After a long wait, Microsoft has given Windows 11 an official launch date. The new operating system will be available as a free upgrade for eligible Windows 10 PCs, or on new hardware that ships with the new Microsoft Operating System OS pre-loaded on October 5th.
The free upgrade to Windows 11 like many upgrades in the past, will be available in phases. New eligible devices will be offered the upgrade first, and then the new OS will become available for more in-market devices in the weeks and months following October 5th.
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“Following the tremendous learnings from Windows 10, we want to make sure we’re providing you with the best possible experience,” explains Aaron Woodman, general manager of Windows marketing at Microsoft. “We expect all eligible devices to be offered the free upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022.”
For those with existing Windows 10 PCs, Windows Update will let you know when the upgrade is available for the new OS. You can also check to see if your device is eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade through the Update, or Microsoft’s dedicated PC Health Check app (currently in preview).
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While Windows 11 will be launching on October 5th, not all of the announced features will be available. Microsoft is bringing Android apps to the new OS in partnership with Amazon and Intel, but this feature won’t be available on October 5th. A preview of Android apps on the new OS will be available for Windows Insiders in the coming months, suggesting that it likely won’t launch to all Windows 11 users until 2022.
Microsoft clarified its minimum system requirements for Windows 11 last week but also revealed a workaround for those who don’t meet them. You can install the latest OS on any hardware using an ISO method, as long as the PC has a 64-bit 1GHz processor with two or more cores, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a TPM 1.2 chip. But if you use the workaround, your PC will be in an unsupported state. This means an unsupported PC might not get access to Windows Update, and even security patches.
If your PC isn’t fully compatible with Microsoft’s new OS, the company is still supporting Windows 10 until October 14th, 2025. It’s not clear how many major updates Microsoft will release for Windows 10 over the next four years, though. A 21H2 update is arriving for Windows 10 users later this year that includes GPU compute support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Windows Hello improvements, and WPA3 H2E Wi-Fi security support.
