Just in case you thought the Windows 11 upgrade and hardware compatibility situation couldn’t get any more confusing and complicated, Microsoft decided to do a Microsoft.
This morning, Microsoft revealed a change of plan to The Verge: it won’t technically abandon those millions of PCs, because you’ll be able to manually install the downloadable Windows 11 ISO on whatever you want. The company’s also extending its official CPU compatibility list to a bunch of Intel’s most expensive Xeon workstation processors and its most expensive line of Core X desktop CPUs — and, tellingly, the less powerful Intel chip it shipped in its Surface Studio 2, so it no longer has to defend the idea of abandoning a flagship product that it still continues to sell brand-new.
That sounds like a nice gesture, since it will enable anyone – even those who do not technically comply with the TPM requirements – to install Windows 11, even if it has to be a fresh installation (which you should probably do with new Windows versions anyway).
However, it turns out there’s a major caveat here. While yes, Microsoft will allow you to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, these installations might not get updates – not even security updates.
First and perhaps most important, Microsoft informed us after we published this story that if your computer doesn’t meet the system requirements, it may not be entitled to get Windows Updates, even security ones. We’re asking Microsoft for clarification on that now. But secondly, it still sounds like Microsoft will be encouraging millions of people to replace their perfectly good Windows PCs.
Other than yet another theme third parties aren’t going to adopt, there’s not a whole lot in Windows 11 as it is, and with all this confusion around upgrades, supported hardware, and access to updates, Windows 10 users are probably better off sticking with Windows 10 for a little while longer. Or, you know, switch to an operating system that doesn’t treat its users like garbage.
Microsoft going from bad to worse. Wind back a few years and a large part of the Windows 10 initiative was to turn pirated and unpatched copies of Windows into official versions of Windows. Now Microsoft is issuing an official OS which will be unpatched. Talking about going backwards!
One interesting thing about all this is contract law… Microsoft openly stated in the past it essentially relied on home users and office drones to copy Windows both to create an environment which persusaded and pressured business into using Windows in preference to other OS People using pirated Windows were also not using the competition so depriving the copetition of Mindshare. Then there is the statement by one Microsoft executive Microsoft never quibbled which is Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows. A lot was implied in this entire narrative timeline forming an understanding based on joint enterprise and verbal contract. It will require a court case to confirm but contracts of this type have been upheld.
On more routine grounds I definately feel there is scope for regulatory action both of Mirosoft’s abuse of its market position and throwing people’s perfectly good hardware obtained in good faith in the bin, since partially rectified, but also the opportunity loss, emotional distress, and risk this only partial rectification is placing end users at. It is also discriminatory (racist for those who don’t want to mince words) as less wealthy nations such as Latin America or Africa will not be able to afford Microsoft’s paying for what is effectively a bribe to hardware vendors to maintain Microsoft’s market position. Then on the domestic front there is the digital divide between rich and poor including but not limited to those in low wage jobs or on limited incomes such as the retired.
I don’t think Intel should escape the fire either as they knew perfectly well they were exposing customers to risks with badly designed CPU’s and potentially other components. I’m pretty sure Intel is hoping everyone has forgotten or ignored this as they collude with Microsoft to sell new hardware. Not only has Intel dodged a worse horror than the Pentium bug but they are double dipping by getting customers to pay to rectify mistakes on Intel’s part.
There are supplementary issues such as Microsoft’s abuse of its position to attempt to destroy OpenGL/Vulkan, buy its way with monopoly profits into the game industry, and via this continue to “farm” end users in the form of gamers to direct and push both technology and keep “the market” addicted to Microsoft compliant solutions which vendors are also twisted into providing via the “deal of the century” which goes all the way back to BeOS and earlier.
There is no “we didn’t know”. Microsoft executives are not ignorant. You do not climb up the greasy pole in a company like Microsoft by walking around with your eyes shut. These are very deliberative people informed by the best lawyers and marketers money can buy. It’s not a whoops or slip of the pen. It is calculated. It is ruthless.
HollyB,
Racist? A tad bit exaggerated, no? For better or worse much of the tech industry (and car industry, and boat industry, and travel industry, and housing industry, etc) cater to the wealthy. While you could make a case that it is unethical, in most cases we can’t point to a specific law and say it’s illegal.
