11 ms·

Microsoft Issues New Warning for 70% of All Windows Users

79 points by sharpshadow 2y ago

brink 2y ago
In an alternative universe, Microsoft stayed on Windows 7, monetized the OS through trust and a really solid app store with a 10% transaction fee, and everyone lived happily ever after.
- baxtr 2y ago
  Is that the same universe, where corporate politics didn’t play a role at all and where Steve Ballmer was a very nice guy?
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    I bet it's the same universe where companies weren't decreted to exist mainly to make money. I mean, people work for money, but money's a mean to satisfy our needs, few people work solely for it. If corporations are people, we raised them to be sociopaths.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  My oscilloscope runs Windows 7 so I get a daily reminder how beautiful unencumbered Windows is. No ads, no layers of pig lipstick, and it's still snappy and crisp even though the machine is 13 years old. If it weren't for weird compatibility issues (Chrome complains IIRC), I'd run Windows 7 at home in a heartbeat.
  - conradfr 2y ago
    Chrome and Firefox are not updated anymore but Firefox has an ESR with updates.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    Got that reminder a couple of months ago when doing a fresh 7 install on an old Core 2 Quad workstation laptop. It’s very clean and “quiet” compared to modern Windows, and though its visual style isn’t exactly fresh I don’t think it exactly looks dated either when used on good modern IPS panel monitor. It’s aged much better than XP did. Wouldn’t ever dare to take that machine online but there’s no reason why it couldn’t serve as a unitasker of some kind.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      There is legacyupdate.net and 0patch.com
  - segasaturn 2y ago
    7 really is the last relic from a lost time. I had to use an old 7 workstation and remembered how good it feels to search for a file in the Start Menu and not get a full page of bing search results, news and ads. Modern Windows has become a bizarre homunculus of all of the tech industry's worst instincts (adtech, endless scrolling news feeds, mass surveillance)
  - wvenable 2y ago
    To this day I configure all my machines to look and act like Windows 7 with a combination of tweaks and 3rd party applications.
- mathattack 2y ago
  Doesn’t 7 have massive InfoSec issues? Or is that scare tactics to push through an upgrade?
  - kasabali 2y ago
    Exactly.
- mhuffman 2y ago
  However, in this universe, Microsoft has the largest market cap on Earth. So I guess the choice between everyone living happily ever after and some people living happily ever after was clearly made.
amflare 2y ago
Frankly I'm looking forward to not being harrassed endlessly to update my computer. I'm happy to live on an EOLed Windows 10 if it means that I don't have to keep playing goalie against whatever random crap Microsoft thinks they should be allowed to put on my machine.
- toast0 2y ago
  I'm sure they'll continue to play games with updates that make the big warnings even bigger and scarier. In the meantime, they told me in 2015 that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, "Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10" [1]. That came from a Microsoft employee, was widely reported, and not corrected; so it may not have been an official statement, but it's not like it came from nowhere. My plan is still to move to FreeBSD on the desktop once Windows 10 is dead; but we'll see what happens to my plan when it comes time to actually do it. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
- netsharc 2y ago
  I upgraded my Windows 7 to 10 (due to Chrome-based browsers weren't being updated anymore for Windows 7, and there was the WebP exploit) using DISM, and I learn that you can also upgrade Windows 10 to Enterprise, which is a little less car-salesman-ly than Pro (no web stuff on the Start Menu/search for example): https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinstalling/ https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinst... On this Windows edition I haven't seen any nudges to upgrade to 11. There's even a "curl $URL | sh"-esque command to get Windows activated, hosted on Microsoft's own Github: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
xmprt 2y ago
Title is a bit misleading. Originally I was under the impression that this was regarding some vulnerability in the new "recall" feature they released. Turns out it's just a warning telling users to upgrade to Windows 11 or else they'll lose security updates in a year and a half.
jamal-kumar 2y ago
Does anyone else work for a company or have clients who are investing heavily in moving off of Microsoft entirely in the past month? It's been like 90% of my work in the past bit. Like, whole ASP.NET apps that were running for decades just being migrated over with a one year timeline to get away from this nonsense.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  When were these applications built that "this nonsense" is a surprise? I mean good for them for deciding now rather than never, just seems strange to me.
  - jamal-kumar 2y ago
    You'd be surprised how many enterprises have been basically running the same codebase since the 90s
    - jimbob45 2y ago
      Or worse - code built around 90s code such that the ancient code is now untouchable and you have to perform binary gymnastics to accomplish your goals.
    - intelVISA 2y ago
      Has anything fundamentally changed? You can solve 90% of business use cases with RFC 2818.
- heywire 2y ago
  Big push in the retail POS space
  - throwaway173738 2y ago
