7 ms·
Windows 11 will leave millions of PCs behind
- dehrmann 5y agoNormally I can come up with at least a hand-wavey explanation for a decision like this, but I'm at a loss with this one.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y agoMoney. Only the newest Intel and AMD processors will do: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min... https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-amd-processors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min... Deprecating a whole generation of hardware that do not meet minimum requirements will generate sales for Intel, AMD, and PC OEMs. Edit: downvotes? Where's your counterargument? How is Windows 11 not designed to give Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and PC OEMs more profit?
- idonotknowwhy 5y agoBut how does money going to Intel, amd and lenovo help Microsoft?
- setum 5y agoWindows 11 is being offered as free upgrade to consumers, OEMs will still need to pay.
- Ayesh 5y agoNew devices = New Windows licenses = More money
- mahgnous 5y agoAll those new machines will have to buy a Windows 11 license.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoRight, but approximately 0 people are going to buy a new computer just to get Windows 11. That is: If I've got to have 11, I'll buy a new computer to get it, but my goal isn't a new computer, it's Windows 11. Selling a new computer vs selling me Windows 11 for an old computer doesn't put a lot of extra money in Microsoft's pocket, so why do they care? But if they did it the other way, they'd get all the people who buy new machines, and they'd be able to sell upgrades to people who wanted 11, but didn't want it bad enough to buy a new machine.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago>Right, but approximately 0 people are going to buy a new computer just to get Windows 11. No, but people who need a new PC won't be able to get one with any Windows other than W11, and if the Legacy BIOS CSM option is removed from UEFI motherboards then those who need Windows 7 will no longer be able to run it on the bare metal. So there will be reduced possibility of mass awareness among busineses where speed is an issue, about how much faster W7 is compared to W11 on the exact same hardware. The hardware is definitely getting faster and Windows is getting slower. As Windows performance slows down for W11, a lot of businesses still are licensed to use W7 if they wanted to switch back, it's a viable option for the majority of PC's that don't need to be on the internet, and of course it's a breeze to dual-boot to W10 when you need the web right now. When W7 was finally very mature & reliable I see the purpose of rushing to W8, w10, & W11 as simply the same anti-competitive forced hardware obsolescence as if there was a competitive offering from a different company which couldn't keep up. But Linux is not a threatening competitor yet, plus it's open source and already infiltrated by Microsoft. Tne only real competition is W7. As we have seen W11 can actually function ideally on a BIOS mainboard. Plus some UEFI boards do not fail to support Microsoft SecureBoot even when the Legacy CSM is enabled. Whoever would ultimately benefit from running older Windows on a brand new PC, that possibility is targeted for extinction with the continued movement in this direction.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y agoWindows 11 requires a Microsoft account to use. Windows 11 has default integration with Microsoft Teams. Windows 11 is Microsoft's Android play. The purpose is to drive adoption of Microsoft services, gaming on Microsoft platforms, and boost the PC ecosystem.
- MikusR 5y agoMajority of Windows licenses are sold by oems with new pcs. People updating their old computers means no new licenses sold.
- slantyyz 5y ago> Deprecating a whole generation of hardware that do not meet minimum requirements will generate sales for Intel, AMD, and PC OEMs. Is Windows 11 even compelling enough for people to break their normal hardware upgrade schedule? I have more Windows machines than I'd like to admit, and only one of them (purchased this year) can run Windows 11. I'm in no rush to upgrade any of the other, non-qualifying devices any time soon, as they are more than usable in their current state.
- Hamuko 5y ago>Is Windows 11 even compelling enough for people to break their normal hardware upgrade schedule? No and your average consumer doesn't care anyways. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- staticassertion 5y agoThis makes sense if you know nothing about how Microsoft is structured or making money, but otherwise falls apart. Windows licenses are not what they're prioritizing. But it is obviously money - kinda silly to point out that that's why a business does things, but yeah, you nailed it. Microsoft sees threats to its business in a number of forms, and believes that this hardware requirement will address them.
- laurent92 5y ago> Microsoft sees threats to its business in a number of forms, and believes that this hardware requirement will address them. Sorry for not understanding straight away but, what is the threat that is being addressed with hardware requirements?