I can see both sides of this. Clearly many people were disappointed and surprised by it, but at the same time these are engineering tradeoffs that improved performance. And these are trade-offs that all CPU makers used to various extents. IMHO the problem wasn’t that intel, AMD, and most likely others offered these performance optimizations, but rather that they failed to disclose the risks and failed to provide a way to disable them such that consumers could make informed decisions.
@Alfman
I’m not going to discuss the topic with someone who doesn’t have a clue about the purpose of regulation, or structural discrimination or constructive discrimination. Nor am I going to engage with bothside-ism or whataboutary . Like Apple you need to consult with better experts and better lawyers.
HollyB,
That’s not a rebuttal and I believe I made fair points.
I’m not a fan of microsoft’s tactics, hell they even pushed me away from windows. I think many of these corporate behaviors are harmful, but to say they’re illegal you have to be able to point to the law(s) they’re breaking.
Alfman,
Intel used to offer 10-20% advantage over AMD CPUs. After full set of mitigation patches, they lost roughly 10-20% in performance. Hence all the “top of the line gaming CPU gains” were actually cutting corners in terms of security.
Yes, designing CPUs are hard. And modern CPUs actually act more like networked super clusters inside. They have to optimize each and every component, and need to make sure some work is assigned to otherwise idle parts. Anyway, I am sure most OSNews readers already know the details, sorry for the intrusion.
Back to topic: The users also have a part in the blame. Yes, researchers have warned security implications of speculative execution, and Intel did not listen. But users did not listen either. They chose the faster CPUs. Tech journalist never made that an issue, Intel continued to pump faster chips, and gamers liked their extra FPS.
For spectre vulnerabilities, the cost of mitigations were felt the same on all complex CPUs (including AMD and ARM). The only difference is that simple/slow/cheap/crappy CPUs (including some low-end Intel CPUs – early Atom) were immune due to the fact that they were simple/slow/cheap/crappy (and didn’t do any speculative execution to begin with).
However; AMD also gained 10-20% in performance by improving their CPU design (Zen) and by using a better manufacturing process (and neither of these things had anything to with any security mitigations). “Lost 10-20% due to mitigations and gained 10-20% for unrelated reasons at the same/similar time” merely creates the illusion that nothing changed.
Brendan,
Things might have changed since last time I looked into this, but Intel was hit much harder performance wise.
For example, this in depth analysis finds a 5x difference:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/291649-intel-performance-amd-spectre-meltdown-mds-patches
Where Intel lost up to ~20% in performance, while AMD impact was low at ~3%. The subject processors where then latest offerings.
Heh. That “in depth analysis” found that disabling hyper-threading makes the cost of mitigations 5X higher for their benchmarks.
The reason they disabled hyper-threading for Intel but left it enabled for AMD is that AMD “lied temporarily” about hyper-threading not being a potential problem.
The fact is that we’ve known hyper-threading has risks since the late 1990s, and that it’s impossible to implement hyper-threading without giving one thread the ability to detect which shared resources the other thread is using (but current operating systems were designed for SMP and suck at everything that isn’t SMP, so… – see note).
The only real difference between AMD and Intel is which resources are shared. Both Intel and AMD share execution units (and are both vulnerable to PortSmash), but AMD’s CPUs are less advanced and failed to share TLBs so they were accidentally immune to TLBbleed.
Note: An OS/scheduler could have mitigated most of the 20+ year old security risks of hyper-threading 20 years ago (while keeping most of the performance benefits of hyper-threading) by implementing a “threads aren’t allowed to share a core unless they can trust each other” policy.
Brendan,
Indeed, it doesn’t matter if a trusted thread is able to determine the stats of other threads. But it becomes more complicated considering that even untrusted threads can invoke kernel calls. So adding isolation between userspace threads themselves may be insufficient, kernel threads would also need isolation as well, which creates a problem because the kernel makes use of shared structures across the OS. This gives rise to untrusted threads having the opportunity to conduct timing attacks against them.
Of course, we’d see a development debate over whether particular kernel structures even need to be isolated on account of them not containing “secure information”. But if the kernel behaves as a predictable automaton, timing attacks against shared kernel structures could become an indirect proxy for timing attacks against secure threads using them. It wouldn’t be easy, kernel side effects could leak useful information to a sophisticated adversary.
sukru,
Precisely.
