Windows 11: this ‘feel good’ update could actually help IT pros

Much has been written about Windows 11, and many YouTube videos have been published. If you want a detailed walkthrough of the good, the bad, the confusing and the contentious, you’ll find no shortage of material out there.

I have no wish to add to all that, but I have patiently ploughed through a lot of it and given this latest update a short test drive myself. My overriding conclusion from all this is that too many people seem to be working far too hard to come up with some kind of ultimate black or white verdict. And what’s pretty obvious is that they can’t – at least not in any meaningful way.

The same Windows, but nicer

Against this background, I reckon Windows 11 might actually be a good thing for IT pros running PC estates. What I think we have here is a new version of Windows that’s fundamentally the same as the previous one, but looks and feels a lot nicer – but not to the extent of being jarring and unfamiliar to users.

This potentially means a lot less deployment pain and operational disruption than most previous upgrades, and a ‘feel good’ boost for users, which is never a bad thing from an IT satisfaction point of view. I have to say that I’m struggling to see any actual productivity benefits, but at least it won’t be a backwards step like the infamous Windows 8.

So, once the confusion around hardware support has cleared – the whole “a minimum of TPM 2.0, UEFI secure boot and a 7th gen Intel or Zen 1 AMD processor” thing – and you have assessed your estate accordingly, maybe this is one of those increasingly rare occasions when Microsoft has actually done you a favour if you’re committed to its desktop OS!

Does that feel too weird? Maybe someone has slipped something into my drink!