back to article Windows 11 continues to creep up behind Windows 10

With Windows 11 still failing to set the world alight, campaigners are warning that millions of perfectly good PCs could become landfill fodder when support for Windows 10 runs out in eleven and a bit months. Figures compiled by StatCounter show that Windows 11 commanded a 35.55 percent share of the desktop Windows market in …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Millions of PCs won't become landfill. They'll just stop receiving updates along with, no doubt, somewhat fewer millions of PCs still running W7 also without receiving updates.

    1. navarac Silver badge

      Instead, think of all those lovely Linux capable machines flooding the market!

      1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
        FAIL

        Old machines

        No such luck. Remember, that for 99% of the laptop buying public, no Windows -> no sale, so the refurb houses would not be able to sell them. There may be a few on eBay, but the Linux boot-USB wielding public is a tiny proportion.

        Worse, the inability of any old computer to be resold will ensure that they all are going into landfill.

        All those £50 corporate Dell sub-minis you were buying as servers and stuff? All going. All the cheapie Dell 1U rackmounts, with loads of life left in them? Gone.

        Donate-a-PC for developing countries' schools? No Windows, no good.

        This is Not Good News. It's an environmental armageddon.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Old machines

          They won't, for the most part, be going anywhere.

          Of those that are capable of being upgraded and are in the hands of businesses which care, some will have been upgraded and some will be being held off until the last minute because their users don't want W11 sooner than they have to have it.

          The rest, which aren't capable of being upgraded, and which you see as landfill will be being used by those for whom the existing updates are a monthly nuisance and will be quite glad to see that stop. Their users are not going to spend good money to climb back onboard that bus once they've got off.

          Unless Microsoft were to send out a bricking update - which I don't think even they would expect they could get away with - they will continue working. The only difference in their users' view is that they'll stop getting upgrades. Nothing else. Zilch. Nada. They continue to be PCs running W10 until their PSU caps bulge.

          I take it that the $30 extended upgrade offer is a realisation by Microsoft that that's the situation but they can try to screw extra money out of some of the irreconcilables.

          1. EricB123 Silver badge

            Re: Old machines

            Developing countries will snap them up. They will run windows 10 fine, which will be an enormous upgrade for the antiques they use now

            1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: Old machines

              We live in a world where my SiL still runs W7. Those W10 boxes aren't going to be given to developing countries. They're just going o stay in use.

          2. martinusher Silver badge

            Re: Old machines

            >Unless Microsoft were to send out a bricking update - which I don't think even they would expect they could get away with

            If its anything like Windows XP it won't brick the system, just degrade its performance to the point where its functionally useless. With Windows XP the Service Pack 3 did the trick -- systems that used to be OK started taking for ever to start and getting erratic peripheral faults. Nothing too obvious, just "time to replace the hardware" type problems. Remember that most users are trained to think of things wearing out as a natural part of their lifecycle; software doesn't actually wear out so it has to be continually upgraded to preserve the illusion it does. (One strategy would be to lock a disk cylinder so that disk use and wear becomes a sort of gradual run down as errors on that cylinder gradually increase -- lots of retries, seeks (or the solid state equivalent) will cause the software to wear out just like the physical device.)

            (BTW -- My Win10 update strategy is called "Linux".)

            1. collinsl Silver badge

              Re: Old machines

              Solid state devices don't tend to degrade over time, if a sector dies then it stops working entirely - once it's mapped as bad, it's not used again. Once you run out of enough spare sectors for the size of the drive, that's it, it's corrupt. Or if a whole chip stops working or if something goes wrong with the controller, then it's dead, Jim. No chance of recovery outside de-soldering the storage chips and putting them on a new board to see what's there, which will require the services of a recovery company most likely with specialist equipment.

        2. mark l 2 Silver badge

          Re: Old machines

          I really don't think that 99% of laptop buyers have to have Windows on them, as the 10s of millions of Chromebooks and Macbooks that sell every year say otherwise.

        3. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Old machines

          Also don’t forget certificate expiry, so expect W10 to more rapidly, than XP, become unusable.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      I'm not going to be upgrading my mom's PC

      She doesn't trust doing anything financial online, so no bank, brokerage, credit card, etc. sites are ever accessed. She doesn't keep anything important on it like photos or whatever. So nothing of value can be accessed or lost if someone gets in.

