I think their argument is that most laptops from the W8 days don't support W11 mainly because of the processor requirements and check. Although the author could've burned the image to a USB disk with Rufus which has defaults that remove the W11 pre-checks during flash.
If you were going to download an os to install that you wanted your kid to be able to tinker with and reinstall and you had not used windows in 8 to 10 years why would you download windows 11 rather than ubuntu or Mint?
Based on their old Windows skills and experience (and having no Linux experience?), they thought they knew what they were going to get with a newer Windows install. The article is all about how shocked they were when they didn't get what they were expecting. I suspect they'll be trying out a Linux distro now though...
Windows 11 will run on a Dell laptop from 2015. That is an 8 year old laptop.
That OS is used by millions of people. It is loaded with obnoxious advertising and news. Nothing false in this article. There have been countless complaints about this crap forced into Windows 11.
From Microsoft? https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11