The Windows 10 update cliff is coming in October 2025. We've explained why that's a big deal, and we have a comprehensive guide to updating to Windows 11 (recently updated to account for changes in Windows 11 24H2) so you can keep getting security updates, whether you're on an officially supported PC or not.
But this is more than just a theoretical exercise; I've been using Windows 11 on some kind of "unsupported" system practically since it launched to stay abreast of what the experience is actually like and to keep tabs on whether Microsoft would make good on its threats to pull support from these systems at any time.
Now that we're three years in, and since I've been using Windows 11 24H2 on a 2012-era desktop and laptop as my primary work machines on and off for a few months now, I can paint a pretty complete picture of what Windows 11 is like on these PCs. As the Windows 10 update cliff approaches, it's worth asking: Is running "unsupported" Windows 11 a good way to keep an older but still functional machine running, especially for non-technical users?
I've run Windows 11 on a fair amount of old hardware, including PCs as old as a late XP-era Core 2 Duo Dell Inspiron desktop. For the first couple of years, I ran it most commonly on an old Dell XPS 13 9333 with a Core i5-4250U and 8GB of RAM and a Dell Latitude 3379 2-in-1 that just barely falls short of the official requirements (both systems are also pressed into service for ChromeOS Flex testing periodically).