Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU Windows 11 won't land until nearer the end of the year and when it does users will only get a supported sample of the OS if they have relatively new hardware. Although the latest version of Windows 10 (21H1) will go all the way back to the fifth generation of Intel's chippery, Windows 11 is a good deal more choosy and starts …
I'd wait to see how insistent they really are about it. Windows 10 required TPM 2.0, but only for devices built after 2016. I wouldn't be surprised if they backtrack and only require TPM 1.2 and UEFI 2.3.1.c (which introduced SecureBoot) for older systems. My Haswell processor and Z97 motherboard supports that.
Not sure how you intend to avoid GWXI "KB2952664" this time around, not as though you can switch off updates completely in Windows 10.
Let's not forget the abuse, Microsoft forced that update on folk running Windows 7, at least 8 times.
I still haven't forgotten those endless "Just checking for updates" in Windows 7 either.
With hindsight, it seems pretty clear Microsoft deliberately broke Windows 7 (made it appear broken in terms of receiving updates) to force Windows 10 on users. I think it's pretty clear they'll attempt to do the same with the move to Windows 11.
The amount of landfill crud this will generate (all for Microsoft forcing TPM 2.0/Direct 12 and WDDM 2.0 Graphics cards) is off the scale, makes Amazon's recent monthly landfill revelation look like a drop in the ocean, by comparison.
It's time we all made a stand and jumped off this landfill crud Microsoft sausage factory conveyor belt.
The amount of landfill crud this will generate (all for Microsoft forcing TPM 2.0/Direct 12 and WDDM 2.0 Graphics cards) is off the scale
On the plus side, there will probably be a lot of good deals to be had on recent-model, lightly-used PCs that can run the crap out of Linux.
From the article:
According to Microsoft's documentation, Windows 11 also requires the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) – version 2.0 – and UEFI Secure Boot enabled.Owners of more recent PCs might have to delve into their BIOS settings to flip the required switch. Others wanting the Windows 11 experience could be looking at new hardware.
The rest of us will likely be looking at a new operating system.
"The rest of us will likely be looking at a new operating system."
Some of us already did! :-)
As for the Win11 thing, how much of a problem is it really? If Win10 is in support till 2025, 4 years away, how many PCs or laptops which will be unsupported will still be viable by then? I'm out of touch with modern specs these days, ie I don't take much notice of them. So when did TMP2,0 and the other specs become standard items? This year? 5 years ago? Longer? Real question. How old will the oldest supported computer be when Win11 is the only Windows option? And how many 10 year old computers are running Win10 nowadays?
I have three family desktops, all 10 years old running Windows 10, I have one 13-year-old laptop running Windows 10 and one 9-year-old laptop running Windows 10. There is one newish desktop that is said to be capable of running 11 and one other new touch screen laptop, the user prefers their 10-year-old desktop.
Windows 11 appears to show a desire to reduce the popularity of Windows, the reviews suggest an OS way out of line with many user needs. Reviews suggested it is designed for touch screens, or is it designed not to touch user needs.
I have a 13 year old desktop, 5 n270 CPU'd netbooks a 14 year old Lenovo laptop, a 15 year old HP laptop and a 18 year old Fujitsi laptop all running Windows 10. Not necessarily the latest build. 3 Linx 7 tablets and a W8 nettop box connected to one of the TV's also running Windows 10.
Most though not all at least dual boot if needed. For instance the HP NX6325 keeps trying to update to the latest Windows build and fails. The Antix linux distro on it has no such issues and it runs faster too. Indeed the Atom based netbook runs it faster than the Sempron based HP. The advantage the HP has is a larger screen size than the netbooks without connecting to an external monitor. This message being typed on an almost identical specced desktop that is purely running 2 different builds of Debian. The Windows unit boots faster (It has an SSD installed), programs open faster than the Debian box but the Debian box is far more stable and easy to keep up to date when I want to do it. It is my daily use machine.
I dont need anything newer hardware wise as I'm not a games player and the performance of both desktop systems is perfectly adequate now I am semi or greater retired!
If Windows 11 doesnt support the hardware any more I wont be buying new I will simply retire the existing off from any use online and switch to fully retired mode myself.
Before anyone says Atom based netbooks must be painfully slow using Windows 10, they are. But they work really well connected to a terminal server or even using RDP across the Internet using a vpn and fibre connection. Cheap enough not to worry about taking them anywhere by 2 or 4 wheeled transport or even on a boat.
That's me screwed then. My desktop dates back to 2013. Having said that, I only run Win10 in a VM on this machine anyway, it has always been a Linux box and it's got 32GB RAM in it.
