Unlike the difference between Windows 10 and Windows 8, Windows 11 provides very little benefit compared to Windows 10 and several reported disadvantages. A lot of the Windows 11 changes seem to have been done just to some designers whim not for any customer benefit.

So far Windows 11 is following in the tradition of every second Windows release being one to avoid (2000, Vista, 8 and now 11).

The only good reason at the moment for running Windows 11 is if the hardware is not supported by Windows 10.

2000 was decent - it was the contemporary consumer version, Windows Millennium Edition, which was shite.

+1 for Win2000! Loved that one, really. Don't forget Win2000 Advanced Server version either! My boss at the time was running that as his workstation OS.

with the exception of ME, I pretty much liked windows 3.x (and NT) through XP. After that, not so much...

The only post XP version that is any decent is 7. The rast *ALL* *STINK* (starting with server 2k3)

Same here! AS was a great platform to jump-start an IT career on; mine was bought at auction having come from an early victim of the dot-com bust. Unfortunately, my first course in network security was months away, and I had a direct connection to the internet... I got a crash course in securing vital services even before I started uni. The good ol' days of Messenger spam and Code Red hitting all these automatically enabled IIS instances. I'm sure I did a hash job really sorting it all out, but it put me way ahead of classmates who only had 2000 on lab systems, and it got me a decent career.

Probably forgot that Me even existed. I know I've tried my hardest to excise that memory from my brain.

I manage a fleet with about 2/3 of the machines meeting the Windows 11 hardware requirements and 1/3rd don't. Those 1/3rd have a useful life of another 5 years easily. Everything is staying at Windows 10 until everything can run Windows 11. Microsoft has no valid reason to have the hardware requirements it does for Windows 11. If they want wider adoption, revert the hardware requirements to what Windows 10 needs today.

Years from now. The only thing that really matters in Windows 11 is the EOL for Windows 10. That's all CIOs will care about but by 2025 it's higly likely that many, if not most, corporate environments are virtualised and only need RDP.

Windows 2K was an excellent product. A big improvement over NT - especially the desktop and app management.

The hardware that does not support Linux or FreeBSD does not get purchased by me. And for an employer or client to purchase it, when I am the one that needs it for doing work, same thing.

So if it is ONLY supported by 11, chances are it would have to be heavily discounted before any normal person would actually want it...

I was so happy when I found that both my laptops weren't supported by W11 so I didn't have to worry about M$ deciding to "update" me when I didn't want it.

I wonder whether I can find some more "won't run 11" boxes to put in the stock cupboard just in case.

It's not the hardware requirements, it's just a bit shit.

In my experience it's slower than Windows 10, system controls are now scattered across three places, it has ads baked in, it's less configurable...

I've been testing it on one of my work laptops since soon after it was released. It's not as bad as W8 (which we never depoloyed), but I can't see any compelling reason to start to move to it - it has no clear advantages over W10, and various things which will annoy users.

There's also the matter of the hardware requirements - we still have quite a lot of computers which don't meet the pubished system requirements, and although I could probably get these to run it (the 'hard' floor for W11 with a clean install is TPM 1.2 and Secure Boot, which all of them can do), I do not want to risk this knowing that MS could break them with an update in future, nor do I want a split estate of W10 and W11 machines for an extended period - in the past I've rolled out the upgrades (XP to 7, then 7 to 10) to a pilot group, then when any issues had been ironed out worked through the rest quickly.

Will have to see what happens in the next year or two I guess - the difference now is that with all the control which Microsoft have baked in for themselves, and the stated end of W10 support in 2025, it could be harder to avoid W11 than it was to avoid W8. That said, if businesses stick with W10 and there are still a substantial number in two or three years Microsoft may have no option but to extend the retirement date for W10 - they are going to be maintaining the codebase for it anyway as the server versions based on W10 (2016, 2019 and 2022) are in support well beyond then, plus there's the paid-for extended support which they normally offer big customers anyway.

They've also not been as pushy this time, compared to how relentless they were with the 7 to 10 upgrade. Most of our computers are WSUS or Intune managed so I can easily keep it off them for now, but we have a few which are standalone for various reasons. Most of these aren't W11 capable, but at least one is and I've been keeping an eye on that (I'm the only one who uses it). Think it's only asked once so far and I told it that I did not want to upgrade. That was a month or so ago,and it's not yet asked again.

Of course, there's still plenty of time for themto ramp up in due course...

My windows 10 machine loves to tell me it doesn't meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11.

Would love to know what kind of powerhouse it thinks it needs, as it seems a 5800X CPU and 6600XT GPU don't cut the mustard.

Is it me? Or is the Microsoft 'gas lighting' "This machine does not meet requirements" banner in Windows 10 update settings page getting bigger each month or every time you run Windows Update?