    Windows has been nothing but a source of problems for my employer’s Windows-based hardware. 7 was the last version I would consider basing a product on.
kayodelycaon 2y ago
Wow. The operating system telling people they need to buy a new computer. Somehow I find this even more disgusting than Recall.
- netsharc 2y ago
  Indeed, Microsoft harassing people to make e-waste of perfectly good computers, who cares about the planet burning?
- throwaway290232 2y ago
  [dead]
- rolph 2y ago
  webpages, even complain about this now, or will complain about your browser, or OS, or all 3
ryandrake 2y ago
> “Microsoft is now rolling out two full-screen pop-up banners that remind everyone, including those with supported and unsupported PCs, to upgrade to Windows 11.” We don't need repeated fucking full-screen reminders that Windows 11 exists. WE KNOW. Willy hears ya. Willy don't care[1]. Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers? The user owns the computer, not Microsoft! If you publish software and users won't use it, stop and consider maybe you're wrong and not your users. Rich from a company who, decades ago, asked "Where do -you- want to go today?" Today, it's more like "Where do -we- want to coerce you into going today?" 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfupnpUOoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfupnpUOoA
- rshah_45 2y ago
  The investors are in charge. You will enjoy the telemetry and hamfisted AI that is Windows 11 because well no one uses Windows because they want to.
  - aworks 2y ago
    Windows 11 suffices for my needs. Ubuntu on WSL is a bonus.
- e40 2y ago
  > Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers? You make it seem like this wasn't intentional. This came from the top and I expect there were a lot of people in the implementation path that did not like it. It's a feature not a bug. I left Windows a long, long time ago. But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Apple supports (with bug/security fixes) the last 3 major releases. Yeah, you can run an unsupported macOS forever (without ads for the newer one), but they don't go as far back as Microsoft ever did.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Oh, yes. It's bad that the two biggest desktop OS vendors seem to be working in lock-step against user choice. Apple always seems to do it first, then Microsoft copies it in a more extreme, yet hamfisted way. Apple also nags you to upgrade the OS, but they do it subtly, in a notification that is annoying but not that intrusive and it's dismissible. Microsoft barrels in and says "Hey, I wanna do that too!" but instead throws up trashy full-screen popups and "warnings" to the user (as if the user is a naughty puppy). Apple really wants you to have an Apple ID, too, and has various subtle ways of reminding you just how much of a sad person you are for not having one. Microsoft then comes barreling in with "Hahah! We're going to FORCE you get a Microsoft ID, and require you to use it to log in to your own PC! Howbout that!?"
jabroni_salad 2y ago
"The reason why Windows 10 users aren't upgrading is that they already know what Windows 11 is capable of, and they've made the decision not to use it" I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's because the general populace has spent the past 30 years being trained, often with on-the-spot reinforcement, that popups and banners == viruses. I don't think the average person on the street could tell you even one thing that "windows 11 is capable of". People do not use operating systems, they use apps.
- spacedcowboy 2y ago
  For me, Windows 11 is synonymous with "lots of unwanted adverts". I don't like adverts, so I don't like Windows 11 - irrespective of whatever program I "want" to run on the OS. I can run my Win10 box (when I absolutely must, because there's no equivalent to a Windows app) via MRD and it's ... not terrible. Downgrading it to 11 would make it even less attractive than it is now, so why would I do that ? I don't care about support - the only driver for me to downgrade it to 11 would be if the application authors stopped writing for 10. So far, so good.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Windows 10 already has an unbearable amount of adverts. Any rumor that Win11 has even more is enough to stop people. (I don't really know about 11, I guess my VM has an incompatible disk partitioning.)
- ben_w 2y ago
  > I don't think the average person on the street could tell you even one thing that "windows 11 is capable of". People do not use operating systems, they use apps. I can't even tell you which Windows is on my gaming laptop, much less what features separate it from other releases. Off the top of my head (no cheating) I don't even know which new features have appeared in the last 5 versions of iOS and I develop for that and actually watch the WWDC videos. Even when deprecation warnings pop up in Xcode, they're utterly forgettable. Normal users have even less reason to care about an OS than devs do.
- nitwit005 2y ago
morkalork 2y ago
I wonder if they'll back down at the 11th hour like Google does with 3rd party cookies.
bee_rider 2y ago
In May, they somehow managed to get 10 taking a tiny bit of market share from 11, so it makes sense that they’d get a little pushier. I wonder how it is doing relative to previous releases.
mulmen 2y ago
Why would I want to upgrade to 11? When I upgraded to 10 from 7 the OS was worse and only degraded over time. My relationship with Microsoft is now purely adversarial. If they want me to do it I know it is bad for me. I only used Windows for games but recently had a game that I couldn’t make work on Windows but did work in Proton on Fedora. I haven’t booted my Windows partition since and will reclaim it when necessary.
munk-a 2y ago