What benefits might I get (running Win11 is not considered a benefit) from an upgrade to a more modern CPU. I don't consider a lighter wallet to be a benefit either. If one is not doing high-end graphics or CAD then why upgrade something that's still working just fine?
>What benefits might I get ... from an upgrade to a more modern CPU
Depends on what your current CPU is - given you say its coupled with 32GB RAM and runs VMs, I suspect it was a mid to high-end CPU and motherboard in its day.
From my recent experience of putting W10 on a load of desktops and laptops dating back to circa 2010, I suggest anyone who is running a 32-bit only system, or a 64-bit system that supports a maximum of 8GB of RAM would benefit from upgrading. However, as we know there is little point in upgrading if the modern CPU doesn't benchmark any better than your old one (and I've come across plenty of these).
The main benefit of a modern CPU is well... my 2008 dual Xeon workstation (16GB RAM) is still very useable, however it suffers from fan/disk noise and generates rather a lot of heat and there is no comparison between it and the silent Ryzen 5 5600x workstation (32GB RAM) my daughter is using for 4K video editing.
This. For day to day, I'm using a 2008 Dell 490: no TPM, no UEFI. With 16GB RAM and an SSD for the system drive, I can open 16 tabs in Chrome at once without it complaining. A lowly Ti550 is fine for the older video games I play. If I were still using Windows, this wouldn't run 11 at all. From what the article said about 21H1, I'm not even sure it'd run later versions of 10. But it works. Fine. Fast.
It's such a shame for those people with perfectly serviceable PCs who aren't tech savvy enough to move away from Windows and are thus forced to spend money on something they don't need in order to get something they do (or will, in 2025).
I eventually got fed up with W10 on my ARKA book (11.6" slow celeron CPU) deciding to update when I opened the lid and being unusable for a period of time and decided to move to Linux. I chose Mint Cinnamon 20.2
It books a fraction quicker, Wine handles the couple of Windows apps I need on the PC but I'm still battling with networking - it will see two of my W7 PCs but not the third. I'm also still struggling with the lift the lid behaviour after hibernate - sometimes it asks for a password, sometimes it doesn't.
A lot of my problems will be sorted by familiarity - I've been using Windows since 3.1 so used to know where things were, and I can still generally track them down in W10. Linux is a whole new ballgame and becoming "tech savvy" is hard work for me. I hate to think what it would be like for the average poor sod of a user out there.
Little example: I wanted to edit an ini file following an example I found on the web. The text editor it showed does not exist in Cinnamon! What do I use? These sorts of questions/problems need sorting.
The daft thing is, plenty of newer systems are pretty screwed as well here. I have an Intel NUC which is under 4 years old. But it runs a 7th gen Kaby Lake CPU, so isn't on the supported list. My main PC is a 1st gen AMD Ryzen system that is only 3.5 years old. It runs everything I need (including modern games as well), but is also not on the supported list.
Thing is with these systems, they're already unsupported by MS for anything less than Windows 10 due to MS blocking updates for 7 and 8.1 on them. What it therefore means is that the *only* supported MS OS on these systems is Windows 10.
Given how much MS were talking up the "green credentials" of Windows 11, this seems like an incredibly short-sighted move on their behalf to block so many perfectly capable and quite recent systems.
I'm a tad miffed. I'm happily working on a 2012 vintage dual Xeon CPU Dell Precision T7500 with 48GB RAM. Works perfectly for my needs. Been using it every day when working from home this last 15 months. No TPM and no UEFI. A massive mistake consigning good quality, perfectly serviceable kit to landfill by Microsoft.
Hopefully they'll back down on these requirements before the final release.
The hell will start a year or two after W11 becomes the only available OS on new machines. Documents created on W11 will start to show poorly on W10. Compatibility will drop and the only available solution will be to buy a modern computer with W11 bundled into the price.
That list is too long to put into a single post on El Reg. Hell, even a DDG list of just the header result links for that search would cause the vulture servers to shit themselves. You're asking for a list that spans *generations* at this point. You might want to narrow the search criteria to whittle down the results to something you can consume in a single lifetime...
"We failed to notice the short supply of chips available when we decided the minimum requirements for Windows 11. While our users are delighted to run our newly regurgitated user interface, they are painfully disappointed because the hardware industry cannot keep up."
Yes, the 3570 is 3rd gen (the "3" in the model number).
For those who don't know, ark.intel.com is a great decoder for the sometimes-cryptic model numbering of Intel's CPUs (and lists all other products too). Just type the model number into the site's search box and get all the specs.
my main Windows desktop has an i5-3570. That's 3rd gen, I think. It works with Win 10.device. I also have a GT 710 video card. Needless to say, I don't play Call of Duty or Crisis on this machine.
