Windows 10 was released in July 2015 and was a welcome replacement for Windows 8 and 8.1. A lot of users, both business and home, avoided Windows 8 due to its unloved redesigned start menu when compared to the stable Windows 7 it replaced. For many there was a marked difference in user experience when they eventually switched from Window 7 to 10, simply missing 8 altogether.
Windows 10 is now the most common supported Operating System (OS) in home and business environments, but its days are numbered with the official end of support scheduled for October 2025. Windows 10 is well accepted as a strong stable OS with minimal bugs, so if you are buying a new PC or laptop do you stick with the tried and trusted or modernise and go straight to Windows 11?
After over 2 years of public availability, Windows 11 is now a mature OS. With the odd foibles introduced by Microsoft during initial releases being mostly ironed out (like removing Task Manger from the right click option on the task bar), it is the sensible choice for use on new hardware. If your new device is 13th Gen Intel based it is the only recommended and fully supported choice.
If you have an 8th Gen Intel processor or above, and are already running Windows 10 should you upgrade to Windows 11. That may come down to personal preference, device lifecycle and watching what you press in Windows update. Microsoft have been pushing Windows 11 as an upgrade through Windows updates for some time now on supported hardware, and to be fair the upgrade process experience has been painless. Windows 11 is an evolution of Windows 10 rather than the revolution that Windows 10 was, with most if not all Windows 10 compatible software working on Windows 11 without much hassle. The caveat being that due to a minimum memory requirement being 4GB RAM, Windows 11 does not come in 32bit versions (although 32bit applications still run fine as they do in Windows 10 64bit).
If you want to prolong the life of your existing devices, then it may be worth considering the upgrade or doing a fresh build of the newer OS, and for new devices it is the only OS worth considering.