn’t stop there. Office refused to install in 32-bit, forcing me to go 64-bit. Even then, the activation dialog was a disaster, horrible layout, buttons that couldn’t be seen or accessed, the kind of user experience that makes you wonder if anyone at Microsoft actually tests things beforehand. (answer would obviously be NO!)

At the end of the day, little glitches like these add up. They erode confidence, waste people’s valuable time, frustrate users, and make “out of the box” setup feel more like “out of patience.”

Alright. Rant over, I feel better now.