I have the same CPU, I upgraded the GPU to a GTX2060 when Corona kicked off (in case I needed to spend a lot of time indoors) and it's good for games like Far Cry 5.
The only time I wish it was more powerful is when I run Lightroom. If I could actually buy an AMD Ryzen 9 I'd probably upgrade though.
Yes I get the Rzyen 9 3900X scores a passmark 32,894, but even the more modest Rzyen CPU's offer a significant performance uplift:
i5-3570 with DDR3 1333/1600 passmark 4,878
Ryzen 5 5600x with X570 chipset and DDR4 3200 passmark 22,181
I don't know about Lightbox, but for 4K video editing, DaVinci utilises the video card, thus careful video card selection paired with a motherboard/CPU that has good PCIE performance can make big difference (as does sensible use of multiple SSD's).
The main prob with an RTX2060 is that it costs almost as much, by itself, as my entire system cost, case, power supply, mobo, CPU, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, _and_ the GT-710. I literally spent $100 on the GT-710, though I probably could have found it cheaper if I'd tried. The rest of the system was about $600. (I got the OS for free. MS Dreamspark, now Imagine.) RTX-2060s start at $590 and head upwards real fast.
I must be imagining the fact that I have 21H1 installed on two 3rd gen and one 4th gen Intel chipped devices then.
I have it running on an i5-2500K in a 9-year old desktop.
Perfectly fine (as far as Windows is ever "fine").
Was creaking 2 years ago, but replacing the HDD with an SSD fixed that.
Under Win10 you can run the System Information app, which will show the CPU model number. As others have noted, with the i-whatever Intel processors, the first digit or two after the hyphen says what generation it is.
So e.g. an i5-7200U is 7th gen, and an i7-1065G7 is 10th gen. (Yes, this scheme appears to be ambiguous if you have a 1st-generation i-whatever CPU, but presumably you can make a good guess about first versus tenth or eleventh based on the age of the system and its performance.)
They do. After all... they have graciously allowed you to run their little baby on your system. Isn't it a fair return for them to get ownership of the hardware in return?
Yes, I'm being cynical. MS is shite and is increasingly getting more turd like with every passing day.
Really?
How f'in stupid can they get?
They're meant to entice more users, not kick out and exclude a majority. Someone needs their heads looking at.
Encourage a mass ditching of either perfectly capable hardware OR a perfectly incapable new os. Either way, it's a dumb strategy.
And I'm a long term reasonably happy user of Windows ten.
Given over Microsoft, such draconian nonsense hasn't worked well before, why try it now?
Business might be willing to buy the hardware to run windows11 because they can claim the cost back with the result that all the other clueless business run agencies will also buy in.
What this means for home users is an intersting question, is the market still willing to follow whatever M$ say is the way forward or will they just ignore them and make linux the only standard for home computing use?
I can see where M$ are going with this, the exposure of all the intel security fails over the past few years have left the windows PC untrusted, if M$ can force everyone to give them control of what is accepted as "safe and secure" software then M$ and the other interested agencies can retain control/oversight of the business computing market and force through more biometric privacy invasion as a feature.
Remember MS want to be Apple...
In some ways this move can be seen to be yet another cack-handed attempt to ape Apple - Apple don't support ancient stuff.
We shouldn't forget that W10 isn't free, the OEMs pay MS so they can install it on their new systems; whilst the OEMs through their volume agreements bundle Windows they and users will be less likely to promote alternatives...
Additionally, most businesses (where MS make their money) will - in the main- be running more recent desktops and laptops.
Apple don't just not support ancient stuff, they now go out their way to trash it, as can be seen by the how they have trashed macOS Update Page for High Sierra and below (Sierra, El Capitan etc), leaving it was a basic font, and left formatting, by removing the server side CSS pre-rendering of the web page, or should I say now garbled web page, clearly done purposely to emphasise what 'unsupported' means.
The effect of this, it to leave Apple customers vunerable to both telephone scammers and underhand mac repair centres where these machines are brought in for repair because they look like they are infected by a virus, and in a way they are infected with a virus, an Apple virus.
Apple, a company that fails to support it's hardware on that version (High Sierra and below) of the OS longer than 3 years.
It's unacceptable by any software company, but here, Apple are trying to be fair too clever for their own good. I've no faith in Tim Cook putting this right either.
There are two ends of that sword...
A 2017 macbook bought in September 2018, that came pre-installed High Sierra has the garbled update page, go figure that one.
People have valid reasons not to update the OS to Big Sur, it should be "a choice" not a bloody requirement. Apple are trashing the macos update page of three year old machines, clearly in breach of UK trading standard laws and probably French law too.