And regards the new Microsoft Watermark 'feature' in Windows 11:

My Watermark for Microsoft: "Get the f*** off my lawn (desktop), you're p*ssing on it right now".

The gas lighting by this company is becoming utterly unbearable.

Where are the regulators on this? Nowhere to be seen. Whatever way you look at it, the 'watermark' on Windows 11, is clearly a form of advertisement, that is exclusive to MS, that no one else can purchase. This is 100% abuse of their market share. No one else can buy that prime space on the desktop, and I'm absolutely sure, many companies would love to have that exclusivity, the centre of attention, in terms of 'eyeballs'.

And regards the new Microsoft Watermark 'feature' in Windows 11:

My Watermark for Microsoft: "Get the f*** off my lawn (desktop), you're p*ssing on it right now".

Which watermark? The one that tells you that the software you've force installed isn't supported? MS may be trying to advertise us and track us all to hell but to complain that some unsupported software is telling you it's unsupported seems a little self entitled. Or would you rather some future update bricks your system as it assumes you've not bypassed the basic hardware checks?

Sure, Win 11 runs on unsupported hardware for now but I suspect in the future it may well not do. (Otherwise MS are causing themselfs a world of pain with regard to customer dissatisfaction for no real reason). It's not stopped you, it's not bricked itself, it's put up a message that's saying 'Hey, you really shouldn't be doing this and you might regret it'.

They never did this sort of thing in the past. I'm sure many of us have run W10 and earlier on hardware which was technically unsupported - in the knowledge that there might be issues but from experience this was unlikely once it had installed OK.

The difference now is that with this sort of thing there seems to be good reason to suspect that they might intentionalluy break it in the future.

"It's not stopped you, it's not bricked itself, it's put up a message that's saying 'Hey, you really shouldn't be doing this and you might regret it'."

It's an advertisement, plain and simple. It's not a 'message'.

A message can be turned off, THIS CAN'T.

Microsoft clearly think they 'own' the user's desktop, to do this.

They didn't ask politely if they could do this, they just did it.

It's gaslighting, by any other name.

"You keep using that word. I don't think it mean what you think it means."

Gaslighting: shining a "fake light" on something in order to make it seem like something else, as if your own past experiences are no longer valid. It differs from distraction (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) in that you're being told or shown things that try to make you "question reality", such as the reality of burning buildings in the background when the news reporter says it is a "peaceful protest" - the reporter is 'gaslighting'. Or, saying that a feature is "not an advertisement" when it most clearly *IS* one., would also be gaslighting. Your own eyes and ears tell you the truth, but "the gaslighter" is trying to convince you otherwise, by making you question your own concept of reality.

There are fair ways of telling users, and annoying ways. A permanent watermark on your desktop is excessive and intrusive. It would be less of an issue if they just popped a footnote in Windows Update to point this out.

Thing is, most people that run Win 11 on unsupported hardware are well aware of it. They've jumped through the hoops when installing it, so permanently nagging them about something they're already aware of is pointless and annoying.

Still, "Microsoft" and "pointless and annoying" sadly seem to go quite hand-in-hand lately.

"Still, "Microsoft" and "pointless and annoying" sadly seem to go quite hand-in-hand lately."

Upvoted - though what do you mean by "lately"?

[...]as it seems a 5800X CPU and 6600XT GPU don't cut the mustard.

Go into the BIOS, enable fTPM, reboot.

You now meet the hardware requirements.

You need to enable fTPM in the BIOS

Not enabling fTPM in the BIOS seems to be a reliable way to avoid W11 being offered or inadvertently installed, so maybe "need not to"?

does that stand for fsck TPM? who actually *trusts* it? what exactly makes it *trustworthy*? are all implementations actually to be *trusted*? is it another security feature waiting to be a new low level exploit vector to be abused?

Most likely due to not activating the tpm option in the bios

There are likely some bios settings you have to fiddle with.

My workstation at home has a 2009 vintage Intel i7, some old DDR3 RAM an SSD (upgraded from a WD Raptor, remember those?) but the performance on Win 10 is still perfectly acceptable. It's not going to play brand new games or anything too fancy but it works fine for what I need.

At work, in some labs we have HP Desktop that are around 10 years old with i5 CPUs and 4GB of RAM....they are totally happy with Win 10 so long as you don't expect to do masses on them.

These are extreme examples, but how many 2/3 year old computers will effectively become landfill because the consumer things they need a new one to run Windows 11? MS probably agreed these requirements with the hardware vendors to boost sales as they realised Win 10 will run on a calculator if you let it......so nobody was buying new gear.

Yet my HP pentium silver processor powered laptop*, which is the slowest machine I've come across in a long time, is eligible to install Windows 11???

* Five minutes to boot to a working desktop, 4GB RAM; 1.1GHz Silver N5000 CPU

Inflation and supply chain issues are not making hardware updates a priority item for most.