- staticassertion 5y agoNo need to be sorry, it's a perfectly reasonable question. 1. Security is a huge threat to Windows, 0365, etc. Microsoft and "malware" go together a little too much in the public's eyes and that hurts their business. Addressing this through hardware is reasonable, but they even have an entire product line now around this - Sentinel. 2. Microsoft likely sees GSuite as a major threat to 0365. Where Microsoft's major client is Windows, GSuite's client is ChromeOS. ChromeOS has mandated TPM 2.0 and baked it into every system, and they offer GSuite features that integrate with that - it's a massive security win for ChromeOS users, and Microsoft has to have TPM 2.0 to compete. I hope that clears this up for TPM 2.0. As for the intel series, I can't comment, I haven't looked into it and as I said elsewhere I feel that MS could easily reduce the requirement.
- staticassertion 5y agoTPM 2.0 seems straightforward. Windows is their client for integrating with services they actually monetize - Sentinel, Azure, 0365. In order for those services to compete they need a client that has these capabilities. TPM 2.0 provides that. The intel generation could be moved back one, I believe, and still meet their requirements though.
- pseudalopex 5y agoThose services work without a TPM. So do their competitors.
- boltzmann_brain 5y ago> Microsoft claims that a combination of Windows Hello, Device Encryption, virtualization-based security, hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI), and Secure Boot “has been shown to reduce malware by 60 percent.” You know what else reduces malware even further? Installing Linux.
- tovej 5y ago“has been shown to reduce malware by 60 percent.” is hilariously vague. The statement means absolutely nothing! 60 percent compared to what? Is the metric that's decreased the number of infections or the number of infections by unique malware? Was this 60% observed in a lab, and these measures defeat 60% of some test set of malware? Is there any reason to believe that malware won't adapt once these features are released? It is infuriating to see these kinds of vague numbers thrown about.
- rytcio 5y agoI've had 0 malware in probably 10 years. 60% of 0 is still 0
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nlitened 5y agoSame, and still no intention to switch from Mac to Windows
- kgwxd 5y ago60 percent of the time, it works every time.
- arduinomancer 5y agoFrom what I understand the hackers only encrypt 40% of your hard drive and offer you a 60% discount on ransom payment.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eximius 5y agoMaybe it means 40% of active CVEs still apply? XD
- dlevine 5y agoI have a Ryzen 5000-series PC that I built about 6 months ago using mostly new parts. Yesterday I was curious whether my PC was compatible out of the box, so I downloaded Microsoft's compatibility checker. It told me that my PC didn't have Secure Boot enabled. I figured that I would just enabled that in my BIOS (haha). I went into the BIOS (sorry, UEFI setup) and enabled TPM, which I had read about as being one of the major issues. That wasn't enough, and I was informed that my PC still isn't compatible. I tried enabling Secure Boot, and got an error message that there was something else I had to do first (generate a security key). I figured out how to do that, and I still couldn't enable Secure Boot because my PC was in CSM mode. CSM mode is my B450 motherboard's default mode. I tried disabling CSM mode, and then I was able to turn on Secure Boot. However, when I rebooted, my computer couldn't find my SSD, and kicked me back to the BIOS, with no message other than a beep. I turned everything off and gave up for the evening. Then this morning I Googled some of the messages I got and realized that the problem might be that my SSD doesn't use GPT but MBR for the partition table (it was pulled from my previous PC). After thinking I was going to have to back up and recreate my hard drive, I realized that there is a command-line tool I could use, helpfully named mbr2gpt. I ran that with the appropriate options, ignoring some warnings. It ran successfully, although I got an error about my recovery image, which was spurious so far as I can tell. Once I did all of this, I was able to switch on Secure Boot, and the compatibility checker informed me that my computer is compatible. The point is that I'm pretty computer-savvy and have a pretty new PC. It still took me quite a while to figure this out, and a lot of people would have given up around the time they had to go mucking around in the BIOS. Unless you are have a recent store-bought PC that has Secure Boot and TPM enabled out of the box, you probably aren't going to be able to upgrade, even if your hardware is compatible. I'm guessing that Microsoft walks back on this decision.
