I’m upgrading computers at work, is there any advantage of doing windows 11 now

I’m upgrading our computers at work, I made sure they are windows 11 upgradable but come with windows 10 which is what we use now. Is there any advantage to windows 11 now? I was planning to put it off to simplify the upgrade process. I am using windows 11 now in my laptop, and it works with our legacy office management billing software.

Conversation 5 comments

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    27 January, 2022 - 10:20 am

    <p>For simplicity, you should keep all users on the same version of Windows, we are currently moving the last users up from 20H1 to 21H2 – we do it in batches, and make sure that we don’t do a complete department in one batch; if something goes wrong with the upgrade, at least half the department will still be able to work.</p><p><br></p><p>Supporting multiple versions is difficult, especially when it is different major versions. You then have the interface changes and getting all the applications certified with the new version of Windows – some of our engineering and production software is on isolated networks, because we can’t even install Windows updates until they have been cleared by the software producer, and that often takes a year!</p><p><br></p><p>Our PLC monitoring software, for example requires IE 8 or IE 11 in compatibility mode, with ActiveX add-ons installed. We can’t update those to Windows 11, the users are stuck on Windows 7 or older versions of Windows 10 on an isolated network, with no access to the rest of the company network or the Internet.</p><p><br></p><p>There is no point upgrading if half of the software you have stops working. That needs to be checked first. You should make a plan for the upgrade. That usually goes something like:</p><p><br></p><ol><li>Test it yourself, do the main applications still work, drivers, odd hardware. When that is done:</li><li>Select key users from each department</li><li>Train them on the changes in the new version of Windows and how it will affect their workflows</li><li>Give them a test PC with all the software they use on a daily basis</li><li>Make them use the test PC as much as possible and they need to report any problems that occur</li><li>Once all departments have been thoroughly tested and any "odd" software shown to work without problems, then you can start looking at a company wide roll-out:</li><li>User training – get this out of the way before the upgrade, but just before the upgrade, nothing worse than user panicking, because their PC "changed" over night or having had the training so long ago, that they have forgotten everything. Do it is phases, co-ordinated with an upgrade of their machines on the following weekend.</li><li>Upgrade a batch, then wait to ensure that everything is working properly, before moving onto the next batch.</li></ol><p><br></p><p>Again, I’d probably go with a controlled rollout, ensuring that a maximum of half a department is updated in one push, there is nothing worse, after having pushed an update, to find the next morning that the entire sales or accounting department can’t work!</p><p><br></p><p>We moved to Office 365 and we received dozens of panicked calls, that Outlook was broken, when Microsoft moved the search box from the top of the emails list to the window title-bar!</p>

  • polloloco51

    28 January, 2022 - 8:54 am

    <p>Windows 11 is definitely not worth upgrading to, or spending resources migrating or training employees </p><p><br></p><p>Windows 10 is stable and works perfectly right now! It will be supported for many years to come too!</p><p><br></p><p>I would say, keep Windows 10! </p><p><br></p>

  • markgreatrex

    28 January, 2022 - 9:50 am

    <p>I don’t really know about the training/costs aspects. But my personal experience is that i haven’t found any compelling features/must haves yet that Windows 11 has, that Windows 10 doesn’t. </p><p><br></p><p>Originally i upgraded to Windows 10 from 7 because i was trying to run a couple of games that had frame rate issues, and i didn’t get the same problem on Windows 10. </p><p><br></p><p>For me, it would be a case of testing the new system out on a test rig and moving to Windows 11 when i really see some benefit. (So at the moment im testing it with my applications/games etc and dual booting)</p><p><br></p><p>Hope theres some more comment on this topic…</p><p><br></p>

  • epguy40

    31 January, 2022 - 3:59 pm

    <p>wait until the first Windows 11 feature update (aka. <strong>22H2</strong>) comes out in late 2022 and then decide at THAT time whether or not to do the Windows 11 upgrade</p>

  • dmitryko

    08 April, 2022 - 4:52 am

    <p>I would skip Windows11 altogether.</p><p><br></p><p>I’m fine with OS kernel improvements like BypassIO (DirectStorage API), WDDM 3.x (graphics acceleNVMe 1.4 Zoned Storage etc. WinUI 3 desktop windowing library with GUI32/USER32 compatibility layer was long overdue.</p><p><br></p><p>But over simplified, touch-screen oriented GUI from Windows 10X built to resemble ChromeOS and macOS/OS X, in times when even Linux distributions are mimicking Windows 7 desktop? A big no-no.</p><p><br></p><p>Not to mention arbitrary processor requirements to push kernel DRM schemes from long-dead <span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Palladium / NGSCB project, instead of actually improving the security of the OS kernel.</span></p>

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