Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs In a stunning example of consensus-building, Microsoft has somehow persuaded the big names of silicon that it would be better for all concerned if they quietly euthanize Windows 7 and 8.1. Accordingly, Redmond, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD have occupied the same room without injury long enough to promise that future products like …
It's happening here. Steadily, more friends are coming to me to install/learn Mint. They don't like what Microsoft are doing, and where they're heading.
They've seen the headlines of M$ hiking prices at their whim, lowering entitlements and changing the rules after the dotted line has been signed, and they don't like it.
"...coming to me to install/learn Mint."
Still a modest barrier to exit then, at least in the minds of the would-be apostates.
Microsoft are presumably betting that most people won't have a Linux-y friend that they can go to. Based on today's market share, they might be right, but the internet can help you find friends so what we're (they're) really dealing with here is the growth of an invasive species in an ecosystem (non-business users with little or no legacy software to worry about) that has no natural defences against it, and that can undermine such cosy assumptions at exponential speed.
The real obstacle to going Linux is not learning how to install or use it. It is having the courage to take the decision in the first place.
I have several desktops running Mint 17. Windows users who have never even heard of Linux will sit down in front of them and just use them. Some don't even notice that Libre Office and Calc are not M$ Office. Eventually, someone will ask me "Why have you set it up that way..." and then I explain.
Thats whats so laughable the Linux's of yesteryear were a bit of a pain, where you had to setup your own partitions up just to install the damned thing. Thankfully now installing Linux is as easy if not even easier to install then Windows 7. That almost every Distro that matter also has Open Office, and GIMP as standard. Means I don't have to waste my time installing M$ Office, or Photoshop Elements. Whoever thinks that a simple copy of Mint can NOT stand against Windows 7 is likely either a Gamer or a heavy professional so locked in to that ecosystem to care.
For everyone else, who'd just need a simple browser, email (as
Iikely Yahoo, Hotmail or, Gmail), along with a decent Word Processor. Mint has you well, and truly coverd. Moreas the shame that Valve aren't pushing Linux as hard as they should be doing.
"For everyone else, who'd just need a simple browser, email "
I think we can be a little more ambitious than that.
Darktable or RawTherapee for RAW photo development/manipulation
Hugin for panorama creation
Kdenlive for NL video editing
Thunderbird for e-mail
Google Earth
VLC or MPlayer for media
Inkscape for vector drawing
More language compilers/interpreters than you could possibly want
etc.
Thats whats so laughable the Linux's of yesteryear were a bit of a pain
Just got a low-end W10 laptop for the better half, changed over to Linux on this (formerly W7) system.
Turned off the spy crap on hers, it works like a dream. Mine? OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing.
Linux of this year is still quite capable of being a pain.
"OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing."
What is the make/model of your laptop?
When you say crashing, is that a kernel panic (black screen with a dump of some registers and all controls frozen, you have to press power switch to reboot) or is it just that daft popup window that says something about internal error? If latter, it isn't serious but I agree not what you want with an unfamiliar system.
PS: At work I have a small PC with an atom processor and 2Gb of RAM. Windows 10 for Education actually runs rather well on that low end hardware. Pity about all the data swiping/corporate politics around what appears to be an actual improvement.
OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing.
You did first use a LiveCD to confirm whichever Linux distribution you wished to install would actually run and recognise your hardware?
I've had problems with some installs determining that because the system contains a x64 capable cpu, the entire system is 64-bit compatible... In these circumstances, I have had to force a 32-bit install.
I just built a fresh desktop box for a non-techie relative and Ubuntu was the obvious choice for a peaceful tech support life.
A couple of years back it would have been Windows 7 for me, but now, Ubuntu just works. No half life, no licence fees, no admin user installing nasties and everything they need is Web based.
The real obstacle to going Linux is not learning how to install or use it. It is having the courage to take the decision in the first place.
Actually, the real obstacle is going to be Linux support of the new chipsets (ie.Intel's Skylake and “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s "8996” silicon, and AMD’s “Bristol Ridge” silicon) and the integrated peripherals.
But once this is solved, I agree the second hurdle is finding courage...
Does anyone know if the Linux community has started development work on these chipsets?
> Does anyone know if the Linux community has started development work on these chipsets?
With the first x86-64 CPUs, Linux was the first implementation.
"""Linux was the first operating system kernel to run the x86-64 architecture in long mode, starting with the 2.4 version in 2001 (preceding the hardware's availability)."""
The initial Windows x86-64 implementation worked on AMD but failed on Intel CPUs.
"Still a modest barrier to exit then, at least in the minds of the would-be apostates."
Is the barrier more or less modest in comparison with migrating to a new version of Windows?
Even for business users the barrier to migrating to non-legacy Windows has proved substantial if it won't run business-critical legacy Windows applications.
@Ken - Slurp is delusional if they think someone can not get Linux installed. Linux geeks have friends and the friends know others. It may be indirect, geek referred by a friend to help the friend's family or other friends.
Also, as more geeks and semi-geeks install Linux and get familiar with the bigger the pool of Linux geeks gets. If this scenario happens, it will be a slow drip, that is slowly accelerating as geeks and semi-geeks abandon Slurp. Then, apparently very suddenly, the Linux adoption rate accelerates as the masses jump on board. The best advertisement for Linux is people using daily.
"to install/learn Mint"
An interesting but not surprising choice. Not so long ago Ubuntu was the default choice for Linux newbies. That this seems to have changed to Mint is possibly due to the hopeless Unity desktop that Canonical foisted upon us.
I hope this trend continues, with PC users increasingly only accepting what they want i.e. an efficient, secure and unintrusive OS with a classic desktop GUI which is clearly not what Microsoft and Canonical are offering.
@EastFinchleyite
To a degree, I make that choice for them. Coming form Windows, if I presented them with a choice of different desktops, it would confuse them. Just give them something which works and looks familiar, and away they go. LibreOffice, GIMP, VLC, Firefox, a few other bits and pieces, show them where the icons are, and away they rock. Minimal training needed, really. Although I'm having to revisit the Firefox choice with the certificate rejections, but so far it hasn't been too dire.
One is on Unity, but given the multiple monitors, the side pop-out gets so annoying. I said that when it came time to rebuilt the workstation, that I'd, "mint," it like I did his other half's laptop... but, er, that was a while ago and I still haven't had to rebuilt it yet.
Unity was great at, "netbook remix," but when they killed the remix and brought out Unity, that's when I left ubuntu. I was also using the music store they had and the cloud storage, but instead of charging for the storage (and I for one, would have been happy to pay a few quid a month for the cross-platform cloud) - they binned it anyway and didn't give anyone a choice. Cannonical have made some very, very bad decisions these last few years... and feeding all desktop searches to Amazon (initially, without an off switch until people complained loudly) was another bad judgement call, IMHO.
There are some concerns that Mint doesn't keep its packages up to date... but that's a double edged sword. Stability is a great bonus, and they love how they're not forced to update until they're ready to do so, and aren't nagged anywhere near as much as Windows used to.
I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox), I couldn't get either to work sufficiently well. So at the minute I've got a Win7 partition that has Battle.Net/Starcraft 2 and Steam and that's it...
Should I get to a point where most of my steam games are playable on Linux (or I don't actually care about not playing them), then I'll probably erase the partition, but for now it'll have to do.
I have to say that if you're going to VM, you want the base hypervisor to be something decent. VirtualBox has never really cut it for me.
VMWare is a good base option and will happily offer 3D acceleration to Linux and Windows guests, from a Linux or Windows host.
The money I spent on a copy of VMWare Workstation has paid for itself 10 times over. And I primarily work on HyperV servers at work.
Hell, if you tweak, you can even run MacOS on it. (I didn't say that).
If they force my hand, it'll be a Linux install at the base, a VMWare VM for everything else, and probably even a Linux VM for actual everyday work (because isolating the hardware is good for future compatibility and moving that VM to other machines, and because snapshots/rollback are worth their weight in gold).
I've a number of XP and Win7 systems running on Virtualbox under SUSE and I never have any real problems with the set-up. I also have a Win 2003 server (that's reall legacy for you) under Virtualbox.
The 2003 server hardware was going fast and we virtualised it using a VMWare tool and my customer says it runs better than ever.
Micro$oft are sounding more desperate by the day to get us all on Win10, Azure and Office 365. The real reason has nothing to do with our "immersive experience" (yuk) but more to do with regular direct debit payments.....
I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Microsoft to reveal why they are pushing so hard on Windows 10 adoption. Changing Windows over to a subscription service is one possibility to expect. Perhaps they are in a "survival mode" believing they lose everything if Windows 10 fails as the last two releases have done.
"I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox)" ....
or perhaps you can ask the vendors if they have any plans to make a linux version availible now that Microsoft is making things difficult.
Steam I know are already pushing vendors to make linux versions of existing games and as most linux distributions are not optimised by default for gaming maybe you might try steamOS which is.
Game developers are going to make games for operating systems that their customers use, if you do not make your game devs aware that you would like their game to run as well or better under linux as it did under windows then you are again tying yourself to windows.
I think it's great that Valve has (kinda, sorta) encouraged game devs to develop for their flavor of Linux. The only problem is that they need to convince the hardware folks at NVIDIA and AMD to create advanced drivers for that operating system, which they are failing to do. Drivers exist for Linux, but performance is significantly worse than on a Windows machine.
"with a Win 7 VM for gaming..."
Use Linux as the VM if you want Windows for gaming (Hyper-V is more efficient than Linux based hypervisors).
Also you miss out on the significant performance improvements of Direct-X 12 if you stick with Win 7. If you are only using it for games, why cut off your nose to spite your face?
Unless you use KVM and IOMMU to get full GPU support in the VM.
Something that really doesn't work properly in HyperV.
Works in KVM though. Hell, LinusTechTips ran seven gaming VMs off one (admittedly chunky) workstation recently.
Come back to us when HyperV can do that. And no, RemoteFX doesn't count.
Steven R
"It's worked properly in Hyper-V since Server 2012 / Windows 8. Yes Remote FX does count as it does a similar thing. However Hyper-V also supports SR-IOV, which is IOMMU on steroids...."
With off the shelf software like Windows 7/8/10 Home edition and a basic HyperV server install, yeah?
No, didn't think so. Software Assurance and Enterprise Edition required, yeah?
Thankfully now installing Linux is as easy if not even easier to install then Windows 7.
How many people actually install any OS?
Bet you that 99% of Win 7 users acquired their PC with it already on, they might have had to supply some information on first boot but no installing.
Surely the objective of promoting your latest and greatest OS should not be to find that even it's fans regard it as "far from a great OS", and that after "Another year or so of updates it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out." - though I must agree with your description of the manner in which Microsoft have "pushed it out".
Fact (1) is that Linux - my choice is Mint - is already an excellent OS for work-related tasks, and fact (2) is that the world does not consist entirely of gamers; though to be fair the gaming community are still not well supported. That is already changing, and will probably take place in less time than the "year or so" it may take to get Win 10 half way sorted.
> Another year or so of updates and it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out...
If you don't mind that the interface/desktop is severely F-U-G-L-Y....
There is simply NO way to make the W10 interface look other than something designed by a 6-month-old with crayons and a full diaper...
"the more people they will push onto Linux or Apple"
The value will still be so near zero so as to make no difference. Even with the success of Android on low end devices, and of Linux in the server world (almost entirely at the expense of other UNIX based systems), pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop.
"pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop."
What you're missing out on here is that the more Windows breaks with its past the less the differentiation between a legacy Windows -> W10 and legacy Windows -> non-Windows migration.
The less the differentiation the more readily people will choose the non-Windows option.
The more people choose the non-Windows option the easier it becomes to choose it.
"... pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop."
Yea, just millions and millions of users.
But of course, if you don't ever read anything else than IDC numbers of "market share", you might think so, as Linux on desktop is rarely sold, thus 'market share' is almost 0.
Amount of downloads would be a similar number but those aren't easy to get because distributed delivery and IDC doesn't collect them, so they don't exist, right?
Also 'market share' shows any laptop as MS-laptop because you can't buy laptops without windows- licences, MS-tax. Regardless of actual OS used.
So no, you have no idea and you rely on bad, mostly made-up statistics.
I mostly agree but "shows any laptop as MS-laptop because you can't buy laptops without windows- licences, MS-tax."
You can - I've got a very nice i7 that I'm writing this on. I would say that you have to look quite hard but I know of at least two outlets in the UK. What you will have to do though is install your distro of choice.
