Microsoft Rolling Out Windows 11 to More Supported Devices
Starting last week, more Windows 10 users with Windows 11 compatible devices, are seeing Microsoft’s Windows 11 upgrade offer showing up in Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. The upgrade is optional, and you won’t be forced to upgrade to Windows 11 until at least October 14, 2025. That is the end-of-support date for Windows 10.
Will you be forced to upgrade to Windows 11?
Microsoft has quite clear that Windows 11 will be a free, but optional, upgrade. If you want to stay on Windows 10, you can – it will be supported until October 14, 2021. But as Windows 7 users who upgraded to Windows 10, Microsoft was quite insistent that you upgrade. If you remember Windows 10 was released on July 29, 2015, and Windows 7 was supported until January 14, 2020. Windows 7 users had over four years before they had to upgrade. Similarly, Windows 10 users have almost four years to upgrade.
If your computer supports Windows 11, be prepared for Microsoft to zealously promote Windows 11. If you recall, Windows 10 was also an optional upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1, and Microsoft was quite vigorous and persistent in its promotion of the new OS to those users during the first year.
However, Microsoft says, that if you are not ready to upgrade, it won’t force the installation, and you can continue to use Windows 10… at least until Oct. 14, 2025.
Here is the statement from Microsoft announcing the expanded availability of Windows 11 via Windows Update.
The availability of Windows 11 has been increased and we are leveraging our latest generation machine learning model to offer the upgrade to an expanded set of eligible devices. We recommend that you upgrade your devices to Windows 11 to take advantage of the latest features and advanced protections from security threats. We will continue to train our machine learning model throughout the phased rollout to deliver a smooth upgrade experience. We will also provide status updates as we further increase availability over time.If you are using Windows 10, you can determine if your device is eligible for the upgrade using the PC Health Check app or checking Windows 11 specs, features, and computer requirements. If you have an eligible device, open Windows Update Settings and select Check for updates. Once the upgrade is ready for your device, you will see the option to download and install.For more information on the Windows 11 upgrade experience, watch this video. (From Microsoft)
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Hi – Do you think that Bing will be as forceful as it is now?
At present, when I turn on my computer, it defaults to Bing – a pain in the a##.
My thanks for all your wonderful work.
Microsoft is sneaky. If you allow Windows to “Optimize your browser settings” it will switch your default browser to Edge and your default search engine to Bing. The secret is, just say no to “Would you like to optimize your browser settings?”