Lately I’ve been playing with some iMacs, generally trying to upgrade them farther than Apple will generally allow. Officially, the iMacs I’ve been working with are upgradable to High Sierra, but I have upgraded them to Catalina using a patched version of the OS, by someone called Dosdude1. Today, I upgraded an iMac from Late 2013 to Big Sur, using a patched version of the OS.  (Thank you Tom and Jan)

The instructions for going to Catalina are HERE.   Generally for 2008 or newer Macs. The web site has the specifics. It’s a clear and easy to follow process. The main site to read about patching Big Sur is HERE.   Generally for 2012 or newer macs.
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The site where I downloaded the program that creates the patched Big Sur is HERE.    (it’s at the top right. I used “Patched Sur v1.0.1”)

The only problem I had was formatting the USB’s partition table to be GUID. It’s easy, but it didn’t immediately show up in the disk utility. Do this: from the View menu choose "Show All Devices" and then you will be able to see the actual USB device that holds this volume and erase it, selecting the partition type.

I am now running Big Sur on an iMac, Late 2013. The whole installation process, including the downloads and creation of the bootable flash drive, takes several hours. I did not sit and watch it, for the most part. When it seemed like it was going to take a long time, I went and did other things. It did an update to the iMac, not a clean install. I think it requires the existing OS to be either Catalina or Big Sur in order to install.
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 As always, do not mess with your OS unless you have a backup of your data. 

an update: I upgraded my 2012 iMac to Big Sur, without issue. Everything was where I left it. Mind you, I don't have any fancy software installed that could be an issue. I do have VirtualBox on there with Windows 10, and it needed to run an update for it, but it still works. And yes, I did make a backup before installing.

So far, my Windows 11 experience has been, oh, let’s say interesting.
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I installed some beta versions on a couple of computers a few weeks back. Surprisingly, they worked fine. They did not fit the minimum requirements yet they installed. Windows 11 was much nicer to look at, and it ran fast. When Win 11 was officially released, the installation no longer worked on these computers. Neither of the 2 computers I was using were up to snuff, and so, I did what everybody else in this situation does, I looked for a workaround.

There are a couple of places I know of that offer a solution to install Windows 11 without the TPM, or CPU requirements. I used Rufus, a program that creates a bootable thumb drive for installing. Last weekend the good folks at Rufus made a version available that takes the MS Windows 11 regular install, and it removes the TPM and CPU requirements. This worked great for a clean install, i.e. an installation that removes everything on the hard drive and installs a fresh copy of the OS.

I had been trying to install 11 on my actual computer as an upgrade and kept getting the TPM error, which my computer should have, and seems to have. So I tried using the Windows install upgrade feature. Unfortunately, though I chose the upgrade option, it wiped my drive anyway and installed.

I had a backup, so it was OK, but at this point in time, I can’t recommend upgrading to 11 unless you have a really good backup. I do know someone whose laptop offered the upgrade, and it installed fine, with no data loss. Perhaps that is the safest option right now, to wait till they offer it to you. Still, make sure you have a backup of whatever data you don’t want to lose.
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Last thing, my audio doesn’t work anymore. Not a big deal for me. Perhaps MS will provide a fix one of these days, but for now, I have no sound.

The first thing I would say is, give it to Brian. I will try and give it away so it can live another life with someone else.

The next thing I might suggest is, make something out of it. A broach, a pterodactyl, whatever. Old phones can be used as computers, clocks, something dedicated to a single feature on that phone. They don’t need a sim card to function. Tablets can be repurposed as computers, picture frames, music players, game players, etc. Computers can be used as movie servers, music servers, video conferencing centers.
A great article my brother-in-law David sent me on these thoughts may be found HERE. 
Thanks David.

This entire post following Brian's comments originally appeared on Rick's Daily Tips Tech Blog

From Brian
I just read the above article from a tech tip person that Carol has been reading regularly. I want to thank him and introduce his daily site:  "Rick's Daily Tips Tech Blog"  

This contains the info I used to download and create installation media for Windows 11 Preview.
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My experience so far:
The first and second time I tried to install Windows 11 from the USB, it failed. So I created the installation media (USB Drive) again. That time the installation worked just fine. I wasn’t sure it would install on this particular PC, but it was the best PC I have, so it was my best chance. It’s an 8 core AMD Ryzen 5 pro with 24Gb of Ram, only a few years old.

Next, I wondered if Windows 11 would work if I cloned the drive and put the cloned drive in another, not as good PC. A 4 Core i5 3rd generation with 8Gb of ram. It works fine.

Now technically, Microsoft wants certain criteria met for Windows 11 hardware, but you know what Bad Santa says, so at least for now, Windows 11 will run on “lesser” machines. That said, this is a preview copy, and the final release may not be as forgiving.

I haven’t done much on it yet. The computer does seem to run very fast, which is nice. MS Edge is nice looking and is easy to use. The system functions that I use are different, but not difficult to find using the search, if needed. It looks much prettier than Windows 10. This is a step forward in design which MS has neglected over the years (decades). It’s certainly familiar enough to navigate easily, unlike the Windows 7 to 8 transition. I look forward to trying it out, but I’m not going to jump to it right away. Windows 10 is supported till 2025, so there’s certainly time. I’ll probably upgrade officially in a couple of months unless something drastic happens.


How to download the latest Windows 11 Preview ISO file
Are you itching to get your hands on Windows 11 and you just don't want to wait for October 5 to get here?

Well, if your PC is capable of running it, you can download the ISO file of the latest Windows Insider Dev Build of Windows 11 (AKA Windows 11 Preview Build) and use it to install Windows 11 on your machine today.

Important: The Preview version of Windows 11 is not the same exact version that will be released on October 5.
Microsoft is still squashing bugs and the official release version could (and probably will) vary a slight bit from this version.
After reading all the above, do you want to give Windows 11 a try before it's even officially released? If so, follow these steps to download the ISO file:
1 - If you haven't done so already, visit this page on the Microsoft website and sign up for the Windows Insider program.
2 - Once you're signed up and logged in, visit the Windows Insider Download Page.
3 - Scroll to the "Select edition" section at the bottom of the page and select the Windows 11 Insider Preview (Dev Channel) option.
4 - Click Confirm.
5 - Select your Language and click Confirm.

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I get emails from places I don’t want. I don’t know how they get my email address, and some are just random, but in any case, there are too many or I flat out do not want to hear from them. Recently I started getting emails from a company selling computer parts, mostly iPhone and iPad parts. Several a day.
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In Outlook, I just Right click on the email, hover on Junk, and select Block Sender. But then the emails started coming from different people at the same company, so I went into the Junk email options, and the Blocked Senders tab, and there, I could add a domain, which I did. Then, I was still getting them, it turns out they had changed their domain, so instead of elekworld.com it was elekworld.biz, or .ltd, or.co, or whatever. I added them all and it has been much better.

What if you don’t use Outlook? Whatever client you use will likely have a way to do the same thing, so I suggest Googling it. And what if you don’t use an email client at all?

Your ISP provides you with an email address, which you may or may not use. You may have an email from Gmail, Microsoft, or Apple, or any number of other places. Those places will also have a method of filtering and blocking email senders, but again, they are individual to your provider so you should Google that.