They did this with W9x, Windows NT, 2000 and XP, where is the news here?
No they didn't!
If you want you can still install these MS OS's on modern cpu's, yes things might get problematic - trying to run W9x as the host OS on a quad core i7, and these old OS's won't recognize or use cpu features outside of the subset defined for the minimum platform requirement.
What the MS cartel are proposing is some mechanism to prevent you from running an old MS OS on a modern cpu; ie. destroying the x86 compatibility that Intel has worked hard to maintain over the decades.
As I've pointed out on another comment, this could have massive ramifications on hypervisors and the use of VM's that utilise the x86 compatibility modes to run VM's directly on the hardware. So whilst your W10 host OS may run on the new CPU's, your W8/7/XP/2K/9x VM's won't...
They have just said that the old OSes won't be updated to support new features in new CPUs and they won't guarantee that they work. That is exactly what you described with W9x on a quad core i7.
As far as I can see, they aren't proposing a way to block Win7/8/8.1 from running on newer hardware, they just won't guarantee it will work.
Like XP before it, you might find that new C-States aren't supported, for example, and hibernation etc. might need to be disabled. In the release I didn't read anything that explicitly stated that Intel will be dropping X86 / X64 in the next generation of CPUs.
" In the release I didn't read anything that explicitly stated that Intel will be dropping X86 / X64 in the next generation of CPUs."
Of course not - their PR people get paid a ridiculous amount of money to ensure the Press Releases only ever contain 'positive' news.
> What the MS cartel are proposing is some mechanism to prevent you from running an old MS OS on a modern cpu
What they really want to do is to also prevent you from running _non-MS_ OS on a modern CPU.
For example with Windows 10 OEMs can now make 'Secure Boot' permanently on which makes it more difficult to boot another OS. This may be tied to 'loyalty discounts' so if they do this they get an extra few dollars discount.
By convincing Intel to make 'Windows 10 only' CPUs and making 'loyalty discounts' to OEMs dependent on using those CPUs, then the cheaper machines (or more profitable ones) will not only not run Windows 7/8 but also not run Linux/BSD. It may be that the discount will make Windows 10 'free' to the OEMs.
The question is: what would be in it for Intel and AMD ? Will Microsoft pay them to do this? Will MS threaten them with making Windows that will _not_ run on their current chips? That seems unlikely. It is not as if 'Win10 only' CPUs would be cheaper to make, or would suddenly have such a large volume as to have efficiency of scale.
It did seem that this was attempted before. In the mid naughties it is alleged that MS was working on a 'next gen' Windows running on the PowerPC Xenon, as used in the XBox, so that it could make 'XPC' boxes that would not run Linux, or anything else . The system would be .NET based using managed code running on a CLR. This was supposed to follow on from XP but they couldn't get it working and so had to throw together Vista from existing bits and pieces.
Microsoft's plan is obviously to change their revenue stream from selling products to services. 'Selling' involves one-time purchase. 'Services' involves annual or monthly fees (as with Azure or Office360) or a percentage cut (as with app store). To make that transition they need to lock in the need for services, such as for updates, or cloud or ability to buy, or rent, software.
Note: they did manage to convince printer manufacturers to make 'WinModems' and 'WinPrinters' (GDI) that would only work with Windows. They were cheaper because they had no processing capability, relying on patented propriety Windows drivers to do the processing, but once you bought them you were locked into Windows to use them*. Today it is just as cheap to have full printer capability because the cost of electronic components is so much less.
* some WinModems and WinPrinters do have Linux drivers.
> these old OS's won't recognize or use cpu features outside of the subset defined for the minimum platform requirement.
Motherboards came with CDs. After installing Windows you would install the software on the CD (which had appropriate sections for whichever Windows version it was) and various drivers and utilities appropriate to the chipset and CPU. In this way new features could be added to the base platform. For example Windows XX might have had no mechanism to monitor or control fan speed or CPU temperature but the software on the CD added this*.
Will MS be able to prevent motherboard and chip makers from continuing to add Windows 7/8 software to handle newer CPU features ?
* Retail machines already had this built into the installed software by the OEM.
Motherboards came with CDs. After installing Windows you would install the software on the CD (which had appropriate sections for whichever Windows version it was) and various drivers and utilities appropriate to the chipset and CPU. In this way new features could be added to the base platform. For example Windows XX might have had no mechanism to monitor or control fan speed or CPU temperature but the software on the CD added this*.
This works to a certain degree for chipsets and other motherboard features, but it won't work for new CPU features, the whole OS needs to be recompiled to take advantage of new Opcodes.
"They did this with W9x, Windows NT, 2000 and XP, where is the news here?"
No, they most certainly did not. This is the most brazen, arrogant upgrade push that I've ever seen Microsoft do. I paid for a retail Windows 7 license a few years ago with the understanding that I could count on updates until 2020 and I could move that Windows 7 to a new machine when I wanted down the road.
Now they tell me, screw you, you want to upgrade to the current hardware, you are changing to 10 and that is all there is to that.
Now they tell me, screw you, you want to upgrade to the current hardware, you are changing to 10 and that is all there is to that.
No, they are saying that it may not work or may not take full advantage of new hardware - exactly the same as other legacy versions of Windows.
Windows 7 will probably boot on a Kabylake, but it won't take advantage of any new CPU features and MS won't guarantee its stability. If you look at XP and W9x, that is pretty much the same situation. Some processor features in Core i processors aren't available in XP and some cause compatibility problems and you have to disable some CPU features in the BIOS.
"They did this with W9x, Windows NT, 2000 and XP, where is the news here?"
False. I still can run any of those on new hardware if I want to: It's called 'PC compability'.
Not too simple on XP, but possible. But next version of hardware will break the compability and will work only with Windows 10. Monopoly abuse at its finest.
Happily (for MS) Linux or other non-windows OSes suffer at the same time, this is a blatant move to kill an open architecture and back to stone age, vendor-spesific hardware.
"They did this with W9x, Windows NT, 2000 and XP, where is the news here?"
With all those systems that you just mentioned, they didn't do this until they ended support for the operating system altogether. This is entirely different than that. This is partially ending support for people who expected it to go on until 2020 when they bought the product.
It's true that this doesn't mean that Windows 7 won't work on the new hardware. However, Windows 7 on the new hardware will basically be in the same boat that Windows XP is as far as hardware compatibility is concerned rather than what people expected.
Well to state the obvious, we all knew MS would do everything in its power to usher all users kicking and screaming if necessarily onto the dreaded data slurping latest Windows edition.
But even I am quite astonished to the lengths it is going with the FUD etc it is stating like Windows 7 is no longer secure, GWX updategate etc !
Surely they must know that they are actually encouraging users to look at other OS's especially one of the many Linux Distro's out there, for me personally I am very happy with Win 7 64 Pro and by responding to this post I am obviously in the No camp for Win 10 at any cost - While Win 7 serves my purpose I will remain a Windows user (Only because of a couple of games that I also use my Laptop for and do admit if it were not for these then I would be using a Linux to browse the internet etc.
I understand that some people out there use certain Windows software that locks them into MS windows like myself for the moment !
The thing for me is the principle, the OS on my Laptop is supposed to be for my convenience, but MS has turned that on its head and now just because they are giving it away free they believe that they own all what you do on it, all the browsing they want to use for making money on what your habits, interests etc are whereas since I paid for and use Win 7 I believe that that they have no right to this information.
Win 10 will never let you use you PC/Laptop without trying to gather data that they can use, no matter what tick boxes etc you click or what registry elements you set/change. The only way is to be completely disconnected from the internet which then devoid's the use of a modern day I.T device.
Yes I own two Android device's and don't use them for anything except phone calls and text and FB and a few games like Mahjong and Soliaire, no I don't use my Android for purchasing and would never input any credit car details into them as I don't trust it, that is what my Laptop is for so from this point you can understand my absolute reluctance to ever put Win 10 on it. So MS do what you will I am not jumping, yes I have disabled WU's and only install what I verify NOT to be backported Win 10 dataslurping updates of any kind.
I wonder how many people have reverted to Win 7 after understanding exactly what MS are doing/monitoring/data slurping, I wonder if any numbers would ever be released, I doubt it. It will be interesting to see people getting annoyed at MS when they start force feeding adverts within the OS, I can just imagine a family PC when several people are using it, especially children and parents start getting MS OS adverts for games or whatever the children are browsing or vice versa when children keep getting adverts completely inappropriate due to father peeking at porn sites !
How will MS know who is using the computer/laptop to be able to differentiate between family members ? Because I'm not sure how many families use different logins for each family member, and just because father logged into his porn or local DIY website doesn't mean that they are actually the person using the machine at that point in time, maybe he got up to go to the loo and wife or child sits down to do their own browsing or whatever !
All I can say is it is a mine field and not everyone wants a Webcam to distinguish who is using the machine without you having control of when its in use or not, nah the only upgrade for me will be to Linux, probably Linux Mint as I am hearing good things about it and never in a million years will I use Win 10 on my personal I.T. equipment and I have been a MS Windows user since Win 3.0 !
You don't deserve Linux or Apple you dirty cur, and you don't deserve Windows 7. You took Windows 8, and Vista and ME. You took activation, registration, Windows Genuine Advantage and Software Assurance. You stood idly by while they took away your Netscape, your NetWare, your WordPerfect and Borland and Nokia - while they asserted their dominance over the world and you.
You crave punishment because you are not worthy. You don't know what is in the Windows box. You don't need to know. You don't want to know. The existence of the box is proof of Microsoft's dominance over you and your lack of understanding is proof that you are unworthy of anything better. It is their excuse to mete the punishments you hunger for, to mewl about and provide the tears they thirst for, and your excuse to submit. But your hunger will never be sated, their thirst never quenched because it is your natures. Microsoft is your master and you are their bitch.
Now lick the boot. Lick it clean you dirty dog.
/The icon might as well have been the whole comment.
"the more people they will push onto Linux or Apple."
Except Apple has roughly half the same support period for each version of OSX. OSX Mountain Lion being the latest one to fall out of support after approximately 3 and a bit years. Windows 7 has been going for over 7 now.
You've hit the nail on the head.
I'm very much a Microsoft / Windows person. Actually, I *was*.
Windows 10 is utterly atrocious in my view, and I'm not at all happy with it on the test systems I've been experiencing it on, and I have thus zero intention of moving off Windows 8.0/8.1 (and yes I like Windows 8 series!). The Windows 10 nonsense and the more aggressive "you will have 10, oh yes you will, we will force it down your throats" approach on the older versions has really annoyed me.
Beyond that, the Win 10 Mobile experience really sucks. It's not even close to being finished, and the volume of problems, limitations and bugs in it are astounding. That's all before you get as far as the pretty considerable "app gap" problems in that platform.
Accordingly, despite running a business that supports Windows, despite having an extensive amount of Microsoft technology in my home, I've actually started buying and looking at alternatives. The straw has very much been found that broke this camels back.
Yeah. Can't see Intel sitting around and copping that one. If they mean that they won't extend the kernel to access new features on the newer silicon, that is fair enough, but if they cripple the kernel so it refuses to run on those CPUs, good luck to them. It won't end up where they expect it too.
> does that mean it won't boot old Linux either?
No, Intel will just release 2 versions of their new CPU range. A Windows 10 edition and a wink wink nudge nudge alternative older operating systems version like Linux or perhaps something else.
I can already guess which series will have the higher run in the fab.
"Intel will just release 2 versions of their new CPU range"
? Looks more like the plan is to provide no driver or other software support for new silicon except for Win10. Which is basically no change from today, the CPU keeps working, just never notices new features.
They'll get away with neglecting legacy Windows to death. Apply it to Linux,BSD etc. and even the US regulators will reconsider breaking up Microsoft, then fining the parts till they can't afford to fsck with the market.
Now we see some of the reasoning behind UEFI. Now we see the thinking behind the original lock down proposals for the XBone.
Now we see that the monopolistic practices of Merkan corporates have no interest in providing an open playing field and will resort to cartel-like tactics to bully the market into line. Their line.
It's nothing new. Microsoft and IBM did this before to get the likes of MS-DOS and Windows going in the 1990s, killing off nearly everything else because nearly everything else brought in nothing for the cartel.
I'm disgusted. Not surprised, but absolutely disgusted.
