back to article Microsoft does and doesn't want you to know it won't stop you manually installing Windows 11 on older PCs

Microsoft doesn't want to say it publicly but it will not stop you manually installing Windows 11 on older or otherwise incompatible PCs. The Redmond giant is under fire for the stringent hardware requirements of its upcoming operating system, due to be formally released by the end of the year. To be officially supported by …

  1. emfiliane

    I'm not surprised

    They've done the same thing with every version since Vista to push new hardware and panic adoption. Publish absolute requirements, and for Windows 10 an immutable deadline... but also just ignore that if you go ahead and try anyway, as long as it meets whatever bare minimums it was compiled for (like SSE2 capable or whatever).

    I've met so many people who think you can't still upgrade Win7 to Win10, despite the fact that they never actually took the ability away, they just told people it would end on that date to drive panic adoption.

    1. Yes Me Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: I'm not surprised

      > people who think you can't still upgrade Win7 to Win10

      Lucky people. I found 7 much better. Everything I've read about 11 sounds bad, so I'm delighted that my machine won't be officially upgradable.

  2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Works for me

    I upgraded my anemic Dell XPS, and Windows 11 runs as snappily as 10 did. Compared with upgrading, say, Linux Mint across major versions, it was a very straightforward experience.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Works for me

      When you say upgraded do you mean an traditional upgrade from Windows 10 or a clean install using an ISO ?

      There are 20 XPS in a cupboard at work and I would like to see W11 running natively on older hardware.

      Cheers

      1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

        Re: Works for me

        Someone on the /r/Dell subreddit got it running on a 14-year-old Precision M4300:

        https://old.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/pcf6yj/14_year_old_precision_m4300_laptop_upgraded_to/

      2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge

        Re: Works for me

        I mean upgraded from Win10.

      3. Kev99 Silver badge

        Re: Works for me

        Use the media creation tool and go for it. That what I did.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Works for me

        If you've got 20 old laptops in a cupboard where you work that are older than the minimum specs for Windows 11 then you sir either have no bargaining power for budget or you work for a cheap ass business that either doesn't know how to write off expense or is siphoning money off somewhere else and no investing in the business. Move on. Tell your boss to go and fuck himself before they go bust.

        8th gen has been around for almost 5 years at this point, if your business kit is older than 8th gen it's time for an upgrade...you can't even get decent insurance on kit that old...at least nothing that would cover the cost of a replacement.

        I don't feel sorry at all for any businesses that might be caught out by this...I only feel sorry for consumers. They're the ones that can't write off their capital expenditure against tax. It's in their interests to do so.

        It's quite common for consumers and home users to run second hand laptops and hand me downs from enterprise, especially right now while components are hard to find and expensive. That is what MS is killing here. They're going to make it harder for anyone to have usable tech.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Works for me

          Ya know, not all of us work for services companies in shiny, sterile glass buildings with cafeterias on the ground floor and a well-lit parking garage underneath. Some of us work for dirty, smelly companies that Make Shit That People Actually Buy. And, I have to say, in our case at least, the computers are there to "help" manufacture The Shit We Sell. The computers are just a tool, and not even the primary tool - they aren't integral to the flow of product through the plant. We can stamp rubber whatsits all day, with or without the "office" computers that might or might not be "officially supported" to run Windows 11.

          So please, take your self-righteous snobbery elsewhere. You aren't speaking for all of us, and probably aren't speaking for most of us.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Works for me

            Neither do I. I'm a freelance guy. The guy that gets called in when the shrinking violet in house guy has just been fired for not stepping up often enough.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Works for me

          "8th gen has been around for almost 5 years at this point, if your business kit is older than 8th gen it's time for an upgrade...you can't even get decent insurance on kit that old...at least nothing that would cover the cost of a replacement."

          This is not granted in my company and it's a multi billion revenue one.