Good news for High Sierra/Sierra/El Capitan users, this has finally been fixed.
The amount work it has taken to get this put right though, the issue began on 05/04/21 (what should have been a simple CSS server fix for Apple), this has taken months to resolve. It should have taken a day at most.
People might not realise this, but there are pertinent issues here relating to those who are registered blind (with some vision loss) and others with disabilities (and relating Law), Apple should have responded much quicker.
Apple really need to learn from this.
Thanks too, to the high profile orgnaisations that I've contacted to put pressure on Apple over this.
Natonal Cyber Security Centre.
UK Trading Standards
UK Competition and Markets Authority
Pressure came from multiple angles so it's difficult to know what worked best. It was too easy to let this one slip, but it had profound consequences if you allow server side rendering to be just 'switched off' as soon as a device is classed 'unsupported' by mulit-nationals like Apple. Here it was just 3 years of 'server side' support, on a Apple device sold in 2018.
I drove my tractor through your haystack last night (ooh aah ooh aah)
I threw me pitchfork at your dog to keep quiet (ooh aah ooh aah)
Now something's telling me
That you'm avoiding me
Come on now darling you've got something I need
Cuz I got a brand M$ 'operating system'
An' I'll give you the key
The company I work for has a refresh cycle on hardware running at around 7 to 10 years now as the hardware is so much more reliable than 20 to 30 years ago. So Microsoft's deciding to obsolete so much good gear is madness and morally bankrupt.
I guess if M$ were to continue to support and fix Windows 10 for another 6 or 7 years then the win11 limitation won't be a such a problem (I hate the updates anyway, always moving shit around).
My dev machine here is a Lenovo Thinkpad W530 and it's a solid piece of kit and I absolutely love it.
I don't think my company is looking to change this out soon which is fair enough. It's super reliable and still able to run multiple VMs and such.
With a 1TB SSD and 32GB upgrades it's still a beast.
I run Linux Mint on the bare metal but I run Windows server 2016 in VMs for development.
In wonder how long it will be before running an up-to-date server Windows becomes impossible on this kit.
I am waiting for Windows infinity+1 because all the versions of windows released by Microsoft are the same old crap that never works or ever gets fixed.
The last because Microsoft realised that fixing stuff after you already have the sucker's money is stupid, instead you make them pay for a "new" "fixed" version with it's very own new design fails and repeat ad infinitum.
You would have thought that people would have noticed but there you go, one born every minute
It does seem a little odd that you'll need a modern GFX card just to run the OS. Any GFX card the manufacturer is prepared to create a driver for should be good enough just to run the OS GUI.
On the Other hand, MS are pushing gaming and XBox stuff as "part of the OS". I wonder how long it will take for governments and/or the legal system to pounce on MS for including their own stuff in the OS and shutting out competitors like with the "browser choice" shenanigans? (Not holding my breath)
I have an E3-1535v6 Kaby Lake and the MS tool said I was not compatible, regardless of the fact that I also have TPM 2.0, UEFI, 64GB RAM, and a 6GB Quadro P4000.
I wished to give Win11 a tryout on the tertiary SSD but no, even with all that supporting hardware MS has decided that my rig isn't good enough.
I await the option that MS has mentioned the possibility of greater CPU support in the future.
This is ultimately great for us. All those people and companies chucking out perfectly good computers just to run the next update of Windows.
I haven't had to buy a new PC for over 10 years. And what is best is ~5 years old is the sweet spot for open-source operating systems. And this is exactly what we will get :)
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Heh. The mobo on my main Windows machine is also an Asus... an Asus P8B75-M. A super board it ain't. It has an i5-3570 on it, and a GT-710 video card. It was never intended to be a gamer box, just to give adequate speed at an acceptable price while doing simple tasks; it's done so for nearly a decade. Thebox it replaced had had a Pentium 4 CPU, and had lasted from 2005. Indeed, the Pentium box remained my secondary box for another five years, until it had a loss of magic smoke incident involving a power failure and a UPS which picked the wrong time to die. I see no reason to scrap working equipment just because MS goes nuts.
The possibility exists that I'll be getting a new box Real Soon Now. However, given MS's antics, the probability is high that the next box will be a Mac of some type, probably with an Apple Mx chip... and it seems that MS has gone way out of their way to make it difficult for Win 11 to run on Apple chips. Seems as though a machine running Win 11 won't be showing up at home until next year. Or maybe the year after that. Or maybe even later than that.
Good work, there, MS. You've made a sale for Apple. Maybe two. Congrats.