I am presuming that Microsoft will limit CPU versions via the microcode they and intel bodged, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/11/memory_hole_roots_intel_processors/
"Old" hardware won't get an fixed MS microcode on newers OS and they prevent the hardware vendors releasing their own version. You can bet some of the microcode contains MS validation methods that produce spurious errors under windows and optimisations that are not enabled by default in the hardware vendors microcode, so yes it will continue to effect "other OS" in terms of only hardware vendors optimisations for old and non-microsoft. The solution is ofc to run the old windows in a VM and if AMD and Intel are stupid enough to allow themselves to be limited on non-MS OS then they deserve go under.
Seriously time for these fools to loose all their patents so someone with integrity can make their unhampered replacement
Well that depends on whether Intel/AMD wish to see their CPU's used in VM platforms, because this strategy effectively means these platforms have to be incompatible with legacy x86 x64/x86-64 assembler on two levels: firstly such code is unable to run natively on the hardware and secondly there is no simple way an hardware emulator/interpreter, can map such instructions...
So the only real option is for MS to read the cpu-id and determine whether Windows can or can't run. The only involvement this requires from Intel/AMD is for them to make the cpu-id hard coded and hence unalterable by their CPU management application.
...Is this PC fully compatible with Windows 7? Does it come with drivers for Windows 7?
(In the old days I used to ask this question whenever I needed a Windows 7 machine backgraded to XP Professional for a customer).
In the UK the onus is on the Supplier to provide goods fit for purpose.
So suppliers: Do you want to listen to MS, or do you want to sell lots of hardware? (Or to keep your fingers crossed and hope you don't get too many returns?)
Admittedly yes, I had. But is this behaviour uncompetitive? Actually, it's probably not, because M$ are effectively asking for their own products to be trashed.
However, is this the kind of behaviour you, as a customer, want to see from a supplier? Definitely not, and this is where customers will vote with their feet. Unfortunately the sales statistics M$ collates in the aftermath wouldn't necessarily correlate "this stimulus caused this effect".
Going back to the uncomptetitive bit: If they ask Intel, et al to trash other manufacturer's products then that is grounds to take action: I would have thought, but then again, the law isn't always based on conventional logic.
"...this is where customers will vote with their feet. "
Only if they know that they have an alternative.
Sadly most people are unaware that Gnu/Linux even exists and the markup on Apple stuff is a disincentive to those on a restricted budget.
I would love MS to shoot themselves and the others in the foot with this idea but can't see it happening. Inertia, ignorance and fear of the unknown may be too strong to lead to a revolution in consumer IT.
And that's a pity.
and yet I can buy a Windows 7 Professional laptop, on Dell's website, today.
And Dell are licensed by MS to sell Win 7 Pro pre-installed until the first anniversary of the launch of Win 10...
I suspect this is the reason why MS talk about the change only occurring during 2017 (probably on the anniversary of OEM's ceasing their sale of Win7 machines and so 'honoring' the one year consumer guarantee that is common across most of the world).
"Windows 7 Professional laptop, on Dell's website, today"
You can. But aren't you, when you look at the small print, actually buying a laptop with 8.1 Pro and using your downgrade rights to have it installed with Windows 7.
eg this little tidbit from the customiser on the Dell website
"Windows 7 Professional (64Bit Windows 8.1 License, Media)- English, ....[Included in Price]"
The Dell site lists the laptop I (same a/c) was looking at as "Windows 7 Professional English, French, Spanish 64bit (Includes Windows 10 Pro License)" [note 'includes', not 'is' - so it's a Win7 license with Win10 included]
It does not state that it is shipping a newer Windows with downgrade rights; it states Windows 7 Professional as the operating system with an included Windows 10. It's also offering me an option to purchase three year support for my Windows 7 laptop. The only other mention of Windows 10 is the recovery CD.
Also, Win 10 to Win 7 isnt a downgrade, it's spyware removal (joke. sort of.)
Re: Dell (and practically any other major OEM) website
You do need to go into the specification details which may also require you to engage in a chat session. At one time Dell were very bad saying a system shipped with "Windows 8", Only by chatting to Dell was I able to determine that on the Consumer side of the website this meant 8.1 Core/Home, whereas on the Business side it was 8.1 Pro.
Likewise with respect to the actual COA shipped. Currently OEM's can ship Win7Pro with any of the following COA's: Win7, Win8, Win8.1 or Win10.
Also those in the market for Win10 need also to read the small print, as it is likely to reveal the system actually ships with 7/8/8.1 and will require the user to available themselves of the free download from MS...
Finally, there is the question of recovery media/partition. Here it seems that OEMs will tend to install the recovery partition with the version installed on the HDD and ship physical media appropriate to the COA, which if different to what is actually installed will require the user to create their own recovery media from the HDD.
"No sir, it's an obsolete OS that went out mainstream support a year ago."
No sir, it's not. As the article says, they all sat in a room and decided not to write drivers for an OS which will go end-of-life in 2020 and is still being sold by OEMs.
If it works, good for you. If you close the lid and it doesn't sleep or it doesn't wake up, tough shit, they can't be bothered to write drivers. Anyway, GWX will be along in a minute to update now or update tonight.
> No sir, it's not. As the article says, they all sat in a room and decided not to write drivers for an OS which will go end-of-life in 2020 and is still being sold by OEMs.
A OEM version of Windows is licenced to the machine that it is installed on when you buy it. Updates for that version _on_that_machine_ will be available until 2020.
Moving that copy of Windows to another, newer, machine or to a newer CPU is a breach of licence. You do not have the opportunity to require drivers for newer hardware.
Retail (non OEM) copies of Windows were not tied to any particular machine but were specified as to the particular range of hardware requirements at that time. You wouldn't expect a copy of Windows 7 to install on an IBM POWER9 computer or a RapsberryPi2, why would you expect it to work on a 2017 Intel i9 ?
"No sir, it's an obsolete OS that went out mainstream support a year ago."
"Then I'm not buying from you. Or do you have something else to offer?"
Answer: Goodbye then. 99.9% of customers wouldn't even know what they might need to ask that question so we don't give a fuck. Try the outdoor market.
The usual problem on Register comments is that people think the whole work thinks like a Register reader.
"The usual problem on Register comments is that people think the whole work thinks like a Register reader."
I think you missed the article's headline: "Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10" Business users tend to have IT staff advising them who are more likely to think like a Register user. They're also more likely to have legal advisors who might also think like a Register user if they look at the current T&Cs.
"Business users tend to have IT staff advising them"
Really? - In the UK around 96% of all businesses are micro-entities with around 1/3rd of those operating below the VAT registration threshold. And oddly enough, even on the lower slopes of the SME (3.9%) market, I see little evidence of many 'Howard's Way' style legal eagles and/or IT 'staff' kept fed and watered behind glass walls (or even in the boiler room)...
Making the decision as to who is the right expert to call in for a particular job often falls to someone who really lacks the expertise to make that decision... 'Go figure!' - As they will insist on saying in the States. - It's only ever a few hours to the next milking time.
A lot of people thought when Nadella took charge of Microsoft that the old ways of Balmer and Gates were put out to pasture. They started to embrace open source code, they started to support Linux. They were doing what Apple did in the late 90's - make themselves look better by behaving better than the competition.
But we all knew it was horse manure, and this article proves that.
So if a business hires new staff and needs a new PC or two for them to use, the choices are either to use an officially (and rather pointedly) unsupported OS or get used to managing a mixture of Win7 and Win10 machines on their domain.
Clearly MS were *very* upset by the XP experience where everyone vaguely corporate elected to downgrade their licence on a new PC. It will be interesting to see how poor the unsupported experience turns out to be. Since modern silicon tends to include an entire GPU (and cheaper machines tend to depend on it), there's scope for it to be "pretty poor indeed" if that GPU gets no support.
Still, it's no different from any other service pack.
If the business uses its own build of W7 it will expect the machines it buys to support that rather than whatever the standard vendor install is. They'll want to specify H/W that does that. If the H/W turns out not to do that it'll be returned PDQ.
Collusion between rival hardware manufacturers to benefit a third business ?
Anyway, bloody stupid because it will stifle sales of new PCs and, thus, depress sales of new processors.
Microsoft obviously has suicidal tendencies -- and mostly we are watching and shouting "Jump !"
I would hope there will be a lawsuit at some point. If this is game they're playing, there had damn well better be "non-OS'd" machines available. I wouldn't want to buy a new PC, pay MS their duty and then load up a non-MS OS. This almost smells like what they pulled a long time ago... lock up the OEM's and you end up paying MS whether you use their OS or not.
Damn twatdangles.
I wouldn't want to buy a new PC, pay MS their duty and then load up a non-MS OS.
How is this different from the current situation? Granted, no-OS machines exist on desktop PC:s from small "garage assemblers", or you can buy a "barebone", but getting a usable laptop with no OS is hard.
@MacroRodent
Don't have any windows machines now, but in the past when you first boot a new laptop you get the choice to refuse the license agreement, once you have done this you used to be able to ask for a refund of the license fee. People need to start pushing back, if you can't get the license fee back as they say it is part of the deal send the whole laptop back as unfit for purpose.
Granted, no-OS machines exist on desktop PC:s from small "garage assemblers", or you can buy a "barebone", but getting a usable laptop with no OS is hard.
Obviously, you never tried. Do you really believe that corporate purchasers purchase their PCs with Windows and then pay extra for Volume Licensing? Here's how to purchase a laptop without an OS from Dell:
http://www.geek.com/chips/buying-a-dell-without-windows-is-not-easy-but-possible-1302452/
It depends where you shop. Just before Christmas, I had the pleasure of helping my German father-in-law buy and set up a new laptop to replace his ancient Vista machine. In Germany, there are loads of Lenovo, Asus laptops etc. available from major retailers which come with basic FreeDOS installed and no Windows license (and a substantially cheaper price as a result).
The big manufacturers offer Windows-free kit in countries like Germany, so why is it so difficult to get them here?
"why is it so difficult to get [FreeDOS] here?"
CurryWorld recommends Microsoft Windows 10.
When you see that kind of thing on an advert, what does it signify?
For example, does it signify that the advert was significantly funded by MS (fair enough, arguably) and maybe that other back room deals went on?
My experience of Germany and Germans says to me that in general (exceptions apply) there are many more people interested in quality, and quite a lot fewer people interested in branding, than we have in the UK. It also seems to me that Germany is quite happy to deal with small independent traders who know their stuff, whereas in the UK an independent might not be so reliable. The independents are less likely to be of interest to MS's corporate/channel people than an easy target like CurryWorld.
If the MS Gold Partners (or whatever status the likes of CurryWorld have) start selling too many non-Windows boxes it might ring alarm bells with their account person at MS, and it might lead to a reduction in co-operative marketing funds and such, in line with normal MS practice.
"This almost smells like what they pulled a long time ago." It does, doesn't it? Perhaps the antitrust people who settled things should be woken up and told their job wasn't done .... and anyone who buys a machine pre-loaded with an OS they don't want is entitled to a rebate, covering either the retail cost of that OS or the labour required to remove it, whichever is the more painful for the vendor :)
"Also, make a note of the word 'twatdangles'. I like it. I want to use it more in conversation". (Gen. Melchett, sort of). Certainly applies here ;-)
> I would hope there will be a lawsuit at some point. If this is game they're playing, there had damn well better be "non-OS'd" machines available.
I don't see many lawsuits where someone bought a Windows Phone 8 and thought they should be able to install Android (or Windows Mobile 6.5). Why would anyone think that a Windows 10 PC should be able to run some other OS?
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> and mostly we are watching and shouting "Jump !"
And seems that they jumped. Now we are watching them fall. I am having popcorn and beer and enjoying the show, all the way down.
Slurp treats world as their oyster, but not in a good way (admitted, they are not alone in that).
Reminds of the children's movie Robots... The company everybody loved is no longer making parts for old robots, only expensive upgrades. I have to believe this M$ ploy won't end happily like the movie did...
Looks like I'll be either building my own windows box(if I ever need another one) or I will be exploring the possibilities of Linux.
MicroSoft has recently asked you nice folks to neuter your more recent products for the good of Windows 10. I just like to inquire if such limitations shall be placed on other non-MicroSoft Systems, and how you felt about this?
... So can anyone else smell the desperation from Redmond yet?
M$ have finally made a decision that's SO bad that they're going to permanently - and probably fatally - injure themselves. At last it's Game Over for Windows in the corporate sphere!
We now have a number of very high quality Linux distributions that are supported - properly - for the long-term. Ubuntu, Mint, Suse are all perfectly usable by business. They're stable, reliable, fully supported and can even run legacy Windows software if it's really necessary.
