Reply to post: So here's how you get around it

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

So here's how you get around it

PC OEMs will demand pre-Kaby Lake CPUs from Intel, because their enterprise customers will demand PCs that can run Windows 7, because enterprises don't upgrade to the latest Windows just because it is out. They want the fewest transitions possible, which is why most of them skipped directly from XP to 7, and will probably skip directly from 7 to 10 or 11.

Even those skipping directly from 7 to 10 don't want to go to 10 today when 7 still has so much life left. Those upgrades are very disruptive and expensive, and can take a year to roll out from start to finish (not including testing/pilot deployments)

If Dell won't sell Skylake based laptops to enterprises because Intel won't sell Dell Skylake CPUs, I think a lot of enterprises will simply halt their upgrade cycle. If they do that look for 2015's nearly 10% drop (which is the fourth consecutive year) in PC sales to be a drop in the bucket compared to what 2017 looks like when Intel is trying to push Kaby Lake and a lot of enterprises do not want it due to its crippled inability to run Windows 7.

I would be very worried if I was running a PC OEM. That market is already dropping like a rock, it does not need Microsoft increasing gravity from the current 9.8 m/s^2!

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