Addressing the elephant in the room. Microsoft today released the first ever Windows 11 preview build for Insiders, and took the opportunity to clarify its stance on one of the more talked about topics.
A topic that has led to a lot of mixed response heading the way of Redmond.
The minimum system requirements for the new OS have caused a fair bit of confusion in the community, with the user base divided on the conditions set by the company — conditions like requiring a TPM 2.0 enabled chip, or certain processors that are perfectly capable of running the OS missing out.
In a dedicated post, the software titan tackled these issues, noting that the new operating system is being built as a complete set of experiences. To that end, the requirements were decided with reliability of the platform in mind, along with the expectations of the people.
These include factors like the driver model, experiences such as video conferencing, multitasking, and security.
The three main areas that the company focused on are security, reliability, and compatibility.
In terms of security, Windows 11 raises this bar by requiring hardware that can enable protections like Windows Hello, Device Encryption, virtualization-based security (VBS), hypervisor protected code integrity (HVCI), and Secure Boot.
The combination of these features has been shown to reduce malware by 60% on teste devices, which is why all Windows 11 supported CPUs have an embedded TPM solution in principle.
Likewise, by choosing processors that have adopted the new Windows Driver model, Microsoft and its OEM and silicon partners have been able to achieve a 99.8% crash free experience.
And when it comes to compatibility, the new OS built to be compatible with the apps people use. The fundamentals of a 1GHz or higher processor, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage aligns with the minimum system requirements for Office and Teams.
It will be interesting to see how the company goes ahead from here, and how firmly it will stick with the system requirements specifics for Windows 11. The line it has drawn has gathered mix reviews from the user base, so far.
And the noise may become deafening closer to release if Redmond stands its ground.