          Up to 2018, I was working an a 2009 shit recycled laptop, the battery lasted 15 mins, forcing me the embarrassment of going to customer meetings with all sorts of cabling stuff ! Ah yes, it had a whoppy 4 GB RAM, forcing the OS to swap permanently, and no, no SSD, just plain 5400 RPM HD. Fun fun.

          Also, why would I update my Haswell gaming rig which is doing totally fine with current AAA games ? Since Intel performance has been minimal across the last Intel gens, why would I scrap mobo/CPU/RAM just for win11 ? Makes no sense.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Works for me

            More PCIe lanes and bandwidth.

            I went from an i7-6700k to a Ryzen 5800x and the bump in performance with my RTX 2080 was profound. Even with the same DDR4 RAM.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Works for me

            Nobody is making you. Windows 10 support doesn't end until 2025.

            So the simple answer is, you don't upgrade to Windows 11.

            So if you have older kit, just install Windows 11 when you upgrade.

        3. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: Works for me

          Could you please explain just what is so good about newer laptops (apart from battery life). I'm retired now so my use case is different but I still write software, still surf the web, still send emails - all on a gen4 i7 laptop.

          1. redpawn

            Re: Works for me

            You can run more bloatware with the newer machines. That will be forced as there is no other reason to have such high specs unless Redmond wants to use quite a few clock cycles for their own purposes.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Works for me

            A warranty for a start.

            For casual use, probably not a lot. I'm not arguing for casuals here, I totally understand why a retiree and/or casual home user might have older kit...but in a business setting having something that old is shocking.

            For business use where laptops get hammered it's not just about the speed. It's also about security, reliability, the physical appearance of the kit (you're expected to look smart for work, why would you be expected to wear a clean smart suit but rock up to a client with a scuffed battered laptop begging for a power socket??).

            If you're the kind of employee that has to visit a lot of client sites and your travel expenses are covered, what's £1000 for a new laptop every two years in the grand scheme of things? It's bugger all. Especially if you also get a company car...how many people would happily drive around in an 8 year old company car?? Compa y cars get rotated in 2-3 year leases.

            Laptops do wear out and become tatty over time. It's not just the battery etc either. The screens can suffer wear and tear on laptop, hi he's start to break, touch pads stop working, USB sockets and network sockets get damaged.

            Also, most former corporate laptops don't always go to landfill they hit the second hand market these days...

            Finally...newer kit is important to us as IT guys because when an employee rocks up somewhere with a shitty laptop that doesn't work properly because it's fucked it's not the beancounters that refused the upgrade that have to shoulder the bullshit fall out...it's the IT guys.

            Employee: Sorry it's taking a while to boot, is there a power socket around here? IT problems...tsk am I right?

            Client: Yeah our IT guy is cheap too.

            In the sysadmin contracts I have, I specifically state in one of the clauses that any hardware support on kit over 4 years old is best effort only.

            Usually if I advise that an old laptop needs replacing at a client and I adequately explain / demonstrate why...it usually is replaced. It's my job to do this, it's why IT guys are hired in the first place. The CEO has no idea when to replace kit, beancounters don't.

            A lot of in house IT guys I've met over the decades are afraid to ask for money for reasons I can't fathom. As if confronting your boss about inadequate spending is some sort of crime against humanity.

            If you don't step up at confront them then come the time you're sat in his office being asked to explain why things have gone to shit, you have no ammo.

            There's two scenarios...

            1.

            CEO: So why is everything falling apart?

            You: Well we really need new kit, I've been doing my best to hold the old kit together for as long as I can to avoid spending money, but I just can't keep up anymore.

            CEO: Why did you not point this out sooner?

            You: Because I didnt think I'd get the budget. It's also really expensive and I was trying to save you money.

            Or...

            2.

            CEO: So why is everything falling apart?