Windows 11 removed the ability to pin the task bar to the side of the screen. Dear Microsoft, I will not upgrade to Windows 11 until you restore your removed accessibility features. I have ADHD and a mid-view taskbar (i.e. on the side of one of the screens in between my two monitors) is a requirement for me to be able to use an operating system. I've submitted numerous tickets, it's pretty clear providing a solid UX is low on their priority list.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  You are not alone. Among other concerns, this is practically my greatest reason to not switch to win11 at home; professionally I use it but I would never choose it for my personal OS.
  - CamelCaseName 2y ago
    It's not just your greatest reason, it is the #1 issue raised on Microsoft's own feature request board. It is a conscious decision, not an accident
    - sharpshadow 2y ago
      Is there a statement why they don’t allow it anymore?
      - r2_pilot 2y ago
        Supposedly, the win11 refactoring of the code base made it infeasible to allow. My hot take on this is if their code is now so unmanageable so as to disallow where a rectangular bar with some minimal interactions is positioned on the screen, it's time for me to get off of it wherever possible.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- smokel 2y ago
  > a mid-view taskbar ... is a requirement for me to be able to use an operating system. This part reduces the credibility of your request. You are actually unable to view a web page or start Excel if the task bar is not in your preferred space?
cypress66 2y ago
My mom's PC is plenty fast, and works flawlessly. She has an i7 4790k. She probably wouldn't mind upgrading to windows 11, but she can't because MS decided that you must have TPM. Windows 10 will be EOL in a year. These companies will bs you about how eco friendly they are, but they expect you to throw a perfectly fine computer into the trash.
- drpossum 2y ago
  The sheer amount of trash this will generate over a small thing like a TPM is something where a competent government would intervene.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  Not me. When Win 10 goes out of support, I'll have a nice, pretty darn modern (all things considered) (yet another) Linux box. And I'll happily pick up any other computer artificially deprecated by Microsoft too.
- amatecha 2y ago
  Oh neat, yeah my most modern desktop PC is i5-4590k, so that's cool. Forced obsolescence is one of my biggest complaints towards modern tech vendors. Ah well, needless to say that 4590 is my last Windows machine. I have one Mac, and the rest of my machines are Linux and OpenBSD. I'm done with proprietary OSes all around.
  - TiredOfLife 2y ago
    The weirdest thing is that Windows 11 iot ltsc (that just released) has no tpm or modern cpu requirements. Only sse 4.2 so basically any intel cpu named core ix-.
- wpm 2y ago
  I'll just keep running Windows 10 until I literally can't. Which is enough time to find a Linux distro + DE/WM/theme I can live with and get Proton/WINE setup.
  - 2y ago
amatecha 2y ago
I wouldn't normally comment on the site functionality, but there is literally zero article content on the page for me, except the headline. I'm using Firefox with "Strict" privacy settings, and this causes the article content not to load correctly. Of course the page is completely laden with ads and whatnot. Web devs: can we please standardize on gracefully handling load failures on non-essential scripts (like when your ad/tracking library didn't load)?
- nerdile 2y ago
  This is Forbes gracefully telling you that if you won't take their ads, then they don't want to give you their sloppy resummarization of someone else's article. Also, lol: Microsoft: Windows 11 is an essential update to Windows 10 Forbes: Ads are an essential part of our articles
- johnea 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/CxEqJ https://archive.ph/CxEqJ
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Microsoft's full-screen reminders – upgrade to Windows 11 are back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564987
layer8 2y ago
A couple of people I know are still on Windows 7 as their main driver, due to the degraded experience on the newer versions. Including, to my initial surprise, a security researcher, and not for security-research purposes. Attack vectors nowadays are almost exclusively through email attachments or getting users to click on malware links. I predict that those staying on Windows 10 will be about as safe as these Windows 7 users.
downrightmike 2y ago
[flagged]
cableshaft 2y ago
I have a perfectly good gaming computer that plays every modern video game out there with quite good graphics (RTX 2070 Super), but because bought it slightly too early for it to come with their security requirements, it won't install Windows 11 on it until I buy new hardware. I bought the computer in May 2021 also, it's only three years old. Got my laptop in November 2021 and it was able to install Windows 11 (but came with Windows 10), so my computer must have been bought just before the hardware cutoff. That's the only reason I haven't upgraded to Windows 11 yet. For all other Windows upgrades it's only been I couldn't install it because that computer was ancient. Feels dumb that I'm going to be forced to upgrade a 4 year old computer just to get security updates.
- Danny_Dan4 2y ago
  it's not due to some arbitrary cut-off date, it's that windows 11 requires TPM 2.0. It's likely that your PC just either lacks a motherboard that supports a firmware TPM on AMD CPUs, or is just missing a TPM module. Accordingly, I've prevented my system from being auto-upgraded to 11 by just disabling my system's TPM.
  - cbmuser 2y ago
    It’s not just TPM but a large number of CPUs Microsoft is just unwilling to support.
