Rant I'm an old man and I hate software updates

[Kaido]

Don't you need a very modern machine for 11? It needs some kind of chip on the motherboard otherwise it won't run. So you need a motherboard that has a special slot for it. Have not looked too much into it myself.

The keys are TPM 2.0 & Secure Boot. Some older mothers can be upgraded to a TPM 2.0 chip via an aftermarket purchase from the manufacturer, if supported by that make, model, and brand. Secure Boot needs a UEFI BIOS. Microsoft has a tool to check if your hardware is compatible:

https://aka.ms/GetPCHealthCheckApp

If it confirms that your computer is compatible, it will put a flag in the system that will let the installation upgrade tool to Windows 11 run, so it's a 2-step process to upgrade:

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2171764

For older computers, there's an aftermarket build called Tiny11 available, which only needs 2 gigs of RAM & 8 gigs of HDD space. It doesn't really update or anything & you'll need to download a browser separately (ex. Chrome), but I've had pretty good success rescuing older hardware with it:

Page 5 - I finally did it...Windows 10 free upgrade on the last day!

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

I don't use it on business client machines for obvious reasons, but I hate throwing away old hardware that still works, especially for families who are on a budget & need to stretch their computer out to work for a few more years. I do a fresh install of Tiny11, plus Office 2021, Malwarebytes, and Chrome (with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and the Malwarebytes Chrome extensions), plus a bunch of freeware (7-zip, ShareX, VLC, Glasswire, Flux, etc.) & they're usually good for another 5 years, haha!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah that's the one, couldn't remember what it was called off top of my head. I will have to run that on my gaming machine to see if it's compatible but I don't imagine my motherboard supports the chip unless it's just a pci-e card or something.

 

[PingSpike]

You can bypass the requirements to install it but there is nothing stopping Microsoft from pulling the carpet out from under you later. They already have a watermark in the testing builds.

Windows 11 gets a new desktop watermark on unsupported hardware

It will only appear on workaround installs.

www.theverge.com

 

[mikeymikec]

You can bypass the requirements to install it but there is nothing stopping Microsoft from pulling the carpet out from under you later. They already have a watermark in the testing builds.

Windows 11 gets a new desktop watermark on unsupported hardware

It will only appear on workaround installs.

www.theverge.com

I wonder why they've done that. AFAIK you don't get any feature updates on unsupported hardware (that's my experience anyway), in a year or two users will start getting warnings that they're on an out-of-date version of Windows.

 

[Red Squirrel]

One good thing about this is once Windows 10 starts to go out of support we're probably going to see a flood of cheap decent desktops on the 2nd hand market. Especially companies as they are probably not really going to want to do workarounds and rather just use supported hardware. So they'll have to upgrade everything, possibly even their servers, if the Windows Server version also has same requirement.

 

[igor_kavinski]

One good thing about this is once Windows 10 starts to go out of support we're probably going to see a flood of cheap decent desktops on the 2nd hand market.

7th gen Intel and original Ryzen desktops? No thanks. Maybe great for third world countries as they will be able to ditch their Core 2/Nehalem/Sandy/Ivy Bridge/Bulldozer PCs.

 

[lxskllr]

7th gen Intel and original Ryzen desktops? No thanks. Maybe great for third world countries as they will be able to ditch their Core 2/Nehalem/Sandy/Ivy Bridge/Bulldozer PCs.

My work computer...

*-cpu
product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3550 CPU @ 3.30GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
size: 1949MHz
capacity: 3700MHz
width: 64 bits

Works for me

 

[igor_kavinski]

My work computer...

My work PCs are also an i5-2400 and an i7-4770. For work, they are fine. I was talking about people who are stuck with old machines they hate and desperately want to upgrade. A 7th gen or Ryzen at dirt cheap prices would be a massive upgrade for them. The really lucky ones would get the i7-5775C desktops, dual socket Xeons with 128GB or more RAM and the unsupported HEDTs.