Speculative execution inherently leaks information. And we need to be perfectly honest about something: to the extent that they’re still making speculative optimizations today in order to save wall-clock time, they’re still a risk of leaking some information. If you don’t want to leak any information about an event, then logically all input conditions have to take the same time.
Now in practice many of these leaks are mostly useless or impractical in nature (games/office applications/email clients/etc), but there exist contexts where timing differences can reveal sensitive information and the fact that the speculative CPU execution can cause leaks is a real problem, which is the reason why IMHO there should have always been a CPU flag to disable it. It will cost performance, but intel, AMD, ARM, etc will have taken care of the problem on the hardware side and it becomes the responsibility of the software to select fast versus secure. This is the best compromise I can think of.
Also, trying to parallelize sequential code is never going to be as scalable as trying to parallelize parallel code. This is why GPUs are so much better at parallelization despite having much slower cores. Most of the software industry has been very stubborn to change, hence the reason CPU vendors have put so much money and effort into optimizing sequential code, but even so they’ll never be able to compete with the performance of parallel code long term. So in a funny way I think the future of sequential speculative CPUs is tied to the laziness/stubbornness of developers because hardware performance & efficiency favor explicitly parallel code.
Alfman,
“Also, trying to parallelize sequential code is never going to be as scalable as trying to parallelize parallel code. ”
Yes. I have seen instances where very talented engineers were able to improve runtime performance multiple times by just rearranging loops, or adding cache prefetch hints.
That could be a “Good Thing”TM, giving us a little bit more job security until more things are automated. (Joking of course. I know it is a *hard* problem, and can never be fully solved).
sukru,
Yeah, but it’s only a matter of time before optimization is done using neural nets that don’t need our intervention. In terms of well defined problems like go, chess, etc, IMHO it was inevitable that computers would prevail, and they did. But humans have been hard to beat in terms of adaptability and flexibility in more analog domains. We can still beat machines at driving in unfamiliar circumstances because we’re better at coping with unrecognized/unexpected input when needed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/toyota-suspends-use-of-self-driving-vehicles-after-collision-with-paralympics-athlete-in-tokyo/ar-AANQPby
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2095740-tesla-driver-dies-in-first-fatal-autonomous-car-crash-in-us/
Nevertheless I think it’s going to be increasingly rare to find domains where computers don’t win. I see no reason for coding to be an exception. For better or worse, the biggest obstacle for neural networks today is that the hardware is so inaccessible. I’ve been trying to get my hands on the latest RTX cards with no luck online, no luck in stores after the “drops”. Nvidia made a recent statement that they don’t see availability improving until some time in 2023….geez. Many of us have held out against the scalpers, but at this rate I think more people are going to give in out of desperation.
Brendan,
A CPU with without speculative execution leading to “crappy” performance may be objectively superior in terms of security. Both ways have merit. A CPU that can do both could probably address everyone’s needs.
Well, AMD trounced Intel in the manufacturing process. But I agree with sukru that people don’t realize how much spectre/meltdown hurt Intel, which cost them several years of performance gains. I have open questions about how much we’re still vulnerable to spectre-type vulnerabilities. Given that these are all proprietary CPUs it’s hard to come by a straightforward answer. It’s conceivable (though I have no proof) that AMD is now more vulnerable to speculative attacks than Intel because Intel got most of the media flack forcing them to become conservative. This may have the effect of tying Intel’s hands on performance a bit.
A great recipe for disaster.
I don’t see the huge issue here. People can just stick with Windows 10. I guess people have got used to installing pirated versions of Windows on their Athlon XP for years, and now are pissy about it.
At some point Microsoft needs to draw a line in the sand, and they’re clearing going for modestly recent CPU’s with the extra x86 instructions for AES, Page Protection, Virtualisation etc. and with ‘fixes’ to spectre and meltdown.
Personally I think MS should take a harder approach. Compile Windows 11 with checks and uses for the newer processor instructions throughout all of the kernal and app codebase – so things simply won’t boot or work at all! At least then people at will know where they stand – this half baked ‘no updates’ Windows 11 is a worse outcome.
If all else fails… it’s the year of the Linux desktop, right?
Interesting approach, but due to the extension disparity even among the Intel CPU line, it would work to a certain degree until it breaks, then they’ll have to issue another binary for the newer CPU yet that will break the older CPU. Talk about planned obsolescence 🙂
It used to work using the core x86 ISA then switch to dedicated versions using “DLL” regarding the CPUID result. Hence the core version would work on all CPU, you’d add newer CPU support with adding/updating the “DLL”. And voilà. It’s not like HDD/SSD are lacking space.
