I don't need Windows 11 anymore. One final tool freed me from Microsoft

I’ve been utilizing Windows for so long as I can keep in mind. It was on the very first PC I recall utilizing, actually on my father’s knee. But I don’t want it anymore. That’s a bizarre factor to say as a author for a website named PCWorld. But it’s been a very long time coming, a gradual mixture of broad tech tendencies, feeling betrayed by a number of manufacturers, and just a little little bit of intention on my half. 

To be clear, I nonetheless use Windows. It’s what I’m utilizing proper now to kind this, on a beefy gaming desktop I assembled myself, with triple screens and all types of googaws connected. But I don’t want all that anymore, and for the primary time in my grownup life, I can see myself transitioning to a wholly completely different working system. 

That’s an enormous deal for me, and I think I’m removed from alone. Microsoft may need to make a remark of it. 

Why I don’t want Windows

So right here’s what I imply after I say that I don’t want Windows anymore: Every instrument, program, and piece of knowledge I depend on is now basically separate from no matter machine I’m utilizing in the meanwhile.

I’m writing the phrases you’re studying proper now in Google Docs. When I’m accomplished, I’ll edit them in WordPress. Throughout my work day I’m speaking with my coworkers and executives on Slack, I’m chatting with my pals through textual content, WhatsApp, and another platforms. I’m managing my very own to-do checklist in Google Keep, updating my work duties in a instrument referred to as Monday, and checking private {and professional} electronic mail in Gmail and Outlook, respectively. I’m keeping track of information and social tendencies in BlueSky and The Old Reader for RSS. 

I nonetheless use native information, after all. But they’re all backed up weekly via Backblaze and accessible wherever I am going, with no matter {hardware} I’ve handy. Most of the time I don’t even want that. Aside from put in sport information, the odd enterprise/tax doc, and an enormous library of images, each my very own and my household’s, I barely even take into consideration the storage on my PC. 

Here’s a screenshot of my fundamental Windows taskbar: Vivaldi, Gmail, Outlook, the PCWorld brand for WordPress, a sure inexperienced “P” I’ll handle shortly, Slack, Explorer, Monday, Google Keep, Google Docs, YouTube.

If you haven’t noticed the frequent thread right here: each single considered one of these experiences is both an online instrument or has an online interface. I take advantage of my favorite browser, Vivaldi, to entry nearly all of them, often in a progressive net app (PWA) or merely a shortcut wrapper and not using a full browser interface. It’s one of my most essential features of modern browsers, permitting me to separate these instruments extra simply and deal with them after I have to. 

Every considered one of them is accessible on the internet, and on different platforms. I can use all of them on a pill and even my cellphone, and more often than not not lose any performance. In reality though I work at home, I entry a number of that on my cellphone through the day, on the identical platforms. At this level Windows is principally only a means for accessing the net in a snug means, on costly {hardware} I’m accustomed to. I feel a number of customers really feel the identical means, particularly youthful people who grew up post-iPhone.

Further studying: The best Chromebooks we’ve tested

Photoshop was the final holdout

The final domino to fall on this chain was picture modifying. I’ve been utilizing Photoshop for over 20 years. Since I realized it in a highschool media class, it’s been extremely tough to interrupt myself of the reliance on it for creating article header pictures or modifying evaluation images. Not that I didn’t need to — I’ve had a chip on my shoulder for Adobe for nearly as lengthy, particularly after it transitioned its extraordinarily costly Creative Suite software program to an much more costly Creative Cloud subscription setup. It reeked of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” 

I favored proudly owning Photoshop, and I used to be not and am not completely satisfied that the choice was taken away. Until a number of weeks in the past I used to be nonetheless holding an historic copy of Creative Suite 6 from 2012 (the final time it was supplied as an actual buy) alive and kicking. I’ve tried alternatives many times, together with the tastelessly-titled GIMP, Affinity Photo, and Pixlr X. All are fairly good instruments, however to my disgrace, I saved crawling again to the familiarity of Photoshop. 

Foundry

My reminiscence, each standard and muscle, made it tough to make use of any of those applications, though every considered one of them covers the overwhelming majority of Photoshop’s core features. I’ve spent years of my life utilizing Photoshop, a number of of them utilizing it for as much as eight hours a day in a print store. It’s a tough expertise for me to quantify should you’re not married to a bit of software program like that — think about it as the sensation you get from sporting another person’s prescription glasses. It’s that type of practical discomfort. 

I’m pretty sure Adobe banks on this, and that’s why you may entry Photoshop and different applications at an enormous low cost should you’re a scholar or in any other case working at a college. To paraphrase Aristotle, “Give me a high-schooler until they are 17, and I will show you the foundations of a life-long subscription customer.” 

But after a long-overdue Windows reinstallation, I made a decision to forego the effort of getting my trusty, rusty copy of CS6 operational. Instead I attempted out Photopea, a web based raster picture editor with a shameless and fantastic clone of the Photoshop interface. 