  - cableshaft 2y ago
    Yeah I know it's because of TPM. But presumably at some point computer manufacturers added TPM to their motherboard/CPUs to be able to say they have or can upgrade to Windows 11. Not saying there's a definite time cutoff, just generally speaking it seems like somewhere around there more computers started including the TPM capabilities. Still three years isn't that long. I'd hate to have to trash my motherboard and/or CPU just to get security updates.
    - lostmsu 2y ago
      A PC from 2021 should have a TPM in the processor.
ok_dad 2y ago
The only reason I use windows is for gaming, and I’m trying to figure out how to switch away as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I do sim racing, so it’ll be hard to get the peripherals working properly. I’m really sick of Microsoft lately with this stuff, they’re definitely run by the MBAs now.
- nerdile 2y ago
  Idk I just installed Debian on a new laptop and installed Steam and had to ask my friends, how do I turn on Proton to get more of my games to run? I figured it was complicated... It was a checkbox O_O Edit: but yeah, peripherals will be the tricky part
AndyKelley 2y ago
Meanwhile my Linux machine plays all the latest games flawlessly and doesn't nag me at all. At some point Windows users need to wake up and stop being willfully ignorant of the perfectly viable alternative.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  You should tell them to stay away from Debian-family like Ubuntu and Mint. The easiest way to get someone to go back to M$ is to tell people to use an outdated linux distro. Fedora/OpenSUSE are literally the best OS ever. Better across the board.
  - trey-jones 2y ago
    There is no need for distro wars here. What works for you is not necessarily what works for someone else, and none of them are _literally_ the best OS ever. Just because Debian and family have been around for a long time, doesn't mean they're outdated - and believe me it's not personal bias: I choose Arch for myself.
    - resource_waste 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - adamomada 2y ago
        I think you’re right and nobody really wants to hear it but here goes: Fedora works the best on laptop computers which are the overwhelming majority of regular people’s personal computers at home, and the only reason it can work so well is because of the work that went into systemd to get it where it is today. So much stuff is considered, even down to swap strategy for modern computers with solid-state drives, that Fedora should probably be crowned “least-worst distro” for ex-Windows users. If there was an effort to get them all on one, either gnome or kde (probably kde for ex-windows users tho) it would do wonders for Linux overall, and maybe 2025 is the year of the Linux Desktop with Win10 EOL. (I don’t even like it, or systemd really, but it’s a necessary ‘evil’ to have it backed by some sort of commercial entity as well)
bowsamic 2y ago
Let’s see if the mods delete this Microsoft critical post off the front page like they did with the last one
throwaway290232 2y ago
[dead]
MaximilianEmel 2y ago
Is this the first time Microsoft is EoLing a Windows version that has the majority marketshare?
kmeisthax 2y ago
My desktop has a 16-core Threadripper 1st Gen and I have zero reason to upgrade the hardware outside of "Microsoft refuses to let me upgrade the software". Yes, I know you can force an unsupported upgrade, but I'm absolutely waiting for the other shoe to drop. Microsoft absolutely will start deactivating Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, mark my words. Why? It's simple: Windows 11 exists to force you to buy new hardware. While Windows is technically a retail product, nobody buys it. That's why they dropped the charade of upgrade copies and made Windows 10 a free update. Everyone buys Windows with their PC anyway, so the only way Microsoft gets more money out of Windows is if they make people upgrade their PCs more often so they buy more OEM licenses. We've already seen with the whole local account debacle[0] and Edge[1] that Microsoft will do anything to users if they think they'll make a buck somewhere down the line. I could totally see Microsoft just saying the quiet part out loud, changing their EULA to make running Windows on unsupported hardware a form of piracy. [0] To be clear, I like Microsoft account sign-in. [1] Man, I remember when Edge came out. It was actually good but needed some polish. Then they switched to Chromium and somehow enshittified it more.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
skeledrew 2y ago
I remember when I was switching from Windows to Linux over 15 years ago. There were a couple of failures because I found the curve very steep. Then I came across Zorin OS (Linux distro with Windows UX) and that took all the transitional pain away. Used it for a few months before moving again to Kubuntu, which is where I'm happily at today. Can recommend a similar path for anyone else having such transitional issues.
cbmuser 2y ago
If Microsoft wants more users to upgrade to Windows 11, they should get rid of their idiotic CPU limitations. There is absolutely no sane reason why Skylake and Broadwell CPUs shouldn’t be able to run Windows 11.
- jasomill 2y ago
  "We don't want to commit engineering resources to investigating or fixing bugs that only arise when running Windows 11 on older PCs" is a sane, if not particularly consumer or environmentally friendly reason to not support Windows 11 on older PCs (where "older" is arbitrary, and probably has more to do with contractual commitments and marketing requirements than technical considerations).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