Satya Nadella is acting like he got a sharp blow to the head or something. The two biggest problems in the Windows ecosystem are:
1) People not applying security patches
2) A substantial number of PCs running an older version of Windows, which encourages software vendors to target the lowest common denominator, which means new Windows features aren’t being used in applications until years later. On top of that, there is the issue of users staying in old versions of Windows well past the EOL date. And now, Microsoft is forcing some Windows users to stick with Windows 10 until 2025 and maybe after that.
Simply put, “just buy a new computer” won’t fly with the PC crowd as well as it does with the Mac crowd, and Microsoft will find this out the hard way. People were using Windows XP well past the official retirement date in double-digit market share numbers, until the machines got too slow and were thrown out.
Apple envy is a serious disease over at Redmond.
“Apple envy is a serious disease over at Redmond”
Every so often they copy Apple in the wrong way by either taking it too far or by copying something that will never fit the Windows ecosystem.
This time it seams like both
So the good-bad-good cycle proved right, right ?
10 ruined that pattern. It’s three OS’s in a row that are bad.
Nah, 10 is less a nuisance than 8 was, yet a recon that it’s inferior to 7 in many ways. The flat interface, hiding scroll bars, dual settings control, bluetooth lag, printer slowdown, updates breaking your setup if not deleting your files, …
Another way of looking at it is that Windows 9 was the cancelled good version, and Windows 11 might be a good version after all.
Yeah, Nadella obviously doesn’t know what he is doing. It’s not like Microsoft is at an all time high or anything.
Shit Osnews says…
Microsoft is at an all time high due to the increase in remote working and resulting increase in demand for laptops and desktops. But this doesn’t mean he is providing good leadership. Balmer didn’t either, despite Microsoft being very profitable during his tenure, and he was unceremoniously ousted.
kurkosdr,
That’s quite something isn’t it! That a poor leader at a massive company can still make billions (trillions?) more than a great leader at a small company. Balmer could have just as easily been working the local car dealership or convenience store if he hadn’t been Gate’s party buddy in college. 🙂
Apart from all the stuff Ilisted obody is paying attention to thereis another thing people are not payign attention to. The alleged performance loses due to mitigations varied from 20% all the way down to 0%. Everyone is just quoting the headline numbers for certain kinds of service applications. The performance issues didn’t impact all use cases and some only marginally and others were mitigated away to the point where they were lost in the noise.
I’m also going to repeat that business like banks cannot just do whatever they like just because. There are these things called laws.
I am also fed up explaining how you do portability and legacy support.
I am also completely exasperated with a minority merrily spending my money for me on new machines I neither want nor need.
I’m also getting the impression some people are nodding along to Microsoft management’s decisions like it’s a badge of virility.
We actually do live in a society and it’s not just about what you want just because. It’s not as if there isn’t enough news on the issues or books. There’s more to the world than technology for the love of technology and the sports pages.
There is one point in what you are saying I would like to address. The way you phrase it, it sounds like you would have to upgrade to windows 11 right now. But that isn’t really the case.
You wouldn’t have to upgrade until at least 2025 — possibly longer. I get that that is objectionable to you, but but you are talking like you have to upgrade right away. And like people who are still using XP or Windows 7 today without upgrades, Windows 10 will be quite mature and stable. You will have to take extra precautions for security, but it isn’t like windows 10 will stop working.
So if you like Windows 10 then you can stay with Windows 10, and if in the future you happen to buy a computer that is officially supported by Windows 11, then you can use that. But you are not forced to upgrade right away
@Jockm
I’ve never commented on timelines other than I’m minded to switch to Linix Mint sooner rather than later. I only switched to Windows 7 in its last year and Windows 10 in the very last week of the free upgrade. I stuck with Windows 2000 until an unexplainable HDD slowdown and planned obsolecence forced me to shift to XP.
No I don’t just object to Windows 11 for all the reasons I stated at the top of the topic plus a lot of technical and aesthetic and usability reasons. I also object to the pshycological maipulation of the marketing where Microsoft are trying to kick the can down the road and say giving in to their demands is an inevitable function of time. They’re just trying to fog peoples minds and shake off regulators as well as dilute media reaction.
