19 Facts About Windows 11

Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021.

Windows 11 removed support for 32-bit x86 CPUs and devices which use BIOS firmware.

Windows 11 teased that an official announcement would come very soon.

On June 24, 2021, Windows 11 was officially announced at a virtual event hosted by Chief Product Officer Panos Panay.

Windows 11 name was accidentally released in an official Microsoft support document in June 2021.

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Retail copies of Windows 11 were released on May 9, 2022, and digital licenses became available via Microsoft Store on July 28, 2022.

Windows 11 is the first version of Windows since the original retail release of Windows 95 to not ship with Internet Explorer.

The Segoe UI font used since Windows 11 Vista has been updated to a variable version, improving its ability to scale between different display resolutions.

Windows 11 is available in two main editions; the Home edition, which is intended for consumer users, and the Pro edition, which contains additional networking and security features, as well as the ability to join a domain.

Windows 11 Home requires an internet connection and a Microsoft account in order to complete first-time setup.

Windows 11 SE was announced on November 9, 2021, as an edition exclusively for low-end devices sold in the education market; it is intended as a successor to Windows 10 S, and competes primarily with Chrome OS.

Thus, Windows 11 is the first consumer version of Windows not to support 32-bit processors.

The minimum RAM and storage requirements were increased; Windows 11 now requires at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

The increased system requirements initially published by Microsoft meant that up to 60 percent of existing Windows 10 PCs were unable to upgrade to Windows 11, which has faced concerns that this will make the devices electronic waste.

Cunningham concluded that "as I've dug into [Windows 11] and learned its ins and outs for this review, I've warmed to it more", but argued that the OS was facing similar "public perception" issues to Windows Vista and Windows 8.

Tom Warren of The Verge described Windows 11 as being akin to a house in the middle of renovations, but that "actually using Windows 11 for the past few months hasn't felt as controversial as I had expected"—praising its updated user interface as being more modern and reminiscent of iOS and Chrome OS, the new start menu for feeling less cluttered than the Windows 10 iteration, updates to some of its stock applications, and Snap Assist.

Warren noted that he rarely used the Widgets panel or Microsoft Teams, citing that he preferred the weather display that later versions of Windows 11 10 offered, and didn't use Teams to communicate with his friends and family.

Windows 11 acknowledged the expansion of Microsoft Store to include more "traditional" desktop applications.

However, he felt that Windows 11 still felt like a work in progress, noting UI inconsistencies, regressions to the taskbar (including the inability to move it, drag files onto taskbar buttons to focus the corresponding application, and the clock only shown on the primary display in multi-monitor configurations), and promised features (such as dynamic refresh rate support and a universal microphone mute button) not being present on the initial release.