What is Windows 11?

Windows 11 is the newest version of Windows that was announced this summer by Microsoft and released on October 5.

Windows 11 has several changes in how it looks. 

They are moving items on the taskbar from on left to being centered. That may not affect some people as they have the task bar full so center or left justify looks the same

The Start menu will no longer be on the left but will appear in the middle of the screen. The tiles that will probably be fine (left over from way Windows 8 had changed whole start menu) as they are big spots. Not sure how people will like the menu there in middle.

They are rounding corners on tiles and icons instead of square corners.

Most of those changes are to look more like the Mac interface. Not sure why copying an interface from a product that has a lot less usage.).

There are additional security features built in Windows 11 and they are supposed to work smoother for the users.

In 2015 Microsoft had said Windows 10 would be the last release of Windows and that it would receive updates every six months and stay current. They skipped 9 in going to 10.

Now it is 2021 and what was said in 2015 no longer applies (in all likelihood if they had done named changes of Windows as they did updates, we would currently be on Windows 12 or 13). Now we have a new named version of Windows.

Windows 11 according to the most recent reports should run on most machines that run Windows 10, and you do not need a new machine. It does require GPT GUID Partition Table) which newer hard drives (and all SSD) use which makes access to files faster

This is not an update that must be done immediately. Many professionals recommend waiting a few months for them to remove all the new bugs found that were missed in beta. Also, some Windows releases flop like Windows 8, Vista, ME. Notice that is basically every other one and this is in that flop cycle. In addition, Windows 10 will be fully supported (corrections and updates) several years. I will wait several months to install on my production machine. 

Send me your questions about computers to me at the paper or to my e-mail dwight@dwightwatt.com and tell me you read this in this paper.  I will pick a question to answer each week.

Dwight Watt does computer work for businesses, individuals and organizations and teaches about computers at a technical college in northwest Georgia. His webpage is www.dwightwatt.com His e-mail address is dwight@dwightwatt.com