            You: Well, as you know from my regular emails, I've been trying to get budget to replace faulty kit for 6 months. I've printed the emails out for your reference...here. Further to those emails, I'd like suggest allocating more budget to solving the problem on a recurring basis and a review of all the kit on a quarterly basis. The problem is we aren't allocating budget when it's required. Either because you aren't greenlighting it or the finance guys are vetoing it. I've been very clear for some time that this problem was going to happen. As you can see in the emails I suggested a course of action 6 months ago, I priced it up and it worked out roughly equal to the annual cost of one company car to upgrade a whole department.

            First example, you look like a moron. Second example you are in control and responsibility is laid bare. If you've followed the right path it stops being a "fucking IT problem" and becomes a senior decision makers problem...senior folks don't like shit on their doorstep that can demonstrably be linked to them. You'll get your budget.

        4. Piro Silver badge

          Re: Works for me

          I see what you're trying to say, but that's not the real world. I know some people would be happy to even to run Core 2, but I think they're a bit on the old side, I personally would say Sandy Bridge (2nd gen, as Intel calls it) quads and newer are perfectly acceptable for day to day use

          1. JohnHMorris

            Re: Works for me

            We are running some Sandy Bridge Dell Optiplexen with up-to-date W10 quite nicely.

    2. elaar

      Re: Works for me

      I don't know a great deal about this so apologies if I have this wrong, but doesn't the current insider edition ignore things like TPM2\secure boot and others, whilst the proper release won't? In which case it's a lot easier to install on older machines using this version but not so in the future?

  3. Lorribot

    At least Microsoft's hardware requirements are not as arduous or as expensive as Apple's.

  4. DS999 Silver badge

    Good news!

    Because if I ever have an upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, I'd damn sure be doing a clean install anyway and not trusting Windows Update.

    1. Ken G Silver badge

      Re: Good news!

      I ran it as an update and it was a painless and seamless process (on a personal Thinkpad L450, I think 5th Gen i5)

  5. Dave K

    Crashes?

    52% higher crashes sounds bad.

    But then you realise that this takes it from 99.8% to no worse than 99.6%. Hardly an issue really, and most of it boils down to "older computers have more reliability issues", rather than any specific defect in the silicon.

    Typical MS putting a stupid spin on it to try and justify a daft restriction...

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Crashes?

      The stock market graphs pull the same shenanigans. A week ago my wife and I were checking out a stock price and, when the page showed the graph, my wife said "Oh my goodness, it's tanking !".

      I then pointed out to her that the graph minimum was 550, the graph maximum was 565, and the stock had gone from 562 to 554. That is a 1.4% drop.

      But, on the graph, the fall was impressive.

      Back in the day, nVidia did the same on its benchmarks to suggest it was seriously overperforming AMD cards. You'd look at the graph and think "wow, that nVidia card is at least 25% more powerful". But if you checked the y-axis values, you'd realize that there was, at best, a 3% difference.

      And I'm pretty sure nVidia was hardly the one who invented that.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Megaphone

        Re: Crashes?

        Nope, manipulating the y-axis in that way has been a thing for as long as I can remember, and I can remember when Nvidia was founded, and AMD was a supplier to Intel.

        1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: Crashes?

          Youngster! I can remember it and I can remember when PCs didn't exist.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Crashes?

            Senile! I can remember my own birth.

          2. Jakester

            Re: Crashes?

            Never had a crash on any of my analog computing devices (slide rules) I owned over the years, although I did break a cursor once. Never required rebooting and never had a battery failure. Also my printer, a #2 graphite device had unlimited fonts and never needed toner, but did require periodic reshaping of the toner point. When the toner was gone, you just replaced the entire printer. There were several brands of #2 printers, most were yellow, but others were produced in various colors. They were completely interchangeable and would print any known and unknown language. None required a Microsoft account to work. An added bonus - you could erase and change individual characters on the printed output with aid of a rubbery accessory at the end opposite of where the toner was deposited on the paper. These printers also didn't need batteries nor did they require a wall connection and were completely portable. I usually carried a spare. They used to cost about 5 to 10 cents apiece, but inflation over the decades has brought the price up to about 5 times that price. Even more amazing is some print in different colors, others have been designed for applying some types of makeup and others made for carpentry and other construction.

