In 2015 Microsoft promised us that Windows 10 was going to be their last operating system release; they always said that Windows 10 would be maintained and updated forever. So the Windows 11 announcement in June was a bit of a surprise.
Surprising too was the announcement that they plan to move the start menu again. I can already hear people weeping into their phones as they try to get used to yet another change in operations. Maybe that’s me being a bit melodramatic, but I can’t help thinking back to theirprevious mistakes in Windows 8.
The Start menu has moved to the centre of the screen and live-tiles have gone, replaced with a grid of icons. The corners on everything are rounded off and it all looks a bit more elegant and refined. There is a search box at the top of the Start Menu, much more prominent than on Windows 10. One might say it’s almost a bit Mac in design.
Desktop Widgets are back. To replace the missing active tiles on the start menu there are new widgets to show you photos, weather, news, etc.
One neat feature is that Android Apps and Android App Stores may be integrated into Windows 11. This isn’t 100% clear yet but it looks like this will allow Android Apps run natively on Windows. I’m sure that won’t include the Google Play store for competition reasons, but they do suggest the Amazon App store may deliver content to Windows 11.
It’s still early days and we’ve only just seen a preview, so I’ll bring you more information once a release date has been confirmed. Sofar the feature list is a bit un-inspiring; it feels more like the bi-annual feature updates we’ve come to expect with Windows 10.
There is no official launch date yet but Microsoft hope to have Windows 11 out before Christmas. Most modern PCs will run Windows 11 okay but there are some new minimum requirements: At least a dual core CPU, at least 4Gb ram and at least 60gb HDD drive space. That isn’t a challenging list but you will also need SecureBoot with a UEFI bios and TPM2. This pretty much excludes most processors before Intel’s 8th Generation of chips and AMD Ryzen Gen 1 are off the list too. That isn’t 100% confirmed yet, but it looks like you’ll need a fairly new PC to meet that requirement.
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