I can name features, but everything I can think of are technical features rather than obvious surface level stuff: DX12, better support for SSDs (Windows 7 doesn't natively support TRIM), HDR (I guess, but it still seems broken to me). And none of these are things that couldn't be implemented in Windows 7. The UI has nothing to do with these things, and there's no reason we couldn't have them without the trouble Windows 10/11, other than the fact that MS doesn't want to do things that way.

On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout across those monitors that you had when you last disconnected (assuming those windows are still open).

This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked that way.

WPA3, DNS over HTTPS, WSL2, Windows Sandbox, Per monitor DPI scaling, QUIC, DirectX 12. The list can be made pretty long.

WSL is a great feature and was a part of Windows 10.

Tabs on notepad and file explorer are extremely nice.

I can't believe it took them 20 years to add them, but at least they're finally here.

This may be unpopular, but they made three legitimately GOOD changes to Notepad, before they went absolutely batshit.

- Dark mode

- Tabs

- "Continue previous session" (restore after restart)

But they also made a HUGE regression which isn't talked about enough:

- Previously, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad didn't "notice." Meaning you could Save to recreate it. The file existed in an ephemeral state, as long as the Notepad window remained open. Right now, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad notices immediately, errors out, and closes that tab -- content gone.

VSCode handles this correctly, it puts a line through the filename in the tab (and red-font), but doesn't close the tab on you suddenly. Ephemeral state retained.

In my ideal world Notepad needs exactly ONE new feature:

- Right Click Tab: "Copy Path."

Then just REMOVE: Spell Checker, Formatting, CoPilot, Markdown(!), and Autocorrect. Completely inappropriate functionality for Notepad, and the Vibecoded Markdown implementation already added a security vulnerability(!) to freaking Notepad. Branch off into a product called "Wordpad" and then create all of that garbage in there.

I used to run all three major OS' where I saw no real difference in me using it for the apps etc I needed. As I leaned more heavily on the development side, linux kind of prevailed. Windows 8.1 and Yosemite were the last of the other two I've used for real. Never had to look back to other two since, be it for work, games or whatever.

Even occasional need for Adobe things stopped. I would still really like to see Adobe suite on linux, but if they don't want my money that's cool too I guess. I suspect the software tools people use for work is what's holding them back mostly, like Altium, CADs etc. Funnily enough, Microsoft office is just fine without OS native version most of the time.

Windows terminal

AutoHDR is nifty and useful