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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and Chris discuss A high-tech rescue, Amazon and UPS reaching a tentative agreement, Google Maps’ Ai features, and more.
“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond
Every year about 8 million tons of plastic enters the Earth’s oceans from land-based sources — the equivalent of a garbage truck dumping plastic into the sea every minute! This week our science and technology news reporter Ralph Bond tells us scientists have created a plant-based plastic that is fully saltwater-degradable.
Read more here.
Dug in Stevensville, Michigan asked: “I just realized that my tower computer is running Windows 10 Home. Is there any way to Upgrade to Windows 11 for free? Please explain any differences that I might experience due to the upgrade. Thanks Dave.”
Dug, Microsoft is offering the upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for free as long as you stay within the same edition (for example, you cant update from Home to Pro for free).
Your computer will need to meet the minimum hardware requirements to be able to upgrade at all though, and not all computers do.
The requirements are not too crazy, for example, you need a dual core 1GHz 64-bit processor, and you need 4GB of RAM, but some requirements like TPM version 2 may not be available to all computers.
If you are able to upgrade there will be plenty of differences, the UI has been largely rebuilt and now has the start menu towards the center of the screen, the window design is a little different, some options in menu are now hidden behind a … menu, but the biggest difference is likely how hard it will push Copilot. Virtually every Microsoft app (even Notepad and Paint) will constantly push you to use Copilot. In some cases that just doesnt make any sense and it can be annoying.
Overall, Windows 11 is not as well regarded as Windows 10, which was considered by most as one of the good versions like Windows 7 was years before it, but given the security implications of staying with 10, moving to 11 seems like the most reasonable option.
If your hardware is not supported by Windows 11 but otherwise still working well, you can install Linux on it and save some money. Linux Mint is a good place to start to migrate from Windows. Otherwise you will likely need a new computer.
Still give the upgrade assistant a chance, most computers that ran 10 have been able to move up to 11.
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