Today is a big day for Microsoft and its latest OS. The biggest milestone in an operating system’s lifetime, this side of launch, is when it is ready for broad deployment.
That is to say when everyone can download and install it without any issues or problems.
Happy to report that Windows 11 just crossed this threshold.
According to the Windows Health Dashboard documentation, the latest and greatest version of Windows is now available for anyone to download and install via Windows Update. In other words, Microsoft now thinks that Windows 11 is suitable for all users with qualifying hardware.
This milestone comes at a rather interesting time for Redmond, however, as it is gearing up to launch the first feature update for the operating system that is designed to fix many of the shortcomings of the initial release.
Importantly, despite making Windows 11 available for broad deployment, the software titan does not plan to impose it by force upgrading computers like it did back in 2015 with Windows 10.
Thankfully, those days are long gone!
The latest OS remains available as an optional upgrade for users, meaning they can stay on the previous version if they want. For the record, Windows 10 is due to receive three more years of active support, so there is plenty of time.
Then again, Microsoft may hold you off from upgrading in very rare cases. Even if you have hardware that qualifies for Windows 11, a known issue or bug may prevent the upgrade.
As of this writing, only one upgrade block affects computers with a specific Intel SST driver. For this reason, PCs running Windows 10 do not receive the offer to install Windows 11. But there is a way to bypass this.
Now that this newest version of Windows is ready for everyone, we may see more users deploy it on their systems.
According to the latest AdDuplex report, every fifth PC now runs Windows 11.
Expect this figure to continue its steady rise.
