The Windows 11 launch on June 24th 2021

I watched Microsoft’s entire virtual launch event, approximately 45 minutes of it, and I must admit I was intrigued and impressed by what I saw. Now usually I am like most people and wait until a while after something new has been launched so that all the bugs have been fixed but I still decided that I was going to give it a try and install Windows 11 on my old spare laptop. I also want to add that this was more of an announcement of Windows 11 as it hasn’t officially been released yet. The official launch date might be at the end of this year or in early 2022.

Can you install Windows 11 on your old computer?

The short answer is YES! I have a Samsung Series 3 300E5C laptop that I have had since new from the beginning of 2013. It also has what appears to be a dodgy motherboard, several keys don’t work including all the navigation keys. This means I cannot make any changes in the BIOS. So, if I can install Windows 11 on this dodgy laptop you should, within reason of course, be able to install it too. Though I was told, when I downloaded the PC Health Check app to see if my laptop was compatible, that I would not be able to install Windows 11. A few of the necessary requirements to install Windows 11 are a TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and UEFI mode rather than Legacy Mode. I didn’t have a TPM and from my research practically all older PC’s and laptops won’t either. I am not going to go through all the steps I took to do the install here. There is a very informative and helpful video on how to install Windows 11 at the bottom this page.

Why does Microsoft have such strict minimum system requirements?

Research has shown from Microsoft’s analytics that PC’s with TPM’s and Secure Boot enabled reported up to 60% fewer malware infection cases. With data security being more important than ever with the rising numbers of data breaches, malware and ransomware attacks Microsoft is launching Windows 11 to be their most secure OS ever.

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NivpAiuh-s0