Windows 11 Try All The New Tools Today!
Back in 2015 at the launch of Windows 10, Jerry Nixon, a Microsoft ‘developer evangelist’ (whatever that means), said: “Windows 10 is the last version of Windows”. The big idea was for Windows 10 to receive regular feature updates, negating the need for a brand new operating system every three or so years.
We’ve learned not to believe everything Microsoft says, and we weren’t alone in thinking the company was unlikely to stick to its word on this. Sure enough, last month Microsoft announced that it will release Windows 11 later this year.
You’ve probably got lots of questions about what this means for you.
Is it free? Will it work on your computer? Will you be forced to upgrade? Over the next few pages, we’ll cut through all the marketing hype to answer these questions, and explain everything you need to know (including how Microsoft seems confused about what your computer needs to run Windows 11, and how to check whether yours is compatible).
We expect that, like us, you’re eager to play with Windows 11, so we’ll explain how to install the preview release of the operating system on a virtual PC. This means you can mess around with Windows 11 as much as you like, safe in the knowledge that whatever you do won’t affect your existing Windows 10 installation.
We’ll also reveal Windows 11’s best new features and show you how to get the same (or similar) tools right now in Windows 10.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
• Check whether your PC has the required hardware to run Windows 11
• Hack the registry to get access to the latest preview build
• Install software to get Windows 11’s tools on Windows 10
• Search for and enable your computer’s TPM chip
WINDOWS 11: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TOKNOW
What’s new in Windows 11?
Windows 11 includes major changes to how the desktop looks, along with a range of new tools and features.
Visually, the most obvious change is that the Start menu and program icons sit in the centre of the taskbar. You can shift these back to the left side of your taskbar if you like, but we enjoyed its new position when testing a preview release of Windows 11 (find out how to install this on page 55).
The Start menu also gets a refresh, and slides up in the screenshot below). The animated live tiles of Windows 10 (which continuously update to reveal further information, such as how many unread emails you have) are replaced by smaller, static icons with more spacing between them, mimicking the icons on phones and tablets.