      That's probably true of more and more people, even people who don't reject the idea of doing anything financial online like my mom, because they manage all that from and keep their important stuff on their phone and not their PC.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: I'm not going to be upgrading my mom's PC

        "keep their important stuff on their phone and not their PC"

        Given the phone is easily lost or stolen unless it's welded to your hand (which often seems to be the case), the PC running W7 or W10 is probably safer.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: I'm not going to be upgrading my mom's PC

          Way way WAY easier to remotely break into a Windows PC though. How many ransomware attacks have you heard of targeting phones? I've heard of zero. So many happen on PCs every day that it isn't news unless it is against a major business, hospital or utility.

    3. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

      Yeah, the hyperbole isn't helpful here. Mainly it's a question of who will blink first: MS when Win11 is the only supported version and it still isn't growing enough, or enterprise and institutional users getting to the end of Win10 support and refusing to needlessly and expensively upgrade perfectly functional hardware just to meet an artificial OS imposition.

      If enough people hold out, MS might just feel pushed relax their hardware requirements. Yeah yeah, it's a pipe dream. It would take a concerted global effort, one I just don't see will happen. Plus MS win either way, since ent's and int's usually must use a supported OS, so they'll have to pay either way. Although it's still a far lower cost than junking perfectly good hardware.

      One way that might work is if governments refused to upgrade their estates, on environmental grounds. They're about the only orgs with sufficient might to force MS to relax it's hardware requirements. And of course, if MS did relax them, all the people forced to upgrade beforehand would be rightly pissed off. Some class action potential there.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "If enough people hold out, MS might just feel pushed relax their hardware requirements."

        Why? What's in it for them?

        The whole H/W requirement is to get you to go out and buy a nice, shiny W11 capable PC which will come with a new W11 licence for which you will, indirectly, pay MS money.

        The only concession here is to let machines that already meet the criteria upgrade for free.

        If you're not going to buy a new computer W11 licence then you can buy $30's worth of extra updates. If you do neither than as far as MS are concerned you can get stuffed. If you're not giving them money they don't care.

        It's there, in plain sight, right in front of you.

        Microsoft's only interest is in the money you give them.

      2. collinsl Silver badge

        I don't think MS can increase backwards compatibility now. They're now writing software into the OS which requires certain CPU flags (as of 24H2) so older processors simply won't run whatever code it is.

        Unless they undo those changes then it's not going to be possible any more.

        I hate to say it but we're back to the old days again - before Vista came along each new version of Windows had higher minimum specs than the one before it, requiring upgrades. Vista changed that - 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 all had the same or similar minimum requirements to Vista which has lulled people into believing that's the "new normal" over the 15 or so years that that's been the case, but it's clearly not sticking around for the long term.

    4. Roland6 Silver badge

      Suspect there are millions of PCs running W10 21H2 that have already stopped receiving updates.

      Had a surprise, with a friends work laptop, it had been GPO’d to 21H2, so that the user could not manually perform an update to 22H2, but potentially could do an update to W11, which seems to by pass the GPO settings…

  2. Paul Herber Silver badge
    Facepalm

    I love my brick in a sock!

    <icon="ouch">

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Windows

      I love my brick in a sock!

      I love my brick in a sock!

      A half brick is more traditional, surely?

      Have you tried shoving a whole brick up a sock? You might have a bit more luck with a pair of panty hose but that might be perceived as being rather nancified.

      At any rate you can't get a decent swing up, fast enough, with a full brick to maintain the element of surprise.

      A half brick in a footy* sock - a pairing made in heaven.

      <sub>* Rugby if you need to ask.</sub>

    2. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Are you talking about the British city centre martial art of CAFBWAB?¹

      1: Crafty Attack From Behind With A Brick

      1. Yorick Hunt Silver badge

        Not to be confused with the Scottish Ecky Thump.

        1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Excuse me dear boy (or girl - your choice) but I think you'll find that Ecky Thump comes from Yorkshire (or possibly The Goodies)

          1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

            Dear Sir or Madman.

