Microsoft has announced the release date of the much-awaited Windows 11. The new operating system will be released on October 5th. It will come as a free upgrade for compatible Windows 10 PCs and on new hardware that comes with preloaded Windows 11. Even though it will be released on October 5th, the rollout will take place in phases. It will first be released on new compatible devices. Then it will be added to more devices in the following weeks and months.
Aaron Woodman who is the general manager of Windows marketing at Microsoft said that the team wants to deliver the best experience for users with Windows 11. He expects that all compatible devices could be upgraded to Windows 11 by the mid of 2022. Windows 10 PCs will notify people when the upgrade is available to them. It can also be checked in Windows Update, or through Microsoft’s PC Health Check app.
Some interesting features of Windows 11 will not be available from the October 5th launch. Microsoft had announced that it is bringing Android apps to Windows 11 with the help of Amazon and Intel. These won’t be immediately available. The preview will be available for Windows Insiders soon, but its launch is likely to happen in 2022.
Microsoft has stated the minimum system requirements to be compatible with Windows 11. It has also mentioned a workaround for those devices that are non-compatible. Windows 11 can be installed on any device using an ISO method. For this, the PC need to have a 64-bit 1GHz processor with two or more cores, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a TPM 1.2 chip. But the systems that are upgraded to Windows 11 using this method might not get any updates or security patches. PCs will continue to support Windows 10 till October 14th, 2025. But the number of updates for this operating system might see a decline. Microsoft has announced a 21H2 update for Windows 10 users which will come by the end of this year.