Future Statement from MS (made up by me)
We will (graciously) allow older systems to run W11 but it will be a degraded system. You can run it for an hour but you will then have to switch it off (As in power down) for two hours before it will boot again.
You can opt to restore the performance by enrolling in our new subscription service. For the princely sum of £9.99 (in vat) per month, you will be able to revert to similar performance levels that you had with Windows 10. Press Enrol to proceed. {Amex and PayPal not accepted}
IK would not put it past MS Marketing to try something like that.
I'm a total geek both at work and home, and upgraded last year to an i7-6700k, on a desktop running a GTX-1660 and five monitors. It's more than fast enough for everything I do, including gaming, work, and coding.
But that's a G6 8-core 4Ghz processor, and apparently won't cope with Windows 11.
Really Microsoft? Because trust me, I have the most up to date computer of anybody in my family. If windows 11 isn't supported on this, it isn't supported on either of my parents computers, nor my sister's, my daughter's, or my wife's. There's not a single person in my immediate family I can think of who would be running a "supported" CPU. And there's not a single one of them who needs an upgrade in the first place. Heck, both my parents upgraded to computers capable of running Windows 10 in 2020, so they could use zoom, and they tend to upgrade roughly once every 5-10 years.
Is this just an attempt to appease PC manufacturers and generate more hardware sales? Because it looks to me like W11 is a total miss for the home market.
No, it doesn't. The pre-release version that just has been made available requires TPM 2.0 but Microsoft has been clear in that the final version of Windows 11 will only need a TPM 1.2, which is available in systems much older than the ones listed in the article. TPM 2.0 is only recommended (and many TPM 1.2 modules can be software-upgraded to TPM 2.0 anyways).
The same is true for the supported processors. If you're still running an early Core i processor or E3/E5 XEON then you'll be fine. All the systems mentioned in the article are only on the recommended list (Windows 11 will run on any 64bit x64 processor with at least 2 cores and 1GHz, and with a minimum of 4GB RAM).
What got the axe with Windows 11 is the 32bit version (of course, the 64bit version will still run 32bit code so no change there).
This is a big nothing-burger, really, and a sloppily researched article that's below what I'd expect from El Reg.
I expect there is a big difference between what your PC Health Check says and what Windows 11 will say when it finally turns up.
Just as... there is a big difference between what the article says (5th gen) and what the linked MS article says. I'm running the latest Win10 on a Sandy Bridge era Xeon, so old that it almost pre-dates Intel's current nth-gen labelling scheme, but it is OK as far as Microsoft's list goes.
Would there be a Microsoft Web page that spells out this new information that you have found for us?
If so, a link would be useful. The places I work in have only just made it to Windows 10 and that is on basic low spec hardware.
There is a link. It's near the top of the article, 6th paragraph - Windows Processor Requirements.
It tells you what processors are supported, and the hardware requirements (as a downloadable PDF).
Thanks. Quote below from the Windows 11 Minimum Hardware Requirements June 2021 pdf section 3 security.
"3.6.1Trusted Platform Module (TPM)All device models, lines or series must implement and be in compliance with the International Standard ISO/IEC 11889:2015 or the Trusted Computing Group TPM 2.0 Library and a component which implements the TPM 2.0 must be present and enabled by default."
The post above my question states that Windows 11 will run on TPM 1.2 devices and that TPM 2.0 is 'recommended'. Where do I find a Microsoft source for that assertion that Windows 11 can be installed on a machine with TPM 1.2?
There's this:
https://twitter.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1408471426122670086?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1408471426122670086%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmsft.com%2Fnews%2Fmicrosoft-clarifies-its-windows-11-requirements-to-make-modern-processors-and-tpm-2-0-mandatory
However, that was yesterday, and today is a new day, and in a fashion that has been so typical for Microsoft under Satya Nadella it didn't take long for Microsoft to make a public 360:
https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-its-windows-11-requirements-to-make-modern-processors-and-tpm-2-0-mandatory
*holding breath waiting for the next MS guy to come out and post another statement contradicting everything else*
So here we are, with a new product being introduced of which no-one (not even the manufacturer, apparently) really knows what system specs it actually requires.
@smirnov: I'm not going to suggest that a public sector organisation with 300+ end point machines (just recently updated to Win10) base their future policy on a twitter post.
We will just need to wait and see what happens in a couple or three years. For now, given your second reference and the documentation that [He That We Must Not Name] kindly posted above, I have to assume that a hardware refresh will be needed when Win10 becomes EOL.
I don't think that this policy is going to be especially popular.
I haven't found the answer as to whether the TPM module needs to be made by your board manufacturer and also have chipset compatibility. From looking at various modules for sale I can only find a Gigabyte TPM2 that is 400 chipset compatible. That's a further issue.
