3 ms·

My conspiracy theory guess is that the Windows 10 minimum requirements were "If it ran Windows 7 you're good", which means that this upgrade saying "If it r

by easton 5y ago

My ~~conspiracy theory~~ guess is that the Windows 10 minimum requirements were "If it ran Windows 7 you're good", which means that this upgrade saying "If it ran Windows 10 you're good" would entail supporting machines built in 2009 or earlier. Which is pretty old, so they decided to draw lines that would get rid of machines that old (for example, no more 32 bit). Then they kept going because someone said "legacy BIOS is dumb, UEFI is the choice of a new generation" and then another manager said "nobody uses disk encryption on home edition, let's mandate TPMs so they can do it easier", and sooner or later you have these probably higher than actual system requirements.

judge2020 5y ago
The engineering/testing cruft that goes along with testing super old hardware probably also hurts how quick they can iterate and how much they have to spend to validate changes on multiple hardware configurations.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  But...supporting that is literally the appeal of Windows?
  - cdash 5y ago
    Is it? I thought the appeal of Windows is supporting old software with new versions of Windows. Getting new hardware is easy, getting new software isn't.
    - rejectedandsad 5y ago
      That’s fair, but having long hardware support periods has been a consistent goal since at least XP, which supported machines with 64mb of RAM. Machines that could run vista well can still run W10 fine!
- II2II 5y ago
  Possibly, but I was under the impression that the free upgrade to Windows 10 (and the inexpensive upgrade for Windows 8) was to entice people to move to the new operating system in order to reduce support costs. By making a hardware upgrade a prerequisite of an operating system upgrade for a larger number of people will just encourage people to stick to Windows 10. That's especially true for desktop computers, where a moderately old machine will outperform many modern laptops.
shadilay 5y ago
I somewhat doubt that given that most of the work for specific hardware is done by the OEM.

My ~~conspiracy theory~~ guess is that the Windows 10 minimum requirements were "If it ran Windows 7 you're good", which means that this upgrade saying "If it r

by easton 5y ago

judge2020 5y ago

The engineering/testing cruft that goes along with testing super old hardware probably also hurts how quick they can iterate and how much they have to spend to validate changes on multiple hardware configurations.

rejectedandsad 5y ago
But...supporting that is literally the appeal of Windows?
- cdash 5y ago
  Is it? I thought the appeal of Windows is supporting old software with new versions of Windows. Getting new hardware is easy, getting new software isn't.
  - rejectedandsad 5y ago
    That’s fair, but having long hardware support periods has been a consistent goal since at least XP, which supported machines with 64mb of RAM. Machines that could run vista well can still run W10 fine!
II2II 5y ago
Possibly, but I was under the impression that the free upgrade to Windows 10 (and the inexpensive upgrade for Windows 8) was to entice people to move to the new operating system in order to reduce support costs. By making a hardware upgrade a prerequisite of an operating system upgrade for a larger number of people will just encourage people to stick to Windows 10. That's especially true for desktop computers, where a moderately old machine will outperform many modern laptops.

shadilay 5y ago

I somewhat doubt that given that most of the work for specific hardware is done by the OEM.