- staticassertion 5y agoSo the moral of this story is that your recent computer was actually compatible with Windows 11 and that installing an OS that's currently in alpha onto a computer that you built yourself requires being computer savvy - yeah?
- 5y ago
- maxrev17 5y agoWhen the last .net framework project is off my stack and upgraded.... It's Linux all the way!
- MR4D 5y agoI don't understand why MSFT didn't simply make this a requirement for Windows Pro, and grandfather in Home, and then update Home next year as Windows 12 Would've been much simpler.
- arprocter 5y agoArticle sort of implies Zen 1 was followed by Zen 2, when (somewhat confusingly) it went Zen 1, Zen+ and then Zen 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen%2B Zen+ are listed as compatible by MS https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-amd-processors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min...
- generalizations 5y agoSeems to me that OS design is starting to be a solved problem - and Microsoft was ready with W10 to just coast for a while. It also seems (Ryzen & M1 notwithstanding) that hardware is coasting too. There just isn't much anymore that needs to be done. Microsoft was probably content to use Windows 10 as a moat / loss leader, and make their money off Active Directory subscriptions (you pay through the nose nowadays for user accounts) and Office subscriptions. Too bad the hardware manufacturers and resellers can't sell software subscriptions. I'd guess the hardware folks had a nice long chat with Microsoft and made it clear that the only way forward is for Microsoft to continue to use their OS to 'encourage' people to upgrade their hardware.
- andai 5y agoThere's allegedly an old quote from Microsoft (ca. 1992), "software should get bigger every year." They make a lot of money from copies of Windows that ship preinstalled on new computers. So Microsoft is actually in the business of encouraging consumers to buy new computers.
- fuzzfactor 5y agoLike Apple, more money can probably be made as an anti-recycling company than an engineering company.
- mywittyname 5y ago> Microsoft was probably content to use Windows 10 as a moat / loss leader Windows isn't a loss leader. It's actually quite profitable. Which is exactly why they are releasing a new version of Windows; they want to drive sales of Windows. It's been five years since the last major release, and a new release will boost revenues nicely.
- tyingq 5y agoI have the insider preview of Windows 11 running on a 6th gen i5, and it works fine. So the CPU requirements are just arbitrary. There are warnings and text that I'll be forced at some point to reinstall Windows 10 after the insider program for early Win 11 builds is done. Fwiw, windows 11 appears to be just windows 10 with a centered taskbar and rounded corners on the windows.
- arduinomancer 5y agoPrediction: TPM modules are going to be sold out everywhere I have a motherboard released in 2020 (intel) and apparently I as a user need to go buy some piece of hardware that I had no idea existed for a feature I didn't ask for and plug it into the motherboard just to run Windows 11. The fact that the TPM module goes from being an addon to mandatory hardware for running Windows seems like a recipe for shortage. Think about IT departments everywhere who want to upgrade for compliance reasons all trying to buy these modules.
- nvarsj 5y agoIt’s already happened. They are being resold on EBay for 100+.
- rootsudo 5y agoNo, not really, you don't add TPM to a computer, it's integrated at time of motherboard manufacture and most PC's have them already but are not enabled.
- Arnavion 5y agoThere are plenty of motherboards that come with a TPM header that you then plug a discrete TPM into.
- rootsudo 5y agoNot anymore, it's pretty much a dead market now that was alive a few years ago. and, tbf, TPM that is installed via pin/headers aren't as secure as a laptop where it's embedded on the actual motherboard itself.
- arduinomancer 5y agoJust google "TPM header" or "TPM module" and you'll see
- Arnavion 5y agoYou're predicting the past. :) https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tpm-modules-unobtainable-expensive-windows-11 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tpm-modules-unobtainable-e...
- pmlnr 5y agoAll I see is new linux users.
- lebrad 5y agoI used a new computer to install Windows 11 onto an SSD, then I pulled out the SSD and popped it into an old computer with no TPM and and an unsupported third-generation Intel CPU. It works great!
