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     * [42]How to check if your PC can run Windows 11
     * RELATED STORIES
     * [43]Should your business upgrade to Windows 11?
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     * [45]Windows 10 Insider Previews: A guide to the builds
     * [46]The real reason for Windows 11

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     [48]Operating Systems

     [49]Windows

   [50]Opinion

                            Windows 11: Just say no

  In a few weeks, Windows 11 will arrive. Should you upgrade to it? Let me
  answer with a question: "Should you stop hitting your head against the wall?"

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   [57]Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols By [58]Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

   Computerworld
   |

   windows 11 laptop Microsoft

   It will be one thing, say, later this year or in 2022, to buy a new PC
   with Windows 11. We can be reasonably certain that Windows 11 will run
   on your new Dell, HP, or Lenovo PC. Maybe some of your drivers and
   programs won't run, but Windows 11 itself? No problem.

   But, if you want to update your existing computers, especially those
   that have a few years on them — that’s another story. It's difficult to
   know whether any given computer will run Windows 11, [59]which arrives
   Oct. 5. Yes, there's Microsoft's [60]PC Health Check app and other
   programs to determine whether you can run Windows 11. But Microsoft
   pulled it the first time around and I'm none too sure how reliable it
   is this time around.

   [ Related: [61]What enterprise needs to know about Windows 11 ]

   There are other "Can I run Windows 11?" programs. (I like the free and
   open-source [62]WhyNotWin11.) But the only way you can really know if
   your PC will run Windows 11 is to, well, try to run Windows 11 on your
   PC.

   That can be an expensive and annoying experiment. Sure, the upgrade
   itself is free. But no one's going to be paying you — unless you're
   someone like me who writes about this stuff — to upgrade your Windows
   10 machine and then find out it doesn't work right or it doesn't
   support an essential application. In fact, Computerworld's own
   [63]Microsoft Patch Lady, Susan Bradley, recommends you [64]hold off on
   moving to Windows 11.

   Microsoft remains confused as ever about what can, and can't, run
   Windows 11. For example, and I'm not making this up: Microsoft has
   relaxed its Windows 11 Insider Program beta rules so you can run
   Windows 11 beta releases on PCs that won't be able to run Windows 11
   when it ships Oct. 5.

   Why would the company do this? Doesn’t it know it’s going to tick off
   some of their most loyal users who want an early jump at Windows 11
   when those users discover — surprise! — they can't run Windows 11 after
   all? That makes no sense.

   I’ve been running the Windows 11 Beta Channel 22000.184 release on a
   new computer — a [65]Beelink GTR7 Mini PC  —  bought just so I could
   check out the new OS. This PC is powered by a 4GHz AMD Ryzen 7 3750H
   processor. The CPU is backed by 16GB DDR4 RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD for
   storage.

   In short, it's a decent PC. And after fooling around with Windows 11
   for six weeks now, I can safely say I see no point in "upgrading" to
   it.

   I do think there's one good reason to move to Windows 11. [66]It has
   better security, presuming your hardware can support it. But, and pay
   attention now, it turns out you can turn on most of Windows 11's
   security goodness in Windows 10.

   As Jason Perlow recently pointed out: "If you are running the 20H2
   release (Windows 10 October 2020 Update) as a consumer, small business,
   or enterprise, [67]you can take advantage of these ["new" security
   features] if you deploy Group Policy or simply click into Windows 10's
   Device Security menu to switch them on.

   He's right. You can. The tools are already there. I've done it myself
   on three of my older Windows PCs. All of which, I might add, probably
   won't run the final version of Windows 11.

   Perlow goes into detail about how to do this, so I don’t need to repeat
   him here. My point is that since you can lock down Windows 10 on newer
   PCs just as well as Windows 11 — without any danger or trouble —
   there's really no good reason to upgrade.

   Related:
     * [68]Windows
     * [69]Desktop PCs
     * [70]Laptops
     * [71]Microsoft
     * [72]Security
     * [73]Small and Medium Business

   Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been writing about technology and the
   business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting-edge PC operating
   system, 300bps was a fast Internet connection, WordStar was the
   state-of-the-art word processor, and we liked it!
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