If your old machine still used HDD as medium, installing Linux to a cheap SSD (never mind nvme) drive will amaze you.
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My laptop runs an ssd and the difference is amazing even in windows. Just doing a mirror backup of my old pc hard drive to pen drive and its taking ages. 
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After several months weâre still undecided (or is it that weâre dithering?) about installing W11 having read many âexpertsâ who say do it and many âexpertsâ who say donât do it. Again there are âexpertsâ who say wait for W12 and other âexpertsâ who say W12 isnât going to happen. So which way do you jump? We (Stuart) are doing everything possible to make sure heâs made the right decision, but what is the right decision. It seems you get things you maybe donât want (AI for example) but canât get things you do want. We watched a video earlier this week from a guy (an expert!) who said that Microsoft had got it so wrong - why did they want to install programmes nobody wanted and why did they not listen to their customers. What was wrong with W7 - W8 was so bad. And whatâs wrong with W10?
We seem to be being pushed into getting W11 like we were pushed into getting a smart phone. We resisted for as long as we possibly could but in the end it was because our bank (CA) said we must install their App and they would not allow online purchases without confirmation via a SMS. As we do a lot of online purchasing, we had to get their App and the smart phone.
We have a PC that has all the specs to upgrade to W11 but we go back to our original question to which we cannot find an answer except that @hairbear said he had W10 Pro and upgraded to W11. So did you (@hairbear) upgrade to W11 Pro from W10 Pro. And did you have to pay for it and was it necessary to have an account.
If we can get an answer to these questions - and it is important for us to have the Pro version - then we will be happy to upgrade.
First off general support ends in October so no need to rush.
Second W10 will not suddenly stop working in October - it will stop getting updates, and it might therefore mean that it will become vulnerable to viruses - but the best defence there is not to get infected in the first place so good browsing hygiene, using a third party browser which itself will continue to receive updates (such as Mozilla, or Brave) and installing a third party virus scanner will mitigate most of the threat from malicious software.
I still had systems on W7 long after it ended support, none was infected with a virus, all continued to work just fine.
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I think youâre talking about Microsoft Copilot, their AI model. Thatâs only installed on the PC if you have a Copilot compatible PC with an AI engine built in. Theyâve only been available very recently on specific AI ready PCs so I think your safe.
The other feature that is controversial is Microsoft Recall (what were they thinking 
) but again thatâs also only for Copilot compatible PCs so no worries.
I did upgrade in place from Win 10 to Win 11 after of course backing up first. You donât have to pay. I did it without a Microsoft account but I think I heard that recently theyâd changed the requirement (that may have been for a clean install though) but there will still be a way to do it.
Edit : The Microsoft Windows 11 upgrade FAQ state explicitly that the 10 to 11 upgrade is free. The first 4 or 5 hits I found about the upgrade say that if you normally log in with a local account then a Microsoft account will not be required for an in place upgrade, but that a clean install will require a Microsoft account.
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@hairbear - thanks for your reply. Stuart is not here now but he will be phoning me later to see if we have had any replies. Iâm not sure Iâve got it right and Iâm so sorry to be a pest but did you upgrade to a like for like (10 Pro to 11 Pro) - was that the automatic choice and was it the 24H2 version you got.
Thanks - Rachel
I just did the upgrade and it installed 11 pro. Donât think I had a choice. 24H2 hadnât been released when I upgraded.
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I am famous for doing a lot of online purchasing, in fact almost everything I buy apart from groceries is online, and I donât have a smartphone. They are not necessary, sms messages arrive perfectly on my non-smart phone.
Amazing amount of data being collected by win 11, and sold on to others.
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@David_Spardo - we didnât have a mobile phone so we couldnât get SMS messages, therefore we had to get one so we chose to get a smart phone. But we donât use it very much, only for using Google maps in the car and, as mentioned, some online purchases.
Just upgrade you are wasting too much on this little issue. I upgraded my laptop first to test it out before my desktop. It is pretty much the same other than the right click options being slightly different. Desktop got it a couple days later. It isnât worth wasting spoons over.
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If you have the Pro version, you can turn almost all of it off within Windows 10/11. There are also third party apps that can be used to turn off the rest. Using a local account helps as well.
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Oficially âitâs supposed to be relatively harmless stuff and anonymised/pseudonymised.
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Was that a misprint? If not, what a great expression.
As for the sentiment, I completely agree. W11 is fine as an OS. Even if you have to pay, itâs not a huge amount and worth it for the similarities. I want an OS to just work and not get in the way of the apps I want to run.
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Did I read ages ago something about unofficial support?
It wasnât a misprint is based on the spoon theory.
Spoon theory is a metaphor that describes how people with chronic illnesses or disabilities have limited energy and must carefully manage it. The theory uses spoons to represent units of energy, and the idea is that people with chronic conditions have a limited number of spoons each day.
Iâm not sure Iâd call it âunofficialâ - any actual support that some from Microsoft is going to be official - but might wind up being applied to a PC which is not running a properly licensed copy of Windows 10.
Thereâs the Extended Security Updates program whereby you can pay for essential updates, but itâs not clear how long Microsoft will keep that going.
The Enterprise Edition is supported until 2027, there are various, almost certainly illegal, hacks to download and activate a copy of Enterprise but the only official route is via volume licensing.
Thereâs the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise âLong Term Supportâ edition which will be supported up to 2032 - again, you would need to be part of a volume licensing deal with M$ for this to be legitimate, and I donât think it is intended for normal consumer desktop machines.
Wow, you certainly know how to make an old man very happy Rachel, It is not often I find myself ahead when it comes to technology. 
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David - youâre not an old man - youâre an elderly gentleman ! 
How sweet of you to say so, and not that I think any the less of you for it, but I do get fed up on tv in films etc. when police persons or others describe miscreants as gentlemen when it is quite obvious that they are anything but gentle. 
But in this case, obviously the cap fits, snugly. 
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