14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 11 launched in 2021, but as it turns out, it took nearly one year for the world to discover the official retail packaging of Microsoft’s latest operating system.
As reported by OnMST, Luke Blevins on Twitter shared photos of the official retail packaging after discovering them on Best Buy, as the store apparently sells flash drives for both the Home and the Pro versions of the operating system.
Of course, it’s still much more convenient to get Windows 11 as a digital upgrade, but the retail packaging still comes in handy on those systems that don’t have Internet access.
The Home version can be had for $139 at Best Buy, while the Pro sibling costs $200. In other words, Windows 11 is just as expensive as Windows 10, but we knew that already, so it appears that Microsoft hasn’t changed the pricing for the retail packaging either.
Windows 11 rollout still underway
In the meantime, Microsoft is still working around the clock on completing the rollout of Windows 11, with the company announcing in January that the process was at that point in the last phase.
In other words, the Windows 11 general availability should be reached rather sooner than later, with more information very likely to be offered at the Build developer conference.
“The upgrade offer to Windows 11 is entering its final phase of availability and is designated for broad deployment for eligible devices. Since the launch of Windows 11 in October, we have seen strong demand and preference for Windows 11 with people upgrading their eligible PCs at twice the rate we saw for Windows 10. Based on this trend, we are advancing the pace of the rollout faster than we originally announced and entering the final phase of availability for Windows 11 ahead of our initial plan of mid-2022,” Microsoft said.