ISSUES ARISING TO BE (COMPATIBLE) OR NOT TO BE (COMPATIBLE)
IT ALL SEEMED TOO GOOD to be true right? Well in fairness it is very good, and we should all be excited about its full release. However, the elephant in the room is a big one at that. You may want to get hold of Windows 11 but can you actually do that? The likelihood is that as of now, it’s not compatible at all. If your PC is over 3 years old, the odds are that it might not be compatible with Windows 11 and that is a worrying thought. Don’t however be too comfortable continuing with Windows 10 if you can’t upgrade as that now has an end-of-life date in October 2025. Even if you have a fairly new PC don’t be too relaxed as it still may not be compatible. Yikes, and yikes again for good measure.
Windows 11 is the first new version of Windows since 2015 and a major part of this new software is to do with its upgrade in security. For as long as we can remember, security online has always been an issue. So much valuable data is stored and accessed on our computers daily and this is something that we need to keep private and secure. There are plenty of different ways to protect ourselves but there is no promise that our data will not get leaked or our systems are totally secure. Of course, VPNs help and the same goes for anti-virus software too but it’s always nice to know that your OS is secure seeing as this is the foundation of your whole PC.
On Microsoft’s website, it states that “Windows 11 raises the bar for security 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 company also states that “the combination of these features has been shown to reduce malware by 60 percent on tested devices”. Now on paper, this sounds great, who doesn’t want ramped-up security, the peace of mind alone is rewarding enough. However, one of the main points to take away from this is that it requires specific hardware to enable these protections. This hardware comes down to the CPU and motherboard. The CPUs supported by Windows 11 must have an embedded TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module), must support secure boot, and support VBS and specific VBS capabilities.
Windows has had a long history of being attacked by viruses, malware, and security issues so we understand why they are trying to pump up the protection for its users, but by doing so it forces the consumer to update their perfectly good systems just to have the latest software. It seems like a way to flush out older less secure hardware. To run Windows 11, according to Microsoft, there is a pretty short list of compatible hardware. As far as minimum requirements go it needs to be a chip greater than a 1GHz dual-core 64bit processor, 4GB memory, and 64GB of storage. Not too intolerable right? It’s when you start diving into the specific CPUs that are compatible the list becomes narrower. To run Windows 11 you will need an Intel 8th gen processor, AMD Zen 2, or a Qualcomm 7 or 8 Series or higher. Yeah, not exactly great news to a lot of people. To be fair, as they are releasing the prerelease software to Windows Insiders, they will be testing to identify if devices running on Intel 7th gen chips and AMD Zen 1 chips meet their principles and are compatible. Fingers crossed.
SECURITY THREAT
Again though, you need a TPM 2.0 chip on board. This is a security chip that is either built into your CPU or motherboard and used for things such as encryption, increased security, and password protection, for example. Most systems of the last few years will have this as standard but do your research and check whether your system has a TPM 2.0 chip.
These compatibility issues could cause a lot of problems and a big backlash for Microsoft. Not everyone can afford to just switch up their rigs, it may even create a high demand for hardware embedded with TPM 2.0 and jump up the prices. This could have a negative impact on the resale market, just like how cryptocurrency has boosted the resell prices for GPUs to unfathomable levels in the past year. The last thing anyone wants is for a spike in CPU prices too, what next, PC cases reselling for over 1000 bucks? No thank you. If this actually happens please don’t blame us, we’d appreciate that.
Microsoft is in a bit of a predicament here. The damage could already be done without a full release. This news of a limited amount of hardware being compatible with the newest update could have already pushed a lot of consumers away. Nobody wants to be forced to change what they have and be made to purchase something new in order to get the latest OS. On the flip side, hardware that is too old is unreliable and might not be powerful enough to take full advantage of the new software, and Microsoft will want everyone to have an equally smooth experience. It just seems because of the required TPM 2.0 chip there will be perfectly powerful enough PCs that can run games at 4K yet won’t be compatible with Windows 11, which seems a bit unfair.
The compatibility problem isn’t ideal, but hopefully, people won’t bypass this update like Windows 8. We hope Microsoft takes all of this into consideration and can widen the compatibility of their newest operating system.