- tyingq 5y agoFor now. They seem to be somewhat upfront about the insider releases having relaxed rules for now, but that you will probably need to reimage with Windows 10 later. Like the language in this image: https://46c4ts1tskv22sdav81j9c69-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/44/2021/06/HardwareChannels6_24-final.png https://46c4ts1tskv22sdav81j9c69-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
- hyperpallium2 5y agoCreating a gap in the market, so that the desktop will have linux on it, for the year of 2021 But seriously, MS has a long history of alternating dodgy and solid windows releases. Windows 12 will be a big hit, probably leveraging office/business standardization and games (integrating xbox).
- FridayoLeary 5y agoCan someone here explain why this submission just sank like a lead balloon? It nosedived something 20 places in the space of a few seconds.
- solarkraft 5y agoWindows 11 compatibility is representative of the Microsoft failure pattern I see again and again. They introduce some new thing to replace an old thing and the new thing is indeed better than the old thing, but also pulls in a web of dependencies you don't really want while not fully replacing the old thing - thus everybody avoids the hassle of switching and they have to support the old things that stuck eternally. They probably went "This time we'll do it like Apple!" and ... just made a hard cut for no reason, while not using the opportunity to actually significantly change things (despite having the things to change lined up; 10X had great ideas!). Why do they keep messing up ecosystems so spectacularly? Are there any deep incentives at play or obvious things I'm missing? It doesn't seem like the CEO change had that radical of an effect on that behavior. Other example off the top of my head: Microsoft Store/UWP/MSIX, (Windows Phone, API shenenigans) Counter-examples: XAML islands, ARM64EC
- qalmakka 5y agoWindows 11 is quickly shaping to become the new Windows 8 or Windows Vista (or a Kinect-like fiasco). Microsoft risks losing mindshare on that segment of "technical-but-not-really" people that actually recommend and spread opinions around by taking care of non-technical people's computers. One of the biggest reasons people weren't using Vista back then is that their tech-savy friend told them it was bad (often for no reason) and reformatted their PC with XP. After a while people were doing that without even considering the reason behind it. People are naturally reluctant when upgrading Windows, so the update needs to be as painless as possible, given that the OS you already have installed often has still several years of support left from Microsoft. I think that is one of the lessons Apple learnt a long time ago, and that's why its software frequently changes aesthetics, but rarely in functionally (the dock is the same, system settings are mostly the same, and so on). If you stay on the old version, you know things might stop working soon. It seems to me that since XP Windows has been for some reason engulfed in a nonsensical crusade to change those things that worked so well already. I still consider the Windows 2000 UI as the most refined and easier to use in all of Windows, and everything after that just complicated and messed up the OS without a real vision (the only good improvement in the UI I think was the 7 taskbar). To see what I'm talking about, it's sufficient to see the mess they made with the control panel, which was clear and easy to use in 2000, then became cartoonish and dumb in XP, and then it got partially replaced by Settings in 8 (and the migration is still incomplete to this day).
- omegalulw 5y agoA lot of criticism for Vista was because of its poor performance, it was too heavy for the hardware of the time. That won't be the case for Windows 11 - it will mostly be run and benchmarked on new hardware. All Microsoft needs to do to convince users to upgrade is to market new features like DirectStorsge well.
- ToFab123 5y agoYes, that is true, but hard to convince users to upgrade when the installer refuse to run on their 3+ years old computer. My desktop is less than 1 year old and still Windows 11 wont install because the disk is formatted using MBR. I know how to fix that. It involves formatting the disk and change bios settings and a lot of work. I can do that. I don't know anyone outside my tech circle that could do the same. When a <1 year old computer cant be effortless upgraded Microsoft has a big problem.
- devetec 5y agoI've been putting off replacing Windows for a while now. Windows 11 not being compatible with older hardware is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Here I come, Linux!
- nmfisher 5y agoYes, I’m very much the same. Windows 10 has been getting on my nerves for some time now, and the TPM requirement is the nail in the coffin, I’ll be switching to Linux desktop for my primary machines.
- alliao 5y agoTook me way too long to enable secure boot on my 2012 built PC, it's now on but I should've read closer, my CPU is simply too old and I still don't have TPM 2.0 so it's still showing as not supported.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]