Electronics

[gadgetgal613]

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@bonnielu wrote:

I was told I would have to buy a new computer because you cannot upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11.  Wonder why they made it that way. 

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It's been that way for years and it includes both Windows and Mac based machines.  I started with Windows 95, soon bought a new computer with Windows 98, XP then Windows 7 before I switched to Apple.  Of all of the Windows operating systems, I like XP the best and kept it the longest. 

[gardenman]

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@bonnielu wrote:

I was told I would have to buy a new computer because you cannot upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11.  Wonder why they made it that way. 

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Do you have to buy a new computer? It depends. Windows 11 more or less requires TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) to run. TPM makes your computer safer. It started to be included on some motherboards in 2006. Not all though. TPM 2.0 came about in 2018 (or so.) If your old computer was built after 2018, you might already have TPM 2.0. It could also have a header where you could add a TPM 2.0 module. (Assuming you can find one. Since Microsoft's announcement, they've largely been all bought up. Most motherboard manufacturers only made a smallish percentage of TPM 2.0 modules as most users never used them. Demand has far outstripped supply of TPM modules as of now.)

My old computer's motherboard didn't have TPM 2.0 built-in nor did it have a header for a TPM module. Many brand new motherboards still only have the TPM header and you have to hope you can find a TPM module for it. The board I bought has TPM built-in and I just had to turn it on in the BIOS.

Why did Microsoft do this? Safety. More and more threats emerge against computers all of the time, so more security is better than less. 

Can you still install Windows 11 without a TPM 2.0 module? Yes. There are some pretty crazy workarounds floating around out there to fool Windows 11 into installing on a machine it's not supposed to install on. It can be done. Should you do it? Eh, I wouldn't, but if you're braver than me, you could. There are a lot of videos and web pages out there telling you how to do it. 

For me, it just made more sense to build a new rig. My old computer was built five years ago using parts that were about two years old at the time, so it was seven-ish years old technology. (Some things in that old build like the case, power supply, hard drives, optical drive were reused from an earlier build, so they were more like 14-ish years old.) Everything in the new system is pretty much brand new technology. I should get a good seven years or more from the new system. The old system only had 8 GBs of RAM and that was starting to get stressed a bit. I'd get an occasional memory error from it.

I had the money on hand to build new, so it just made sense for me to build a new system. 

[SilleeMee]

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@bonnielu wrote:

I was told I would have to buy a new computer because you cannot upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11.  Wonder why they made it that way. 

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@bonnielu 

That depends on your computer. If your computer is capable of the upgrade then you will receive notification from Microsoft stating "This PC can run on Windows 11"  (found in the Update & Security section under Settings). Microsoft provides you with a link there also where you can check and see if your computer meets the requirements for the upgrade. Microsoft sent me a link to their website to learn about Win11, too.

[wagirl]

I just got a new laptop that I can load windows 11 onto but think I will wait awhile--10 is going to be fine for the next 4 years as far as updates are concerned--not in a rush.

[gardenman]

The new computer is up and running. Still on Windows 10 until Microsoft gets around to upgrading it. Only one hiccup so far. For whatever reason, it's not letting me add my verizon.net email to Outlook. A minor annoyance but I can access that account through the browser so it's not a big deal. It's fully up to date on updates and is working fine. I haven't added the older hard drives yet, but I'll get around to that in a few days. It's very, very quiet. Almost silent.

[Nuttmeg]

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@wagirl wrote:

I just got a new laptop that I can load windows 11 onto but think I will wait awhile--10 is going to be fine for the next 4 years as far as updates are concerned--not in a rush.

@wagirl

You may want to run the Windows 11 upgrade app and see what results you receive.

Microsoft may offer upgrades free for maybe for a year?  At some point the company will want money for this software.

There is a larger question. What peripherals you have will need to be changed?  A Printer can be expensive, and  there may not be drivers for your old wireless card. 

I know a Windows 11 computer today has some different parts not found in a Windows 10 sold last week. I have seen Dell change components in their components. 