The "learning curve" is now very shallow - my recent experience of training new users showed that it took just a matter of a few minutes to show each of them the "new way" to do things. All these distros have options for remote maintenance....
Is it just me, or is this beginning to smell a bit clipper-chip-ish?
Apart from a bit of end of life assistance (which is possible the way MS is behaving); I can't think of a single reason why disparate, rival firms would go along with this. If I was still in the Windows market; W10-only support would equal no sale. It's also going to massively piss business off...end-users can just change to Linux; but businesses may not be able to so easily.
So Hardware suppliers are colluding with microsoft to ensure that only the new 'best' windows will work on their new hardware? That means that they will sell less new kit to businesses that want a bit more power or just replacements. The net effect will be a reduction in sales for such reasons.
The only reason for buying new (assuming you want to stick with Windows 7) will be because your machines no longer perform or function as needed
So is that what's missing from the picture : an agreement between Microsoft and the Hardware vendors whereby Microsoft promise to kill Windows 7 on old machines while manufacturers promise to ensure that it doesn't run on new machines?
And what about Linux? Lots of assumptions here that it will be an alternative to Windows 10 on new hardware, but that will depend on hardware suppliers being free with the needed information.
Something very smelly going on here.
That's a very good point.
We kill Windows 7 by removing security updates (2017), you kill Windows 7 by removing or crippling the code and an unexpected effect is that it also cripples Linux. That then forces everyone that needs a new machine onto Windows 10 or Mac and increases sales for the hardware cartel.
Where does all this leave Microsoft's Server roadmap? Will they bork Win7 support in that as well with an update?
"an unexpected effect is that it also cripples Linux. That then forces everyone that needs a new machine onto Windows 10 or Mac."
But if this is crippling at CPU level it's also going to cripple the Mac unless they're part of the cartel because Mac also runs on Intel. Also, don't you think Linux would code round this pretty quickly?
It wont make any difference in the end. Big corporates will upgrade as the consultancies and auditors will scare them about compliance and risk. Many IT managers will get another year of safe employmemt managing the upgrade.. Contractors will make a nice killing in the migration, companies will make a nice killing on upgrades for incompatible software. The money will keep churning around as Microsoft dictates the PC sales market (which is what this really is evidence of). MS & hardware are desparate to get the upgrade cycle kick started again as they have shot them selves in the foot pushjng "the cloud save your day".
Smaller companies who cant afford to will retain old PCs and run windows 7 well beyond end of life, some may move to Linux, more will move to Apple (in the end commercial support is considered king of compliance).
It doesn't surprise me. Any wish to leave a working OS alone is much better than an announcement that on new hardware, your working OS will probably be trashed on a Tuesday update when you least expect it.
How about Cyanogen to build a neutral UEFI, though probably removing the old one will be harder than building your own around a neutral (or Mac) motherboard.
The only reasons I went to Linux Mint (not a bad decision, I might point out) was that Microsoft buggered up Windows 10 with restrictions on managing updates; added in tons of 'we want your data in our cloud' telemetry to it; and retrocompromised Windows 7 with the same telemetry shit. If they 'corrected' those two things on Windows 10 properly so I could actually have control of my PC, then I'd have welcomed Windows 10.
To be honest, buying brand new hardware and expecting it to downgrade and run clunky old OS versions is something you shouldn't expect anyway.
Win7 and 8.1 OEM downgrade rights end later this year, so all new PC's will come with 10 out the box. All MS is saying is that if you choose to change this, your're on your own.
Alternativly I would stock up on Broadwell era systems now if you wanna keep 7 around.
> Binary compatibility is a major selling point for PCs, destroy that and you destroy the reason most people buy Wintel boxes.
It would only be necessary to stop Windows 7/8 (and Linux) from _booting_ on the new CPU. Once Windows 10 has booted it can provide all the binary compatibility required - with patented propriety emulators if necessary.
The way to get this implemented is to give OEMs a 100% discount for Windows 10 (normally $100 to OEMs) on computers that use these CPUs. This would make the retail price of these $200 cheaper than 'standard' computers. The buyer demand would force OEMs to demand these CPUs from Intel and AMD.
The same happened with WinModems and WinPrinters (GDI) in the late 90s. The machines were cheaper but Windows only. However, electronic became cheap enough that 'full feature' modems and printers were just as cheap.
Microsoft is trying to get this lock-in back.
One thing for sure; if mainstream hardware vendors introduce "Windows 10 only" restrictions it just creates a market for those manufacturers willing to circumvent those restrictions. I recently bought a high-spec low-price desktop computer directly from a small manufacturer in China (via amazon.co.uk) that came with Ubuntu pre-installed and a USB stick with Windows 7 drivers. I put Linux Mint on it; installation was quick and problem free. One sale less for the UK high street PC vendors.
> I've been using Windows since 3.1 and I honestly don't ever remember a situation where a CPU wouldn't run a recent version of Windows.
I think the situation being discussed here is the other way round: that brand new, yet-to-be-released hardware potentially won't properly run an *old* version of Windows (i.e. Windows 7)
But it's a bit of a non-issue. Sure, Microsoft may not support Windows 7 running on new hardware which didn't exist at the time Windows 7 was released. But if there is a market demand for it, the hardware vendors will provide their own Windows 7 drivers.
I recall an issue with Windows 95 where it wouldn't run on certain high speed AMD processors.
AMD K7; I had two. The problem was windows installer code running "too fast". Shitty coding. There was a workaround. The problem never occurred with NT4.
I really don't see what the problem is. Do you really expect Microsoft to support future hardware that will be manufactured 7 or more years after the initial release of Windows 7.
Since 22/10/2009 there have been 2 new releases of Windows (8/8.1 and 10) and mainstream support for Windows 7 ended 13/01/2015. It makes perfect sense for manufactures and Microsoft not to support Windows 7 on new forthcoming hardware.
I would like to see Apple support a 7 year old version of their OS running on their latest hardware or Google supporting 7 year old Android on the latest phones.
If Microsoft offered a suitable replacement operating system we wouldn't be having this conversation.
As it stands, Microsoft has only offered up a tinker toy riddled with spyware that doesn't stop spying when you try to turn it off and which removes from end users control over the most basic and critical aspects of their own operating system, such as updates and when the system reboots.
I'm sorry, but Windows 10 is simply not fit for purpose, full stop.
>Do you really expect Microsoft to support future hardware that will be manufactured 7 or more years after the initial release of Windows 7.
The issue isn't the support Microsoft gives. The issue is that MS is asking other companies not to write proper drivers for W7 for their new hardware. They're asking hardware manufacturers to try to make W10 look better by sabotaging the W7 drivers.
They could have let Intel write any drivers they want - how can you trust a company which deliberately intervenes with third parties ask them to make their older products rubbish in the hope of making the new ones look better?
Microsoft dont write most of the drivers that add-on hardware or new cpu variant need, the hardware makers write them.
As for perfectly reasonably not to support... I have JUST got rid of a (Dell) Win7 box that originally came installed with Win98se; the ONLY hardware upgrade in all that time was a DVD drive.
You missed the point, M$ arent saying THEY wont support 7&8 with software, they are saying they have strong armed the cpu makers into BLOCKING 7&8 from running on newer cpu families; that is a very different thing, and as suggested, my be illegal under various laws across the globe.
Assuming they manage to go ahead with this, I would not be surprised to see any needed software driver being issued directly by the hardware makers, regardless of what they say now; Microshite may still be a powerful company, but if this goes ahead, they will be a "dead man standing" by 2018.
Who wants to bet they havent already sent us an update that will detect a new cpu and refuse to run the OS??
I really don't see what the problem is. Do you really expect Microsoft to support future hardware that will be manufactured 7 or more years after the initial release of Windows 7.
Not if they can get away with it, no.
That's not the issue here, though. The issue is that Microsoft have persuaded the hardware vendors also to drop support for older versions of Windows -- which may be convenient for Microsoft but is not in the best interests of the user community or, I'd argue, of the hardware vendors themselves.
You may not realise, but new CPU generations generally introduce issues with Windows, generally these are fixed quietly by Microsoft via Windows Update.
MS is going to stop doing this, which isn't unreasonable for such and old OS
When was the last time you used a 6+ year OS on a brand new:
Nexus
iPhone
Mac
Windows has been a bit of an odd one out here. I wouldn't be suprised even if a old version of Linux wouldn't work properly on a brand new system.
All the other moaners: its not exactly hard to configure the privacy settings. There are various other 3rd party apps which wll allow you to disable these settings (and telemetry) if it bothers you so much.
Windows 10 is a pretty good sucessful OS. The bashing and 'Use Mint' etc comments here are getting tiresome
"All the other moaners: its not exactly hard to configure the privacy settings. There are various other 3rd party apps which wll allow you to disable these settings (and telemetry) if it bothers you so much."
And all the 3rd party app makers have to do is keep up with the Microsoft in the arms race as the latter re-enable the settings via updates.
And the same people praising Microsoft for their over extended microcontrol, control that interferes with what people want to do with their own computers, and in private, would be up in arms if the government tried to do the exact same thing.
Why is that? Corporations good, government regulation bad? To most people the world is a little more complicated than that. Not enough regulations are at fault here.
What is happening here, is that Microsoft wants to be the ONLY operating system allowed to run on new hardware, regardless of purpose. Regardless of the sensitivity of the data on said computer.
Want to run Linux? Bribe someone in China for a proper CPU and chip set. Not rich enough? Too bad, you will comply.
The issue is that Microsoft have persuaded the hardware vendors also to drop support for older versions of Windows
MS must have been doing this for quite a long time. The Adaptec SCSI driver that came with my Canon FS 2710 slide scanner only worked with Win2k using a workaround they never published or WinXP. The driver doesn't work under Vista or Win7. Canon have never released an updated driver.
I have never purchased another Canon product.
"I really don't see what the problem is. Do you really expect Microsoft to support future hardware that will be manufactured 7 or more years after the initial release of Windows 7."
Well, this is going to be a problem with W10 MS will be having in spades in a few years time, particularly as it is supposed to be the last version of Windows...
Working through the details of what has been announced, I suspect that during 2017 we will see a NEW!!! edition of Windows '10' (10R2 ?) that will not run on the MS defined 'legacy' cpu platforms, so that MS only has a single single (x64 ?) code-base to maintain for Win '10'.
> a NEW!!! edition of Windows '10' (10R2 ?) that will not run on the MS defined 'legacy' cpu platforms, so that MS only has a single single (x64 ?) code-base to maintain for Win '10'.
That has happened all the time. Windows 1 ran on 8086, Windows 3.0 could run on 8086, 80286 or 80386 but Windows 3.1 dropped the 8086. Windows 95 required at least a 80386. NT 4 required a 486 or above. 2000 was Pentium only, and also dropped MIP, Alpha and PowerPC.
When Vista was released MS announced that this would be the final x86-32 release and all future versions would be x86-64 (but they still continued with 32bit).
Current Windows 10 (allegedly the same code base) runs on x86, x86-64 and ARM7.
But that is the reverse of what the article was about.
Back in the day, hardware manufacturers were able to crack IBM's monopoly by utilising BIOS chips that had been "clean engineered" without reference to the original IBM code. Shirley we must be reaching a point where it's feasible to engineer an OS (and chips, maybe) that can run existing Windows software, without Windows.
Not VM software, but a complete OS. I know WINE goes some way to achieving this but I'm thinking of a standalone setup
WINE is *exactly* what you are describing: an implementation of the Windows APIs/ABIs so that Windows applications can run, without having a copy of Windows OS, and without virtualization.
Unfortunately this turns out to be next to impossible to do completely. So many applications rely on undocumented interfaces, or undocumented behaviour of the documented interfaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
Sun used to have the commercial "Wabi", but I that only implemented the old Win16 ABI, and you still needed a copy of Windows 3.x.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_(software)
Shirley we must be reaching a point where it's feasible to engineer an OS (and chips, maybe) that can run existing Windows software, without Windows.
If Oracle wins its suit and gets the courts to recognise APIs are copyrightable, it might become technically possible whilst being entirely illegal in the US...
Vic.
is to rush out Windows 11, that looks and acts exactly like Windows 7, with all the under-the-hood improvements of Windows 10 but minus the data slurping. You know, give people something they *want* to upgrade to rather than trying to push a POS no one wants down their throats.
But I really don't see that happening.
they could rush out W11 but M$ want the Telemetry - "sorry data mining" so it wont go away.
the best option for MS to appease the companies and individuals that are complaining about W10
Telemetry
GUI
Updates
ETC
is to launch a PAID for version that has NO Telemetry, Updates as per all previous versions ie Optional as and when the user wants them, and GUI to give W10 as standard but give a W7 clone as an option.