The reason why I am objecting so strongly today is the same reason why some people objected strongly to Hitler before he got power. We know what direction this is going in. I also object to Windows being the default standard by which people measure systems compatibility.
@HollyB You are of course free to that opinion, however I am simply going to invoke Godwin, and step out now
“The reason why I am objecting so strongly today is the same reason why some people objected strongly to Hitler before he got power.”
As someone who’s Jewish, I find your comparison of forced OS upgrades to the Holocaust to be utterly repugnant.
+1
Actually, that is uncertain. Microsoft was said to “retire’ Windows 10 in 2025. With Microsoft, the meaning of that can change. So no, Windows 10 probably won’t stop working, but they could fully discontinue security updates or something along those lines.
That is what I was alluding to when I said:
Large institutions will almost certainly be able to pay for extended support as they did for all operating systems since Windows 2000 (maybe longer I just know it was true for that os and after)
And there are still individuals who continue to use XP and Windows 7, and there have been no widespread reports of the remaining XP systems being compromised. If the past is any predictor then Windows 10 users
Every year that passes increases the likelihood that people will want to upgrade naturally. Yes there are plenty of people like Holly who hold on to their systems and upgrade slowly, but from all the data I have seen that isn’t the norm.
The last time I saw data on this, most people upgrade their motherboard or to a new computer every 4-6 years. So we are (mostly) talking about people with CPUs made before 2018, so by 2025 their systems will be a minimum of 7 years old.
Some people will be affected and upgrade, a smaller group of them won’t, A smaller group still will be up in arms about it and switch to Linux, *BSD, or whatever; but my best guess is that it won’t be the groundswell of dissent that others in this forum and elsewhere thing it will be.
I actually like the idea of setting a new floor for what is supported, and I don’t think TPM is a bad thing to have in that floor. I personally think they should have said that windows 10 should get longer before it was unsupported.
jockm,
Everything you say has merit, but also keep in mind that people have been increasingly reluctant to go out and buy new PCs and operating systems when they already have one that works for them. For most people it doesn’t make sense until their old system dies or becomes otherwise unusable. Window XP held market share forever, and that wasn’t good for microsoft so when it came time to promote windows 10 microsoft didn’t leave it to users, they employed misleading UIs the hide the opt-out options and confuse users and beat them into submission with windows 10 upgrade. So while this certainly made windows 10 upgrade stats look great, I wouldn’t quite call it users “upgrading naturally”. I think it’s fair to say windows 7 would have held on far longer if they had just let the users explicitly decide to upgrade naturally.
I agree with that, most people will stick with windows regardless because that’s what they know. I’d say linux is very strong if not dominant as a developer platform, but in terms of ordinary end users desktop linux is a very niche segment of the market and will likely remain so because of the chicken and egg problem: most commercial applications & manufacturers won’t support it and they don’t feel there’s enough users to justify supporting it. Things like the microsoft tax are still extremely frustrating, I think this should have been tackled by courts decades ago, but it’s still an allowed practice that continues to harm alternatives. 🙁
Windows runs fine without TPM, and it’s already worked for decades for those who wanted it (particularly enterprise). I think the main reason microsoft is pushing TPM is for DRM, which has more to do with restricting consumers than empowering us. It’s like secure boot, the technology itself has positive use cases, but it can also be exploited to diminish owner rights, which is concerning especially when these things are unilaterally deployed without owner interests being represented at the table.
@Alfman Two things:
To address you first point:
A 2017 system/cpu (depending how you want to talk about it) which is theoretically not supported by Windows 11, will be 7-8 years old in 2025 when Windows 10 is no longer supported (if indeed that is the date). If it were a 2015 system will be 10 years old. Even in a reality of keeping computers longer those are pushing the bounds of what the majority of people will do
To address your last point:
TPM has uses beyond DRM. It is a good solution to the problem of having a secure key store. I personally believe it is going to be more and more critical to keeping online systems secure, and a problem I have struggled with. I was quite dismayed to learn that many(most? all?) Linux distributions store wifi passwords in the clear and only rely on access control for protection.
But feel free to disagree with me
jockm,
I had people coming to my door asking for older computers during the pandemic because they just needed a basic computer for teleworking and didn’t want to or need to buy a new computer. I had old computers that had just been sitting around but I didn’t have enough to go around for all the friends and neighbors who wanted them. I think it’s fair to say there was a shortage of both old and new computers. Maybe we’re on the tail end of this particular scenario, but still for a lot of people a 10-15 year old system is still ok especially if it had high end specs originally. The main upgrade would be to add an SSD, but that’s not a problem. I still use old systems as NAS & backup servers.
