Lucky us! Microsoft has made a couple of big announcements lately to clarify the hardware requirements of Windows 11. However, it has also left open a little loophole in the process.
Shades of Windows 10 here.
First, the company is sticking to its guns and not backtracking on the system requirements for the upcoming operating system. Second, it has just updated the list of supported processors and added some 7th-gen Intel processors.
And thirdly, the company rereleased the PC Health Check app to allow users to check whether their system is compatible with the new operating system or not.
The company has left a loophole open for those who get a No.
Enthusiasts who want to upgrade their unsupported hardware to Windows 11 will be able to do so because Redmond will not be putting a hard cap on installations done via ISOs. Those who download and install the OS this way will be notified that their device will be in an unsupported state.
As of this moment, it remains unclear what this unsupported state means.
But as Paul Thurrott notes, this compromise is similar to Microsoft leaving the loophole open that still allows Windows 7 users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. Even after the company categorically said that the free upgrade offer was only valid for a year.
Of course, another perfectly valid way to continue using Windows 11 free of cost is to enroll in the Windows Insider Program, which will continue running after the OS launches.
Here, too, the software titan has left a loophole open that lets users run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware via a simple registry edit.
None of this is terribly surprising and well within the realm of expectation.
It was not like Microsoft would have alienated potentially billions of users by making Windows 11 exclusive to only the latest and greatest of hardware configurations.
Am I right, or am I right?