79 points by sharpshadow 2y ago

In an alternative universe, Microsoft stayed on Windows 7, monetized the OS through trust and a really solid app store with a 10% transaction fee, and everyone lived happily ever after.

baxtr 2y ago
Is that the same universe, where corporate politics didn’t play a role at all and where Steve Ballmer was a very nice guy?
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  I bet it's the same universe where companies weren't decreted to exist mainly to make money. I mean, people work for money, but money's a mean to satisfy our needs, few people work solely for it. If corporations are people, we raised them to be sociopaths.
schmidtleonard 2y ago
My oscilloscope runs Windows 7 so I get a daily reminder how beautiful unencumbered Windows is. No ads, no layers of pig lipstick, and it's still snappy and crisp even though the machine is 13 years old. If it weren't for weird compatibility issues (Chrome complains IIRC), I'd run Windows 7 at home in a heartbeat.
- conradfr 2y ago
  Chrome and Firefox are not updated anymore but Firefox has an ESR with updates.
- jwells89 2y ago
  Got that reminder a couple of months ago when doing a fresh 7 install on an old Core 2 Quad workstation laptop. It’s very clean and “quiet” compared to modern Windows, and though its visual style isn’t exactly fresh I don’t think it exactly looks dated either when used on good modern IPS panel monitor. It’s aged much better than XP did. Wouldn’t ever dare to take that machine online but there’s no reason why it couldn’t serve as a unitasker of some kind.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    There is legacyupdate.net and 0patch.com
- segasaturn 2y ago
  7 really is the last relic from a lost time. I had to use an old 7 workstation and remembered how good it feels to search for a file in the Start Menu and not get a full page of bing search results, news and ads. Modern Windows has become a bizarre homunculus of all of the tech industry's worst instincts (adtech, endless scrolling news feeds, mass surveillance)
- wvenable 2y ago
  To this day I configure all my machines to look and act like Windows 7 with a combination of tweaks and 3rd party applications.
mathattack 2y ago
Doesn’t 7 have massive InfoSec issues? Or is that scare tactics to push through an upgrade?
- kasabali 2y ago
  Exactly.
mhuffman 2y ago
However, in this universe, Microsoft has the largest market cap on Earth. So I guess the choice between everyone living happily ever after and some people living happily ever after was clearly made.

amflare 2y ago

Frankly I'm looking forward to not being harrassed endlessly to update my computer. I'm happy to live on an EOLed Windows 10 if it means that I don't have to keep playing goalie against whatever random crap Microsoft thinks they should be allowed to put on my machine.

toast0 2y ago
I'm sure they'll continue to play games with updates that make the big warnings even bigger and scarier. In the meantime, they told me in 2015 that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, "Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10" [1]. That came from a Microsoft employee, was widely reported, and not corrected; so it may not have been an official statement, but it's not like it came from nowhere. My plan is still to move to FreeBSD on the desktop once Windows 10 is dead; but we'll see what happens to my plan when it comes time to actually do it. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
netsharc 2y ago
I upgraded my Windows 7 to 10 (due to Chrome-based browsers weren't being updated anymore for Windows 7, and there was the WebP exploit) using DISM, and I learn that you can also upgrade Windows 10 to Enterprise, which is a little less car-salesman-ly than Pro (no web stuff on the Start Menu/search for example): https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinstalling/ https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinst... On this Windows edition I haven't seen any nudges to upgrade to 11. There's even a "curl $URL | sh"-esque command to get Windows activated, hosted on Microsoft's own Github: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

xmprt 2y ago

Title is a bit misleading. Originally I was under the impression that this was regarding some vulnerability in the new "recall" feature they released. Turns out it's just a warning telling users to upgrade to Windows 11 or else they'll lose security updates in a year and a half.

jamal-kumar 2y ago

Does anyone else work for a company or have clients who are investing heavily in moving off of Microsoft entirely in the past month? It's been like 90% of my work in the past bit. Like, whole ASP.NET apps that were running for decades just being migrated over with a one year timeline to get away from this nonsense.

Zambyte 2y ago
When were these applications built that "this nonsense" is a surprise? I mean good for them for deciding now rather than never, just seems strange to me.
- jamal-kumar 2y ago
  You'd be surprised how many enterprises have been basically running the same codebase since the 90s
  - jimbob45 2y ago
    Or worse - code built around 90s code such that the ancient code is now untouchable and you have to perform binary gymnastics to accomplish your goals.
  - intelVISA 2y ago
    Has anything fundamentally changed? You can solve 90% of business use cases with RFC 2818.
heywire 2y ago
Big push in the retail POS space
- throwaway173738 2y ago
  Windows has been nothing but a source of problems for my employer’s Windows-based hardware. 7 was the last version I would consider basing a product on.