Attack of the Clones

I’ve tried Photopea a number of instances earlier than, with this precise purpose in thoughts. And I couldn’t fairly get it to stay. To be trustworthy I can’t recall if it was an absence of efficiency within the instrument, or just that it wasn’t as succesful as CS6 even over a decade later. But whichever a part of the equation has modified — the efficiency in a contemporary browser on a robust desktop, the server-side efficiency, or the picture modifying choices being improved — it simply clicked. 

Now I’m utilizing Photopea (pronounced “photo-pee” if you’re wondering, however the creators don’t actually care) instead of Photoshop for all my work functions. I don’t even have the latter put in, although I nonetheless have my copy simply in case. I’m paying $5 a month for the ad-free model of Photopea, which nonetheless rankles my “just let me buy it” coronary heart a bit. But the truth that it’s utterly free with adverts, to not point out far, far cheaper than an Adobe subscription even should you banish them, is a balm to my skinflint soul. 

Photopea

And in spite of everything, Photopea is an online instrument hosted on a server — it at the very least has a primary justification for charging a subscription. Nothing stops Adobe from promoting a stand-alone, non-subscription model of Photoshop. Except greed.

Photopea is a clone of Photoshop, not an ideal alternative. There are issues it may’t do, notably load up customized fonts with out a number of further steps, that may make it unsuitable if I have been nonetheless doing graphics full time. And to be completely trustworthy, I’m not fairly pretty much as good at it as I was with Photoshop. Some of the consequences I’d throw along with ease simply don’t look pretty much as good. That could possibly be equal elements my very own unfamiliarity with the deeper instruments and the web-based program’s lack of Photoshop’s strongest, deeply buried choices. Maybe I’ll get again to my previous experience in time.

But I’m not a graphic designer anymore. I’m a keyboard jockey who wants a number of cropping for PR pictures, a little bit of background work, clone-stamp and coloration changes for unique images, that type of factor. And I can do all that, with out sacrificing velocity or most functionality, and with out native software program. I can do it on any machine, from a laptop computer or a pill and even my cellphone in a pinch (with a mouse and keyboard), and I can log in on all of these to get entry to it ad-free. 

Samsung

Oh, and even should you desire to pay Adobe’s exorbitant costs, you may nonetheless not want a neighborhood set up of this system. Photoshop has an online version now, similar to Photopea, included with the subscription.

Everything I have to do my job, and most of no matter else I would like, is totally divorced from Windows. Or if not divorced, then at the very least amicably separated. I understand that lots of people bought to this place earlier than I did, folks youthful than me, older than me, each extra tech-savvy and fewer. But it nonetheless looks like a private milestone.

Gaming nonetheless lives on Windows…for now

I’m nonetheless utilizing Windows 11, warts and all, even whereas I moan about ever-encroaching advertising in allegedly premium software program, to not point out the hard upsell for “AI” tools I don’t want. These are the place Microsoft is hoping to get that actual (learn: recurring) cash out of me, and the place I refuse to let it go. But Windows continues to be my private {and professional} house, whilst I more and more “live” on my cellphone, identical to everybody else. 

Gaming is an enormous a part of this. I personal a Switch and a PS5 and a pleasant pill and some different wingdings for video games — over a current trip I even performed by way of Skies of Arcadia to the top on an Android emulator. But PC gaming is the place I actually sink my tooth into the medium, and that’s unlikely to alter. Not simply because I like constructing desktop PCs (once more, verify the title of the location up high!), however as a result of Steam is my major technique of buying and taking part in video games. 

Lenovo/Valve

And even that isn’t a sacred cow I’m unwilling to eat. Valve is making Steam its personal OS, spreading into hardware from partners like Lenovo and Asus, and I feel it has a legitimate shot at dethroning Windows as the home of PC gaming. To say nothing of tendencies that allow you to entry your video games wherever, together with Nvidia’s cloud-powered GeForce Now (which performs my Steam video games!) and Microsoft’s personal Xbox Game Pass streaming. I’ve used each of them on the go, enjoyably if far much less easily than on my fancy-pants desktop at house, and been keenly conscious of their platform-agnostic nature. 

I performed the PC model of Fortnite, full with mouse and keyboard, by utilizing my Samsung cellphone’s DeX desktop mode, a USB-C monitor, and GeForce Now. Hey, at the very least one tiny sliver of the long run doesn’t suck.  

A brand new world of choices

This newfound freedom is liberating, if solely in a shopper sense. For the primary time I can significantly take into account a Mac or a Chromebook laptop, protected within the information that the whole lot I want will probably be accessible with barely even an adjustment to my routine. An iPad Pro, whereas not my first selection, would in all probability be doable. I might even see myself attempting out Linux on the desktop, although I confess I’d in all probability hold it dual-booting at first. And perhaps utilizing SteamOS or a derivative like Bazzite, simply to satiate my degenerate gaming wants. 

I don’t want Windows anymore. There’s a reasonably good probability you don’t, both, or at the very least that it’s simpler than ever to work round it. I feel you must hold it in thoughts…particularly should you’re a Microsoft govt who desires me to buy a new laptop. 

Further studying: Windows survival skills: 8 things every PC user should know how to do