Microsoft Windows 11

Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. (Wikipedia, n.d.a)

Windows 11 features major changes to the Windows shell, including a redesigned Start menu, the replacement of its "live tiles" with a separate "Widgets" panel on the taskbar, the ability to create tiled sets of windows that can be minimized and restored from the taskbar as a group, and new gaming technologies inherited from Xbox Series X and Series S such as Auto HDR and DirectStorage on compatible hardware. (Wikipedia, n.d.a)

Editions

There are four editions of Windows 11, namely "Home", "Pro", "Enterprise" and "Education".

Windows 11 Home is intended for consumer users, offering basic networking and security features like BitLocker device encryption (Microsoft Helps, 2022a).

Windows 11 Pro contains additional networking and security features like BitLocker device AND drive encryption (Microsoft Helps, 2022a; Wikipedia, n.d.a), as well as the ability to join a Windows domain (Wikipedia, n.d.a).

BitLocker Device and Drive Encryption

While the Home edition only offers BitLocker device encryption for your desktop or laptop computer (Microsoft Helps, 2022a; Wikipedia, n.d.b), the Pro version also supports BitLocker drive encryption for portable storage media. (Microsoft Helps, 2022a; Wikipedia, n.d.a)

Microsoft Defender for Individuals

Microsoft Defender for Individuals, not to be confused with the much older "Windows Defender" (Microsoft ExpertZone North America, 2022a), comes preloaded on all versions of Windows 11.

The Microsoft Edge Web Browser

All versions of Windows 11 includes Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge web browser - not to be confused with your grannie's "Internet Explorer".

The New Windows Media Player

Windows 11 also arrives preloaded with the new Windows Media Player for audio and video. (Wikipedia, n.d.c)

The latest version supports popular audio formats like MP3, 3GP, AAC, Dolby AC-3, FLAC, M4A, WAV, and WMA (Wikipedia, n.d.c), as well as video formats like MP4, ASF, AVI, MOV, and WMV. (Wikipedia, n.d.c)

Native Archiving Support

Apart from native ZIP archive support introduced with Windows 98 (Tyson, 2023a), Windows 11 now also offers native support for 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.BZ2, TAR.GZ, TAR.ZST, TAR.XZ, TBZ2, TGZ, TXZ and TZST archives (Tyson, 2023a)

That means you no longer need to download and install third-party archiving utilities like Bandizip, WinRAR and WinZIP.

Purchasing

A one-time purchase of Windows 11 will provide you with one license for one device at either home or work.

References

  1. Microsoft ExpertZone North America (2022a, August 27) What is Microsoft Defender? [YouTube]
  2. Microsoft Helps (2022a, August 26) What is BitLocker and BitLocker recovery? [YouTube]
  3. Tyson, M. (2023a, October 30) Windows 11 Adds Support for 11 Additional Zip and Archive Formats [Tom's Hardware]
  4. Wikipedia (n.d.a) Windows 11
  5. Wikipedia (n.d.b) BitLocker
  6. Wikipedia (n.d.c) Windows Media Player (2022)