You have a problem then. Microsoft is responsible for deciding what works and decided to implement a handy tool for telling people whether their machine qualifies, well handy as long as it does. If it doesn't qualify, it's a little less useful as the tool doesn't say what is lacking. That tool has been rejecting old processors and TPM 1.2 chips since it came out.
What are people supposed to believe? The tool released by the Windows 11 people to tell you whether you can run Windows 11 and for no other reason is just wrong a lot? The page that says TPM 2.0 is required is wrong too? The page that lists processors backed up by a tool which rejects those not on the list is also wrong? And the right answers are where, exactly?
I think Microsoft will change their pages at some point, but not because some crazy person filled them with wrong answers. I predict that they'll do that to avoid annoying people who buy lots of Windows licenses.
a nice story to the 'green' lobby about saying "windows 11 wont run on an earlier than 2017 pc resulting in a huge amount of e.waste being generated as companies/people are forced to upgrade"
Should get them frothing at the mouth, making lots of noise and having m$ change the specs to keep them quiet.
Then again my spare/network storage box from 2011 running an I7-2600 with 8gig of ram struggles to run windows 10 (Linux mint 20 runs like a dream) so theres no chance win 11 will run on it.... even if I wanted to
Zen+ Or 7th gen core required? Very obvious the wintel consortium is doing its worst to create eWaste and generate sales.
Not to worry, I’m not the target market for windows anymore. My 6700K never went past win7 for the better, and the only copy of windows that’s booted on my 3800xt to date is server 2019, rarely.
All a bit rubbish really. This is not the difference between a 286 and 486 where there was an obvious performance barrier to windows 95 it.
While my 2015-era desktop system could be coaxed into running Win11 (possibly...) by the addition of a TPM (14-1) module - all of which are sold out for the foreseeable future - I am still not feeling the love here.
I use Windows 10 on my (2019-era) laptop and will likely upgrade it to Win11 just because Win10 is so terrible, but for my desktop PC I'm not really seeing the point. To go from the last Windows OS that is literally just an OS and not a way for MSFT to experiment with useless features and sell its online services, to something which is actively user-hostile is not an attractive proposition.
Perhaps ironically, I was one of the Win2k holdouts when XP had been out for a while already and only jumped in around SP2 or so. XP to Win7 was a bit rough in some ways, but everything I didn't like there (new start menu mostly) was fixable.
Yet after using Win10 on my new (SSD-equipped, tricked out) laptop for a few years now, I won't be touching that with a barge pole on my desktop system, and it doesn't seem like Win11 is going to change that equation. Is Windows 7 the last of the 'just an OS' from the MSFT stables? That'd be somewhat tragic.
My current laptop is a Lenovo Laptop, about 9 months old, with a 4800U CPU.
I can probably get windows 11 running on this. Not sure if I will want to, considering they didnt mention privacy at all during the reveal event.
Good thing I waited getting a Ryzen 5000 series CPU based desktop over the pass few months (due to lack of availability of GPU / CPU and high prices).
Figure getting a new desktop early / mid next year would be better now, with full support for Windows 11, next gen of CPU / GPU available, togther with possibly USB 4, DDR5, PCIE 5, DisplayPort 2.0 etc coming up. And hopefully supply will be better. I can probably afford to wait till end next year if necessary.
Of course I may still not get Windows 11 with it. It all depends on what the next OS is actually like, privacywise.
Still have a single partition on my laptop giving sanctuary to win 7 to run VCDS for the VAG vehicles in our household. It only connects to the not for occasional updates from Ross-Tech, beyond that there are a couple of macs, while Linux has featured large in this house for around 15 years, Mint is now, mature and useable enough to put on my sisters desktop, with Firefox and Thunderbird being the same as she’s used to, I can’t see a need for her to buy new kit just to keep up with Redmonds demands.
We are lucky, Windows just doesn’t feature in our use any more
If Microsoft wanted to take a lesson from their venture into phone oses, I'd have thought it would be that you can't leverage market share through forced upgrades if your market share is declining, and perfectly good, not to say, superior, alternatives exist.
Once upon a time, the world was a place where a new version of Windows was an industry defining moment, because there was no real alternative.
Now, people don't need desktops as much as they did, and all other domestic computer types are well served by alternatives to Windows. Maybe this is why Microsoft are giving such a long time to eol W10, to see what happens with W11, especially as what it has to offer is so ho-hum.
