Over a third of business PCs currently in use cannot run Windows 11: this was revealed by a study by the IT specialist company Riverbed in a study that covered a pool of about 2 million systems. Most of these (about 23% of the total) can receive a resolving hardware update, but for about 12% there is nothing to do – the only solution is replacement (or stick to Windows 10, of course).
It will come as no surprise to anyone to know that the most responsible requirement for the situation is support for TPM 2.0 secure boot technology, which accounts for over 20% of failed compatibility tests. However, it is closely followed by storage: approximately 19.45% of the computers analyzed have less than 64GB. Other specifications such as RAM, type of processor or frequency are almost universally OK – after all, from this point of view Windows 11 is decidedly undemanding, with 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core CPU with an operating frequency of 1 GHz.
Microsoft has decided to make a rather drastic choice in relation to the backward compatibility of its new operating system. It is not a question of performance: the problem is safety. Essentially the company left behind all processors vulnerable to severe security flaws in the so-called speculative CPU execution that emerged a few years ago, known as Meltdown and Specter, and impossible to shut down completely.
That said, it’s not “over” for the old systems. First, Windows 10 will still be supported for quite a long time (at least until 2025); second, it is technically possible switch to Windows 11 anyway, however, Microsoft will not provide official support at this juncture. It may also show a warning watermark in the future.
