Lack of future updates has people hesitant about upgrading unsupported PCs to Windows 11
Most of our polled readers will put Windows 11 onto unsupported PCs, but that's only part of the story.

Microsoft's statements regarding unsupported hardware and Windows 11 have been about as clear as the operating system's blur effects. Just since the announcement of Windows 11, Microsoft shared an official minimum requirements list, released, pulled, and re-released a PC Health Check app, changed some of the minimum requirements of the OS, and announced that PCs that don't meet the minimum requirements will be able to manually update to Windows 11. Based on the last bit of news in that list, we wanted to know if our readers will run Windows 11 on their PCs even if their hardware isn't officially supported.
Our poll that ran over the weekend and into the start of this week was only complicated by Microsoft stating that unsupported PCs aren't guaranteed to receive updates. Specifically, security and driver updates might not become available for unsupported PCs that are pushed to Windows 11. This news appears to affect the views of our readers quite a bit. Several people expressed that future updates are a major factor when it comes to upgrading a PC to Windows 11.
"Scovious2" said in our comments section, "I have 5 unsupported computers that I would upgrade to Windows 11, but only if Windows Update is going to serve me updates."
"ISO_117" echoed expressed similar feelings in the comments, "Not anymore now [that] Microsoft said there's a big chance unsupported devices don't get further updates if you manually upgrade to Windows 11. So [what's] the point in upgrading and then be left unsupported and unsafe."
Despite concerns regarding future updates, most polled participants said that they'd upgrade PCs to Windows 11 even if their hardware doesn't meet the operating system's minimum requirements. At the time of publication, 64.53% said they would upgrade, while 35.47 said they would not. Some of these votes occurred before the news regarding future updates for unsupported PCs, so we'll leave the poll open to see if things trend another way.
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Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).
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I won't be forcing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware for two reasons, I already have supported hardware and I have it installed on unsupported hardware as well and it's a horrific experience on my Surface Pro 4. There is also talk of Microsoft withholding updates from unsupported hardware as well.
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Can you elaborate please? Kinda curious - if your experience is replicated or can be replicated with similar specced hardware.
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I'm putting it on a Surface Pro 4. Even though the Beta has struggled I need the top and bottom snap in portrait orientation; feature I've been asking for on Windows 10 ever since it was released. I do have the Core M version of the Surface Pro 4 and it was sluggish with windows 10 to begin with.
After I installed Windows 11 it was indexing the search for about 4 days straight, which took significant chunk of the CPU resources. I left it on day and night for this to finish. Now it's running a bit faster, usable, but not a "fun" experience for sure. -
I have it on my Surface Pro 4, and the only issue I have, is the stupid file explorer sucks. What issues are you having?
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"Unsupported" specs would not stop me to upgrade, if I could go around that. But I will first see if 11 is upgrade over 10, which is not for now.
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Why would anyone expect updates for an unsupported device?
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What does it mean actually "not receiving updates"? In the first place people shouldn't be able to install on unsupported devices, yet they can. Okay, they Will not receive updates, according to Microsoft, yet probably they will. And even if they don't, what keeps them from installing an update or upgrade to an unsupported device via an ISO or whathaveyou when they were able to install the OS in the first place. Maybe it won't be a click away as for supported devices, but I am pretty sure, that keeping the OS secure would not be an issue for most.