Posts by DavidYorkshire

A Windows 11 tsunami? No, more of a ripple as Microsoft's latest OS hits 5% PC market

I'm sure many of us could work around them - but would you be wanting to run a whole load of business machines like this, knowing that Microsoft could if it wished bork them with an update one month?

It's not something I'm keen to do!

Re: MS account

In the Pro version it can, but not the home version as I understand it?

Re: Do I want Win 11?

But no guarantees that they won't break it with an update in the future!

I can't see any point in trying to get workarounds to work - W11 offers nothing that I actually want and is not an improvement over W10.

Might think about it in 2025 if I have any machines which aren't officially compatible and which I want to continue using after the W10 end of support.

Product release cycles are killing the environment, techies tell British Computer Society

Windows 11 is an obvious example of this, and Microsoft should be getting a lot more criticism than they are over the system requirements for that.

Ever wondered where the 'cloud' was in Adobe Creative Cloud? Here it is in beta form

Re: Ripoff

While Microsoft does offer a purchase option for Office, they intentionally make this difficult in assorted ways - e.g. shortening the period for which it is guaranteed to be compatible with their online services, and only officially supporting it on the latest version of Windows Server at the time it is released (used to go back to all supported server versions) - this is very relevant if you use terminal servers.

Microsoft appears to be trying to go the same way as Adobe, but didn't quite think they could get away with it in one step so are doing it incrementally, whereas Adobe clearly thought they could just go for it, and did so.

Share your experience: How does your organization introduce new systems?

There is too much of a tendency in many organisation to decide that new and shiny = better, which is not always the case. If your current systems do the job they are required to do, the best option might be to stick with them.

The issue of constant change has become a lot worse in recent years due to software companies (particularly Microsoft) pushing at an ever-faster pace, and breaking existing ways of doing things to force adoption of their new and shiny way of working - and this normally means tying it into their cloudy services and subscription model and thereby making the constant change even more of an issue as Microsoft then has absolute control.

Apple arms high-end MacBook Pro notebooks with M1 Pro, M1 Max processors

Re: I'm out

Apple kit up until 2012 used to be very well-made, and used standard components. Since then less so - lack of ports, awful keyboards, soldered RAM and SSDs. Some of these look to have been addressed, but not all of them. I assume that RAM and SSD are still soldered? That's a major minus point due to the likelihood of the flash chips especially failing after a number of years.

Reg scribe spends week being watched by government Bluetooth wristband, emerges to more surveillance

Re: I'll be tracked almost everywhere I go...

Now look at Florida and Sweden.

The reality is that there is no correlation between dystopian measures and number of cases, and there never has been. In order to demonstrate that restrictions work, there would need to be a consistent worldwide pattern of countries with more restricitons having fewer cases - and there is no such pattern.

Re: I'll be tracked almost everywhere I go...

To the thumb-downers - see the current situation as reported by the ONS:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1019992/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_38.pdf

Page 17, top graph. Take into account that under 40 the vaccination rates are lower. In all of the older categories, which have the highest vaccination rates, more infections were seen in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated.

Re: I'll be tracked almost everywhere I go...

That would require that the vaccines stop people from being able to catch it and spread it - which they don't!

Microsoft Patch Tuesday bug harvest festival comes to town

Re: "Microsoft Patch Tuesday bug harvest festival comes to town"

Then you'll be waiting for the patch to fix the patch which broke the patch...

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

Re: Loyd Grossman accent <on> ... Who would run a company like this ?

Indeed - many of the founders of the previous generation of really big IT companies stayed in charge for years, and one or two (e.g. Michael Dell) still are.

Re: Without Facebook...

Railway companies tend to do that as well - and use social media as the only way to contact them for a quick answer (they could have a chat function on their websites, but don't).

Often the only option on the website is an enquiry form, which might get a response in a couple of weeks. Maybe.

Re: It will take a while

Another problem is the number of clubs and societies which use it as their only / main way to communicate. Fifteen years ago these would have had their own website and email list, or used something fairly non-offensive like a Yahoo group to communicate. Now they just have a Facebook page.

Want to check out Windows 11 but don't want to buy a new PC? Here's how to bypass the hardware requirements

Re: @DavidYorkshire - Memo to myself

Just to add that having done some more testing, it appears that Secure Boot IS enforced. So far as I can tell the 'hard floor' is TPM.1.2 and Secure Boot, with no enforcement of CPU. WIll fully test this in the next few weeks.

Re: And coming up next: a bypass for the ludicrous CPU requirements?

That won't stop it installing though - it still installs fine even if the CPU is reported as not supported. I've tested this with a clean install.

If it won't work when upgrading, try a clean install.