Now obviously there’s a limit to how far we can reasonably take things, but I do think the “it still works for me, no need to replace it” category is more common than you’re making it out to be. My mom passed away recently, she only ever replaced computers when the previous one broke. Why would she want to replace it earlier than that? The answer is she wouldn’t, not unless she was forced to. Same thing for phones, although I will say we have gone through phones much faster because for whatever reason they break more often than computers.
Obviously I concede it has more uses than just DRM, but TPM has long been available for people who explicitly wanted it.
About the wifi password, it likely depends on your distro’s networking toolset. I ended up disabling encrypted wifi passwords on ubuntu because I just wanted my VPN to come up automatically like it does at home over wired ethernet. However with wifi it would fail until the user manually unlocks the keystore. The default behavior encrypts the wifi password, but it’s no good if you want a device to connect to wifi automatically.
@Alfman do you have any data on the age distribution of windows 10 systems? I have been trying to find it and am coming up empty. Here is why I ask: I admit there is a compelling emotional argument when you said “but still for a lot of people a 10-15 year old system is still ok especially if it had high end specs originally.”
But I don’t know how many people that actually is. If we are talking 5% or more then there is a compelling logical case that support for windows 10 should go longer than 2025. However my suspicion is that number is probably sub 1.5% in which case I don’t think the argument is as compelling. You would have to get into the demographics of the percentage to understand how important they are to the windows ecosystem
According to a 2020 article in Business News Daily[1], the average lifespan of a laptop is 3-5 years, and a desktop is 5-8 years. I don’t know where that data came from nor do I know how accurate it is; but it feels about right to my experience (but perception isn’t reality, and you may have different experience, feel free to provide data if you have it).
I feel this lends credibility to the idea that there aren’t a lot of 10-15 year old computers.
Microsoft supported Windows 2000 for 5 years, XP for 12 years, 7 for 10 years, and 10 will be at least 10 years. There is nothing out of the ordinary about how long windows 10 will be supported, and every generation has obsoleted older hardware.
I don’t believe there will be that many Windows 10 users come October 2025, I don’t think this sturm and drang is warrented. But if you have data, I really really want to see it
1: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/65-when-to-replace-the-company-computers.html
jockm,
I am not aware of any data on this published for a large sample size. My gut tells me older generations in particular don’t typically care about having the latest and greatest, they’re not known to be avid FPS gamers, the group most likely to benefit from upgrade cycles. I appreciate the importance of citing data, I just don’t have it outside of anecdotal experience. You can just take it as my opinion 🙂
We can only speculate about what windows 7’s popularity would have been without microsoft’s immense windows 10 free (and coerced) upgrades, but I tend to think that it would have naturally followed a similar pattern to windows XP, which remained incredibly popular (~30%) even as microsoft support for it was ending.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/weeks-before-expiration-date-windows-xp-still-has-29-os-market-share/
I think they’re completely ignoring the second hand market. Most of the laptops I buy are 3-4 years old already, no joking, haha. I’ve also bought some semi-old desktops, although they’re not my primary workhorse. I’ve gotten some great deals this way, but obviously not everyone will feel the same way about used.
I’d like to press back on that a bit. For the most part legacy x86 computers can be supported for a very long time by both windows and linux. Even the first AMD 64 bit athlon CPU had SSE3 and can still run windows 10 today.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/nq5a3p/athlon_64_x2_running_windows_10/
I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s a good combo, but it just makes you think “wow, that’s impressive”, no? A lot of these older systems were not compatible with the larger DIMMs combinations that would come out (as reported in the link), but even 8GB is respectable (sidenote: the entry level apple M1 computers also max out at 8GB even in 2021). I wouldn’t be surprised if it can still run windows 11 as well assuming microsoft doesn’t resort to CPU blacklisting/whitelisting.
I’m only talking about this because I think it’s an interesting discussion, but to be clear I don’t keep anything quite that old 🙂
If Microsoft thinks that they can deploy an operating system then refuse to supply security updates, they are laying themselves open to some serious liability issues. A class action for damages caused by unpatched systems would be fun to watch. The reaction from the EU where they actually can impose regulations (which while often onerous, are also often effective) will put Microsoft under a microscope and facing fines they may find very painful.
