Anything to get "excited" about with a new 12th generation Intel laptop with Windows 11? Well, maybe yes, and maybe no

 

About the only thing that “excites” me these days is when I scrounge up enough money to buy a new laptop computer, since I prefer to avoid paying for such things on credit. After Fry’s Electronics closed, the only retail store left that sold computer products was Best Buy, but the SouthCenter location was still trying to sell off last year’s product and didn’t have a single 12^th generation Intel laptop to sell (or so I was told). The one person on duty in the computer department didn’t know when they would have these new machines in. Although I loathed to do it, I looked up what Amazon had for sale, and since Sony stopped selling VAIO laptops in the U.S. years ago, I preferred the HP brand, avoiding brands like Lenova and Acer at all costs due to some bad experiences with product I purchased from then.

So anyways the only 12^th generation Intel that Amazon was selling at the moment from HP was a Pavilion laptop with a i7-1255U processor. My previous purchase was an HP Envy 11^th generation Intel laptop; the “difference” between a Pavilion and an Envy is that the former is supposed to be a “general purpose” machine and the latter is more “business” oriented. The Pavilion is alleged to be more gamer-friendly than the Envy, and I suppose that I should be “impressed” that a game almost 30 years old—Jump Raven—is still chugging along fitfully even on Windows 11:

 

Unfortunately for $100 less than what I paid for the Envy, I didn’t get a touchscreen (no big deal, just leaves smudges), no micro SD card slot (it would have been occasionally useful), and no backlit keyboard (not good, but I can live without it). As far as performance is concerned, there no obvious difference between the i7-1255U and the i7-11657G in processing speed, although the speed jump in startup and shutdown with the system software stored in the no-longer-an-option Optane memory in the Envy was mind-boggling to say the least. Since this new laptop also has a solid state hard drive the same procedures are still fast but now just ho-hum.

Unlike previous iterations of Intel processors, Intel is now directly competing with Apple’s M1 version of “ARM”—Advanced RISC Machine—processor. Back in the day RISC was supposedly the next “big thing,” but it never really reached the consumer market for a long time. RISC—as opposed to CISC, which uses a “complex” instruction set to do several operations at once—basically breaks down the instructions (as in “reduced”) separately for “simpler” and faster  processing, although it means more individual instructions have to be utilized for the same process instead one big “chuck.” In ARM processing, the actual “processor” is broken down into separate components, where some (or most) are used for “light” tasks (word processing), while other components are specifically designed to handle heavy tasks (like gaming).

The 12^th generation Intel processor, like its predecessors and AMD processors, are still x86-based and thus largely remain within the CISC family; with the 12^th generation, Intel is simply adopting the ARM/M1 architecture of multiple processing units instead of one large processor. There are those who would argue for and against, although as many people have discovered to the chagrin of their pocketbooks when dealing with Apple, x86 processors are more adaptable to change and improvement, and whatever speed advantage either processors has over the other is limited by power consumption, and RISC processors—because they require more bandwidth to execute the same amount of instructions, also require higher memory usage.

To compare the 1255U with previous Intel chips, I used CPU-Z. Testing shows that in single and multi-core performance the 1255U is about 20 percent faster than the 11657G processor that was in my Envy laptop, and in the “stress test”—which measures how long the processor can sustain 100 percent capacity—the 1255U significantly outperforms the 11657G, maintaining capacity while the latter has a significant drop-off over a time. I will assume that this represents an advantage in using a dedicated portion of the processing unit.

So the 12th generation Intel processor seems to be an improvement over its closest Intel processor predecessor, but what about in comparison to other processors, like my old Omen with a dedicated gaming i7-6700K processor? Slightly faster in single core, a little more in multi-core since it has more cores. Also slightly faster than the i7-7700K processor, but while faster in single-core speed than the i7-8700K, considerably slower in the multi-core. Still, these comparisons of a low-power U processor with older gaming-level K processors demonstrates a still very much impressive competitive showing (also helped by improved cache). Although much slower than the i9-10900 in multi-core speed (it only has half as many cores), the 1255U still beats it in single-core speed.

Nevertheless, the real-world differences between an i7-1255U laptop and one with the i7-11657G processor is somewhat negligible by the "eye test," and I don’t see any improvement in battery life either. Comparison between the new Windows 11 operating system with the “old” Windows 10 is another story altogether. Not that you can’t “figure out” W11 with practice and exploration, but it is less “intuitive” and either lacks certain useful tools in W10, or makes it difficult to find them. Apparently Windows 11 software engineers were taking “suggestions” from users who don’t really use their computers for any real “work,” and left out functionality for people who do use their computers for “work.”

I’ll provide one example that software engineers were “surprised” by all the complaints about. Here is the new menu “options” for file explorer:

 

There is no more “Home” tab that includes functions like “Copy To” or “Move To,” and the “New Folder” option is hidden in a drop-down menu; functions like "select" and "find" are also missing. A lot of people seem to be particularly upset about the lack of the copy and move functions. What there is both “simple” and “confusing” at the same time. A “Copy” and “Paste” button is present but you have to hover the cursor over the few icons present to even know what they are for. Now Microsoft hasn’t been dumb enough to completely do away with the Windows 10 menus; to find them first hit the Windows key + R to bring up the “run” program, and then type in “control”:

 

Which brings you to the “old” version of the Control Panel:

 

Then in the upper left hand corner you see an “up” arrow:

 

Hit the up arrow and “voila!” the old menu pops up in a different window:

 

 

As an aside, that's Stardock's Deskscapes "live" wallpaper application, similar to Windows 7's Dreamscene. Anyways, unfortunately the "old" menu only remains in place as long as you work in the same window; once it is closed, you are back to the new menu and you have to run “Run” again. I haven’t found a way to “default” to the old menu; supposedly you can add something to the registry to make it permanent, or you can wait for a Windows update that will “fix” that complaint.

Overall, while I’d rather have the “latest and greatest” with its supposed improvements in design and efficiency, I didn’t see the kind of obvious improvement in overall speed in relation to relatively similar-use processors that I saw in simply switching to a SSD drive, which is where the really “dramatic” improvement in speed came from before.