kayodelycaon 2y ago

Wow. The operating system telling people they need to buy a new computer. Somehow I find this even more disgusting than Recall.

netsharc 2y ago
Indeed, Microsoft harassing people to make e-waste of perfectly good computers, who cares about the planet burning?
throwaway290232 2y ago
[dead]
rolph 2y ago
webpages, even complain about this now, or will complain about your browser, or OS, or all 3

ryandrake 2y ago

> “Microsoft is now rolling out two full-screen pop-up banners that remind everyone, including those with supported and unsupported PCs, to upgrade to Windows 11.” We don't need repeated fucking full-screen reminders that Windows 11 exists. WE KNOW. Willy hears ya. Willy don't care[1]. Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers? The user owns the computer, not Microsoft! If you publish software and users won't use it, stop and consider maybe you're wrong and not your users. Rich from a company who, decades ago, asked "Where do -you- want to go today?" Today, it's more like "Where do -we- want to coerce you into going today?" 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfupnpUOoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfupnpUOoA

rshah_45 2y ago
The investors are in charge. You will enjoy the telemetry and hamfisted AI that is Windows 11 because well no one uses Windows because they want to.
- aworks 2y ago
  Windows 11 suffices for my needs. Ubuntu on WSL is a bonus.
e40 2y ago
> Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers? You make it seem like this wasn't intentional. This came from the top and I expect there were a lot of people in the implementation path that did not like it. It's a feature not a bug. I left Windows a long, long time ago. But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Apple supports (with bug/security fixes) the last 3 major releases. Yeah, you can run an unsupported macOS forever (without ads for the newer one), but they don't go as far back as Microsoft ever did.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Oh, yes. It's bad that the two biggest desktop OS vendors seem to be working in lock-step against user choice. Apple always seems to do it first, then Microsoft copies it in a more extreme, yet hamfisted way. Apple also nags you to upgrade the OS, but they do it subtly, in a notification that is annoying but not that intrusive and it's dismissible. Microsoft barrels in and says "Hey, I wanna do that too!" but instead throws up trashy full-screen popups and "warnings" to the user (as if the user is a naughty puppy). Apple really wants you to have an Apple ID, too, and has various subtle ways of reminding you just how much of a sad person you are for not having one. Microsoft then comes barreling in with "Hahah! We're going to FORCE you get a Microsoft ID, and require you to use it to log in to your own PC! Howbout that!?"

jabroni_salad 2y ago

"The reason why Windows 10 users aren't upgrading is that they already know what Windows 11 is capable of, and they've made the decision not to use it" I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's because the general populace has spent the past 30 years being trained, often with on-the-spot reinforcement, that popups and banners == viruses. I don't think the average person on the street could tell you even one thing that "windows 11 is capable of". People do not use operating systems, they use apps.

spacedcowboy 2y ago
For me, Windows 11 is synonymous with "lots of unwanted adverts". I don't like adverts, so I don't like Windows 11 - irrespective of whatever program I "want" to run on the OS. I can run my Win10 box (when I absolutely must, because there's no equivalent to a Windows app) via MRD and it's ... not terrible. Downgrading it to 11 would make it even less attractive than it is now, so why would I do that ? I don't care about support - the only driver for me to downgrade it to 11 would be if the application authors stopped writing for 10. So far, so good.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Windows 10 already has an unbearable amount of adverts. Any rumor that Win11 has even more is enough to stop people. (I don't really know about 11, I guess my VM has an incompatible disk partitioning.)
ben_w 2y ago
> I don't think the average person on the street could tell you even one thing that "windows 11 is capable of". People do not use operating systems, they use apps. I can't even tell you which Windows is on my gaming laptop, much less what features separate it from other releases. Off the top of my head (no cheating) I don't even know which new features have appeared in the last 5 versions of iOS and I develop for that and actually watch the WWDC videos. Even when deprecation warnings pop up in Xcode, they're utterly forgettable. Normal users have even less reason to care about an OS than devs do.
nitwit005 2y ago

morkalork 2y ago

I wonder if they'll back down at the 11th hour like Google does with 3rd party cookies.

bee_rider 2y ago

In May, they somehow managed to get 10 taking a tiny bit of market share from 11, so it makes sense that they’d get a little pushier. I wonder how it is doing relative to previous releases.

mulmen 2y ago

Why would I want to upgrade to 11? When I upgraded to 10 from 7 the OS was worse and only degraded over time. My relationship with Microsoft is now purely adversarial. If they want me to do it I know it is bad for me. I only used Windows for games but recently had a game that I couldn’t make work on Windows but did work in Proton on Fedora. I haven’t booted my Windows partition since and will reclaim it when necessary.