I’ll just keep all my stuff on Linux as I have been doing for over a decade.
To be fair it is releasing an OS telling you explicitly at install time that it is unsupported (as I understand it) and then warning you you may bot get some or all updates if you are on an unsupported system… which they publicized a head of time and warn you about at install time
I have a hard time seeing how liability can be attached
With Windows, the enemy is already inside, and not getting updates is a huge positive for power users if it means MS not shoving whatever is on their agenda down your throat…
I’ve recently installed Windows 10 for somebody, and had to fight a literal 3 day battle to have the desired configuration not forced changed behind my back, which was happpening even outside the scope of updates. Basically, if at any time you go online they detect settings they don’t like, they actually deem your machine in need of “repair” and will force trigger a literal system reinstall / repair, with no way of opting out. It’s a horror show beyond belief.
After multiple offline reinstalls and obscure Group Policy tweaking, I eventually was able to take the machine online without having my configuration force changed, but then lost the ability to use Windows Update as a side effect. So you can never win really…
It was a surreal Orwellian experience beyond belief and it literally left me exhausted. I only kept going because I took the stance of a freedom fighter and couldn’t bear the thought of losing the battle to keep my desired settings, but I’m still lost for words to describe the clusterfuck that Windows has become…
The UK’s human rights act and computer misuse act may be worth reading. There are issues of privacy and interfering with your computer and a lack of consent. EU citizens may write to the Commission. I personally consider the UK government a waste of time at the moment.
Thanks Holly. I’m moving to Sweden in a couple of weeks, so this would be low priority given personal circumstances, but once more settled would be interested in documenting reproduceable steps and reporting it to the EU Comission.
I’m actually creating a foundation to do work in the digital privacy space, so my battles are far from over… 🙂
I suspect MS would argue you have given your consent when agreeing to the EULA.
@Zayn
There have already been cases on EULA’s. Firstly a EULA cannot remove rights in law. Secondly the issues of falsely obtainted consent has been dealt with and safeguards built into the GDPR. Then we’re back to reglation, opportunity loss, and so on. It’s difficult to give consent when you are being strongarmed and there are cases on this and much more besides. EULA’s have zero force of law in the UK and most of Europe. EULA’s are an American conceit highlighting how little power the US customer has along with hire and fire work practices and so on. Europe is not America.
The problem with a lot of discussion online is everyone thinks they are a lawyer and law is easy. I have no objection listening to somebody else’s opinion or commentary but there are limits.
Microsoft can argue all they like but they will be laughed at by the judge.
@HollyB
So when are you taking MS to court then?
@stereotype
The EU Commission is interested in strategic cases and has its priorities and competencies. It’s worth getting a general view of this. But like you say look after your own health and sanity first. I have my own situation to deal with so know what you mean.
We can only hope all these companies quit doing business in the EU and UK.
Yeah, agreed. Fortunately I only use Windows at work, where I am able to control those things with a domain and group policy. Microsoft are even trying to make that harder, however, and monthly patches that start mysteriously ignoring group policy settings have become somewhat common. It’s enough to make me consider a career change.
darknexus,
I hear that! Since when has it become acceptable for computer vendors to work against the owner’s will? I can’t believe it’s gotten to this. I just think of all the wasted effort I’ve had fighting policies that were designed to make things harder for us. Why? Why do we allow it? Why is the free market rewarding anti-consumer tactics? Where did we go wrong? I know the answer is consolidation and monopolization, but it just sucks that this is where technology’s going, ugh.
Actually, the free market is *not* ignoring consumers. It’s just that most consumers care more about flashy icons than whether they own their computers, especially since the average response when something doesn’t work is just to overpay at Geeksquad or wherever. What we care about is not what they care about, nor can we force them to do so.
It’s all convenient to dwell on monopolization et al, and it’s a nice buzzword battlecry, however I do not think it gets into the heart of the matter. We can test that, however it requires developers putting up with the 80/20 rule and going the extra 80%. If you want to break Microsoft’s majority hold, you have to provide something *better* than Windows, not *mostly equivalent* to Windows. So far, the only companies who have done something even close to that are Apple and Google, and even they are only climbing slowly in the home PC market.
