PremiumMicrosoft took yet another shot at informing users about Windows 11’s minimum system requirements today, but the company may have made things worse. In a blog post, the company said that Windows 11 will require the TPM chips, but the first build of OS, which Microsoft provides only to its “insiders" doesn’t require the chip.
The company went on to say that it will use the preview builds to “learn how Windows 11 performs across CPU models" and will inform “any adjustments" it makes to the minimum system requirements. Windows Insider is sort of a beta programme, through which Microsoft offers access to its platform to a select user group, so it can collect data.
Microsoft got a lot of things right with Windows 11, but the part about requiring TPM chips has confused, and disappointed, many. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a hardware solution that offers better security for PCs. “The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a chip that is either integrated into your PC’s motherboard or added separately into the CPU," explained David Weston, Director of Enterprise and OS Security at Microsoft, in a separate blog post earlier. “Its purpose is to help protect encryption keys, user credentials, and other sensitive data behind a hardware barrier so that malware and attackers can’t access or tamper with that data," he added.
But the TPM chips aside, Microsoft did confirm that the OS will work with all devices running Intel’s 8th generation or AMD’s Zen 2 processors. It will also run on Qualcomm’s 7 and 8 series chipsets. “Windows 11 is designed to be compatible with the apps you use. It has the fundamentals of >1GHz, 2-core processors, 4GB memory, and 64GB of storage, aligning with our minimum system requirements for Office and Microsoft Teams," the company said in its new blog post.
On the other hand, this means that devices running on 6th generation Intel Skylake processors will not support Windows 11. So, if you bought your laptops before 2015 (which is when Intel launched the Skylake chips), you may be out of luck. This may be true for many Indian users.
Companies like HP and Dell have already announced some of their devices that will get Windows 11. The current versions of HP Spectre, HP Envy and the HP Pavilion portfolios will work with Windows 11, which includes the HP Spectre x360 14, HP Envy x360 15, and the HP Pavilion All-in-One. Dell’s XPS 13, Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 and Latitude 9420 will also support the OS, as will laptops from HP’s Omen and Victus lines.
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