munk-a 2y ago

Windows 11 removed the ability to pin the task bar to the side of the screen. Dear Microsoft, I will not upgrade to Windows 11 until you restore your removed accessibility features. I have ADHD and a mid-view taskbar (i.e. on the side of one of the screens in between my two monitors) is a requirement for me to be able to use an operating system. I've submitted numerous tickets, it's pretty clear providing a solid UX is low on their priority list.

r2_pilot 2y ago
You are not alone. Among other concerns, this is practically my greatest reason to not switch to win11 at home; professionally I use it but I would never choose it for my personal OS.
- CamelCaseName 2y ago
  It's not just your greatest reason, it is the #1 issue raised on Microsoft's own feature request board. It is a conscious decision, not an accident
  - sharpshadow 2y ago
    Is there a statement why they don’t allow it anymore?
    - r2_pilot 2y ago
      Supposedly, the win11 refactoring of the code base made it infeasible to allow. My hot take on this is if their code is now so unmanageable so as to disallow where a rectangular bar with some minimal interactions is positioned on the screen, it's time for me to get off of it wherever possible.
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smokel 2y ago
> a mid-view taskbar ... is a requirement for me to be able to use an operating system. This part reduces the credibility of your request. You are actually unable to view a web page or start Excel if the task bar is not in your preferred space?

cypress66 2y ago

My mom's PC is plenty fast, and works flawlessly. She has an i7 4790k. She probably wouldn't mind upgrading to windows 11, but she can't because MS decided that you must have TPM. Windows 10 will be EOL in a year. These companies will bs you about how eco friendly they are, but they expect you to throw a perfectly fine computer into the trash.

drpossum 2y ago
The sheer amount of trash this will generate over a small thing like a TPM is something where a competent government would intervene.
r2_pilot 2y ago
Not me. When Win 10 goes out of support, I'll have a nice, pretty darn modern (all things considered) (yet another) Linux box. And I'll happily pick up any other computer artificially deprecated by Microsoft too.
amatecha 2y ago
Oh neat, yeah my most modern desktop PC is i5-4590k, so that's cool. Forced obsolescence is one of my biggest complaints towards modern tech vendors. Ah well, needless to say that 4590 is my last Windows machine. I have one Mac, and the rest of my machines are Linux and OpenBSD. I'm done with proprietary OSes all around.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  The weirdest thing is that Windows 11 iot ltsc (that just released) has no tpm or modern cpu requirements. Only sse 4.2 so basically any intel cpu named core ix-.
wpm 2y ago
I'll just keep running Windows 10 until I literally can't. Which is enough time to find a Linux distro + DE/WM/theme I can live with and get Proton/WINE setup.
- 2y ago

amatecha 2y ago

I wouldn't normally comment on the site functionality, but there is literally zero article content on the page for me, except the headline. I'm using Firefox with "Strict" privacy settings, and this causes the article content not to load correctly. Of course the page is completely laden with ads and whatnot. Web devs: can we please standardize on gracefully handling load failures on non-essential scripts (like when your ad/tracking library didn't load)?

nerdile 2y ago
This is Forbes gracefully telling you that if you won't take their ads, then they don't want to give you their sloppy resummarization of someone else's article. Also, lol: Microsoft: Windows 11 is an essential update to Windows 10 Forbes: Ads are an essential part of our articles
johnea 2y ago
https://archive.ph/CxEqJ https://archive.ph/CxEqJ

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Microsoft's full-screen reminders – upgrade to Windows 11 are back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564987

layer8 2y ago

A couple of people I know are still on Windows 7 as their main driver, due to the degraded experience on the newer versions. Including, to my initial surprise, a security researcher, and not for security-research purposes. Attack vectors nowadays are almost exclusively through email attachments or getting users to click on malware links. I predict that those staying on Windows 10 will be about as safe as these Windows 7 users.

downrightmike 2y ago

[flagged]

cableshaft 2y ago

I have a perfectly good gaming computer that plays every modern video game out there with quite good graphics (RTX 2070 Super), but because bought it slightly too early for it to come with their security requirements, it won't install Windows 11 on it until I buy new hardware. I bought the computer in May 2021 also, it's only three years old. Got my laptop in November 2021 and it was able to install Windows 11 (but came with Windows 10), so my computer must have been bought just before the hardware cutoff. That's the only reason I haven't upgraded to Windows 11 yet. For all other Windows upgrades it's only been I couldn't install it because that computer was ancient. Feels dumb that I'm going to be forced to upgrade a 4 year old computer just to get security updates.