Re: @DavidYorkshire - Memo to myself

TPM is needed if you use Bitlocker.

Don't know whether seure boot is enforced or not - will do some testing to find out when I have time.

Re: And coming up next: a bypass for the ludicrous CPU requirements?

It doesn't seem to enforce the CPU requirement and will still install. It's lack of a TPM which is the show-stopper.

I have done some VM testing. My host is a 10-year-old Poweredge running Hyper-V Server 2016. Clean installs from ISO.

Provided you configure the VM with access to the TPM and secure boot, it installs fine (despite the age of the server, it does actually have TPM2). The CPU is is reported as unsupported by the health checker program, but it still installs despite that.

If the VM doesn't have TPM access, it won't install at all.

Re: Even better....don't bother yet!

Right, so when Microsoft automatically installs it (which they will) - what then?

I'm sure we all remember how aggressively they pushed W10 onto W7 and 8 computers. This will probably be even more difficult to block, unless you have a good knowledge of computers.

Just telling users 'tough, we don't support it' is really not an acceptable answer.

Re: Even better....don't bother yet!

You've missed at least one category - people who work in IT and need to know how it behaves. Especially so where BYOD is allowed for VPN connections, and we are very likely to be getting users with W11 asking us questions in the next few weeks.

What happens if you try to clean install rather than upgrade?

I've not had chance yet to try with a TPM 1.2. Have tried with no TPM, and it refuses to install.

Tight squeeze: Dell shrinks PowerEdge tower server from 117 grapefruit to 74 grapefruit

Re: has dell decided to do away with LCDs on servers?

Those LCDs are quite useful when something goes wrong with the server - they turn orange and show a message indicating what the fault is.

Gartner's Windows 11 adoption advice: Explore but don't rush

Isn't it fortunate that we have the likes of Gartner to advise us? I'm sure that none of us working in IT would ever have come to this conclusion without their assistance.

Re: What happens when....?

Hopefully that's a few years off yet.

Re: Looking forward to windows 12

And hopefully un-fuck-up the start menu too.

Fancy some Surface kit but wary of new Windows? Microsoft lets commercial customers pick 10 or 11

Or you could just clean install it when it arrives? I always do that with everything anyway - gets rid of any unnecessary crap!

VMware to kill SD cards and USB drives as vSphere boot options

SSDs will last a lot longer. I had to put them in our two main hosts urgently a while back as it was clear that the the SD cards were all failing at once (two SD cards in each host for supposed redundancy).

The bigger question is why major server manufacturers ever thought it was a good idea to use SD cards as boot devices.

There is the added advantage that they now boot much faster too.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

I've been testing it on VMs this morning (clean install from ISO), and can report the following:

- It doesn't seem to enforce CPU compliance, and will install on older CPUs (ten year old Xeon in this case)

- It does enforce TPM. Won't install without a TPM. Not had chance to see what happens yet with TPM 1.2 - need to find a physical machine for that

- Not sure yet whehter it enforces Secure Boot

Got enterprise workstations and hope to run Windows 11? Survey says: You lose. Over half the gear's not fit for it

Re: Another indicator of microsoft's predatory monopolistic practices

They've never gone anywhere near this far in the past - Vista was a dog on hardware close above the minimum spec, but would run, W7 ran better than Vista on the same hardare, and W8 / 10 run fine on hardware bought with W7. I've come across hardly anything which wouldn't run W10, even in its early days - think we had one old laptop which had been hanging around for years as a test machine which wouldn't due to an unsupported graphics chip, but that was all.

We currently have some desktops still in use approaching 8 years old (upgraded with SSDs), and they are fine with W10 for basic office stuff.

Re: Environmental homicide

Ah come on, they are clearly really conerned about the environment - just look at this and see if you aren't convinced: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/accessories/sustainability/ocean-plastic-mouse

(just ignore the vast numbers of computers which will be scrapped as a result of W11, and the point that all surface devices have limited or no upgradeability and are mostly difficult to repair...)

Re: Immutable OS’s are the answer

"If you really meant immutable os and suggested building it in to the hardware in such a way that it couldn't be overwritten I might be interested."

Acorn RISC OS was like that - only way to upgrade was to open up the computer and physically replace the OS ROMs. I did this with a number of machines back in the mists of time (mid 1990s).

Re: The TPM revision was added to bring in servers to the party.

It's notable that Server 2022 is W10-based, presumably to avoid this issue with servers as they know that most companies wouldn't tolerate it. It does of course create a messy situation, as normally in the past new versions of client and server versions have been in sync (roughly).

I've checked our computers for compatibility and it's low - only a couple of the workstation are supported, and few of the standard desktops. Numbers are higher for the laptops as that's what we've mostly bought in the past 18 months.