      2. navidier

        Re: Crashes?

        Beg, borrow, steal or buy this book: Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information .

        1. J. Cook Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Crashes?

          also known as Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. (WIth an optional fourth of 'Damned Statistics'. )

        2. keithpeter Silver badge
          Windows

          Re: Crashes?

          @navidier and all

          Tufte's books are lovely - I've used them in teaching for years, students who do not like maths much find them visually engaging.

          I'd mention Spiegelhalter's The Art of Statistics as well; in addition to presentation and percentages, he covers inferential statistics and regression analysis in an accessible way. And its in Penguin paperback and cheap.

    2. jonathan keith

      Re: Crashes?

      Yeah, really. I was just about to post the same point.

      "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" as the phrase goes.

      1. Norman Nescio Silver badge

        Re: Crashes?

        It has been going on for a long, long time, as this absolute classic book, published in 1954, makes clear.

        How to Lie with Statistics: Darrell Huff; Illustrated by: Irving Geis

        Well worth a read.

        NN

        1. keithpeter Silver badge
          Windows

          Re: Crashes?

          Mr Huff had an interesting later career as a consultant. Might want to research that a bit.

    3. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: Crashes?

      I guess I've been doing things with computer programs too long. I wrote my first computer program in 1961. But in my world view, kernels aren't supposed to crash -- ever.

      To me 99.8% (99.8% of what pray tell?) sounds like an atrocious success rate. Assuming that it's a meaningful number, it should probably be orders of magnitude better before a product is allowed to ship. It seems to me a sad reflection on the state of the art of computing that a 0.2% (of what?) failure rate is postulated to be not only acceptable, but admirable.

      No, I don't use Windows. I gave up on it two decades ago because it kind of sucked and I was tired of trying to deal with the lack of adequate technical documentation and the #$@^! Registry. Also, it seemed likely to me that competitive forces would cause MS to become far more user hostile than it was prior to 2000 -- which it has.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: Crashes?

        "But in my world view, kernels aren't supposed to crash -- ever."

        This.

        The only reason a kernel should crash is actual physical hardware failure, not simply because it is older.

      2. elaar

        Re: Crashes?

        "I wrote my first computer program in 1961. But in my world view, kernels aren't supposed to crash -- ever."

        If that's the case, you would know that humans aren't infallible. Nuclear reactors aren't supposed to fail - ever, but they have. Aeroplanes aren't supposed to crash - ever, but they do (due to software).

      3. steviebuk Silver badge

        Re: Crashes?

        You've missed out then. Aaron Margoses and Mark Russinovich haven't written great books about the sysinternal tools that go a bit into the workings (technical documentation) of Windows. But you also have David Solomon's even greater book that gives detailed workings of Windows system over the years.

    4. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Crashes?

      And if you use the sysinternal tools over the years and listened to all the old talks from Mark Russinovich, Aaron Margoses and David Solomon, you'd hear that a lot of the crashes in windows are from 3rd party drivers.

    5. Cuddles

      Re: Crashes?

      A 50% increase would make it 99.7% - going from 0.2% failure to 0.3%. However, note the specific wording. Devices that meet the requirements have a 99.8% crash free experience. Devices that do not have 52% more kernel crashes. Kernel crashes are a subset of all crashes. So it's not 99.8% to 99.7%, but probably something more like 99.8% to 99.79%. Whatever the exact number, it's clearly similar enough to that for authorised devices that they felt the need to throw out some other numbers in an effort to obfuscate it.

  6. LenG

    Restrictions

    I have no intention of upgrading in the forseeable future but the first hurdle were I to relent is the requirement for a M$ account. I don't have one and never will.

    1. Gnisho

      Re: Restrictions

      You can still use a local-only account, but that requires the Pro version. Skip the home version.