            Introduced in "Kung Fu Kapers", a 1975 episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies. In the episode, "ecky thump" is a secret Lancastrian martial art using black puddings as a weapon.

            https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ecky_thump

  3. Mentat74
    Big Brother

    Well...

    Microsoft does act like a creepy stalker these days...

    I'd rather go back to using Windows 7 than "Upgrade" my laptop to Win11...

    1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      Re: Well...

      I've given you a downvote for moving away from W7 to start with!

      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

        Re: Well...

        Many of us didn't have a choice. Against my objections, and despite Win10 still be very much in support at the time, my "upgrade" was forced on me by the company's IT dept.

  4. Howard Sway Silver badge

    campaigners are warning that millions of perfectly good PCs could become landfill fodder

    They won't go to landfill, but the glut of second hand PCs will mean that they will become a very cheap way of buying a good machine to put a better operating system on.

    1. navarac Silver badge

      Re: campaigners are warning that millions of perfectly good PCs could become landfill fodder

      Nicely worded :-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ... but the glut of second hand PCs

      Either that, or a glut of now unpatched W10 PC's still in use (because of business lag, lack of upgrade money, etc) ... for the bad guys to have a much easier time of cracking. Yay.

      1. Yorick Hunt Silver badge

        Re: ... but the glut of second hand PCs

        It's been my experience that every patch Microsoft has released, has been one to introduce vulnerabilities rather than removing or mitigating them.

  5. Too old for this sh*t

    needs a dose of Gov

    Governments around the world need to step in and force MS to drop the restrictions else (as the article says) there will be masses of unnecessary WEEE.

    I have been upgrading via rufus just to see what happens, but I suspect the better solution will be to image, install a free-for-commercial-use hypervisor and restore the image to a VM. That way it still complies with the licensing terms and run with that until the end of the life of the PC

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: needs a dose of Gov

      The most likely solution is that they'll just be kept running as is. They're not being used by the likes of elReg inhabitants. They're being used by people who think they're just PCs and will stay just PCs until the day they don't boot any more.

      Their users don't care.

      1. Chasxith

        Re: needs a dose of Gov

        Exactly the experience with my parents.

        It wasn't until last year that I realised my dad's elderly iMac was way past EOL for updates from Apple. He has eventually agreed after much explanation that it requires replacement with something that is more secure and up to date (never mind the HDD that must be getting increasingly untrustworthy inside). Beyond home finances / web browsing and his music / photo collections he doesn't use it, his daily driver usually being an iPad. A bit like an iPad, he'd rather a computer that "just works".

        Mum took about a year of convincing to replace her ten year old android phone with something newer that could actually run things like whatsapp and allow her to keep in touch with everyone easily.

        There are plenty out there who don't have someone tech-savvy to assist with replacing their out of date stuff...

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: needs a dose of Gov

          You make it sound more like brow-beating than assisting.

          1. Chasxith

            Re: needs a dose of Gov

            More like a nudge..

    2. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      Re: needs a dose of Gov

      -- upgrading via rufus --

      Did that - works quite well on an antiquated HP laptop, especially after pruning.

  6. Spanners
    Linux

    An advantage of me aging

    I reach the UK retirement age in January 2026. I am already working part-time. My 2 day week starts tomorrow, and my NHS pension pays me for the other 3.

    I imagine we will be spending plenty of money on new kit that we shouldn't really need but, as of my 66th birthday, that is not my real problem!

    I have a PC at home that probably doesn't run Win11 but It does run Linux - probably Ubuntu. It has a separate data drive so I shouldn't lose much stuff either.

    I can leave that with people, mostly no older than my kids,

  7. BobChip
    Happy

    Ageing?

    I'm ageing too - 80+ - and I have been a Mint user for years, with an additional 2 Tb HDD in my homebuild purely for backup and data storage. My wife has an "old" ex windows laptop (< 5yrs ), also running Mint but sadly without the capacity for a second data drive. Now looking for a higher spec second hand machine with more flexible upgrade potential; M2 card or the like rather than spinning tin.

    It will most likely be a "casualty" of Win 11 and cost maybe as much as £50 - or less. I'll probably have to pay more than that just for the second HDD to get the spec I want. Then it will probably go on working reliably for more years than I've got left.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Ageing?