Whether the home PC market will even be relevant in another few years is debateable of course, what with most people being happy enough with their smartphone and/or iPad. And that only proves that most people simply don’t care about whether they can repair the device or even whether they own it or not. It’s a tool to them, not an ideological battleground and as long as it works, that’s good enough. That may change, but only when the average person feels the squeeze.
darknexus,
Frankly a lot of my own purchases are betraying my preferences on account of not being given enough choice. I would argue this is a strong sign that the market is actually ignoring consumers and that there’s not enough competition. For example we were recently talking about widescreens and how many of us dislike them, yet my own recent monitor purchases were widescreen because no alternatives were sold, not one. It would be inaccurate and misleading to count these purchases as a vote for widescreen. Another example is I bought my daughter a new bicycle, but the one we wanted to buy wasn’t available so we bought another. The sales numbers will count it as a vote for the less desired model, but in truth it is a false indicator of our preference had we been given the choice. Our markets are becoming extremely consolidated and I think it’s getting worse. There’s a huge difference between buying a product for it’s merits and buying it because we’re deprived of choice. We know this is bad for free markets and bad for consumers, alas I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it. From where I’m sitting market consolidation seems to be the inevitable future.
IMHO there isn’t a viable path for it regardless of merit. The incumbents are trillion dollar companies with stiff control over 3rd party ecosystems. Strong vendor independent standards would go a long way towards bringing in fresh competition, but it’s the incumbents at the top who control the world’s standards. Alas, their goals don’t align with consumer or competitive interests, they’d rather just exploit their control to gain market advantages and keep billions of dollars flowing into their own pockets. It’s not necessarily fair, but that’s we’re dealing with.
Replying to this instead of yours below it since the threading level is too deep:
I need to counter your argument with a question, an honest one. It is this:
Why are we always coming up with reasons why we *can’t* do something and blaming others for it, rather than finding ways to actually *do* it? It is not the trillion dollar companies holding back these efforts. Look in the mirror before we blame others.
darknexus,
Well, in terms of hardware purchases, I find myself running into some barriers over and over again. My experience has taught me to favor open solutions over proprietary ones because it gives me a much better chance of supporting myself and fixing things if I have an open unlocked product with FOSS. I’m in favor of users being able to “do it” as you say, but the sad fact is that most manufactures have no intention of providing the code or specs that DIY people like us need. I’m not afraid of “doing it” when it comes to writing my own software, etc, but it seems a bit naive to fault me when I can’t even buy the open hardware that I wanted to buy. That’s the problem. Telling me to “look in the mirror” is not helpful advice.
Are Service Packs no longer a thing on modern Windows?
Honestly, I don’t see the lack of security updates happening. Even Windows 7/2008r2 still occasionally gets security updates for big issues, despite being well out of official support now. MS can’t afford the PR disaster of going back to the days of many millions of unpatched windows machines like the old days.
Even feature updates will likely end up applying, if they’re ones that correspond to new ISO releases (if you can install an updated ISO, you can install the same through Windows Update).
I get the impression this is more about deniability than anything else – “At your own risk” type stuff.
The1stImmortal,
I’m also skeptical that they would actually allow windows 11 installs to go without updates. Denying security updates for legitimate installs would put their own customers in harm’s way and doesn’t seem like good business. So perhaps it’s all a bluff.
Microsoft executives said “windows 10” would be the final version, which was also a bluff.
Well, I’m only speculating here, but I have a feeling microsoft is planning something for TPM in windows 11, so this may all be a ploy to create a sense of urgency for consumers to go buy TPM hardware even though the need is completely artificial.
The thing is, Thom, most people don’t use computers to use Windows. They use computers, and Windows, to get the things they need to do done. It’s damn hard to switch to an operating system which doesn’t have the software you need, especially if you’re talking about your job or a specialized piece of equipment (don’t even get me started on OEM software that hasn’t been updated in twenty years!).
Of course, if Microsoft keeps pulling Microsofts, we may end up in a situation where Windows won’t even run older Windows software, but I doubt that’ll come soon if at all.
darknexus,
I know what you mean. A lot of new software platforms are online whether we like it or not, so that’s less of a reason to require windows.
I’ve seen this happen already, both as an end user and a developer where software updates were needed to run properly on new windows versions, but I do think it’s relatively uncommon. If microsoft were to deliberately break compatibility it would be much more problematic, but it would be like shooting themselves in the foot.