  7. martinusher Silver badge

    Explain to me why I should upgrade

    I'm a bit dense, I'll admit, but so far I've not seen a compelling reason to change to Windows 11. It seems to do less with more.

    I might be an old curmudgeon who's happy with my Celeron or whatever but actually I was thinking of getting new machines but I'm completely put off by modern versions of Windows. I changed from 7 to 10 and have regretted it ever since -- its not that I'm against progress but there has to be something in there that works better than it did before and I've yet to find it. (Actually, on the upgraded system all sorts of things stopped working -- it became a sort of lottery to figure out on which Tuesday things that stopped working would start or vice versa. I fixed the problem in the short term by installing Linux.)(and I don't mean WSL, either)

    1. oiseau
      Facepalm

      Re: Explain to me why I should upgrade

      ... might be an old curmudgeon who's happy with ...

      There you go !!!! 8^D

      I am an old(ish) curmudgeon who is quite happy with both my Sun Ultra24 on a Q9550/8Gb RAM and my Asus 1000HE on an Atom N280/2Gb which I use when I have to leave home.

      Both run Linux Devuan Beowulf and I'm quite happy with them.

      O.

  8. Snake Silver badge

    I'm there

    Good news! (I'm hearing James May in my head as I write that!)

    I'll be trying a Windows 11 install on the third (spare) drive on my Lenovo P71 as soon as I have some spare time. I wanted to try it before but was put off by the hardware tester which was unhappy with only one component, the Kaby Lake Xeon.

    Now that I can ignore Microsoft, I'll be trying Microsoft!! :p

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm there

      Same here. Sure, the P71 is slightly old by now, but it’s still a beefy machine. There’s no reason it can’t run 11!

      I still love my P71 and it still works great!

      1. Snake Silver badge

        Re: "old"

        It's amazing that a 4 year-old workstation, absolutely maxed out in specs at the time, is considered "old" and not acceptable for Windows 11! Xeon, 64GB, three SSD's totaling 2.75GB (could be much, much more), 6 GB P4000, 4k display, TPM 2.0... and Microsoft wants you to believe that this isn't good enough. It's "old".

        I feel like a gamer :p even though I don't play games.

        1. aks

          Re: "old"

          three SSD's totaling 2.75GB‽

          should this be 2.75TB?

          1. Snake Silver badge

            Re: 2.75TB

            Sorry, yes

            1. David 132 Silver badge

              Re: 2.75TB

              Funnily enough, I was only thinking earlier today of the time back in my final year of university (‘95 or so), when a friend got a shiny brand new 1GB hard drive! My, how we all ooh’ed and aaaah’ed at his extravagance. Funny to think that these days that would be a puny amount of memory, let alone primary storage..

              1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

                Re: 2.75TB

                I seem to recall that the first hard drive I bought - bolted on to an ISA(?) card so it was just plug and play - was 30MB. And it cost me around 300 mid-eighties quid.

                1. Ken Y-N
                  Windows

                  Re: 2.75TB

                  Hah! I remember paying 99 quid for a wobbly 16Kb extension pack for my ZX81.

              2. LybsterRoy Silver badge

                Re: 2.75TB

                Boring old fart here. I remember driving c300 miles round trip to see someone's 1GHz pentium.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "old"

          Indeed! The price tag was eye watering since I also maxed it out. I justified it with myself by telling myself that if the warranty is 5 years, I wanted to make sure that the system was still worth getting repaired 5 years later!

          4.5 years later it’s still going strong and never even needed the warranty.

  9. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Yes okay but

    I want to know what I can do to trick Windows 11 into thinking it can't install on my PC?

    1. katrinab Silver badge

      Re: Yes okay but

      Disable or remove the TPM module. Though I think if you are using Windows Hello, that will stop working.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yes okay but

        I tried Windows Hello, but the time between locking my workstation and leaving the room was such that it kept unlocking before I reached the door. Now I use a USB fingerprint scanner :)

  10. redpawn

    I Do!