99.9% of uses will buy or get updates to OEM / standard retail versions and only the rest that are on a Volume licence or pay through the nose and know where to get it will be on the W10s (safe, secure, slim, NO Spyware call it what you want) version
This allows M£ to keep the store which they hope will be the route to purchase software in the future so they can still get future and ongoing revenue from people purchasing this version of W10
I would spend hard cash on a copy of this version if not its W7 and Ebay if i need "new" hardware to run it until 2020
It's time to put my money where my mouth it. I need a Win32 compatible environment. Microsoft isn't going to provide one. It's time to back ReactOS as strongly as I can.
https://www.reactos.org/
Maybe if enough of us stop bitching and start pitching in, we can win. The odds aren't great..but the alternatives are pretty crap*.
*Oh, hi, systemd!
Just because this is true today doesn't mean it will be 5 or 10 years from now. Getting to the point of support has to start somewhere, and it's a fuck of lot better than praying for change or help that simply is not going to happen.
Maybe ReactOS will never be suitable for the enterprise. Or maybe it will. The Russian government appears to be tentatively backing development now as they seek an alternative to Microsoft, and it's open source so if they try anything funny we can eventually audit the thing for back doors.
Maybe nothing comes of supporting ReactOS, but I would rather go down swinging than just passively take it from Microsoft for all eternity.
I would rather go down swinging than just passively take it from Microsoft for all eternity
If I could upvote this a thousand times, I would. Everyone sitting back and saying "well, what can you do..." is another person effectively saying to MS that they can just carry on doing what they like.
Application Developer: Yes, it may work on Windows 10 Today, but you and I have no control over what updates Microsoft is going to force down your throat tomorrow, which could render the application unusable on Windows 10.
This always was the big issue with Win10 and why it really has no place in the enterprise. Because this announcement makes clear, MS will be introducing stuff into Win10 in 2017 that is likely to break stuff.
"It's time to put my money where my mouth it. I need a Win32 compatible environment. Microsoft isn't going to provide one. It's time to back ReactOS as strongly as I can."
I am not convinced that's the best option if all you want is a Win32 compatible env in the near future, the ReactOS folks have been at it for at least 8 years that I know of - and it's still alpha. The risk with ReactOS is they are copying a big player's product with a strong case of Not Invented Here Syndrome, so there is a high risk that they'll deliver a poor solution rather than copy a good one.
WINE looks like the "safer" option given the current state of play - but I'll bet you've considered throwing your weight behind WINE and thought better of it. I am curious to know why you chose ReactOS instead.
"I don't think that matters.
ReactOS is GPL-compatible - so if either camp gets something good going that the other one doesn't have, it is encouraged for that to be copied over..."
That's a good point, but the ReactOS team would have to get over the hatred of all things POSIX & UNIX that was evident in previous visits to their website first. I guess ReactOS could get forked if that remains a problem.
Unfortunately that wouldn't address the concern that Redmond's IP lawyers would have a field day in court should ReactOS get to the point where people are migrating over to it en masse, I can't see MS taking that kind of competition lying down.
I can't see MS taking that kind of competition lying down.
Agree that they are likely not to take this lying down, however because they have gone big time on patents, they may actually have little real choice in the matter; because both utility and design patents are life limited: 20 years in the case of utility and 15 for design. So effectively most things in win95 are available for re-use unless they were explicitly copyrighted. And in a few more years the same will apply to XP...
When I used to work for London Transport, one of the things that used to be insisted upon by one of the departments I worked for was that all components had to be second-sourceable. This was built into British Standards, but I've forgotten the nitty gritty details it was so long ago. TTL and CMOS chips were fine because there were various manufacturers. CPU's were more of an issue, but in those days Intel licensed manufacture of their chips to other manufacturers, so in practice there wasn't an issue. I seem to remember IBM were one of these licensees.
Nowadays things have moved on and it seems such policies are deemed to be insane for "moving forward" technologically. But when you think about it, a technological brake needs to be applied, sooner or later, before technology disappears up its own orifice.
Industry needs to start clamouring for Second Sourcing, again. The problem is still, that licensees need to look at what exactly they are taking on board.
The is another side to this that everyone seems to be missing. Imagine how happy the software engineers were, when they were told they'd only have to write and support drivers for Win10 and not half a dozen older OS's as well.
After all, Apple's control of their hardware, and consequent reduction in the different hardware they have to support is part of the reason for the success of OSX.
That's certainly how I read this. Windows 10 was supposed to boost PC sales. But we all know how well that has worked.
So maybe introducing hardware incompatibilities is a way of helping both MS and the makers? Can't see enterprise customers being terribly keen on this and home users are switching in droves to cheap but perfectly functional tablets.
I wonder whether we'll start to see companies moving to Citrix on Android for legacy stuff? Again, MS is shooting itself in the foot by not making the Edge browser available for Windows 7 and 8. Windows 11 is pretty good but, with development now frozen, companies have even more reasons to install a second browser such as Firefox ESR.
What they're saying is that because Windows 7 was engineered for older CPUs it requires various compatibility type stuff for newer ones, which MS will no longer be providing.
Now, if they're talking about things like SSE* and other extensions to the x86 (or x86_64) spec, that's fine. New stuff is invented, old OS doesn't know it exists, so won't use it - but that shouldn't stop the old OS from running, surely? It just means you don't get access to all the new shiny that the CPU can provide.
Unless they're pushing a version check into Win7 that checks what kind of CPU it's running on and then flat refuses to work unless it's a known good (in which case, don't install that particular update) the only way I can see them preventing Win7 from running on _any_ CPU that supports the x86_64 standard is for them to get the chip manufacturers to change the way the chip reports it's capabilities.
I have to assume that very early in the boot process Windows tries to determine what the CPU is capable of by running some instructions, and if it doesn't get answers it likes it'll stall with "Unsupported architecture" or similar.
So, for this to work, despite being x86_64 capable, at that point these new CPU's say "Sorry I don't know what you want from me. I'm an x86_64_Forced_Upgrade" at which point Win7 will go "Well, as far as I can tell this isn't an x86 compatible CPU, so I give up"?
*Whatever version of that we're on by now
I'm damned certain that what Microsoft is doing is not certifying WHQL of any driver for anyone's new CPU's except under Windows 10. That they can get away with, with or without any other firm's cooperation. The only way possibly around that just might be flipping Windows over into Test Mode, something I've been doing for since WHQL drivers have been required as legacy has been something of a requirement here.
Yeah, but CPU's don't really require drivers. This is what I'm confused by. The CPU needs to be able to run the OS kernel long before any drivers are loaded, so the only thing they could withhold access to is extensions like SSE, MMX etc, which one might well argue we don't actually care about most of the time, seeing as the ones we already have are quite adequate. If it's an x86 CPU, it's an x86 CPU... unless they've managed to get the CPU manufacturers to start making x86 CPU's that lie about what they can actually do when polled by the mechanism that Win7 and older use to determine what CPU they're running on.
The hate energy from El Reg is high today!
How many vendors have announced their legacy software won't be certified on new hardware without a murmour?
But as it's MSFT, the El Reg scriblers go berserk.
I used to visit this site to laugh with El Reg, now I laugh at you.
The brown cow is staring at my bicycle...The green apple is ready for the cider press...the green apple is ready for the cider press...Aunty's dentures are on the bedside cabinet...Aunty's dentures are on the bedside cabinet...
"You WILL take Windows 10 if you stay on Windows at all."
Care to bet on that?
-Updates are disabled on all my machines.
-Any 10, telemetry or CEIP updates have not been installed on my machines. I have a script to sanity check this whenever I want.
-I'm also running GWX in Monitor mode.
Windows 10 won't make it to my machines.
I don't give two $#!ts about "after 2020" either, because I'll still be running 7.
If anything, at that point I'll have a 7 host with a Mint guest and I'll use Mint for anything that needs the internet and lock down my 7 host otherwise.
Their software is their software. It is not, apparently, obligated to even recognize your settings let alone honor them. Sooner or later they will find a way to get you to take it. Maybe they will bring it in through your browser and their ad network. Or maybe an update that triggers the upgrade after a period of time. Somehow, some way, they will win. And they only have to win once.
Their software no longer talks to them unless I allow it.
If I want, I can deny it at the level 2 layer (firewall/NAT) and they won't be able to do a damned thing about it either unless they come to my home and physically access my firewall configuration. (I don't feel the need to do that yet, so I'm relying on layer 7.)
Again - the upgrade will not hit any machines I don't want it to. Very rudimentary network basics in play here. I don't want it, I won't get it. I have enough behind me to completely prevent it from ever happening.
I also don't use their browsers and I block all ads using uBlock Origin so I'm not worried about it there either.
Possibly a dumb question here: does (UEFI) secure boot come into this picture in any shape or form?
Is it conceivable that chip and system vendors will have divergent Windows and non-Windows product lines?
Feeling a bit dim today. Illumination welcome. Elimination (of Windows) may apparently arrive sooner than many people have been expecting.
Unlike some of the poorly thought through decisions made at boardroom level in recent history, this is one that is more difficult to reverse if M$ later decide to do a U-Turn. The funny thing is that if they do, Intel will produce little stickers which say "Compatible with Windows 7" on them, so that customers can differentiate between MSFolly PC's and more recent ones.
Come to think of it, this may be something suppliers will do anyway, reinforcing the point that there is something a bit iffy with the latest version. If this filters through to the average Joe on the street, this will put the pressure on M$.
Would or should?
Because there's tens of millions of lines of code out there written on older Operating Systems using an older development platform (Visual Studio) which don't compile nor run properly on later operating systems.
All of these applications were written by Microsoft's tools on Microsoft's machines using Microsoft's guidelines and with Microsoft's assurances.
That's why.
This is excellent news. The development of the PC has been held back by backwards compatibilty for legacy operating systems for years, and here's MS telling the hardware designers not to bother any more. A bit surprising when MS's USP is backwards compatibility, but still - their choice, their funeral.
I dual boot Ubuntu 14.04 & W7-64 bit.
IE is crap,always has been IMHO.
I have often railed against W8,8.1 & W10.
It's been obvious for years,at least since W8,that M$ were moving along the MAC route,so that they 'own' users, make them use their own version of Apple Store & then raise prices at their leisure.
I will NEVER downgrade W7 64 bit for any newer version of Windows.
There's so many browsers available for the internet(IE blocks many D\Loads-Firefox doesn't),there's WINE API for gaming,or use STEAM.
I'm not aware of using DX12 in W7,even on a VM?
If using WINDOWS, just switch off Event Viewer Logs that are sent to M$,of course there is a minimal chance of thing's not working at some point in the future,but that's better than ,losing one's privacy to uncle Sam isn't it?
I think I've hit that moment when I stop pretending things are going to happen because I want them too and start accepting things as they are.
Here's why Linux isn't really going to take over the market:
1) Windows 10 is good, I'm not even a windows fan, but it's definitely a good OS. MS has issues, but saying W10 is bad is like saying Linux is too technical for the average person. Their both fallacies.
2) Windows Server is still easier to use, manage, and connect systems than Linux. Sorry that's the case. I may be able to run an LDAP system for little to know cost on Linux, but I don't need to know all the intricacies of LDAP, KERBEROS, and NFS and SAMBA to have a working network. I know IT admin should be able to do this, but hell, I see Linux admins have trouble with this.
3) The operating system that takes over Windows in business will not be Linux (maybe a derivative), but I think the best a company like Red Hat and Canonical can hope for is making progress on the server front such as Web Servers and Application Server (Weblogic, Tomcat, etc).
4) Without developing cross platform, we're not moving forward on Linux. As Dev's we still suck at this, and pretend that also as we just build web platform is "cross-platform". The two main choices in business are .NET and Java, and to be honest neither are bad, but their also old had and this whole section of programming is what people call "mature" IE boring.
"2) Windows Server is still easier to use, manage, and connect systems than Linux. Sorry that's the case. I may be able to run an LDAP system for little to know cost on Linux, but I don't need to know all the intricacies of LDAP, KERBEROS, and NFS and SAMBA to have a working network. I know IT admin should be able to do this, but hell, I see Linux admins have trouble with this."
Imagine if a doctor said something similar, like "I don't need to know how the human body works, just tell me where to cut". If you are not willing to learn how things work, you should not be on IT...well, there's always management and marketing.