On a related note, I'm sure that, like me, many want to avoid mixed versions. Easy enought with the machines updated via WSUS, but look at Intune carefully if you use that - from looking at it and communications with Microsoft, there appears to be a new policy section called 'Feature updates for Windows 10 and later (preview)', which allows you to create a policy setting maximum version and apply it to groups of computers - 21H1 is currently the most recent available, but presumably W11 and W10 10H2 will appear there in due course.

Microsoft shows off Office 2021 for consumers ahead of the coming of Windows 11

Re: Standalone versions need an MS Account

In a business setting there's often not really any option - both due to user familarity, and to Office plugins used to integrate with assorted other systems (finance, CRM, etc).

Re: Byzantine pricing: Machiavellian schemes.

That's already the case. I think I'm fairly clued up on Microsoft's licensing, but even so I still have to ask the software dealer sometimes as it gets so complicated that nobody apart from a Microsoft licensing specialist understands it - and even them I'm not entirely convinced that anyone actually does as you can get a different answer depending who and when you ask!

Re: a substantial proportion of users will be in need of a new PC

Don't worry - Microsoft is going to save the world with this fine example of greenwash:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/accessories/sustainability/ocean-plastic-mouse

Clearly we are expected to ignore the vast number of computers which will be dumped as a result of W11's system requirements, and the fact that Surface devices have little or no upgradeabliliy and are difficult / impossible to repair.

Re: Standalone versions need an MS Account

To make you register it and sign up for a Microsoft account. They are doing the same with W11 Home version which apparently can't be set up with a local account (they tried to give the impression with W10 Home that this applied, but provided you didn't let it see an internet connection until you were past the account creation stage it was actually possible).

I wonder whether the LTSB version can be installed with just the installer .exe and an XML config file which contains the activation key? That did work with Office 2019 Pro+ (no sign-in needed).

Fairphone makes wireless earbuds less foul, by charging batteries carefully

Re: Which is greener?

That relies on companies like this sticking to principals - not following the herd (which in this case means removing the 3.5mm socket) and thereby leading to more waste as people have to buy new headphones more often.

Was thinking of getting one of these, but lack of a hedphone jack rules it out - it's not practical to use a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter when out with it in a pocket - it's too unwieldly, and will easily lead to the socket getting damaged.

It's disappointing that even a company which claims to be about making devices which last is going down this route. Does it not occur to them that some of us are quite happy with wired headphones and have no wish to have to buy new wireless ones every few years because the batteries have died (or sooner if one gets dropped down a drain).

Phones do not need to be any thinner - it just makes them harder to hold and more prone to bending and damage. They are already quite thin enough.

Microsoft wants you to know it hasn't forgotten about Surface

Re: Eye-candy

At least the laptops appear to have replaceable SSDs now, unlike the earlier models where they were soldered.

Replacing the batteries still looks to be difficult, though.

DIdn't HP try the a device exactly like that Surface Studio Laptop a few years ago? It had a leather cover and was called Spectre Folio or something like that. They don't seem to have sold particularly well (saw them discounted), and there only seems to have been one model before they abandoned that type of hybrid form-factor.

Fix network printing or keep Windows secure? Admins would rather disable PrintNightmare patch

I can't help but think that a lot of the commenters on here have never actually managed a network! Suggestions such as directly connecting the computer with a USB cable, or going out and buying a load of desktop printers, are not an option whcih many companies will accept, or which would in many cases be realistically practical to implement.

And you think the beancounters are going to say 'yes, fine - go out and buy 100 desktop printers rather than telling all the users to carry on printing to the perfectly-functioning photocopier in the corner of the office'?

Re: "Security is our utmost priority", says company after being hit with malware

And what if you want to use GPOs to control/deploy them? Restructuring all the print functionality for every printer is not something which most organisations are going to do at short notice.

And drivers will still need to be installed, however you structure it.

Re: "Security is our utmost priority", says company after being hit with malware

So what would you do in these circumstances? Both options are unacceptable, but you have to choose one!

Microsoft does and doesn't require VMs to meet hardware requirements for Windows 11

Just checked my test VM. Hosted on a ten year old Poweredge, running Hyper-V Server 2016. TPM is version 2 and enabled on the VM, but the CPU is not supported.

VM is now on build 22000.194, and still seems to be working at the moment - no messages about unsupported harware.

Microsoft releases new Windows 11 builds, confirms running on an Apple M1 'is not a supported scenario'

Re: RIP BootCamp?

Pretty sure that Apple stated that it would not be part of the ARM versions of their OS.

In Microsoft's world, cloud email still often requires on-premises Exchange. Why?

Re: Confused.com

No two-way sync so far as I am aware. As you say, the local AD is authoritative.