    And yet I don't want to upgrade. I thought my devotion to Windows 10 was a lifetime commitment. Can I get the assistance of a good priest?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To be fair...

    From Microsoft's perspective, if Windows 11 installs on something then it needs to work for 10 years not just "at the moment".

    It's best to just let people keep Windows 10 chugging along until the ancient hardware breaks... It'll help software vendors as well: "This game requires Windows 11" will actually mean something.

    1. LenG

      Prehaps, but not what M$ want it to mean

      "It'll help software vendors as well: "This game requires Windows 11" will actually mean something."

      Yup. It will mean "play a different game". Besides, no game developer (except perhaps M$ in house) would issue a game with that restriction unless Win 11 already had a massive user base.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Prehaps, but not what M$ want it to mean

        Well.... I'm pretty sure that if your computer is so obsolete that it can't run Windows 11, that game is pretty much going to be solitaire.

  12. PhillW

    99.8%

    Have I got my maths right here?

    Microsoft claims "devices that do meet the minimum system requirements had a 99.8% crash free experience," and those that did not "had 52% more kernel mode crashes."

    So, supported hardware has a crash rate of 0.2%, non-supported hardware has 52% more crashes.

    52% more of 0.2% is only 0.3% ..................... So basically, it is no worse on older hardware than newer?

    1. jonathan keith

      Re: 99.8%

      I can't remember how to do the calculation (it's been decades) but I wonder if that difference is even statistically Significant.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 99.8%, statistically significant?

        The real question everyone should be asking is whether the difference between Windows 11 and Windows 10 is statistically significant to even bother.

        What is statistically significant is the size of the backtrack from Microsoft. That's off the scale, from their original announcement detailing the system requirements for Windows 11.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Why ask the question ? Borkzilla is going to ram it down everyone's throat regardless.

        2. DJV Silver badge

          Re: the difference...

          "the difference between Windows 11 and Windows 10 is statistically significant to even bother"

          But, but, but .... it's got ROUNDED WINDOW CORNERS!!

          (Be still, my beating heart...)

          /s

        3. DCdave
          Joke

          Re: 99.8%, statistically significant?

          Well, even basic maths says that Windows 11 is 10% better than Windows 10.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: 99.8%

      You're right, but 52%, man !

      That's like the people who are at a BBQ and tell you that grilled meat has a 24% greater chance of giving you colorectal cancer. Greater than what ? They don't know. So I tell them.

      Then I point out to them that the cigarette they're smoking has a 2300% better chance of giving them lung cancer.

      Now pass me that hamburger.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: 99.8%

        "Now pass me that hamburger"

        I'm British. I grew up in the eighties. Burgers had other issues back then. Issues that mean a lot of the world won't accept my blood (which works for me, needles give me the heebeegeebees and I can say no with zero guilt).

        I'll take chips with mine, thanks.

  13. martyn.hare

    As long one neat trick still works…

    As long as folks can bcdedit in the hypervisorlaunchtype as off… then the requirement for 7th/8th Gen (or newer) goes away, as there’s no need for MBEC instructions when not using Virtualisation Based Security, WSL2 or Hyper-V. It does mean you’ll need TPM+PIN rather than TPM-only encryption, to prevent people walking around the restrictions when one has physical access. Ultimately, that just leaves GPU driver support, where I suspect they won’t nerf the minimum required WDDM API version too hard as many stock server GPUs (the types designed to offer remote KVM) can’t even do 3D acceleration.

    I reckon the reason for this news is down to Gabe Newell and the looming threat the Steam Deck poses when it comes to convincing gamers that they could switch, especially with AMD now making their upscaling tech available to all Proton games (but not for all games when ran natively on Windows). Now that there’s an extended deadline for an enthusiast hardware refresh, Linux has once again lost the ace-in-the-hole, as 2031 is far enough into the future for people not to care.. besides, even if Windows 11 uses more RAM.. £18 gets you an extra 4GB RAM stick and £37 can get you 8GB if you shop carefully… folks could even go as far as upgrading to 32GB quite cheaply and then never look back. When combined with WinGet and/or Chocolatey, folks even get a package manager to handle everything not found within Steam.