Danny_Dan4 2y ago
it's not due to some arbitrary cut-off date, it's that windows 11 requires TPM 2.0. It's likely that your PC just either lacks a motherboard that supports a firmware TPM on AMD CPUs, or is just missing a TPM module. Accordingly, I've prevented my system from being auto-upgraded to 11 by just disabling my system's TPM.
- cbmuser 2y ago
  It’s not just TPM but a large number of CPUs Microsoft is just unwilling to support.
- cableshaft 2y ago
  Yeah I know it's because of TPM. But presumably at some point computer manufacturers added TPM to their motherboard/CPUs to be able to say they have or can upgrade to Windows 11. Not saying there's a definite time cutoff, just generally speaking it seems like somewhere around there more computers started including the TPM capabilities. Still three years isn't that long. I'd hate to have to trash my motherboard and/or CPU just to get security updates.
  - lostmsu 2y ago
    A PC from 2021 should have a TPM in the processor.

ok_dad 2y ago

The only reason I use windows is for gaming, and I’m trying to figure out how to switch away as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I do sim racing, so it’ll be hard to get the peripherals working properly. I’m really sick of Microsoft lately with this stuff, they’re definitely run by the MBAs now.

nerdile 2y ago
Idk I just installed Debian on a new laptop and installed Steam and had to ask my friends, how do I turn on Proton to get more of my games to run? I figured it was complicated... It was a checkbox O_O Edit: but yeah, peripherals will be the tricky part

AndyKelley 2y ago

Meanwhile my Linux machine plays all the latest games flawlessly and doesn't nag me at all. At some point Windows users need to wake up and stop being willfully ignorant of the perfectly viable alternative.

resource_waste 2y ago
You should tell them to stay away from Debian-family like Ubuntu and Mint. The easiest way to get someone to go back to M$ is to tell people to use an outdated linux distro. Fedora/OpenSUSE are literally the best OS ever. Better across the board.
- trey-jones 2y ago
  There is no need for distro wars here. What works for you is not necessarily what works for someone else, and none of them are _literally_ the best OS ever. Just because Debian and family have been around for a long time, doesn't mean they're outdated - and believe me it's not personal bias: I choose Arch for myself.
  - resource_waste 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - adamomada 2y ago
      I think you’re right and nobody really wants to hear it but here goes: Fedora works the best on laptop computers which are the overwhelming majority of regular people’s personal computers at home, and the only reason it can work so well is because of the work that went into systemd to get it where it is today. So much stuff is considered, even down to swap strategy for modern computers with solid-state drives, that Fedora should probably be crowned “least-worst distro” for ex-Windows users. If there was an effort to get them all on one, either gnome or kde (probably kde for ex-windows users tho) it would do wonders for Linux overall, and maybe 2025 is the year of the Linux Desktop with Win10 EOL. (I don’t even like it, or systemd really, but it’s a necessary ‘evil’ to have it backed by some sort of commercial entity as well)

bowsamic 2y ago

Let’s see if the mods delete this Microsoft critical post off the front page like they did with the last one

throwaway290232 2y ago

[dead]

MaximilianEmel 2y ago

Is this the first time Microsoft is EoLing a Windows version that has the majority marketshare?

kmeisthax 2y ago

My desktop has a 16-core Threadripper 1st Gen and I have zero reason to upgrade the hardware outside of "Microsoft refuses to let me upgrade the software". Yes, I know you can force an unsupported upgrade, but I'm absolutely waiting for the other shoe to drop. Microsoft absolutely will start deactivating Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, mark my words. Why? It's simple: Windows 11 exists to force you to buy new hardware. While Windows is technically a retail product, nobody buys it. That's why they dropped the charade of upgrade copies and made Windows 10 a free update. Everyone buys Windows with their PC anyway, so the only way Microsoft gets more money out of Windows is if they make people upgrade their PCs more often so they buy more OEM licenses. We've already seen with the whole local account debacle[0] and Edge[1] that Microsoft will do anything to users if they think they'll make a buck somewhere down the line. I could totally see Microsoft just saying the quiet part out loud, changing their EULA to make running Windows on unsupported hardware a form of piracy. [0] To be clear, I like Microsoft account sign-in. [1] Man, I remember when Edge came out. It was actually good but needed some polish. Then they switched to Chromium and somehow enshittified it more.

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skeledrew 2y ago

I remember when I was switching from Windows to Linux over 15 years ago. There were a couple of failures because I found the curve very steep. Then I came across Zorin OS (Linux distro with Windows UX) and that took all the transitional pain away. Used it for a few months before moving again to Kubuntu, which is where I'm happily at today. Can recommend a similar path for anyone else having such transitional issues.

cbmuser 2y ago

If Microsoft wants more users to upgrade to Windows 11, they should get rid of their idiotic CPU limitations. There is absolutely no sane reason why Skylake and Broadwell CPUs shouldn’t be able to run Windows 11.

jasomill 2y ago
"We don't want to commit engineering resources to investigating or fixing bugs that only arise when running Windows 11 on older PCs" is a sane, if not particularly consumer or environmentally friendly reason to not support Windows 11 on older PCs (where "older" is arbitrary, and probably has more to do with contractual commitments and marketing requirements than technical considerations).

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