[gardenman]

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@Nuttmeg wrote:

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@wagirl wrote:

I just got a new laptop that I can load windows 11 onto but think I will wait awhile--10 is going to be fine for the next 4 years as far as updates are concerned--not in a rush.

@wagirl

You may want to run the Windows 11 upgrade app and see what results you receive.

Microsoft may offer upgrades free for maybe for a year?  At some point the company will want money for this software.

There is a larger question. What peripherals you have will need to be changed?  A Printer can be expensive, and  there may not be drivers for your old wireless card. 

I know a Windows 11 computer today has some different parts not found in a Windows 10 sold last week. I have seen Dell change components in their components. 

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If you believe Microsoft (and there's good reason not to) if your existing devices (printer, scanner, etc.) work with Windows10 they should work with Windows 11. Or so the theory goes.

[gardenman]

This is my first computer with Bluetooth and I've now paired my Bluetooth speaker with it and I'm having fun with that. My Bluetooth speaker is better sounding than my computer speakers so that's fun. It's a pretty neat new setup. The speaker is rechargeable and there's a conveniently located USB port on the top of the case, so a short USB jumper cable I've had lying around forever lets me charge the speaker while listening to it.

[Sooner]

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@gardenman wrote:

I'm building a new PC now and will upgrade it to Windows 11 and hope for the best. Most of the major bugs were worked out in the beta testing. There seem to be mostly minor issues remaining. My old PC wasn't upgradable, so it was time to build a new one. 

The majority of older computers can't upgrade to Windows 11 (at least not easily) so if you want to upgrade you may have to get a new computer.

For anyone interested the new computer is AMD Ryzen 5600G processor, Asus ROG Strix B550 F WIFI motherboard, 32 GBs of 3200 mhz RAM, two 1 terabyte m.2 drives, a 510-watt power supply, and a Corsair 4000D case.  The total cost was around $970.  I should get another five to seven years from that build. It's an absurdly easy build. It might have taken me a half-hour all total to assemble everything. I'm just waiting for Amazon to deliver my Windows 10 USB stick today and I'll finish everything. I've already activated the fTPM switch in the BIOS settings and everything else already meets Windows 11 standards so after getting Windows 10 installed it should let me upgrade immediately to Windows 11. 

I'm breaking some of my own rules on computer building with this build. I'm using newer components. (The CPU just hit the market in August.) I typically buy components that are in year two or three of release, but I'm going with newer, but still very well-reviewed stuff, in this build. It's a little pricier than my earlier builds, but I'm not really reusing much from the old PC. (I will move the hard drives over once the new build is up and running though.) I may also scavenge the two case fans from the old PC to get extra cooling in the new one. With any luck, sometime today or tomorrow the new computer will be up and fully functional. I know it POSTs now, and I've been in the BIOS adjusting settings, so everything so far is working well. I just need to get Windows installed and I should be in business. And I'm just waiting now for Amazon to deliver it.

This is the first computer I've built without an optical drive of some sort. My first build had a CD ROM drive, then the next two had DVD drives. While debating options for this build, I tried to remember the last time I'd used the DVD drive and I couldn't, so no DVD drive this time around. We'll have to see if I miss it. 

I've got two older spinning hard drives in my current computer (a 320 GB and a 1 TB one) along with a 128 GB SSD. They'll get added to the 2 TBs of m.2 storage in the new computer. So, in total it should have around 3.48 TBs of total storage. My first "real" computer had a 1.2 GB hard drive and the salesman at the time told me I'd never fill that in a lifetime of computing. Ha! Things have changed quite a bit in later years.

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@gardenman You young whippersnapper!  My first computer had a floppy disk!    AND addressed 128K!  

[gardenman]

@Sooner 

My first computer (not a more modern PC) was a Timex/Sinclair 1000. No drive of any kind. If you wanted to save a program you would record it to a cassette tape recorder. It had two whole KBs of memory. That was in 1982. Times have changed. Timex was making digital watches and decided "Hey, our watches are kind of computers. Let's make a computer!" They hooked up with Sinclair and the Timex/Sinclair 1000 was born.