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After 4 years they'll either not get security updates or have to switch to Linux. There are plenty of PCs running older hardware that'll most likely be perfectl

After 4 years they'll either not get security updates or have to switch to Linux. There are plenty of PCs running older hardware that'll most likely be perfectly fine after 2025 but no longer be able to run a supported version of Windows.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>After 4 years they'll either not get security updates or have to switch to Linux. To be fair, Windows 10 will be 10 years old at that time and their PC will be over 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time. 11 year old HW is not very energy efficient and is often vulnerable to various side channel attacks that need SW mitigations which make them even slower. Newer HW is more secure, while being more energy efficient to boot. Even if Microsoft would continue support for ancient hardware, the chances are Nvidia and AMD would drop driver support for what they consider to be legacy hardware, like they alwasy do. I also keep my 15 year old PC (Core 2 Quad) going for my parents but I moved it to Linux as I can't expect Microsoft to keep supporting such old hardware for free forever and at some point, the SW and HW industry have to keep moving forward and that sometimes means removing support for legacy stuff even if that means cutting some users with old hardware off (they still can keep using their systems after all, just not run the latest and greatest SW). Is Apple doing better officially supporting hardware overs 10 years old?
- vetinari 5y ago
  > To be fair, Windows 10 will be 10 years old at that time and their PC will be over 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time. To be fair, the PC won't be that old. Every single machine with Zen (1st gen Ryzen and Threadrippers), for example.
- nikau 5y ago
  To be fair my 11 year old desktop CPU is faster than the cpu in my brand new work laptop.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  > 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time No its not. For casual use, 15 year old PC is very much fine and works perfectly in many use cases ie for our parents. You may swap for SSD but that's it, it can be blazingly fast for the tasks required. Forcing everybody to move into Linux when they can barely handle Windows is quite a stretch, there might be licences to software which won't work, same for hardware. Lets not forget whole world isn't on HN level of computer expertise to debug issues.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Forcing everybody to move into Linux when they can barely handle Windows is quite a stretch Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You can keep using whatever HW and OS you have as long as you wish. What's your point?
  - mattl 5y ago
    11 years is a very long time in the personal computer industry. It’s a little under 20% of the time we’ve had such an industry.
    - layer8 5y ago
      PC hardware of recent years is much longer lived in terms of performance than in earlier years.
      - mattl 5y ago
        A PC from 11 years ago is likely running a spinning hard disk and running a 32-bit version of the OS, no?
        saiya-jin 5y ago
        I bought my first 64bit AMD CPU somewhere around 2001-2002 (at that time this premium turned out more or less useless). And as I mentioned, you may switch HDD to SSD to get very acceptable performance from even quite old computers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- abricot 5y ago
  "Windows 10 is 10 years old" It's a rolling release, so with 21H1 it's only half a year old. And I don't care what they do. It will be the last Windows for me.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    21H1 is a release which is half a year old, the OS itself was launched in 2015 which makes it 10 years old in 2025.
    - layer8 5y ago
      The issue is that hardware purchased last year and not supported by Windows 11 (like for example the Surface Studio 2 still sold by Microsoft, and other currently sold CPUs) has a much longer lifetime than five years.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Seriously. I’m working in a school. We have lots of computers from 2012. Maybe they will finally be replaced by 2025 (I kind of doubt it), but we’ll still have lots of machines from 2014/2015.
dehrmann 5y ago
With how little my grandma uses her computer for and how confusing OS changes are, I almost wonder if I'd be better off installing ReactOS.
zymhan 5y ago
> have to switch to Linux Come, now, we all know it's mostly hobbyists keeping 15+ year old PCs running with Linux
- teh_klev 5y ago
  Assuming you could afford to upgrade, it's pretty bonkers keeping these old inefficient machines running from a power consumption standpoint. I had a bunch of old Dell Precision workstations and I eventually got shot of them because my electric bills were becoming more and more eye-watering. I built a cheap PC that (with virtualisation) can carry out all these old machines workloads and more, and my power bills were a fraction of what they were previously. Quite an eye opener for me with regards to how energy efficient new stuff is.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    IKR. My parents are still rocking my old gaming PC from 2006-2007 with a quad core Intel Core 2 Quad and Nvidia 6800GT and it serves them fine. However, by modern standards that PC is an absolute energy hog for what it does. The CPU alone has a declared TDP of 105W (in practice, maybe even more). A modern laptop-grade quad-core Intel Tiger Lake 1165g7 would absolutely destroy it in terms of performance, and at 15W TDP, consume only a fraction of the power. I love fighting planned obsolescence and reducing e-waste by repairing and keeping stuff working as long as possible but at some point old hardware should be replaced if funds allow it for the sake of energy efficiency and the environment.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    That is fair enough. But most of the boxes I bought are fairly efficient, being laptops (usually 45w max under load). Sandybridge was a pretty good platform for its time. It was not until recently that they have iterated out of it. If you had a desktop yeah I would recommend the upgrade. My use case was portability with some very light gaming, and a decent screen for programming. I had done that cutover from power hungry boxes to fairly efficient ones in about 2006. I dumped about 40 bucks off my power bill. My rub with this upgrade for win11 is it seems kind of arbitrary. Mostly TPM. A feature I do not want or have a need for.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>After 4 years they'll either not get security updates or have to switch to Linux. To be fair, Windows 10 will be 10 years old at that time and their PC will be over 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time. 11 year old HW is not very energy efficient and is often vulnerable to various side channel attacks that need SW mitigations which make them even slower. Newer HW is more secure, while being more energy efficient to boot. Even if Microsoft would continue support for ancient hardware, the chances are Nvidia and AMD would drop driver support for what they consider to be legacy hardware, like they alwasy do. I also keep my 15 year old PC (Core 2 Quad) going for my parents but I moved it to Linux as I can't expect Microsoft to keep supporting such old hardware for free forever and at some point, the SW and HW industry have to keep moving forward and that sometimes means removing support for legacy stuff even if that means cutting some users with old hardware off (they still can keep using their systems after all, just not run the latest and greatest SW). Is Apple doing better officially supporting hardware overs 10 years old?

