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Hard to believe they really care about right to repair when they added random CPU requirements to Windows 11 just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel
by dataflow 3y ago
Hard to believe they really care about right to repair when they added random CPU requirements to Windows 11 just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business.
- the__alchemist 3y agoYou don't need this if doing a clean install; only reqs it from upgrade.
- dataflow 3y agoI assume you do realize more people would be interested in upgrading from older CPUs than new ones?
- anaganisk 3y agoI assume you do realize you can still do a clean install (on old CPUs, instead of hitting upgrade, because that's what OP meant.
- dataflow 3y agoSomehow both of you are strongly validating my point without realizing it, and it's rather perplexing why you're making it sound like a rebuttal. When you deny ordinary people the easy path of an upgrade and force them to do a clean install (because "security"), you induce the vast majority of them to avoid the migration pain and just buy new hardware, with the new OS preinstalled. If this isn't a way to force people to buy new hardware via software, I don't know what is.
- anaganisk 3y agoForced is a strong word here because, do we absolutely know a straight up upgrade might not corrupt something hence they're expecting a clean install? Else you are right.
- quickthrower2 3y agoYeah I am forced to do a real upgrade now to GNU/Linux
- pierat 3y agoThe bright side is that Linux is NOT a roach motel. And your data is your own. And being a 'pierat' I've already seen Sony institute 'dont play torrented content on PlayStations'. And that was the PS3. I completely expect similar with Windows and Mac. We already see keygens and patches marked as "malware" when the only mal- is for the publishers. It may end up that the best play-anything-anywhere will be Linux.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe only thing keeping me on Windows is the sharing a PC with family kind of thing but now we have enough devices I might just reformat my laptop.
- anarchy79 3y agoI am thinking this does more damage to their competitors than to themselves.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoCPU requirements hurt their competitors? How?
- cosmojg 3y agoFor anyone else in this predicament, I was able to get around this by editing some registry keys and installing from a lightly modified ISO on the one Windows machine in my fleet.
- dataflow 3y agoFor anyone else in this predicament (or not), I recommend not getting around this and just sticking with Windows 10.
- ipaddr 3y agoWhat is your plan for when Windows 10 becomes not supported
- dataflow 3y agoCry, probably. (Only half joking.)
- katbyte 3y agoHope there’s windows 12 and it’s better?
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoLinux, as should be most sensible people’s solution. Especially since 80% of PC users just use their operating system as bootloaders into a browser. 80% of that remaining 20% use PCs for gaming, and that is only getting better on Linux. Not to mention more adoption = better native ports. The final 4% of users are people who understand enough to choose their OS with a purpose in mind and/or use a specific OS for work purposes.
- dawidpotocki 3y agoOr you can use Rufus for flashing the ISO to the USB stick which will do it for you.
- krelian 3y agoBy all accounts windows 11 is a hot pile of excrement so they really did us a favor.
- aardvarkr 3y agoThe only people who say this are the ones who HAVEN’T tried it. Tbh it’s just like every other boring windows OS. Slapping a new coat of paint on it barely qualifies as “hot pile of excrement”.
- bitwize 3y agoWindows 11 is like Ghostbusters (2016 film). It wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be, not by a long shot, but that doesn't make it good or something I want to subject myself to again. But my perspective is unusual. The friction increase for Windows 11 over its predecessor is, for me, slight; but I've used so many WMs and DEs that adjusting to a new one is hardly noticeable. To a normie, Windows 11's pebble-in-shoe UI changes -- the start menu location change, the right-click menu change, the emphasis on connecting you to Microsoft and third-party apps and services rather than getting things done -- would be sources of profound aggravation.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoAnyone's first experience with Windows 11 is clicking on the start menu and discovering their virgin install is fully leaden with crapware - ala 1999 Packard Bell. That sells you on Windows the same way stepping in cat barf sells you on your new pet.
- firecall 3y agoThat really is a big issue, for me, with Windows 11 and Edge. The entire experience is cheapened. MS Edge, for instance, actually has an excellent base UI. But the UX is destroyed by plastering horrible tabloid news and ads all over the first launch experience. The engineers are MS are obviously very good at what they do. But it feels like the rest of the product and marketing departments get ahold of things and jam in trashware and ruin it. Windows 11 is fine. It's fine. The graphical changes to the UI are in improvement to my eyes, and they are slowly adding back utility. Such as right-clicking on the task bar and being able to launch the activity monitor! They even have tabbed explorer windows now! Still, MS did such a bad job of launching W11 that my two gamer teenager kids and their friends have sworn off it for as long as they can!
- throwaway70701 3y agoYeah well I was like "if I have to buy a computer anyways it's going to be a Mac". Thanks Windows 11 for finally pushing me!
- nirvdrum 3y agoIf you want a Mac, go for it. But if your opposition is to Microsoft requiring newer model CPUs, that seems like a weird turn to take. You can't even upgrade RAM or storage on any of the Mac laptops; you're supposed to just go buy a new machine.
- oblio 3y agoDon't try to reason with people in these circumstances. "I hate big cars and they increased the size of my favorite midrange SUV. I wanted to buy the latest generation but because it's too big I instead bought a Ford F150". You wouldn't believe how often an equivalent scenario happens with laptops, phones, Linux distributions. It's largely emotional aka spite. Plus an excuse of sorts for a guilty pleasure.
- rvba 3y agoRather: I have a perfrctly gine computer but cannot upgrade it to Windows 11 for free, because Microsoft came up with random requirements. They want me to buy a new computer and pay for Windows again. Also "security" is not a real excuse. If someone can physically grab my computer they will be able to break into it few days after Windows 11 is life since there will be some exploit like there always are.
- crossroadsguy 3y agoSo I will move to a platform that's literally more restrictive in every other way (in)humanely possible? Right!
