![]() On a laptop screen, you're generally not looking at one or maybe two windows at once. If you have a gigantic monitor, use multiple monitors or need several thinly sliced web browser windows open at once, it can be handy. Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio Review: The Screen Is All.Surface Pro 8: A Familiar Companion for Windows 11.Windows 10: All the Upgrades You Should Know About Windows 11 Compatibility: Check if Your PC Meets Microsoft's Requirements With These Tools.Windows 11: Everything You Need to Know About New Features and More.Change Your Windows 11 Wallpaper in 5 Simple Steps (It's Super Easy to Do).Sure, there are plenty of other ways to do this, using an app like Bluestacks or even the Your Phone app from Microsoft, but it's not simple enough for everyday users. That's a shame, because easy access to Android apps was probably going to be the biggest single practical change in Windows 11 for most people. It's going to be previewed sometime in the coming months, so I wouldn't expect it to be added as a fully baked feature until some time in 2022. that feature is not included with the launch version of Windows 11. Microsoft is adding similar functionality to Windows 11, both to compete with Chromebooks and to forge greater bonds between Windows PC users and Android phone users, just as Macs and iPhones are inexorably bound.īut. That breaks Chromebooks out from being restricted to just cloud-based apps and frankly adds a lot of functionality to your $300 or so Chromebook. One of the big selling points of Chromebooks, which run Google's ChromeOS, is that most Chromebooks can run just about any Android app, from phone-centric favorites like Instagram to mobile games. Read more: Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review: The screen is everything Get some Android in your Windows For casual or mainstream users, you're unlikely to notice much of it, though there are some standout upgrades worth noting. There are workarounds for installing Windows 11 anyway, but proceed with those at your own risk.Īnd there is a good deal going on in Windows 11. If you want to check, use the Microsoft PC Health Check app. If you've got a CPU older than a seventh-gen Intel Core series (we're up to 11th-gen now), you might be in trouble. It's that last one that gets tricky for some people, especially on cheaper laptops. The base requirements are a 64-bit processor, 4GB of memory, 64GB of storage, UEFI secure boot and TPM (trusted platform module) 2.0. ![]() The list of compatible PCs is frankly a little narrower than I would have expected. That's a big change from when you had to hand over $120 to Microsoft for the privilege of upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Except for system builders, the idea of paying separately for a computer operating system is basically extinct. Apple's OS X moved to a similar free-to-upgrade model around the same time. But more importantly, it was free* - which includes an asterisk to indicate it was generally available as a no-cost upgrade to anyone with a nonancient PC.īefore 2015, Windows upgrades either cost some money, or if you bought a new laptop or desktop, the latest OS just came preinstalled. Windows 10 started out with favorable reviews and has remained in everyone's good graces precisely because it got out of the way of whatever you were doing instead of trying to force its ideas on you. Read more: Surface Pro 8 review: a familiar flagship for Windows 11 They're not, and that's OK: I work on a Windows machine, I do plenty of PC gaming on one, but when I flip through news headlines in bed at night, it's on an iPad. That generation was all about righting a ship that had gone somewhat off-course, leaning too far into tablet territory, trying to convince everyone that Windows laptops and tablets were as cool as iPads. Big enough for Microsoft to skip an entire version number, even. Maybe the shift from Windows 10 to Windows 11 feels subtle because the jump from Windows 8 to Windows 10 was so gigantic. That's mostly because Windows 11 feels more like Windows 10.5 than a generational leap - not that there's really anything wrong with that. ![]() So sorry, no Spinal Tap "goes to 11" puns here. ![]() And that user is you, sitting in front of a laptop keyboard or tapping on a phone screen. Before you decide whether or not to install the new OS, let's talk about what we like and don't like about the upgrade.Īn operating system, whether it's MacOS on your MacBook or Google's Wear OS on your smartwatch, gets better the more transparent it is to the user. If you have Windows 8, you'll have to get the free upgrade to Windows 10 first, then download Windows 11. 5 on a rolling basis as a free upgrade to most Windows 10 users. Microsoft made Windows 11 available on Oct.
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