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Poor Design On Windows 11.

Posted on 12th May 2024

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Sheryl's new laptop, which I bought earlier this year, runs Windows 11. So far, I am not impressed with the operating system.

Last night I noticed an odd bug. We had been watching a video, with the laptop connected to our TV, and the laptop charger plugged in. When we were finished, I unplugged the charger, and the screen (the laptop screen and the TV) both immediately went dark as the machine started to go into standby (suspend). As soon as I moved the mouse, the laptop woke up.

I puzzled over this for a while, and realised what had happened. The laptop has the default setting that, after 15 minutes of no user action (mouse or keyboard) while running on battery, it goes into standby. Obviously, this 15 minute timer is running even when charging, so as soon as the charger is removed, it goes into standby.

It really should start the timer only when the charger is removed. This is bad design, pure and simple; it shows that the requirements were not properly analysed, which would have highlighted this bug. This is exactly the kind of sloppy design that we have come to expect from Microsoft.