W11 Blog 001 | Initial Thoughts and Upgrading

Windows 11 is now upon us. As part of the release of Windows 11, we’ll be looking at what to do/how to upgrade and finding out if you can. We’ll be producing a series of short articles around this, as we test things out and collate our thoughts.

Should you upgrade to Windows 11?

Without wishing to cause confusion the answer here is both yes and no. I’ll rephrase that, it’s yes when the time is right and some testing has been done first.

In very general terms – it’s always advised to upgrade software as and when new releases are available. The three main reasons to upgrade any software are to have the latest features available to you, to be as secure as you can be and to get the best performance available to you.

With Windows 11 – it will have new features which aren’t available in Windows 10 (we’ll get into this, in a future article as part of this mini-series), it should (only time will tell) be more secure and it will be quicker and smoother than Windows 10 (assuming you’re upgrading from Windows 10).

So, should you just go ahead and upgrade?

No – you need to do some testing and checks first. Here’s why. If your business run’s a critical application, for example, a database or CRM solution, and you roll out Windows 11 to let’s say all twenty of your team, why might this be a bad move? Well, how do you know your business-critical software will run? You don’t want to have rolled out the upgrade, only to find that certain key applications don’t work – this will cause issues with time and productivity.

Ideally, you take one computer to one side, accept things may go wrong and upgrade just that single computer. You then do testing. Lots of it. This is ensure everything works as it should, and the upgrade won’t have a negative impact on your business. If it all works fine, great. If it doesn’t, gives you time to find a solution before rolling things out across the business.

When do you need to upgrade?

There’s no mad rush here. If you’re using Windows 10, you’re still fully supported until October 2025.

The upgrade from Windows 10 will be available to compatible computers between now and mid-2022 – so again, no huge rush here.

Where are we at with Windows 11?

Like everyone else, we’re just starting our Windows 11 journey. We’re testing it out, to make sure our own business-critical applications work first, and we’re checking to see what computers in our business will run it, and what ones won’t. We’ll write a separate article about this once we have more findings.

So, that’s it for the first of this mini-series on Windows 11, hope this gives you some indication of what it means and why, to begin with.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, an IT Business based in Redditch, Worcestershire. He wrote this article on his Windows 10 laptop, which is compatible with Windows 11.