Just because Microsoft have ended support for their earlier operating systems doesn't mean the computers running them have to be discarded.
Although my main desktop is running Win 10 I still have Win 7 on its other partition, again for the programs that need that version.
Windows 7 support only finished in January last year, eight years after the release of its successor. Microsoft have decided that three years must suffice in future. The number of exploit attempts targetting Win7 in February 2020 was much greater than in the whole of the previous year. Your Win7 installation survives because you are careful what you use it for. Think off the millions who still use it for browsing the net, with hundreds of known, but unpatched, vulnerabilties. That will be you and your Win10 only four years from now. Support for Win10 version 1909 has already been stopped (less than 3 years!).
Andrew - do you have any sources for the changes that you mention? I've looked at the page about Windows 11 on the MS site, and the video there, but didn't see anything about the need for a MS account, or it being cloud-based, or that drives will be encrypted.
So is this just speculation, or have MS actually said they intend to do all this?
The leaked version shown in many online analyses is the "Pro" version and still has an "offline" account possible, but hidden behind several nags. The "Home" version has many more restrictions. The cut-down Win10 offered to third-world markets does not allow offline accounts; Microsoft sees that as a Good Thing.
Encryption is being pushed, naturally, as a security feature - "Secure by design". It was enabled by default on the installations I've seen; it was not clear whether the encrytion could be stopped and reversed.
64-bit processor (Intel "I7" or the AMD equivalent), Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 are official requirements. Processors designed since 2018 are almost certain to incorporate TPM 2.0 features on the chip, even if there is a TPM 1.2 chip fitted on the board.
"Powered by the cloud" is a quote from Microsoft. In the industry it is directly equivalent to "give us all your data". Microsoft look enviously at Google and Apple, who enforce environments where all user information is passed to them without exception. "Knowledge is Power".
There are ways of doing a CLEAN installation of the leaked Win11 onto older hardware by overwriting some files in the install image with the older versions from Win10. It is not clear whether this will be possible with the released version, and this would certainly not be possible for an upgrade-in-situ, of which there will be two every year.
