Microsoft's draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025

catch22@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 1041 points –
Microsoft's draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025
tomshardware.com

Microsoft, doing it's part to make the world a better place.

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I feel like MS could avoid everyone’s gripes by simply not charging for their security update program. 7 to 13+ years is going to more than cover when most people would’ve upgraded anyway.

That’s not how software works. Maintaining an OS until the end of time is a real problem.

Should they be maintaining the beloved windows xp still?

For real. I would expect this separate to have a marginally better understanding of software development than your average Joe but I've been quite disappointed in this thread.

Maintaining software is extremely expensive when it's as expansive as this. We're talking hundreds of millions per month for something like Windows just in salaries. Long term support has to be financed, that's the dirty reality, people have to be paid to do the work.

Agreed. I’m just looking at the machines that were purchased at the launch of Win 11, but might not have had the proper hardware to transition off 10. I would assume that computers on a that cusp will mostly support 11, but if the extended updates were free, it would ensure those machines would have had 7 years of security updates - which seems like a reasonable lifespan for a computer these days.

Making those updates free would also mean computers that were 13+ years old were also getting security updates, so maybe my recommendation is overkill.

At some point you just need to move on and stop taking customer service calls from people with old hardware.

Agreed. I’m just looking at the machines that were purchased at the launch of Win 11, but might not have had the proper hardware to transition off 10.

Windows 11 launched in 2021. The bare minimum hardware (8th gen intel) is from 2017. If you were buying 5+ year old hardware in 2021 then that’s on you.

Don't forget the TPM module! Which has also been pretty damn ubiquitous on mobos for a long ass time.

This is all just clickbait and easy upvotes on lemmy with the big pro-linux movement.

TPM is built into the CPU of all 8th gen and ryzen 2000 series CPUs. The module is only needed for older systems.

The module is only needed for older systems.

Not needed at all. If you’re installing it on an older system, you’re already bypassing the requirements so why bother with a TPM?

The TPM is a hardware feature of every processor that's supported. I really don't understand all of this bullshit, the requirements are basically "don't run this on ancient hardware." That's it.

7th gen i5 business laptops already had hardware TPMs included.
So I'd guess this is either a heavily business sided feature or most OEM machines (not DIYs motherboards or systemintegrators just buying off-the-shelve hardware in bulk!) like the ones from HP, Dell, Lenovo probably had those fpr whatever reason as well.

The whole point of charging for it is to incentivise people to install Win11, imo. They want to avoid what happened with XP/7, where people clung to it for years.

"Windows 10 is unsupported and you will probably get scary viruses, but don't worry, you can pay our security subscription or you can download Windows 11 for FREE right now!"

Basically, yeah. I know they got caught with their pants down in regards to windows 7 and its extended updates, but considering everything about the Windows 11 cutoff is totally arbitrary, it feels pretty shitty to also have to pay for upgrades after being arbitrarily fucked out of using the next operating system.