*According to what Microsoft's published*, Win10 loses support in exactly one year, which is spawning articles of warning online. One year from now Microsoft may blink, and offer support for another year or three -- after all, they are going to be creating security updates for any biz willing to pay the price, so the only cost would be download bandwidth, a cheap price considering the bad PR if they don't. Or they could recover some of the cost for the bandwidth used by charging consumers -- they've said they will offer consumers security updates for an as yet undisclosed price. For many people however, I personally think the best option is to upgrade to Win11.
What can go wrong? The biggest potential issue is hardware driver support. With the latest version of Win11 Microsoft expanded their forbidden driver list, which is the most immediate threat. The best cure would be to update any effected drivers to current releases, but if that's not possible, there may be a way to edit that list or policy, and a switch in the security settings does let you turn off that driver enforcement. Windows is also evolving -- the underlying code is different in 24H2 compared to 23H2. There is a chance that at some point older drivers may just not work because the parts of Windows they relied on don't exist anymore. I believe that the easiest way to spot potential driver issues is to create and try a Windows To Go drive -- it requires a small SSD, a cheap housing to connect that SSD via USB, a Win11 ISO, and the free app Rufus. A Windows To Go drive has the core files for Win11, but it has not been configured to Any hardware yet, which happens the 1st time it's run. Boot to that drive, and if it works, you should be good to go. If something doesn't work, you can try hunting down newer drivers, or if you don't feel it's critical to using the device, e.g., the camera, you might be inclined to just do without it. That said, when you perform an in-place upgrade, Windows will try to adapt many of the drivers that are currently used. Sometimes drivers that would not work otherwise will work after that upgrade, but on the flip side, sometimes Windows uses the wrong driver for a component. It is possible to run Windows setup.exe from a command prompt, & that lets you use various switches, for example /InstallDrivers, which lets you specify a folder where drivers are stored.
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-setup-command-line-options?view=windows-11
What about Win11's hardware requirements? Both Win10 & 11 let you turn on/off VBS -- it's listed in the security settings as Memory Integrity. If you click the button to "learn more" it takes you here: support.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows/core-isolation-e30ed737-17d8-42f3-a2a9-87521df09b78 . The problem is that if you turn it on it has a negative impact on performance. Newer CPUs mitigate that, *to an extent*, which is why Microsoft requires only newer CPUs for Win11, but if you leave it off like most people, & probably every gamer, older CPUs work just fine. Win11 also works fine without the required TPM. You *might* have issues if you want to use BitLocker, but you're better off using VeraCrypt instead anyway [VeraCrypt[.]fr]. Win11's disk space & RAM requirements are there to make PC/laptop sellers happy, but frankly, a device with very low resources, e.g., my tablet with a bottom end CPU, 32GB storage & 2GB RAM is simply not going to give you anywhere near the performance of a flagship PC from say Lenovo or Dell, no matter what OS you use. In practice, many have found that upgrading a low end device from Win10 to 11 provides a decent performance boost [myself included].
Making the decision... at the end of the day you just have to weigh the pros & cons yourself -- what's most important to you may not matter that much to someone else. Since Windows 95, each new version of Windows worked best, and sometimes required new hardware. The enhanced compatibility of Win10 is something new that basically started with Win10. Old drivers losing compatibility with newer versions of Windows is not something new. Hopefully you won't have any driver issues, but it's a possibility with Win11 24H2, & again with every version after. The tradeoff is that you get somewhat better security with Win11, some new features that may or may not matter to you, *maybe* better performance, and a few years of guaranteed security updates. The Windows 12 that was rumored for 2024 didn't happen, but that just means it's been put off, probably to 2025, but we'll see. Once Win12 happens, Win11 will be just like Win10 for the last few years, security-only updates in a sort of maintenance mode.