And as for the idea that different parts of Microsoft don't talk to each other, that's surely a given
Annoying. I have a 2012 setup with an Intel i7 2600K, 16GB RAM, a Z77 mobo which can take a TPM 1.2 and has EUFI/secure boot. I've added enterprise SSDs and a 1070GTX to it over the years and it runs very well for gaming and the other bits and pieces I do with it. Due to my CPU not being supported and a lack of TPM I have to chuck my CPU, mobo and RAM away come 2025 (windows 10 eol date) - even if they still work very well. Sucks a bit, that's for sure.
And, yes, I have run the windows 11 checker which says: CPU Baaaaaaaaad!
Annoying, but understandable. Haswell (4th-gen) introduced AVX2 and a VEX coding scheme that was useful enough and orthogonal enough that compilers can actually target it. I expect MS want to use that in Win11.
And yes they could make two builds of /everything/, but then you have to test the "old" build, on a range of representative old hardware, purely for the benefit of processors that (by 2025) are 10 years older than the OS.
Windows 10 required SSE2, which came in about 10-12 years before Win10, and not many people complained about that. A change of compiler switches would have "fixed" the problem, but made the OS run slower for everyone else. When is an OS vendor allowed to finally start depending on last decade's technology?
Gosh, and here I was thinking that an operating system shouldn't need fucking vector instructions to be useful.
Microsoft really seem determined to burn off any remaining goodwill they might have accrued.
For work, IT will supply me with a machine using whatever version of Windows is current, however vile it might be. Whatever. I'll beat it into something tolerable.
For home, I'll switch to Linux as the host OS. In the past I'd left Windows as the host because I needed it for some things (TurboTax, mostly) and I didn't feel like taking the time to reinstall and license it under a VM, so I ran Linux in VMs instead. But clearly that's no longer going to be tolerable. I'll put Win10 in a VM to run TurboTax and anything else I can't easily run under Linux, and when TurboTax no longer supports Win10 I'll ... do something else. Start using an accountant for my taxes, maybe.
As mentioned above Win10 EOL 2025, so plenty of time to wait until forced to upgrade hardware or install Linux or move to Mac.
Hopefully mobo & PC manufacturers will soon be pumping out hardware with TPM built in, since a requirement.
On the other hand, if there's enough backlash from end users, maybe M$ will back track on mandatory vs recommended specs.
Maybe I’m overthinking this but the current hardware drought will end soon but are we going to see people start delaying upgrades and replacement because they want to minimise the risk of compatibility issues?
I get MS covering their backs with hardware from around 2018/2019 being more likely to be compatible - it ties in with the idea of corporate refresh every 3 or 5 years but if organisations decide to wait another year or two to sweat their assets so that ensure compatibility this surely could cause a drop in hardware sales. MS driving a hardware boom/bust cycle. I’m probably wrong and I really hope I am.
MS will change their tune once they take the time to figure out how many people outside the U.S. survive on older computers because they can't afford newer ones. MS wants to be a world wide "service provider". This proclamation is the equivalent of cutting off 1/3-2/3 of the world's computer user base from accessing MS services. In the end the hardware tech boys at MS are there to serve the needs of MS customer service requirements. In a head to head fight, MS customer service will prevail because that's where the revenue comes from.
Realized a long time ago that Microsoft was corrupt. I use Linux for most of my operations and have Windows 10 for gaming only. I would never trust Microsoft to provide me with a stable and secure environment for my work. I have a one year old machine with an i9 CPU and 64 gigs of fast ram. Yet because of no TPM (thanks Asus!) my machine cannot run Windows 11. Read up about TPM to see what I was missing. It's just one more industry con job to take more control of our computers. So when the time comes, I'll flush Windows out of the system and buy a game console (not an Xbox).
But here's the thing. We don't need to go through any of this. This is an opportunity for all of us to reassess and make better choices. Without our willing participation Microsoft and other corrupt companies wouldn't be able to survive. So turn your backs on them. Don't buy the garbage they hand out to us in pretty wrappers.The future belongs to us, if we're willing to fight for it.
Regarding 'planned obsolescence', this deprecation of relatively new hardware by not supporting it in software is a thing Apple have been doing for a long time. APIs are first marked as 'not supported in the future' and then completely removed some OS-cycles later.
On any expensive production system for video or audio for example, this necessitates you to buy in to an as complete system as possible on day one, and at some later point only allowing internet connections for updates and monthly online verification, mostly thanks to Adobe.
Once you have a fast 4K HD video system, or a 96 kHz 24bit audio system, with loads of expensive plugins and matching hardware, and an established workflow, there is very little incentive to write off your investment. It's all become pretty good, and has been for some years.
Hardware and software companies of course would beg to differ.
