To be honest I was not expecting any performance improvements either, no matter what Microsoft claimed with those blog posts and videos. That’s just the thing, though: why make all those claims in the first place when they KNOW it will not perform any better on current hardware?

Modern hardware — like Intel Alder Lake for instance — is another matter entirely. But the jury is out on that one still.

At this point, it makes no sense for Microsoft to bring out a new version of Windows if it DOESN’T bring enough new stuff to the table. We could all continue using Windows 10 for a few more years as it is and nothing would change. So why bring out this pointless release, to begin with?

The answer is, of course, “to sell new computers” as you mentioned, but I refuse to accept that bullying people into buying new PCs (taking into account the strict hardware requirements that’s what it actually is) is what a new operating system should strive for. It seems that I am not the only one to think so.

It will be interesting to see what the January reports about the PC market will indicate. If there was not even a modest uptick in PC sales during November/December, then Windows 11 will be a truly embarrassing failure.