>> I don't need to know all the intricacies of LDAP, KERBEROS, and NFS and SAMBA to have a working network.
Ah, Windows Admin click, click, click config method
click, check if working, nope
Click, click, working? nope
Click, click, click, working? nope but that nearly always works
Click, click, click, click, click click, panic, panic, panic, click, click, click ....
Do here they are getting power shell, new windows admin interview question -- can you type :-)
>> I don't need to know all the intricacies of LDAP, KERBEROS, and NFS and SAMBA to have a working network.
> Of course you don't. What was your point?
I've seen what this Microsoft mentality produces. It produces ignorant gits that can't handle anything that's the slightest bit unexpected. They also tend to ignore very BASIC issues that are spelled out with a map and a flashlight in the most rudimentary vendor documentation. They really have no clue what they are doing and don't care to. Sure they can deploy something that seems functional but it's really a ticking time bomb that may explode in your face at any moment.
If an NT admin isn't a menace and waste of skin then they are perfectly able to deal with Unixen (not just Linux) too.
Have people actually used Windows 10? It's fantastic. I have been a Mac user for years, and just got a Surface Pro 4. It's what computing should be. I've deployed Windows 10 at work, as well... with a great deal of success. It's a fantastic OS, and I'm sure no Microsoft fanboy.
I'm not in the camp of breathless "Windows 10 is malware!" people, but the truth is that Microsoft is making It very difficult for average users to use their PCs in non-smartphone mode. Their justification seems to be that people are fine with Apple and Android phones phoning home, and it's pretty obvious that Microsoft wants to turn end user platforms into phone-style terminals. It does take a lot of work, and it's a moving target, but it is possible to disable almost all of the communication.
I think Microsoft did a decent job fixing up Windows 8.1, and I'm no longer using 7 personally. But, I work in an environment that will be very slow to update from 7 due to a lot of legacy code. And when we're talking legacy, we're talking un-replaceable 16-bit code in some cases. Big businesses have stuff like this, and it'll take something like cutting off support to get them fixed; that's just real life.
Their justification seems to be that people are fine with Apple and Android phones phoning home
Fixed that for you. In case you missed it, Apple is actively marketing iOS as an alternative to Google's snoopy and information selling ways, at least in Tim Cook's statements. They aren't making ads that say that, but privacy is a difficult concept to sell to the general public.
The important difference between Android and Windows is that you don't pay anything for Android. Selling your personal data is the trade you make for having a wide selection of cheaper phones thanks to the Google developing and giving away Android to the world at large. Paying more for iPhones is the trade you make for keeping that personal data safe[*].
Microsoft wants to have it both ways, making you pay for Windows, and collecting money from selling your personal information. People may be "fine" with this based on Android's market share, but how many consumers really know that's the choice they are making by selecting Android, or even if they did/do believe the price premium of an iPhone is worth it to avoid that?
[*] Not claiming Apple collects absolutely no personal information, but what they collect isn't to feed a massive worldwide hungry advertising beast that is never sated like Google's. Apple makes so much money from selling iPhones that they'd probably lose money trying to sell personal data like Google, because if they did those who consider that an important differentiation with Android might figure "what's the point in paying more for an iPhone" and that loss would outweigh whatever extra cash they could make from selling people's personal information.
DougS, I have not read any credible claims that MS _sells_ the telemetry from Windows 10 to anyone. Do you have any links to the contrary?
All the actual data out there on what it is used for is to debug, tweak, and adjust the OS and the third party software that runs on it.
So the data from Windows 10 might go to third parties, but it would only be data relevant hangs and crashes of that particular third party's software when it runs on Windows 10.
The aggressiveness with which they are trying to force people to Windows 10, and once in Windows 10 to give up personal information, leads me to believe that they are, or if they aren't today they will tomorrow. If the bulk of the install base is forced onto Windows 10, and they change the EULA when it forces you onto 10.1, what recourse do you have? Especially if your PC isn't even CAPABLE of running Windows 7 should you wish to go back?
Microsoft brought this upon themselves by making Windows Update act like malware, and now using the worst lock-in tactics of the past to not allow computers sold later this year to run an OS that will still have several years of full support life remaining. For all the hate directed at Apple in some quarters, what Microsoft is doing here is so far beyond that that in less than a year Microsoft has regained its crown from Apple of "most hated company at El Reg" (just look at the post counts on these recent Microsoft articles vs Apple articles, and the nearly uniformly negative tone...that was not the case a year ago)
I don't particularly dislike Windows 10, I might even have considered upgrading to it if it was just a better Windows 7 that undid the folly of Windows 8. But the way Microsoft has been acting since Ballmer left has quickly eroded the goodwill they earned with me - grudgingly at first, when Windows XP turned out to be the first Windows I ever used that didn't crash constantly on me (at least after the first couple service packs) and later with Windows 7 which was the first Windows good enough that I sometimes forgot I was using a Microsoft product at all!
@Erik4872 "Microsoft is making It very difficult for average users to use their PCs in non-smartphone mode"
Windows 10 completely solves that issue. To get desktop Windows 10 into smartphone mode you have to dig in the settings and actually change them.
The default in Windows 10 installed on a desktop computer is desktop mode.
I wouldn't go as far as saying fantastic. (Unless Windows 8 is your reference) But I have found it a decent OS. I find it far faster than Windows 7 on the PC I'm typing this on. I certainly wouldn't bother with 7 on any machine for myself.
If the telemetry is of concern, then migration to a different OS entirely is what is called for, not sticking to a previous version. (And I certainly won't rule that out for myself, my PC laptop is already dual boot 10/mint.)
As someone pointed out earlier, saying Windows 10 is a poor OS compared to previous versions is as valid as saying Linux is too techie.
However, pushing people over to it as they have been doing, is wrong.
It is not a big enough improvement over 7 to be worth the bother for many people, and especially for anyone with an investment in software that might not work properly.
(Of course the story is a bit different for anyone with windows 8 on the desktop, software issues should be far rarer, and 8 is vile.)
"If the telemetry is of concern"
There's an implication that it isn't of concern to you.
Have you read and understood the T&Cs? Go back and read them again.
Read the bit that says they keep your login credentials. Can you find anything that limits it to login credentials to their services? The bit that days they won't keep login credentials for your bank or your work if they feel like it? If you can't find that doesn't it worry you, even just a little?
The same thing about keeping details of your transaction - can you find anything there that restricts them to just purchases from MS & not M&S?
Or did you think that this was just an oversight & MS couldn't find a lawyer to check them over?
"Read the bit that says they keep your login credentials. Can you find anything that limits it to login credentials to their services?"
There is common law and judicial precedent that when you are the one writing the contract any ambiguities are interpreted against you.
Microsoft wrote the contract therefore "login credentials" would be interpreted narrowly, in other words applying only to MS's products and services.
BTW, do you sign on each time you use The Register or iTunes -- or do you allow The Reg and Apple to store your login credentials?
Wrong question.
If you signed up with iTunes then iTunes needs to keep your login credentials otherwise your account wouldn't exist and there would be no mechanism for signing in. So let's look at what I think was the intention:-
"Do you allow your PC to store your login credentials?"
Only if I trust the PC that I am saving it on, and the complete path (which will vary) leading all the way back to the provider of the service, unless there is end-to-end encryption. Actually, you can scrub that last bit, because from what I have seen just lately, there are arguably so many opportunities for MITM (Man in the Middle) interception that it might just as well go plain text to not draw attention to its content.
Or there is another permutation:-
"do you allow The Reg to store your login credentials for iTunes, and do you allow iTunes to store your login credentials for The Reg?"
Are you CRAZY?? (In answer to that question, how many people "out there" use the same password for everything?).
So I think I've just proved that the world is MAD MAD MAD Mwwaahh!!!
"do you sign on each time you use The Register or iTunes -- or do you allow The Reg and Apple to store your login credentials?"
In 20+ years in IT I think I've come across a tiny handful of organisations, all incompetent, that store my actual login credentials.
I take MS's wording, and the discussion that has resulted, to mean that the credentials are stored in a reversible way, ie they can get the originals back.
Every organisation with a clue who wants me to authenticate stores something which isn't my original credentials but is derived from them in a way that allows me to authenticate without allowing the organisation to know exactly what the originals were.
Why can't MS do this and say it's what they do?
ps
was this business about "login credentials" in the EULA for previous Windows versions? If not, what's changed?
In case you haven't noticed, the hate isn't for Windows 10 but for Microsoft (and soon the Hardware companies) for trampling over their customers in their insane demand that we all move on (I won't say 'Up') to Windows 10.
If they stopped treating us all like shit then I, for one, would say very little more on the subject of Windows 10.
Who do you think treats you better? Apple no longer supports ANY old version of OS X after new hardware comes out. Buy a Mac introduced after El Capitan came out, and Yosemite won't boot on it. Just the way it is. Microsoft's saying that maybe, just maybe, there will be limited driver support for the next generation of Intel CPUs on an OS that came out SIX YEARS AGO.
Don't like Apple? Well, how well is modern hardware supported on ANY Linux distro released in 2009?
Microsoft has the longest support timelines of anyone in the industry, yet is somehow made out the bad guy when they end support? That is what's completely illogical to me.
There's plenty to hate about Microsoft, but this idea that they have short support lives for their OS is just bizarre, as is the idea that Windows 10 is a bad OS (it's amazing... and I used to really dislike Windows...). It's fast, light, finally gets things like colour management and display scaling handled properly. And it looks darn good. Privacy? Damn, maybe, but that's everyone - even mainstream Linux. Ubuntu sends all your searches to Amazon...
"Microsoft has the longest support timelines of anyone in the industry, yet is somehow made out the bad guy when they end support? That is what's completely illogical to me."
No, it's not illogical. Firstly, MS only real selling point has been backwards compatibility. Secondly, the combination of a radical change in business model (monetize the stupid customers, and manage the stupid customers' machines for them, no matter what they actually want), with backporting some of that crap to Windows 7, as well as nagging incessantly, and downloading massive installation binaries without asking first, all makes the blood boil on anyone with integrity.
Microsoft's arrogant behaviour towards what is supposed to be their customers is flabbergasting.
If they show contempt for their users, then the users will show contempt for them. Does MS really think they are too big to fail? Good luck to them in that case...
"Privacy? Damn, maybe, but that's everyone - even mainstream Linux. Ubuntu sends all your searches to Amazon..."
Maybe you (and most of the rest of the meejah) didn't notice, but there is actually more than one credible Linux to choose from. Even if Ubuntu isn't one of them any more, for the reason you mention and maybe others, there are still alternatives which don't have the same challenges.
Have a lot of fun.
"Maybe you (and most of the rest of the meejah) didn't notice, but there is actually more than one credible Linux to choose from. Even if Ubuntu isn't one of them any more, for the reason you mention and maybe others, there are still alternatives which don't have the same challenges."
Did you read where I said "mainstream"? I love Fedora, personally. But to MOST people who aren't in a tech field Linux = Ubuntu.
I work in "enterprise" end user computing. For those unaware. the typical desktop OS and hardware lifecycle is like this:
- OS images and software packages are certified and used for as long as possible. Sometimes this can be for a very long time if applications require an OS or hardware feature that gets dropped or changed.
- Enterprise desktop and laptop hardware from the Big 3 (HP, Lenovo, Dell) is on an 18-month sales cycle.
- Enterprise desktops are on a very conservative update track compared to consumer machines. Often, this is because they're sold into places that still need legacy stuff like serial ports, full BIOS emulation, and the ability to run very old OSes (even if the vendor doesn't explicitly support it.)
- Because of this, the progression usually is:
- Intel/AMD comes out with whizzy new architecture
- Enterprise desktops are released pretty far into the architecture cycle, and sometimes skip the "tick-tock" architecture change and opt for the die-shrunk version of the chip.
- New models are released with some overlap of the old ones to ensure companies have time to make sure all their applications work on the new hardware.
This announcement from Microsoft is a big shift. They're basically saying that anything you buy after a certain date will not be able to run supported Windows 7. I don't know what they're planning to tie this to, but it basically sets an expiration date for Win7 even for the most conservative Windows shops.
I've already said how 2015 was the official end of the Golden age of computing, so I'll stop with that now.
