June 25, 2:15 PM Pacific: This post has been updated multiple times since its initial publication to reflect Microsoft's scrambling to clean up the mess they made.

You might think it's a simple, straightforward task to find out whether your current PC will run Windows 11. You also might think that if you went to Microsoft.com and paid nearly $5000 for a top-of-the-line Surface PC today, you'd be assured of being able to upgrade to Windows 11 in a few months, when it's ready for general release.

Think again. Microsoft can't quite get its upgrade story straight. And the clash between the company's engineering decisions and its marketing plan is about to cause screams of outrage from customers who will discover that their new or nearly new hardware just isn't good enough, in Microsoft's eyes....