How to get hold of Windows 11 for free
Anyone can grab a copy, but make sure you’re willing to jump through some hoops – and that your hardware supports it
There are many good reasons to try Windows 11, but we don’t want to be accused of leading you down the garden path only to deliver a compost heap rather than roses. There are also good reasons not to install it, so let’s tackle those first.
The biggest is that this is by no means a finished operating system. It will inevitably crash at the most inconvenient moment you think of, and you will be bugged to update to more recent builds as you go along. The first few builds may also lack features that you consider essential. In short, this is something to install on a spare PC, or in a virtual machine (VM), unless you like the continual adrenaline rush of living on the edge.
You also have to go through a few hoops, with the first one being to sign up to the Windows Insider Program ( insider.windows.
com). All that requires is a Microsoft account and to be running on a licensed Windows 10 device – which you no doubt are.
Once that’s complete, you will have access to ISOs (if you’re unfamiliar with the term, these are like virtual DVDs). While there are many ways to load an ISO, most of the PC Pro team have chosen to load Windows 11 into a virtual machine. Mac users often turn to Parallels for its ease of use, while Windows users have choices such as Hyper-V (if they’re using Windows 10 Pro), VMware Workstation Player and the unsupported but still working VirtualBox.
However, before you start your Windows 11 adventure you need to make sure that your PC meets the minimum specifications.
MINIMUM SPECIFICATIONS
As we are all aware, there is a big difference between minimum specifications for
Windows and the real specifications for it to run happily. However, Windows 11 includes a couple of extra “gotchas” that might just stop you in your tracks.
In the table above are the basics. Whilst any laptop or PC that runs Windows 10 will probably tick all of those boxes with room to spare, we would flag the requirement for a TPM 2.0 module in particular. It may well be that you need to enable this in your BIOS for Windows 11 to run.
It’s also worth double-checking that your CPU is compatible: to do so, head to pcpro.link/323amd and
pcpro.link/323intel. And if you want a tool that does the whole job of checking compatibility for you, point your browser at the Windows 11 update checker: aka.ms/ GetPCHealthCheckApp.
To fully enjoy all the benefits of Windows 11, you’ll need a few extras. But these aren’t too onerous. For example, Teams needs a webcam to work and Snap’s three-column layouts demand a panel with at least 1,920 pixels width.
As ever, we’d recommend far more than the minimal specs. It doesn’t look like Windows 11 will be any less demanding than Windows 10 in terms of resources, and for a smooth-running machine we’d recommend at least 8GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage and a quad-core processor from Intel’s Core or AMD’s Ryzen range.