    Hats off to Microsoft for making a wise decision here.

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: As long one neat trick still works…

      I'll believe that Stream Deck will significantly change the desktop gamer PC landscape when I see it. Portable gaming has never had a great impact on desktop because gaming hardware specs are a constantly moving target and an all-in-one portable is a hard lock-in. *Someone* will hit the performance wall of the potable with a new release, usually sooner rather than later, and both current owners and potential buyers feel the limitations of the platform. It's downhill in long-term customer satisfaction from there on.

      What about consoles, you say? Don't they have the same limitations, and doesn't their success mean I am full of it? Yes, and no. Yes, consoles will eventually hit the performance wall but it can be much, much higher to begin with thanks to the power envelope allowed with AC supply. Then, some upgrades are still possible - storage expansion, display upgrades, controller upgrades and high-level MMU connectivity.

      With gamers lining up to spend big cash on RTX units as soon as they are available, it shows many gamers are now highly performance sensitive. Heaven forbid they can't run 110fps+ at a minimum of 1080p, all options on, with their newest game release. It's an abomination, I tell you! My rig is CRAP!

      1. jonathan keith

        Re: As long one neat trick still works…

        1080p? 1080p? It's 4K or nothing next door at the Jones's, and they're already talking about 8K.

  14. Elledan

    2015-era systems thrown under the bus

    For people like myself who are using original Skylake systems (like i7 6700K), this whole Win11 thing seems like a clear signal that we should be looking somewhere other than Windows. Maybe if there was something really major to be gained from installing Win11 might it be worth the risk, but it seems to be just more of the schizophrenic Win10 experience, with a slightly less hideous (though MacOS-like) UI.

    Maybe when Win10 support ends in 2025 will I be looking at upgrading this system. Possibly Win12 or Win13 will be worth it again :)

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: 2015-era systems thrown under the bus

      I'll agree. My rig was $6k+ worth in 2018 and they're still throwing it under the bus. Sure, they say just stick with Windows 10, but they bring out 11 and then deny some pretty modern hardware.

      It does make you think they're in cahoots with Intel....

    2. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: 2015-era systems thrown under the bus

      The wife's old Windows 10 laptop is getting slower and slower after every update. It will only be a matter of time until I upgrade it to Linux Mint. It will still do everything she wants to do, but much faster boot up and program launches. Windows 11? Don't want it don't need it.

    3. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      Re: 2015-era systems thrown under the bus

      <<this whole Win11 thing seems like a clear signal that we should be looking somewhere other than Windows.>>

      Almost right but just go retro - W7 rulze ok

  15. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Devil

    MS is irresponsible

    If it works on older hardware it should install on older hardware without jumping through hoops. Perfectly good hardware is going to end up in landfill because Windows Update is going to badger people about Windows 10 reaching EOL but is not going to offer Windows 11 as an update.

    Obviously the US and UK won't give two hoots about this, maybe the EU will.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is something I've noticed ....

    ...different behaviour depending on what route you take to upgrade.

    First reared it's head when I noticed some 1843 build Windows machines were simply not getting 20H2 as an update. However manually running the upgrade EXE did the trick. Although I then noticed it seemed to stick on some machines and needed a reboot and to be run a second time to actually complete.

    When I'm ready to get Windows 11 (i.,e. when I need to test in order to keep compliance happy) I'm going to do it from a complete install. No in place upgrades.

  17. Kev99 Silver badge

    People have griped and whined when I write that microsoft and the hard/soft-ware manufacturers are in cabal in regards to minimum requirements I'm running win7 on a Toshiba circa 2010 netbook with no problems even tho' both say win7 is not compatible. I have win10 on a circa 2012 AMD Athlon 64 based system which microsoft claimed was not compatible. Their minimums are just as much for baseline as they are for suckering users into buying new kit.

