We are still learning a little more about Windows 11, and that will probably continue until the rollout to PCs begins in a few months. Speaking of which, one thing we have learned recently is that the free update to existing Windows 10 PCs will not happen at the same time, nor will it happen this year.

That is if you are using Windows 10 and want to perform an in-place upgrade through Windows Update. You still have the option to perform a clean install, and assuming you own a valid Windows 10 license, you should be able to activate Windows 11 with the same key.

However, if you do not want to perform a clean install, you will need to wait a bit longer.

Microsoft's official Windows account on Twitter revealed the timing of Windows 11, stating that it "will be released in late 2021 and offered over several months." Meanwhile, "upgrades to Windows devices already in use today will begin in 2022 and into the first half of that year," Microsoft added.

That means they will have to wait six more months (from today) to move to Windows 10 via in-place upgrades via Windows Update. The flip side of waiting a little longer than others is that Microsoft will fix the early release glitches for early adopters.

We have seen this time and again in the continuous evolution of Windows 10. Feature upgrades are made twice a year, and each time a bug slips through. Most of them are trivial, but there have been some pretty big headaches along the way.

One of the more notable hiccups was the initial October 2018 update to Windows 10 that introduced full support for DirecX Raytracing (DXR). It also introduced a bug that caused some files on Windows 10 PCs to go missing after the update. Microsoft eventually suspended the update while it investigated the situation and resumed the rollout a month later.

In a way, Windows 11 can be considered another major feature update with a new name. Microsoft could have made Windows 11 just a biannual update, and had it done so, it would have been one of the biggest upgrades since the introduction of Windows 10.

While not going that route, there are still some issues that will need to be addressed in the first release. Hopefully those will be minor issues, but with such an ambitious upgrade, you never know. In other words, waiting until the first half of next year is not such a terrible proposition.