      Went to Mint on a new PC and my wife was annoyed I thought she may have to ask for help.

      She used it straight from W7 no issues, no training beyond passwords

  8. LessWileyCoyote

    Next year might be the time I make the shift to 0patch to keep the security patches coming when MS stops supplying them.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I moved to W11

    Had to sell the kids mind you.

    But win/win

  10. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

    If only there was an operating system that was free to download, ran on almost any old hardware, was secure and reliable, didn't spy on you and didn't force updates on you....

  11. Roopee Silver badge
    Joke

    And...

    And, if only there weren’t 50+ of them!

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: And...

      Yup. Buying a car is so difficult.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: And...

        Interesting comparison.

        The car manufactures have a vested interest in promoting both the real features and the emotive features of their offerings.

        The magazines likewise do test drives and comparisons, using well known metrics.

        I suspect a challenge OS distro’s have, is they have not got the same level of marketing and produce promotion material.

        So Joe Public don’t really have any thing to go on to compare say MINT with Ubuntu.

  12. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    My primary laptop was bought in January 2018 (an HP 17-Y002NA) and it upgraded to Win 11 without a complaint shortly after it was released. So if a 6.5 year old laptop (and probably not even the current model at the time) can run Win11 things can't be all that bad. My mail server is running on a refurbished HP desktop of some kind and it doesn't want to know and I don't care. I reckon it's safe enough - it runs headless and even when I'm doing maintenance I prefer to browse on the remote machine and transfer files via the LAN.

    I do think that MS should relax the hardware requirements, though.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Here's a thought. What if they did a paid-for version which would ignore H/W requirements to upgrade your W10 for the cost of a new W11 licence?

      It's not likely because they'd upset the H/W vendors.

  13. Mwnelson

    Win11 is still awful

    What I don't understand is how Microsoft still can't see how dreadful Win11 is. I'll try it from time to time on a VM but it's simply a bad OS. With gaming still not having moved on from the PS5 generation, other than the yahoos interested in LLMs and Machine learning there little to no reason to upgrade hardware. A Zen2 processor is still doing its good work on a B450 board. The hardware really hasn't been struggling at all.

    Sadly, although I dual boot Ubuntu and Win10 I still don't have a long term solution past the EoS. Windows 11 isn't the solution for me with it's bloat and it's poor design choices. Ubuntu, and indeed all Linux distros are not the solution either. They carry with them the *ability* to do almost anything, but not the usability either without a massive learning curve.

    There are those here on elReg who I'm sure will criticise those planning to just ride out the expiry of Win10 support. Fact is though that there is no realistic solution. The machines that work now, will be capable of running things as they are in another eleven months, so from a User perspective why should they be thrown away.

    Microsoft tried these scare tactics once before with Win7/8 and failed. Users often don't understand the impacts of EoS. Which means the real question is - how long before Microsoft wake up and realise that they either need to remove trash like copilot, or extend support for Win10 again. The real answer of course is that both need to happen. Just like it went down last time!

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Win11 is still awful

      "or extend support for Win10 again"

      Where's the money for them in that?

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Win11 is still awful

        >” Where's the money for them in that?”

        Well MS decided to make the OS “free”. But as we know it’s not really free..

        The issue is MS want both the easy revenues from OEM sales and the sales of user data..

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Win11 is still awful

      Win 11 doesn't seem all that different to Win 10. There's a few Task Bar tweaks but nothing much else. It all adds to what I feel is the stupidity of it all. It's hard to tell any difference so why does anyone care?

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: Win11 is still awful

        It stole paint and sausagised all the dialogs, and made scroll bars too narrow, and at least 3 designs, plus of course show desktop is miniscule

    3. David Hicklin Silver badge

      Re: Win11 is still awful

      > will criticise those planning to just ride out the expiry of Win10 support

      I can't really say anything - still on windows 7 here!

  14. druck Silver badge

    Rust in the Windows kernel

    I'm more concerned about the dry rot.

    1. the Jim bloke

      Re: Rust in the Windows kernel

      There's a really nasty smell, and it feels spongy underfoot...

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