    1. Chris G

      One would think a world dominating software company would like to maintain that position by creating a system that is functional, elegant and designed to run smoothly on the widest range of kit, including older units.

      Thereby appealing to the maximum percentage of the population.

      The fact that MS doesn't give a hoot about that does tend to indicate an interest in everyone spending on new hardware as often as they adopt the latest software.

      1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

        <<One would think >>

        Obviously not because if they followed that path there would be no need for upgrade. What is needed is planned obsolescence preferably on an annual basis.

      2. Man inna barrel

        > Thereby appealing to the maximum percentage of the population.

        You don't have to do that if you already have a virtual monopoly. They buy what you tell them to.

  18. Updraft102

    "improve security by, among other things, encouraging password-less authentication "

    And I suppose they want to increase automotive security by encouraging the removal of the brake calipers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      "removal of the brake calipers."

      There are at last four bolts holding each wheel to the axles. Both of my cars have four. That's way too much redundancy!

      One of our cars had a tyre replaced. I buggered off to London to do a job and that evening the wife mentioned her car made an odd grinding noise when going around corners. I'm no mechanic but it sounded to me like a knackered CV boot. She did mainly whizzing around town driving so it should be fine until I get home, besides it had only just come back from a garage. I got back home and did some test driving. Yes, grinding noise when accelerating and turning. I've got some ramps so take a quick look and a poke around - all looks fine to me. I Google it and wheel bolts get mentioned amongst many, many other things. I remove the cover over the bolts on all wheels. On the recently changed wheel - one bolt is mostly tight, the other three vary from finger loose to rattling behind the cover. It could have collapsed whilst I was underneath the car or it could have failed on one of the rather busy roundabouts here. I suspect the mechanic got distracted and then forgot he hadn't torqued all the bolts. Wheels are handy on a car and I inspect the bolts on mine regularly, now. Lorries often have arrows on theirs to show that they haven't come loose. Cars could do with similar.

    2. Glen Turner 666

      Not removing authentication, but removing authentication which uses passwords and replacing it with something better.

      This is good: passwords are no longer fit for purpose. People simply can't think of ten mathematically-random characters for every website they use.

      Rather authentication uses an attribute of yourself: such as fingerprints or face. And maybe a button-press to signal that you do mean to login.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I recently bought a brand new (not refurbished) mini PC from Amazon with a 5th gen Intel i3 CPU - such PCs are still on sale. I'm assuming Windows 10 will be supported "for the lifetime of the device" as Microsoft promised. Many people who buy these PCs won't know about re-installing Windows, they'll just expect their PC to continue working past 2025.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pop corn sales

    I bet sales of pop corn worldwide has now rocketed up, with the already started PR shitshow.

    Better grab some before global penury :)

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    under fire for the stringent hardware requirements of its upcoming operating system

    this is the same news they release their new, latest/greatest/last/final OS. I think I've seen it around W95, XP, W7... what else have they come up with.. oh,yeah, W10 too.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obvious

    The fact that the just released Server 2022 didn’t have the same strict requirements made it pretty obvious that this was a blatant scam on Microsoft’s part. They really expect people to believe that their old machine can’t handle Windows 11 because it’s not new enough, but it’ll run Sever 2022 fine?!?

  23. DCdave
    WTF?

    Old laptop? What old laptop?

    I'm fairly ambivalent about upgrading to Windows 11, though I have it running on a VM out of idle curiousity. But I was quite surprised to find from the compatibility list that my 3 year old laptop with a Ryzen 5 2500U, where said VM is running, wasn't even supported. New laptop? Don't think so, but I might eventually install Windows 11 on it, I suppose.

  24. thondwe

    Irked

    So have 2 i5-7200U laptops both with TPM 2 - but not officially supported. But OLD hardware works don't it - homelab server is running Windows Server 2019 with Hyper-V fine - HP ML110 G6!

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