I’ve had a lot of queries in the past few weeks about upgrading to Windows 11, so I thought it would be a good idea to answer some common questions:
Windows 10 and Windows 11 will be running side-by-side for many years from now, so there is no formal ‘switch-off’ date yet for Windows 10, there is no need to panic.
Many computers are not able to run Windows 11, either because their processor is too old, or because they don’t have a TPM chip. It’s not normally economical to upgrade a computer to run Windows 11 as it’s not just a case of upgrading the CPU; you will probably also need to upgrade the mainboard and probably memory too.
Windows 11 requirements are: an 8th Generation Intel processor or 2ndGeneration Ryzen or newer, so computers bought new in the last 18 months will probably run Windows 11.There is no need to upgrade yet; it will be many years before we see hardware and software that work only with Windows 11. It’s still quite new; let the enthusiast get it fully tested and maybe wait for a future release before trusting it.
Sticking with Windows 10 is just fine for now;the current version of Windows 10 (21H2) is supported until the mid-2024 and we’re expecting more feature updates that will extend the support life further. We expect that by the time Windows 10 has reached its final release version, and then that has finished its support life a few years later, any machines that will still not run windows 11 will be 10 years old or more and therefore be due for replacement.
If you really do want to upgrade then you can download the Windows PC Health Check tool from the Microsoft website and it will tell you if your computer is compatible and give you a download link, but I still advise against this.
Windows 8 users… You might be interested to know that your switch-off date for support is 1 year from now: January 2023. So if you’re still running windows 8 then I recommend upgrading to windows 10 as soon as possible. Almost all machines with windows 8 will upgrade happily to Windows 10 and this will extend the useful life of your computer.