You are right on that but.... MS will not care one little bit. All they want is for everyone to be on W11 then they'll introduce OS subscriptions. $15.99/month + Tax per machine or VM.

I know two fairly large SME's who are planning on ditching MS (Windows, Office, Teams etc) by the end of 2023. They are planning on using their existing HW estate and a load of Open Source Software. Some of their machines will keep running W7 but they are standalone

I am sure that they are not alone in this.

Windows 11 is stable thanks to it's Windows 10 core, but it's in a state of rapid flux, with features being added and changed at a rapid pace.

We're waiting for the 22H2 build of Windows 11 before we unpack it and test it properly with business systems.

In this way, it's pretty much the save as Windows 10; The RTM was a little wobbly, the November Update fixed the big issues, and the Anniversary update was Business ready.

They'll probably be a little uptick then from business rollouts and new buy PC's coming with it, but I agree the strict hardware requirements are probably the limiting factor now.

"Anniversary update was Business ready" (1607)

You clearly missed Windows 1809 update that deleted the contents of the user's folders (Documents, Downloads etc) on applying the update.

Another update not long after that saw the C: Drive, recognised as RAW format (by the OS), causing chkdsk to destroy it (quite literally, you couldn't recover the data after chkdsk had attempted a repair).

I still wouldn't class it business ready, last month's February 2022 update was as buggy as hell. The worse I've experienced for a while. Blue screens, complete meltdowns (Ctrl-alt-del to restart).

March update has improved things, but still seeing what appears to be an ongoing memory leak from the March 2022 update, if you open too many browser windows or leave them open over an extended period.

Microsoft need to decide on the Fedora / Red Hat model, and decide which OS Windows 10 or Windows 11 is their experimental canvas for testnig their crap. Choose ONE Microsoft, and stick with it. Either Windows 11 or Windows 10 but one of them needs to be a STABLE release, at the moment, neither is.

"one of them needs to be a STABLE release"

This is not an ordinary release. This is an MS release.

It ain't just MS, unfortunately - seems to be the industry standard now. Even VMWare (whose updates have normally been pretty solid) released a couple of turds late last year - which were so bad that they had to pull them after release.

That word is banned in the MS dictionary. As soon as something comes close, they F it up big time.

Windows 11 is stable thanks to it's Windows 10 core (etc.)

you're supposed to put the lipstick on the end that goes "oink"...

Some flavor of Linux, or Apple's Mac OS? Either, or both, applying themselves to take over the general business part of needed business software?

Microsoft should not be trying to set new hardware requirements as a goal, but to work on a stable, reliable OS and software, with the IT department and stable, ease of use for the end user in mind. MS is failing miserably.

Why would anyone move to MacOS to escape hardware lock-in? It's far worse than Windows 11 for this!

Perhaps the thumb-downer would care to explain in what sense MacOS is not more hardware-restrictive than W11?

The Hackintosh sitting two desks away says that it is quite possible to install macOS on non-Apple hardware. Unlike the Mac mini that this is being written on, it actually supports the latest version of the OS. And that Mac mini is running a version of the OS which is officially unsupported. Meanwhile, zero point zero of my Windows boxes can be hacked to run Win 11. The main Windows box at home is about the same age as the Mac mini… which can be hacked to run the latest version, if I felt like it, but the Win box cannot physically be made to run Win 11 under any circumstances. Hell, I can run Win 11 in a VM on one of the other Macs, but not on any physical Win boxes! MS has gone way beyond anything Apple ever did!

You still have the same issue of the significant possibility of updates breaking it though - plus MacOS on Intel (which I assume this is) is almost certainly a dead end.

I would assume that they are looking at the limitation of iOS only running on a very specific set of hardware. You have no choice of vendor at all.

At least with Windows & Linux you can have a choice of the hardware.....

I have a laptop and a desk top that quite happily run Windows 10 and are fine for what they are used for. However, they don't meet the requirements for Windows 11. Assuming they continue to run and have the performance needed, I will be moving them to Linux Mint when W10 goes EOL.

I expect this (Linux) will be the fate for many W10 boxes which is probably a good thing. Why throw away a perfectly good computer?

I managed to get windows 10 to install on an ancient ExoPC demo unit I got from some Intel conference nearly a decade ago. It was meant to run Meego as the OS which dates it somewhat. Sounds like a Harrier Jump Jet taking off, and could probably be used as a very loud impromptu version of Air Hockey. It did fucking work though. Now my old-ish i7 laptop with 16G of RAM with a discrete graphics card can't even run Win 11. Not that I particularly want to anyway.

The last version of Windows with only incremental updates? I seem to recall that when MS was trying to roll out this was one of the features of installing it over your copy of 7 or 8.

If so, why hasn't anyone sued MS for false advertising?