In the six months since the launch of its Windows 11 operating system, Microsoft has busied itself with upgrading as many of its teams’ PCs as it can. Now, the company has shared a glimpse into how the process is going, celebrating the upgrade as “the smoothest we’ve ever had.”
In a post on the Windows IT Pro Blog (via Windows Central), content and social program manager at Microsoft Lukas Velush says that “over 190,000 employee devices” have undergone a Windows 11 upgrade. This spree of OS installations took place over five weeks, meaning the company was able to upgrade over 5,000 PCs a day.
However, the rollout of the OS hasn’t been entirely without its hurdles. Velush highlights that “a percentage of [employee] devices” did not meet the Windows 11 requirements and will instead continue to run Windows 10 until their next available device refresh. It also remains unclear how many more systems are yet to receive an upgrade, as Microsoft didn’t specify what fraction the 190,000 PCs previously mentioned makes up of the company’s total installation base.
Microsoft’s claims of a smooth transition to Windows 11 unfortunately doesn’t reflect the experiences of those within the consumer gaming PC space. The operating system’s TPM requirement continues to cause confusion among consumers, and performance headaches for those with AMD Ryzen processors and NVMe gaming SSDs.
Time to upgrade: Here’s how to install Windows 11
Despite these problems, demand for the operating system among Steam users continues to grow with each month, with nearly one in five users running Windows 11 over Windows 10. Features such as Auto HDR and DirectStorage are undoubtedly enticing for gamers, but OS-exclusive enhancements with the best gaming CPUs in Intel’s 12th Gen Core line-up is likely also boosting the rate of adoption.