- throwaway70701 3y ago
- Hawxy 3y ago> just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business. Bizarre take. It's not random, it's specifically CPUs that support modern hardware security mitigations + features. There's a pretty great talk from Bluehat a few days ago that goes into why Microsoft is doing this: https://youtu.be/8T6ClX-y2AE https://youtu.be/8T6ClX-y2AE
- dataflow 3y agoSee the last paragraph. At best it's half-plausible deniability. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/why-windows-11-has-such-strict-hardware-requirements-according-to-microsoft/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/why-windows-11-has-s...
- Hawxy 3y agoThe last paragraph is a little strange as Microsoft explained its reasoning the day before: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/08/27/update-on-windows-11-minimum-system-requirements-and-the-pc-health-check-app/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/08/27/update-... It only added 7th gen processors that have DCH driver support, which is the absolute minimum baseline for W11 support.
- dataflow 3y agoI find it quite interesting how they whitelisted their own Surface devices but not, say, Thinkpads, despite them having the same CPUs. [1] Surely there's no conflict of interest here. Could you explain in what way "DCH driver support" is a "hardware security mitigation" as you wrote? Moreover, doesn't basing this on "DCH driver support" basically let the hardware vendors decide which otherwise-capable CPUs they'd like to make obsolete through software updates? And furthermore, note that the OS isn't even turning on the CPU features they require by default, as the article also mentions. (I'm probably going to just leave it at this, but suffice it to say the evidence doesn't seem in their favor.) [1] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T-series-Laptops/T470p-Intel-i7-7820HQ-Not-Compatible-With-windows-11/m-p/5153393 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T-...
- Dalewyn 3y ago>just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business. AMD also "benefits" with their minimum being Zen+ (aka Ryzen 2000 series and certain 1000 series processors) to Intel's Coffee Lake (8th gen) and certain Kaby Lake (7th gen) processors.
- flangola7 3y ago>just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business. This isn't the main reason, I'm not even sure why they would do that, Microsoft will cheerfully build for whatever hardware is available. They're not indebted to Intel. The real reason is to finally close the circle of every mainstream OS supporting hardware-backed remote attestation. Once that is in place digital controls ala DRM become extremely reliable and virtually impossible to crack. Pirating locally-ran software will be as difficult as extracting the private key from a Trezor or YubiKey.
- rvba 3y agoThey want us to buy new computers. With a new computer you cannot upgrade for free - you need to pay for windows again.
- matrix_overload 3y agoIIRC, it was due to spectre/meltdown [0], where a rather obscure design flaw in Intel CPUs of the time made it possible to slowly read the kernel memory space from an arbitrary process. Microsoft added software mitigations for it to Windows 10, but they came with a price of a ~20% slowdown. By the time of Windows 11, Intel fixed the issue in the newer processors, so instead of supporting both old CPUs (with slowdown) and new CPUs, Microsoft just scrapped the mitigations altogether and limited Windows 11 to new CPUs only. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...
- pgeorgi 3y agoWould have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. Especially with win11 claiming to be eco-friendly in various places ("reduce CO2 footprint") it's somewhat annoying to force a hardware refresh cycle like that.
- eru 3y ago> Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. If people want extensive warranties like that on their electronics, they can already buy extensive warranties on their electronics. Why force everyone to pay for these things?
- dislikedtom2 3y agoBecause this planned obsolete stuff is slowly killing us and yielding would probably only make it worse?
- eru 3y agoIf you don't like it, don't buy it. Or do you just want to control what other people are doing?
- usernew 3y agoThey do not. What they do care about is making it less profitable for their competitors, by attacking in spaces they no longer compete. They lost the phone business, they've just now pulled out of making mice and keyboards. Their MS Surface line is not something people buy - it's something companies buy, with a support contract. Since their consumer hardware business is gone, they now can at least use that to hurt companies that still have a consumer hardware business. But for selfish reasons and anti-competitive self-interest, they are doing something good for us against a greater evil. It's pretty much the DePanties/Disney thing where we cheer for a large evil corporation.
- kenjackson 3y agoThis is the case for almost all companies. When something is in their best interest, but that interest aligned with yours then the company is good. See Google. Do no evil was easy for them when their business model made that look easy. Once privacy became a big deal then they became evil. But really its just interests we’re no longer aligned.
- usernew 3y agoOh of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is articles spinning anti-competitive scammy behavior, as "Microsoft is good now."
- 1letterunixname 3y agoNot entirely surprising. It harms their frenemies and doesn't really hurt them because it's not a large fraction of their business (Xbox and Surface notwithstanding). If one can make things more expensive for other companies and win points with customers, it adds to brand goodwill. I don't believe it's entirely realpolitik and there were likely legitimately interested Microsoft personnel who wanted to push some sensible change.
- nubinetwork 3y agoStrange that you complain about that, but not the massive hell that is repairing the Microsoft Surface.
- dataflow 3y agoStrange? There are orders of magnitude more people with non-Surface machines than Surfaces.
- nubinetwork 3y agoSo what? Surface is what Microsoft manufactures and sells... If they were just an OS company, they can support whatever hardware legislation they want... but to sell a locked down turd on one hand while crying about openness with the other really takes the cake.
- isodev 3y agoWouldn’t it be nice if a somewhat “positive” thing “leaks” just to give the people something to talk about? All that chatter about antitrust, sucking personal data without permission etc doesn’t give a very positive image. Right to repair on the other hand... oh that fixes everything.
- temac 3y agoI doubt it was more about Intel than about themselves. Of course, the environment being the huge collateral damage. They also make unreparable devices, so their pretend support has no weight.
- bwat48 3y agoThe CPU requirements are because they wanted to enable virtualization based security by default and have it be performant.