The most hassle-free solution *might* be a Chromebook, which handles updates much like an Android phone, and you'll get updates for a long time, rather than one or two *at best* with most phones. The bad part is that most stuff you'll have to do online, e.g., access Microsoft Office on the web, & maybe do gaming using Geforce Now.
The biggest negative with Apple's products is the higher price. And if you're used to having multiple apps running with multiple windows open at the same time, you'll be a bit constrained -- it'll take some getting used to. Many apps & games are not available, so it's somewhat common to also run Windows as a VM [Virtual Machine]. That way you'd still have some of your games -- not every game will run in a VM -- but you'd still have update hassles, because that copy of Windows gets updated same as a regular version.
To manage Windows updates Ed Bott [ZDNET] recommends pausing updates for 5 weeks, then when you're ready, go to Settings -> Windows Update & click Resume updates.
zdnet.com/article/how-to-make-windows-update-less-annoying-in-three-easy-steps/
Whether you should upgrade to Win11 now is a tossup... Win10 has one year left of support, Microsoft may extend that, and they will offer security updates to consumers for 3 years for an undisclosed price -- it will be expensive for business but education will get it dirt cheap. Windows 12 is also an unknown. It was on track to be released this year, but the guy in charge went to Amazon, and we got Win11 24H2 instead. It may turn out upgrading from Win10 to 12 is the smarter choice, or not.
IMHO there's really not a big difference between Win10 & 11 when it comes to just doing the stuff you normally do. On very low-end hardware, like my tablet & mini-PC, which run Intel's cheapest, lowest power Atom CPUs, Win11 does provide a boost in performance, but on more capable laptops & PCs they've tested over and over, running all sorts of benchmarks, and they're pretty much equal. [I upgraded the mini-PC to Win11 just out of curiosity one day, and when I saw the performance boost, I upgraded the tablet a short while later.] Microsoft *may* come up with something you'd consider useful or neat using AI, but it *may* require a NPU [Neural Processing Unit], like those in the newest laptops, or it may not happen until Win12, which we *might* be looking at a year from now. When you scroll down the page for Windows Updates it will say whether your device can upgrade to Win11 or not, and if not, there's a link to their app that tells you why not. It may be a matter of turning on the TPM in the BIOs, or maybe replacing the hard disk with something bigger. You can most likely run Win11 either way, but if it doesn't meet the hardware requirements you have to use one of the tricks to bypass compatibility checking during setup.
zdnet.com/article/microsoft-blocked-your-windows-11-upgrade-this-trusty-tool-can-fix-that/
The biggest potential issue is probably whether the existing hardware drivers will work with Win11, or if there are newer versions available that will. I like to boot a device running Win10 to a Windows To Go drive running Win11 as a no risk test to see if Win11 will work on that PC/laptop. A Windows To Go drive has a copy of Windows on it that has not been configured with any drivers -- it adds those automatically when it's 1st run. If Windows runs properly you're good to go -- you still could have an issue with an existing installed driver or app, but that is likely fixable. If Windows doesn't run, or run well, upgrading to Win11 might still work, since the upgrade process will attempt to use the existing drivers with compatibility fixes, but it's a gamble -- make sure you have a backup to put things back if you risk it. To make a Windows To Go drive you need a small, cheap SSD, a cheap housing to connect it via USB, the free Rufus app, & a Windows ISO downloaded from Microsoft, which Rufus can download for you.
As far as should you buy a new PC/laptop... if you're in the US, the election could Really influence that decision:
tomshardware.com/news/trump-tariffs-increase-laptop-electronics-prices
Otherwise, since new hardware is out, and more is coming out later this month & year, there will be [& are] discounts on the older stuff. On the flip side of the coin, new laptops have much greater battery life, if that's important, and no one knows yet whether NPUs will be useful, or even important for desktop PCs. Intel's coming out with new desktop CPUs that, while reports are they may be slower, may be the 1st to include an NPU -- we just don't know yet if that will matter, or how much it will matter. Adding to the uncertainty, the NPUs they use are lower power than what's in their laptops because of space constraints on the CPU die -- will it be too little to matter, &/or will it be better to wait for the next generation? FWIW I'm mulling over this stuff myself as I try to decide if I should upgrade now or next year or...
