After six years for IT support services and technical support departments for businesses to adjust to what was promised to be the final version of Windows, Windows 10’s replacement has been released.
Promising improved performance and ease of use compared to Windows 10 (as they seemingly do every major update), Windows 11 promises a new interface, some interesting new multitasking features, Teams integration and a few performance enhancements.
However, past the marketing, many businesses are asking themselves whether they should take the plunge with Windows 11 and what its updates would actually mean for their IT infrastructure.
For businesses that have relatively old hardware, it may mean a hardware upgrade. Windows 11 requires the use of TPM 2.0 hardware, which is a standard system on pretty much any PC and laptop since 2017.
If you have older equipment, however, upgrading may be an issue, and it is worth using Microsoft’s PC Health Check tool to ensure your computers meet the required specifications to work.
It also uses hardware-based isolation tools, secure boot and Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity to protect a computer at the hardware level, improving the standard level of security.
As well as this, some standard features of earlier Windows operating systems have been removed. The most notable removal, perhaps is Cortana, the voice-activated assistant that could not compete with Amazon, Google and Apple’s attempts in the field.
Windows Timeline was also removed, which allowed for programmes to be controlled across multiple devices, and Windows 11 has support for Android applications without requiring an emulator.
One final consideration is a change to the major update schedule. Whilst there will still be constant minor updates and hotfixes, major updates will be limited to just once per year, rather than the biannual schedule Windows 10 had.
As with any early Windows release, early adopters should be wary that there are a few launch issues and missing features, but these should be fixed in time. When the first wave of major updates hits Windows 11 is probably the earliest time to consider upgrading.