Oh, wow, everybody panic! People with machines with older chippery (older than 4 years, apparently) will be "forced" to stick with Windows 10.
What makes you think I want to pony up a DIME for the latest upgrade churn from Microsquishy? And from everything I've read, this is a very squishy upgrade indeed - it is hard to squeeze out anything from it that makes it worth your while unless you have no Android device already.
Oh, woe. I can't emulate a RISC processor at 1/4 the speed my mid-grade phone runs. *LOLOLOLOLOL*
Remember when people refused to upgrade from earlier releases of Windows? There are many people who are not willing to just fling mo' money, mo' money, mo'money for no bang to Microsoft.
The only machine I own that gives me upgrade permission is a lightweight i5 machine.
My i7 laptop, and worst of all, twin xeon workstation are not deemed worthy.
I don't feel any urge to upgrade perfectly functional equipment. We're supposed to be thinking of the planet, not covering it with discarded 5 year old IT equipment.
I see fuck all signs that there is a grown up alternative. Desktop Linux - like nuclear fusion - has been around the corner for years. And yet everytime I check it seems less and less useful for enterprise level deployments.
Don't get me wrong - I am writing this on my trusted Mint Machine which has only had Linux on it since new. But I'm a tech nerd, and this is home. I'd never consider trying to deploy it at work. And we only have c. 200 machines.
So, yes M$ are bastards. But only because they can be.
Anyway, the future is much more browser based cloudy integrated apps. O365 happens to work perfectly on my Mint Machine too.
Really, If the PC's new enough to have TPM 2, it should be new enough to run W11 - the CPU is an irrelevance surely? Or is there some nasty in the land of Intel which means TPM 2.0 doesn't work probably with older CPUs (rarely tested in practice I suspect)
I'm frustrated, as my kids have HP X360 Pavillions from 2017 - TPM 2.0, hits the ram, disk etc parameters - so good - but Gen 7 CPUs. In the scheme of things W10 is fine for them, but I prefer to have the whole family on the same OS as support becomes a pain as MS (and Apple, etc) insist on moving stuff around in the UI and it's annoying!
Personally, I'm with those expecting MS to roll back a bit on the CPU!
I'm seriously cringing reading all the comments here from people on old hardware. If you're a serious PC gamer you should be upgrading every 4 years max anyway. 4 years from now is 2025 when support for Windows 10 ends. If you only play old games then you don't need Windows 11 anyway, or you could switch to Linux. For people that want to continue to play the latest AAA games, either stop complaining and upgrade or get a console. The complaining is absolutely pathetic. My PC is less than two years old and is fully compatible with Windows 11, because I do want to play the latest AAA games.
Upgrading GPU every 4 years? Yes. CPU? i7-6700K has been good for 5 years and will be good for probably 5 more apart from enforced software obsolescence.
Reference? The CPU in the latest Xbox and PlayStation is ancient history by PC standards and significantly worse than the 6700K.
Really, unless you need the compute capability; single core clock is king for games.
So many Register users are grumbling about Win10 having a proposed support end-date of 2025 I'm assuming they spend most of their time dressed in tie-dye shirts and flares in front of a coal-fire watching their VCR on CRT televisions and are worrying about whether they'll still be able to buy petrol for their Trabant in 10 years time. I'm surprised they have the time to use their dial-up modem and AOL disk to connect to the information superhighway. Anyway if any of you know how I can get tapes for my Betamax, just grab your trusty Nokia 5110 and give me a call.
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Microsoft is standing on a pedestal with a rope around it's neck which was fashioned by is own hand.
In their mind's Intel and Microsoft are going to make a bundle of money. Excluding old hardware and processor they don't like this a sure fire thing.
Obviously not a student of Murphy's law.
Think about all of the current Windows users with current equipment that will have to purchase TPM modules for 'secure' computing or new motherboards and processors. In addition, all Windows machines will have to re-format their system drives to GPT drive format to support Windows 11. Not to mention the time and investment needed to roll a fleet of corporate PCs over to Windows 11. Another HORRIBLE choice Microsoft. I guess you haven't learned from Windows Vista and have forgotten what failure is like.
I'm Independent Advisor not Microsoft employee or support person. I have deep enough Windows knowledge and you may trust me. It's a pleasure for me to help others and I'll do all my best to help you.
Please check ASRock support site for BIOS updates.
Turn off XMP mode in BIOS if it is turned on.
And please check your RAM modes (voltage, frequency, timings) are in compliance with motherboard compatibility list (QVL).
Check system journal (Event Viewer) for possible errors at these moments, especially Kernel-Power errors. DistributedCOM errors should be ignored.
Or save system journal to evtx file and share it to OneDrive for analysis.
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