vetinari 5y ago
> To be fair, Windows 10 will be 10 years old at that time and their PC will be over 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time. To be fair, the PC won't be that old. Every single machine with Zen (1st gen Ryzen and Threadrippers), for example.
nikau 5y ago
To be fair my 11 year old desktop CPU is faster than the cpu in my brand new work laptop.
saiya-jin 5y ago
> 11 years old which is an eternity in technology time No its not. For casual use, 15 year old PC is very much fine and works perfectly in many use cases ie for our parents. You may swap for SSD but that's it, it can be blazingly fast for the tasks required. Forcing everybody to move into Linux when they can barely handle Windows is quite a stretch, there might be licences to software which won't work, same for hardware. Lets not forget whole world isn't on HN level of computer expertise to debug issues.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Forcing everybody to move into Linux when they can barely handle Windows is quite a stretch Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You can keep using whatever HW and OS you have as long as you wish. What's your point?
- mattl 5y ago
  11 years is a very long time in the personal computer industry. It’s a little under 20% of the time we’ve had such an industry.
  - layer8 5y ago
    PC hardware of recent years is much longer lived in terms of performance than in earlier years.
    - mattl 5y ago
      A PC from 11 years ago is likely running a spinning hard disk and running a 32-bit version of the OS, no?
      - saiya-jin 5y ago
        I bought my first 64bit AMD CPU somewhere around 2001-2002 (at that time this premium turned out more or less useless). And as I mentioned, you may switch HDD to SSD to get very acceptable performance from even quite old computers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
abricot 5y ago
"Windows 10 is 10 years old" It's a rolling release, so with 21H1 it's only half a year old. And I don't care what they do. It will be the last Windows for me.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  21H1 is a release which is half a year old, the OS itself was launched in 2015 which makes it 10 years old in 2025.
  - layer8 5y ago
    The issue is that hardware purchased last year and not supported by Windows 11 (like for example the Surface Studio 2 still sold by Microsoft, and other currently sold CPUs) has a much longer lifetime than five years.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Seriously. I’m working in a school. We have lots of computers from 2012. Maybe they will finally be replaced by 2025 (I kind of doubt it), but we’ll still have lots of machines from 2014/2015.

dehrmann 5y ago

With how little my grandma uses her computer for and how confusing OS changes are, I almost wonder if I'd be better off installing ReactOS.

zymhan 5y ago

> have to switch to Linux Come, now, we all know it's mostly hobbyists keeping 15+ year old PCs running with Linux

teh_klev 5y ago
Assuming you could afford to upgrade, it's pretty bonkers keeping these old inefficient machines running from a power consumption standpoint. I had a bunch of old Dell Precision workstations and I eventually got shot of them because my electric bills were becoming more and more eye-watering. I built a cheap PC that (with virtualisation) can carry out all these old machines workloads and more, and my power bills were a fraction of what they were previously. Quite an eye opener for me with regards to how energy efficient new stuff is.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  IKR. My parents are still rocking my old gaming PC from 2006-2007 with a quad core Intel Core 2 Quad and Nvidia 6800GT and it serves them fine. However, by modern standards that PC is an absolute energy hog for what it does. The CPU alone has a declared TDP of 105W (in practice, maybe even more). A modern laptop-grade quad-core Intel Tiger Lake 1165g7 would absolutely destroy it in terms of performance, and at 15W TDP, consume only a fraction of the power. I love fighting planned obsolescence and reducing e-waste by repairing and keeping stuff working as long as possible but at some point old hardware should be replaced if funds allow it for the sake of energy efficiency and the environment.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  That is fair enough. But most of the boxes I bought are fairly efficient, being laptops (usually 45w max under load). Sandybridge was a pretty good platform for its time. It was not until recently that they have iterated out of it. If you had a desktop yeah I would recommend the upgrade. My use case was portability with some very light gaming, and a decent screen for programming. I had done that cutover from power hungry boxes to fairly efficient ones in about 2006. I dumped about 40 bucks off my power bill. My rub with this upgrade for win11 is it seems kind of arbitrary. Mostly TPM. A feature I do not want or have a need for.