Let my hat or crow eating commence: Sun Valley is officially branded as Windows 11

britechguy

britechguy

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This hit the street from someone I know who watches this stuff, and likely attended "the event," and whom I trust implicitly to share only confirmed information:

Hello Win10 Forum family, Microsoft staff and others,

It is official: Windows Sun Valley is Windows 11.
 
Sky-Knight said:
The question now is, do they make us re-license all our rigs or is it just a feature update.
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They’ve offered free upgrades, even while coyly denying it, all this time now. To not do so now would hurt them more than help. It will roll out as the fall update.
 
mmerry said:
From what I have read and heard on Podcasts, MS never actually said WIn 10 was the last one. it was actually said by a MS evangelist and MS never corrected him.

www.techradar.com

Microsoft confirms there will be no Windows 11

A new Windows era begins
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
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He is a Microsoft employee and was speaking at one of their official conferences. Whadda need? A memo signed in blood by Bill Gates?
 
Also: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-11-announcement

Of course it's a feature update, and at no cost. It was completely developed as the intended Windows 10, Version 20H2.

This is, as someone else I know said, "marketing puffery."

The article I referenced above implies that there will be a Windows 10 and WIndows 11, which I find almost impossible to believe over the longer term. Microsoft has been trying to get to a single Windows for years now, and I see no reason that they'd keep Windows 8 through 2023, Windows 10 through 2025, and Windows 11 as well.
 
And, lets face it, Windows 11 is not, in any way, shape, or form, the equivalent of any Windows major version number release in the past.

It's a feature update dressed up as new version, plain and simple.

But many will be pleased to know that Microsoft is officially going to one major update per year under Windows 11, or at least that's the statement now.
 
britechguy said:
Also: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-11-announcement

Of course it's a feature update, and at no cost. It was completely developed as the intended Windows 10, Version 20H2.

This is, as someone else I know said, "marketing puffery."

The article I referenced above implies that there will be a Windows 10 and WIndows 11, which I find almost impossible to believe over the longer term. Microsoft has been trying to get to a single Windows for years now, and I see no reason that they'd keep Windows 8 through 2023, Windows 10 through 2025, and Windows 11 as well.
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Because of support obligations. Volume Licensee's agreements require them to support certain existing versions in long term support. There's not going to be a concurrent issues of new Windows 10 and 11 but certain long-term versions will have extended support for years. And they also provide at least 18 months of support for each build. So it's going to take 18 months for Windows 10 to fade out of the market as they eventually will be force upgraded.
 
Windows 11's minimum system requirements are as follows:

  • A modern 64-bit processor
  • 1Ghz clock speed
  • 2 cores
  • 64GB drive
  • 4GB RAM
  • UEFI, Secure Book capable & TPM 2.0
  • 9-inch display with 1366x768 resolution
  • DirectX 12 compatible graphics / WDDM 2.x
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Hello. @Sky-Knight there‘s your hardware line in the sand.
 
nlinecomputers said:
There's not going to be a concurrent issues of new Windows 10 and 11 but certain long-term versions will have extended support for years. And they also provide at least 18 months of support for each build. So it's going to take 18 months for Windows 10 to fade out of the market as they eventually will be force upgraded.
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True. I should have been clear that I meant "the usual consumer versions." I'm well aware of the various long-term support versions for Enterprise, for example. I just never have to deal with those.

I also know about the 18-month lifecycle window.

But I think the death of Windows 10 as "an ongoing entity" for "the usual consumer versions" is virtually certain to occur. I went from Windows 7 to Windows 10 because I knew that Windows 7 was going to go away and I'll go to Windows 11 for an analogous reason. Regardless of whatever pain might be involved, keeping up with Microsoft's most current OS has always been "best practice" as far as I'm concerned.
 
britechguy said:
I went from Windows 7 to Windows 10 because I knew that Windows 7 was going to go away and I'll go to Windows 11 for an analogous reason. Regardless of whatever pain might be involved, keeping up with Microsoft's most current OS has always been "best practice" as far as I'm concerned.
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Ditto. Gotta keep up.
 
nlinecomputers said:
Hello. @Sky-Knight there‘s your hardware line in the sand.
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I think that means at least 6th gen, possibly 7th gen iSeries and younger is required. That is, assuming you can't disable secure boot... which I suspect you'll be able to do that.

Actually worse because many white box main boards simply don't have TPM. TPM is only shipped by the likes of Dell. I assume this reality isn't going to be a hard one.

Just checked the Dell 6th Gen units I have right now, and they're TPM 1.2. So if they hard drive 2.0, this is going to be a train wreck.

My Poweredge T330 that's still got 3 years of warranty left has no TPM at all...

But yeah, I'm not going to panic just yet because I don't believe TPM is really required. BUT, if it is... we're all going to have some very upset customers.
 
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It's likely that the minimum hardware specification only applies to new machines with W11 pre-installed. Microsoft has a long and glorious history of making ancient hardware work well with new operating systems and they'd have to be crazy to change that now.

For what it's worth, I don't think they're crazy and look forward to upgrading my eight-year-old daily driver to W11 with no more than the usual trepidation.
 
Computer Bloke said:
It's likely that the minimum hardware specification only applies to new machines with W11 pre-installed. Microsoft has a long and glorious history of making ancient hardware work well with new operating systems and they'd have to be crazy to change that now.

For what it's worth, I don't think they're crazy and look forward to upgrading my eight-year-old daily driver to W11 with no more than the usual trepidation.
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Yep, and any change in this reality would cause a back lash that would bury even them. I don't mind the upgrade either, but we're in a silicon shortage that's going to last right up until that drop dead date of 10. Forcing everyone into 8th generation and younger stuff is going to exaggerate that problem.
 
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