But now this, so soon into 2016. It's just coming thick and fast - an onslaught. Dataraped and helpless victims that we are, we are now getting hardware raped. Crikey. Where will it end? Ballmer and the boys in monkey masks breaking in with rubber hoses to re-educate people when they find out you are refusing to be micro-chipped with a Win OS? [I know he no longer works there, but the imagery was too good to pass up - forgive me]
When I first saw a computer in the late 70's - an Apple with Green VDU - it was a mysterious machine. Kept hearing about these things called 'computers' and here was one you could touch. A few clueless computer programming lessons later, plus a bit of source code input to my ZX81 from a magazine to play 'space invaders' type of thing, it all went a bit quiet on the computer front until a few years later - 1999 in fact, I had to design a spec for my g/f's computer for college. Rich parents she had and I had a budge of 3000 quid. That got you a 200MHz cput and a 2GB hard disk, etc.etc.
It was barely fast enough to run the programs of the time - photoshop being one of the main ones, but it worked. It even ran the first VST (Virtual Studio Technology (c) Steinberg Soft und Harware) where actual analog synthesizers could be 'emulated' digitally. It blew people's minds.
Then what could be achieved via software went light years ahead, and with it, the hardware to make it all work. Fast forward to today where we have things like the Holy Grail of Audio - Melodyne - where you can reach in to recorded polyphonic music and extract and manipulate individual notes from within via DNA (Direct Note Access) - they said it couldn't be done. But somebody had an idea somewhere and it was done. It doesn't get much better than this.
You now have pretty much 100 percent virtualisations of old analog hardware like the Korg Legacy series, that are all and more that people need to make music. We have Digital Audio Workstations like Ableton Live, that can take an audio clip and with a right click it will analyse it and break it down and translate it to MIDI. They said it couldn't be done. Another Holy Grail found. You get the picture.
And of course, even budget systems such as I run (i5), can operate this software absolutely perfectly like a dream (unless you're one of those nutters that puts an eq and comp and fx on every insert and send) as long as you don't use the most thirsty of VSTs - you'll be fine. We even have the capability to put in 16GB of RAM if you run large sample libraries in Kontakt, say. Still not enough for some people, but sometimes nothing is ever enough for some people...
But...but.... and it's a big 'but', we now have Microshaft true to their name, shafting their own customers after those customers paid for their OS (it wasn't free was it?) either by forcing on winX or leaching and draining their customers time by malware nagging. Let's leave out the moral implications of what they are doing with slurp for the moment, and just stick to having a computer that works.
Driver support is always a bug bear with audio stuff, but it kind of works ok for the most part now, especially as we have things like ASIO to help us along. Don't install the multi-client version though or you might end up with a totally borked system as it wipes out your boot info and whatnot - or use it at your peril on a fully backed up system, as I did. It took me a week to sort out and it's still not right, but that is for another discussion...
So the problem is not that we don't have geniuses that can write the most magical and wizardry of software. It isn't that the hardware is not fast enough to run it now - it is. It's the fact that these bastards have a monopoly and are playing fast and loose, abusing their position of power and abusing their paying customers into the bargain.
NO - YOU CAN NOT KEEP USING THAT SOFTWARE PAST NEXT YEAR!
You will upgrade, and if the software writers can't keep up, then your software just won't work any more - tough titty boohoo.
How the fuck did we end up in this position. This could have been a new Golden era of computing. The one that everyone strived for. It's here folks, it's here. We made it happen - all the software programmers/engineers/beta testers/graphics designers - we did it.
And microshat pull the rug out from under us all. Total utter bastards. I won't even buy a microsoft mouse from now on.
That audio software will not work in any other OS. The devs already have their work cut out supporting Mac (if they do) or maybe even Linux if you arer Bitwig or Reaper (Justin Frankel who wrote winamp and is held in very very high regard by the whole audio community). 64 bit drained the life out of the smaller devs and VSTs that use things like Synthedit or Flowstone as their framework will possibly never work on 64 bit. But 64 bit had to happen (depending on your perspective). Everyone just cracked on.
But now this. Purposeful crippling of hardware and by extension of that software. Some smaller devs such as LinPlug have obviously seen which way the wind was blowing by discontinuing their (perfectly good working) older software, just in case new OS changes render them useless. They see what's on the horizon. And it's a monster.
So, in a year or two, if my current compo goes kaput, I will have to source a second hand one to run the software I paid thousands and thousands of pounds for. I could have cracked it, but I paid for it, because I have integrity. What microshits are doing is showing not just a total lack of integrity, but an absolute absence of moral character that I can not differentiate from a common or garden burglar.
Already we are seeing major snafus with drivers and software not working on Win X, but apart from that - I don't want to be data raped.
So, my win7 machine gets unplugged from the net. The system frozen in time via a golden image. And I will have to be extremely careful and picky about buying or putting any new software on there - being careful to keep new clones for every step I take, should it bork. Thankyou microsoft, thank you so much.
I will now use Linux Mint or whatever distro I fancy (fatdog64, Knoppix, AVLinux etc.) along with my winOS replacement for general computer use (probably a flavour of Mint). I even went to the darkside and bought a Chrome book for my brother such is my sheer hatred for all things microsoft now.
And now this on top. These bully boy bastards are not going to stop. I despise them with every inch of my being, and if they want personal war with me, they shall have it.
The Golden age of computing is over. You know, from when it used to like, be fun. Now we are entering the age of Attrition. I wonder what other dirty tricks they have got up their sleeves. Nothing they do will surprise me from now on. Not even this did. But to be so blantant. What balls. The balls of a bully, knowing full well he can indeed throw his weight about and there's not a damn thing his victims can do about it.
For now. I for one, can't wait to see these nasty bastards get what is truly coming to them. They really are suffering some kind of insanity, but they are a danger to others, and now they must be stopped.
Well said, but... we tried to warn you. A thousand times. You would not listen. You berated us, you scoffed at our tinfoil hats, our nerdy calls to "freedom!" When you talked to us at all your answer was "it works," with a sneer.
OK, fine. It sucks. But you we told you it would and you chose it anyway. Own it. Admit some share of responsibility before you go all apoplectic.
Upvote though. That was high art.
Most of my 3500 users don't know what the OS is and care less. They do care that the tools the use to run the business (ERP, MS Office, EDRM, MI, e-mail, Skype, smart-phones, ...) are there 24*7 and are easy to use (SSO, familiar UI) and we care all end-user devices are centrally managed and controlled from our operations centre.
If anyone can explain how Linux Mint fits the reality of corporate IT, please let me know. I won't hold my breath.
> If anyone can explain how Linux Mint fits the reality of corporate IT, please let me know. I won't hold my breath.
Most tools required to run an office don't require the underlying OS so much since in general, platform specific binaries are a relic of the past. This is especially true in a larger environment with an actual ERP system. Smaller shops not so much... but you excluded those as soon as you started with your alphabet soup.
You also raised the bar in terms of the level of IT support available.
Are you by any chance based in Stockholm? You certainly exhibit the syndrome.
If something comes down the MS upgrade channel that overnight obsoletes the boxes those 3500 users are running on you'll happily put your hand in your business's pocket & write out an order for 3500 new boxes, won't you?
I once ran a Unix unit in a shop where the IT management had a similar one stop shop mentality. They were going to replace my system in 6 months time. For years and years. Eventually I retired. I regret not being there to see what happened in the end. Their one stop shop was for VAX/VMS.
The problem with Linux is that it is open source.
Open source was supposed to be "bug free" and "vulnerability free" because so many people would be donating their time to checking it over, debugging it and testing it.
Well it has turned out that far more people have far more thoroughly examined and tested Windows than Linux.
It isn't just that it is open source, although as Poodle proved with OpenSSL, even vast market dominance won't get the personpower necessary to test and probe shareware sufficiently.
OS X is not thoroughly tested either, because it is not so popular as Windows, the hackers can't be bothered, and Apple doesn't bother because hackers don't bother.
That extensive testing and probing by hackers of MS products is why targeted organizations like banks and governments use MS rather than products "designed for security from the ground up".
Designed for security, yes. But tested and probed sufficient to actually deliver security? No !
PC OEMs will demand pre-Kaby Lake CPUs from Intel, because their enterprise customers will demand PCs that can run Windows 7, because enterprises don't upgrade to the latest Windows just because it is out. They want the fewest transitions possible, which is why most of them skipped directly from XP to 7, and will probably skip directly from 7 to 10 or 11.
Even those skipping directly from 7 to 10 don't want to go to 10 today when 7 still has so much life left. Those upgrades are very disruptive and expensive, and can take a year to roll out from start to finish (not including testing/pilot deployments)
If Dell won't sell Skylake based laptops to enterprises because Intel won't sell Dell Skylake CPUs, I think a lot of enterprises will simply halt their upgrade cycle. If they do that look for 2015's nearly 10% drop (which is the fourth consecutive year) in PC sales to be a drop in the bucket compared to what 2017 looks like when Intel is trying to push Kaby Lake and a lot of enterprises do not want it due to its crippled inability to run Windows 7.
I would be very worried if I was running a PC OEM. That market is already dropping like a rock, it does not need Microsoft increasing gravity from the current 9.8 m/s^2!
...and of course, add to that the fact that the machines we have now are SO FAST that there's no point updating them. I'm still getting by perfectly well on a desktop that's 7 years old in my office, because nothing I do there requires it to be any faster. Sure, one day it will pack up and I'll need a new one, but I have no need to update, and as long as I don't need to I'm keeping accounts happy by not requesting budget for it.
All the hardware companys' income is so dependent on McDoodysoft they can't survive without that mama bird. At this point my new name for all the CEOs of all the PC hardware companies is "Baby Birds" who will never fly on their own. This is the nest they made by doing nothing for their independence. So all these CEOs are now just Baby Birds...
It started with my Surface Pro 4, which I was using to synch my meds calendar. It failed to wake from sleep again and I just lost my wits on the train and started just wailing away on a railing with it (it may have been past time for the meds). Another passenger came to help me and I flung it at him, regrettably embedding it corner first in his forehead (did I mention the build quality? These things are sturdy and very slim!). Naturally I was arrested, and so when the train derailed on what would have been my commute home, I was in the pokey and didn't die with everyone else. And now I have an Android phone with Google Calendar for meds tracking and am current on my meds while I await the competency hearing.
Anyway, that's how Windows 10 and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 saved my life! Windows 4 lyf (but of course, not until I'm off court supervision).
Microsoft sure knows where to stick the carrot, asking everyone to bend over in unison. They've arrived at the perfect strategy to drive people away from Windows, Bing and all their cloud crap. But let's see how the world reacts. Unfortunately, there are a lot of corporate sheep who bought into "You can't go wrong with Microsoft", a serious absence of critical thinking, no different than the IBM-Think of (OMG, was it?) 50 years ago.
Sad thing is that Windows 10 is quite OK, once Microsoft surveillance and ads are shut off.
Finally, it's a large steaming pile of horse manure to say that drivers from Windows 7 won't work with Windows 10 and vice versa. I'll bet some school of hackers figures out how to make those Windows 10 work with Windows 7. If not, it will become yet another lame excuse to make perfectly good hardware obsolete. No surprise here. Microsoft always screws up the driver model to make it easy for IHV's to render hardware obsolete. And, THAT, is what keeps the Wintel computer industry alive in this age of people already using alternatives like tablets, phablets, smartphones, and Apple i-stuff.
When found to be a monopoly, Microsoft was supposed to be forced to play nice. How will the entities that enforce the various agreements with regulatory agencies make it so Microsoft actually produces a functional product without the worst of the latest self-serving possibilities we are now seeing?
Most likely, nothing will happen. They're all in it together. It's just that governing bodies have their own way of getting in on the action, with fines, fees and favors that most of us will never know about.
Should seriously beat Micro$oft with a big stick over this, doesn't the almighty WEEE Directive promote "reuse or recycling" ?
If folks also can't put Windows 7 on an old system because they've nuked the activation servers then this amounts to denying them access (an offense under Computer Misuse Act to boot!)
I might start collecting Vista OEM stickers at this point, better to have something that can't be force upgraded to 10 and then "you must buy a new CPU to continue using this product"... grr!
FWIW Vista is actually not that bad and updates will continue until 2022 at the earliest.
11 April 2017 according to this page http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/lifecycle
It's usable now (unlike when it was brand new), but were it the only version I had a licence for, I would be dual booting with linux and only using it when specific software demanded it.
There is no shortage of cut-price older model CPUs for those wanting to run old operating systems.
And that is what companies that really want to run Windows 7 will use.
Using older model CPUs has always been standard procedure for makers of SCADA systems which are tightly married to CPU architectures.
Is the tech press so desperate for readers that it has to appeal to Apple Fanbois?
