Prefer it? Not really. The core issue is they keep changing the GUI metaphors. Now at this point if you click on the right program you may see stuff from win3.11 all the way up to win11. With some GUI's stuck in 'the window is a max of 640x480 mode' and is crap to use on a even semi recent computer. Then is as tradition MS moves junk around into non logical places. Even the task manager has had junk moved around for no real reason and it really does not look better or worse than the win10 version it was however an 'ok' improvement upon the old win9x style.

The win8 debacle was them not testing it on users and thinking everyone would have a touch tablet for windows?! It shows. Win9x and WinXP you can see they did their usability studies. Then just decided to not do it anymore. Discoverability is terrible, usability is skewed across at least 7 different windows idioms and things you are used to doing just randomly disappear and reappear somewhere else (if you are lucky). Then tools are deprecated and replaced with new shiny but do the exact same thing but not quite and usually surrounded by techno bable. Just fix the old ones and update it please. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecat...

The only reason I still use it is I am fairly committed to this eco system. Moving to another one is possible but not something I really want to do. Just upgrading a computer is a painful thing for me to do at this point much less changing to another OS. It gets more and more tempting as WINE gets better and better.

The UX for windows 7, 10 and 11 is literally the same for me except for some details. I press start and type a query and hit enter as soon as I see what I need appearing (i.e. immediately). I don't really care where that menu appears and I prefer my task bar on the bottom. Yes it looks a bit different across versions but it's not something I cannot get used to.