AND Windows 11 it has a hard time spreading among home users due to its high requirements, which left many machines out of the game and forced them to use Windows 10 or switch to Linux. On the other hand, if regular users are not very diligent about updating their operating system on many occasions, companies are even less so, to the extent that Windows 7 is increasingly used than Windows 11 in this segment.

It’s important to note that we’re comparing Windows 7 and Windows 11 because Windows 10 is by far the most widely used and still supported in the standard way. However, this is not the case with Windows 7, which officially ended its life at the beginning of 2020 and whose support can be extended for professional users until at least 2023 (with the possibility of reaching 2026).

Of course, the fact that companies continue to use Windows 7 more than 11 does not mean that they have all enabled extended support aimed at them. However, the situation of Microsoft’s latest operating system has improved compared to six months ago, when its share in this segment was lower than that of Windows XP and 8.

According to Lansweeper, the company behind this study and the study six months ago, explained that in companies “only 57.26% of tested workstation CPUs met the system requirements to upgrade to Windows 11, while 42.74% did not.. And while the majority passed the RAM test (92.85%), about 65% of the TPM workstations tested passed the requirements, while more than 15% failed and 20% did not have TPM support or I did not have it enabled.”

“For virtual machine workstations, the forecast is less optimistic. CPU compatibility is slightly lower at 55.7%. Our research shows that only 67.1% have enough RAM. The news is grim for TPM, only 1.33% of all virtual workstations are TPM 2.0 enabled. Not entirely surprising, TPM has never been required for Windows, and while TPM passthrough (vTPM) exists to provide virtual machines with TPM support, it’s rarely used. Which means most workstations in VMs will need to be modified to get vTPM before they can be upgraded to Windows 11.”

Lansweeper insists, as we have said several times, on the same roadblock that many have run into. The high requirements of Windows 11, with a special mention of TPM, mean that many companies have to invest in new hardware to use it, which is not the case with previous versions of Microsoft’s operating system. This also applies to virtualization solutions, which until recently, depending on the case, did not pay much attention to firmware support, as operating systems continued to run in BIOS or required at most a basic UEFI configuration.

Lansweeper took data based on approximately 30 million Windows devices in approximately 60,000 organizationsso the sample is, at least initially and on paper, quite large.