Is there no press left that caters to IT professionals instead of hobbyists?
Windows 10 is actually very good. Fast, new but with a number of bugs more in keeping with an OS that is several years old.
I do agree that MS has gone overboard with the upgrade prompts -- there should be no more than one prompt per week. But Windows 10 is vastly superior to Windows 7 in speed and security, and probably even has fewer bugs.
Apple has never supported its new OSes only old computers.
Where was your hobbyist outrage then?
It was such a non-concern most people didn't even know it.
And there are some companies that predominantly use Apples. Mac dominate in graphics arts companies. And even their tech departments can cope with it.
Take Linux as another example. Linux often doesn't support new hardware. Since Linux's creation users have been stuck appealing for volunteers to write drivers for them.
Do they?
Do you have evidence of Apple dictating to their suppliers that they should only develop for the latest version of OSX and iOS?
In fact I'm sure Apple will want to see the real details of just what MS have asked Intel/AMD et al, because they have a vested interest in these processors being able to run a non-MS OS...
I have to use Windows at work 7 64 bit currently as I write WIN32 software.
We will move away in a few years, but not sure what to.
To be honest Windows is safe until MS kill WIN32, then it may as well die.
But do we need Windows at home?
There is a choice between Linux and a version of BSD.
My gaming machine is an octo cored machine with yet another version of BSD, playing PC games for me is too much like work.
My home PC is XP as it works and I have better things to spend money on than replacing functional operating systems. It is dual boot so eventually will go Linux.
>To be honest Windows is safe until MS kill WIN32
2017 could well be the year MS cease supporting Win32 on Win10...
Remember one of the challenges MS has with Windows is legacy and looking at Win10, 'Edge' etc. it does seem that MS are relatively quickly pushing features it considers to be legacy to one side and ceasing development...
But if they kill WIN32 there is then no reason to use their OSes.
Force a complete rewrite (there is a .NET escape plan if we HAD to).
Kill WIN32 then we would HAVE to go something more generic.
And it took us about 10 years to fully rewrite into WIN32 and still adding new code all the time.
I run a small business. Here is the current set up:
1 PC using Windows 7, 3 PC’s using Linux Mint (not virtual) & 1 PC stuck on XP (short version - driver issues / don’t ask).
Most of you talk the talk about switching to Linux Mint / (Ubuntu if you must) etc. but I doubt many of you will. In most cases management will decide and you’ll just scurry along with upgrading to Windows 10, while you complain vigorously about privacy all the way (but not actually doing anything about it). That way your backs covered when the customer accounts all turn up on Pastebin - right? “Must have been Microsoft”. Wrong! P45 for you….
By far, the Windows 7 and XP PC are the most problematic in terms of keeping patched and up to date - I can spend a whole day on each fannying around with both of them getting them to work and be secure. Windows update, Adobe Flash, Baseline Security Analyzer, various software update checkers, Adobe Flash emergency out of band extra patch, Internet browsers (including IE windae licker edition), undoing Microsoft’s upgrade to Windows 10 and retro Windows 10 spyware on Windows 7 cagar, Adobe Flash extra, extra out of band update fix the second part b (honest gov - it’s the last one this month), uninstalling the obligatory Microsoft “Bork my PC now” booby trapped BSOD recommended update, Surprise!!… Pain in the arse.
Conversely, Linux Mint just works. Updates (at most) take around ten minutes. No fannying around, no double checking here there, wing and a prayer - just works.
Every once in a while I scan the network for any issues with security. Surprise, surprise it’s always the Windows PC’s that end up with the problems. In most cases Mint is so quiet on the network that nMap can’t even identify it let alone find a weakness. Windows 7 on the other hand - shut the f*** up! Yet another piece of software required…. Antivirus, Antispyware, Firewall, USB autorun prevention, ASLR, OS configurations, Application rights, Group Policy this, that, this and this, oh wait a minute that one needs a registry edit…… The list is endless. Oh s*** here’s yet another javascript OS vulnerability that bypasses the UAC. Hmmm, yes that sounds like a really sensible idea to allow .js to run natively in the OS. I luv my ransomeware Microsoft!
Look guys, the only way you will secure your data and prevent Microsoft from grabbing it all (keyloggers, wifi passwords, big jugs online or whatever) is to dump Windows 10 and use Linux. Go on, you know you want to - try it and get your social life back (No, Facebook doesn’t count).
Running Mint 17.3 since last December. Slowly but surely wrapping my head around the *nix file system and how things work. No where near my Windows chops though. I'll keep using it for home use and keep supporting Win at work. Eventually I'll be as competent in linux as Win and then perhaps my job prospects will broaden a bit...
Come on Win admins. Take the plunge. I for one am loving the simple interface and no fuss interaction. The only thing I'm missing is Visio and One Note. The rest is provided and works great (Libre Office).
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"Why on earth do they need "Telemetry" from a Windows 7 PC, if NO development or enhancements are to be provided to Windows 7 (8.0/8.1 ?) ????"
MS must contaminate Windows 7, so it's not an obviously superior alternative to Windows 10.
That is the main reason. And having telemetry on those obstinate enough to still resist the marching orders to Windows 10. The telemetry isn't really there mainly to improve the OS. It's to monetize the user.
The irony of it all is that Windows 10 is a decent OS, as far as MS OS'es go. Couldn't they simply have a payed-for version that does not include telemetry at all? I think my limit would be around £40 or so, given that Linux is free, and OS X is free as long as you have a Mac.
Oh, and without the someone-else-decides-when-to-update crap as well, of course.
It does indeed, and when you get a nice clean working install, it is actually a real pleasure.
The first time I installed Linux was at v10 - Julia, iirc. I couldn't believe how much faster my hardware was. Things opened and shut instantly, the eye candy was more like a Mac than the kludge that is win7 or the fisher price that is xp. I tolerate(d) those, because you know, need them to get the job done. But...
If you can take the leap, and you are prepared to spend a bit of time distro-hopping (as I did), you can get some delicious flavours to work with. DreamLinux (discontinued now) was one quite close to the Mac experience. I don't mind Macs (use them in the Studio), and a very large percentage of the professional Audio softs available work on it. Can't afford one, don't like the company etc. etc..
I've also mentioned I preferred developing (just basic website building) on Linux with XAMPP. You have your bitmap/raster graphics editor with Gimp and you have your Vector stuff with Inkscape (a program I absolutely adore and even have the portable version on win7). I also enjoy running my VMs from Linux. I have several flavours of xp with one only being a few hundred MB in size. Others a Gig or two. They fly like the proverbial shit off a blanket, even virtualised in Linux.
I have the extra vt instructions or whatever they are on my amd chip (5 years old now) and apart from the usual Catalyst graphics driver problems and probably not having an included proprietary wireless driver, it's actually a BETTER experience.
I've enjoyed the gorgeous gui/desktop that is KDE - set up my VPNs from there and had it all running off a 8GB usb stick. Took a while to load, but there you go. XFCE/LXDE seems like a mature enough technology to me, and I enjoy using those as well. I still need to fine tune the whole Cinnamon/Mate thing to see what works best for me, but I am going to spend a bit of time with this one setting it all up and imaging it, so if the whole lot crumbles...
It's really not a problem at all to me. I will just simply lock down and freeze my windows partition and disconnect it totally absolutely thoroughly from the net. With an SSD I plan to put into my aging laptop, I would imagine restarting and rebooting into another partition won't be much slower than logging out/logging on in windoze.
But again, it's the smaller software devs I feel sorry for. Their life just got harder again. Plus, I am going to think really hard, then think again, then think one more time, if I really need that new sampler/synth/fx that I have a hundred of anyway. So I would say that I really would be loathe now to buy something just for the sake of it and have to reimage everything as I go along. Before every new install, a full system clone will be done, then if successful another one after that. It won't take long and it is worth it for the piece of mind, not to mention it's absolutely necessary when messing about with low level system drivers like audio (did I mention multi-client asio hosed my entire system?).
So it's all good. Looking forward to it in fact. Looking forward to the wonderful experience that Linux _can_ be. I'll make it work.
The audio software community is already at saturation point. Only new kids coming up and BUYING new stuff are keeping it going. It's on life support in some quarters. There used to be a culture of crack everything black and blue years ago, but today, kids take pride in buying their software (not all of them I know). The whole cracking scene is all but dead. You still have groups releasing, but they are more sick and tired of the leechers than some of the software devs.
Interesting times. And microshaft just haven't done any one any favours on all of this as this great big computing machine(ry) thing advances into what could have been a rather pleasant middle age - a peak in fact. They culled it just as it was starting to get good. Bought and paid for by the totalitarian state (is it fair to say we are there yet?) don't expect anything good ever to come out of Redmond ever again.
Yup, no favours at all, least to themselves. They can't say they weren't warned can they?
I will only work with Linux from now on. Apart from my frozen DAW.
If you're machine gets messed I'll put linux on it and windows on a vm or something, I don't know. I'm not going to perpetrate their crap an inch longer. I will not use their services, I will not buy their products, I will not have a good word to say about them, and I most certainly won't encourage anyone else to support the enemy, for that is what they are now.
A line has been drawn in the sand.
Linux is good enough and fit for purpose. Windoze is not. Even with all my thousands of pounds worth of software, I can still use it on a machine not connected to the net, so why would I? And 99 pecent of all new software will still let you authorise a machine without an internet connection - a pain yeah - so never mind.
And once that move has been made, there won't be any going back.
This is the death throes of a dying decaying desperate organisation. But what do I know? I'm just a paying (ex) customer.
It's clear MS is getting tough is for pure monetary reasons. Once a threshold numbers of people and businesses are addicted to W10, then the monthly fee starts. And, I bet it won't be cheap either.
Also, MS has charged head first into the Mass Surveillance paradigm and I would guess for every W10 user a certain monetary value can be, or has been, assigned for marketing and selling personal data.
Contracts to world governments alone would likely be multi-billions of any currency you choose.
Sure, you can say "Linux" but will generations raised on windows really try an alternative? Or will they simply keep smiling while the device cam records them24/7 and pay, pay, pay?
OK so New chips wont run older Windows OS or new chip features wont be supported by older Windows OS one or the other the Author don't make this totally clear in the article. one is obviously significantly worse than the other.
SO I believe Microsoft's next move will be within their own products, when they have a critical mass of office 365 subscribers they will make it so Future versions of Office "Boxed" software will no longer be compatible with older Windows OS versions and only Office 365 ES "extended Support" (at a $£ premium) will allow install on older Windows OS versions otherwise its web app versions only for you or There is the Great offer "upgrade your OS at an office 365 subscriber discount only £$ per month" for the upgraded latest version of Windows.
I wonder if its possible to make my own replacement chips, its not that hard if you have enough very advanced technology and in fact existing obsolete chips can act as pin carriers etc if you are careful.
It turns out that grafting a BCM series SoC and breakout board onto an old S1G2 is feasible thanks to more modern Z axis techniques and differential pin probing to make it stable long term by adjusting the SoC to avoid any questionable lines.
Its a bit clunky but only a minor heatsink modification would be needed and the resultant system should reuse 90% of the hardware with the offset made up by selling the old CPU to someone as an upgrade.
Also relevant, hacking S1G2 systems to take an S1G3 CPU and this has also been done successfully.
My job requires me to install operating systems from scratch, then run the updates.
After installing Windows 7 SP1 on a system, you can watch paint dry while the Microsoft borg shovels 216-or-so IMPORTANT updates at you, bloating the space used by just the operating system to over 40GB.
After installing Windows 10 on a system, and turning off all the "Custom Settings" that give Microsoft all the data about you that it wants, the important updates get installed 1-2-3, quick as a bunny. Result is an OS that occupies less than 20GB.
Not too long ago, the Windows 7 update process went pretty quickly. Methinks there is a coincidence here.
"After installing Windows 7 SP1 on a system"
Have you tried this recently (las few months) and had it even update itself reliably?
I've had three or four goes on three or four systems since late last year for various reasons. It's a nightmare to even get the update process to start. Lots of people have the problem, no one (inside or outside MS) seems to have a known good solution. My research says there's an expired certificate (or something like that) in the picture somewhere and consequently Windows Update refuses to exchange meaningful data. It also refuses to produce a meaningful error message (no surprise there though).
All suggestions gratefully received. Current medium term option: abandon Windows, permanently. Haven't yet decided whether Suse is the answer (based on my long term experience) or whether to give the Church of Jobs a try for a while, as many of my non-technical friends, neighbours, and even ex-colleagues have been doing.
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