Posted 2 September 2023

Best operating system

I have just purchased a ideapad pro 5 16 laptop which does not have an operating system installed. Would it be better to get the windows 10 or 11. I have heard a few complaints about the 11. Also, windows 10 is only £10 and 11 is a lot more expensive. Any advice appreciated, thanks.
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  1. KodaBear's avatar
    Depending upon how modern the IdeaPad is, you may find there isn't official driver support for Windows 10 anymore leading to an unstable operation. Check the Lenovo support site and put your serial number in to see what OS has full driver availability.

    W10 and W11 Codes should be more or less the same price if looking at the right websites for the cheap volume licenses you're talking about around the £10 mark and not the official retail licenses from Microsoft.

    I've got an IdeaPad which originally came with W10. I upgraded it to 11 and actually saw a marginal improvement in performance, a slight boost to battery life, and a couple of bugs fixed too. So definitely wouldn't be put off the idea of 11 personally.
    shropshirelass51's avatar
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    That's really helpful, thanks.
  2. slimy31's avatar
    My preference would be 11, it has sorted out a lot of issues that I had on 10. The main thing I still have issues with is wifi, but I think it might be my laptop (Huawei) rather than the OS.

    As mentioned there shouldn't be any price difference, in fact if you buy 10 you can still upgrade for free. From the microsoft website;


    It’s free. But only Windows 10 PCs that are running the most current version of Windows 10 and meet the minimum hardware specifications will be able to upgrade. You can check to see if you have the latest updates for Windows 10 in Settings/Windows Update. Note that in areas where the internet is metered, ISP fees may apply.
  3. Willy_Wonka's avatar
    Just install 10.


    When installed it will give you the option to update to 11
    Pájaro's avatar
    Yeah, don't do this, . Win11 can be installed directly with a Win10 key, so you'd be wasting your time if you were to Win10 first, and ending up with a bit of a hodge-podge OS install.
  4. bozo007's avatar
    W11 is stable now. I have it on two machines with zero problems.
  5. TristanDeCoonha's avatar
    Do you need windows? Could you work with something like Ubuntu? Forever free, including upgrades
  6. tardytortoise's avatar
    Windows 10 reaches end of life Oct 2025.
    From a raw machine, installing Windows 11 would be best BUT ONLY if it has the correct specs - TPM 2.0 and a fairly newish processor. Installing 10 and then upgrading to 11 can sometimes be a PITA.
    Having said that, my preference is Linux Mint. (edited)
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