 

[mindless1]

Why the perpetual feeling of needing to upgrade? I no longer hunger to play the latest games, nor am I doing demanding cad/etc. Most demanding thing I do regularly is basic video editing, or something like a sharpening filter upscaling video playback to 4K, and/or smooth 50+FPS playback, and even that, just needs something with mediocre nvdec/nvenc performance, or for the editing, also one or more SSDs.

Just sayin', so many people use phones for things these days and are far less productive using them than a computer with just about any old dual core processor. I just don't see many people desperate to upgrade, more often they just have a hardware fault and can't diy fix it, so it 'd cost more for the repair shop bill than the system is worth so they buy a new oem box for that reason.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Enthusiasts always hunger for more power, whether they need it or not. The moment they see something more powerful than what they have that they can acquire at a reasonable price, they will jump at the chance. Plus, don't underestimate the need to brag. It's a VERY human need.

 

[nakedfrog]

Enthusiasts always hunger for more power, whether they need it or not. The moment they see something more powerful than what they have that they can acquire at a reasonable price, they will jump at the chance. Plus, don't underestimate the need to brag. It's a VERY human need.

There's also the factor of web sites increasingly relying on client-side scripting, which increases the CPU/RAM load for rendering a page.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Remember MMX? It was supposed to make our web pages load blazingly fast. We now have AVX-512 and browsers still don't know how to handle crazy javascripted pages.

 

[nakedfrog]

I don't specifically remember MMX being aimed at faster-loading webpages, back then your bandwidth was far more likely to be the bottleneck.

 

[Captante]

My work computer...

*-cpu
product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3550 CPU @ 3.30GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
size: 1949MHz
capacity: 3700MHz
width: 64 bits

Works for me

My ancient backup FX-8350 will run office apps and web-browsers fine too!

Seriously, I only upgrade when something I need to do won't run acceptably. (unless I get an uncontrollable "itch" lol)

 

[Captante]

I don't specifically remember MMX being aimed at faster-loading webpages, back then your bandwidth was far more likely to be the bottleneck.

MMX was all about gaming (and to a far lesser degree) video/media performance not network adapter or dial-up modem DL speeds although it did help a little with "caching efficiency".

Having said that, the only "MMX Pentium" I ever built a system with was a 166 mhz chip and my primary 200 Mhz Dell Pentium Pro at the time walked all over it pushing a Voodoo 1 card in most games. (except for 16-bit DOS stuff)

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't specifically remember MMX being aimed at faster-loading webpages, back then your bandwidth was far more likely to be the bottleneck.

Tell that to Intel's marketing dept

New Intel Pentium® Processors with MMX™ Technology Bring Performance Boost and Value to Mobile PCs

www.intel.com

Mobile PCs equipped with the 266-MHz Pentium processor with MMX technology offer business users higher-quality and faster Internet browsing, improved responsiveness when using applications such as office suites, and enhanced graphics performance when developing and delivering presentations.

 

[Captante]

Tell that to Intel's marketing dept

New Intel Pentium® Processors with MMX™ Technology Bring Performance Boost and Value to Mobile PCs

www.intel.com

LOL.... only in the sense that they speeded up the entire PC!
(and NOT very much either .... going from a P-133 to a "vanilla" 166 mhz Pentium was barely noticable... and adding an MMX 166 mhz made NO perceptible change)

 

[igor_kavinski]

LOL.... only in the sense that they speeded up the entire PC!
(and NOT very much either!)

But the bosses back then said, "Git me that new fangled MMX PC. Ma Internet iz slowwww!"

 

[nakedfrog]

Tell that to Intel's marketing dept

New Intel Pentium® Processors with MMX™ Technology Bring Performance Boost and Value to Mobile PCs

www.intel.com

Marketing people go to hell.

The initial launch was more realistic about the actual goals.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/012497intel.html

First the basics. MMX is an acronym for multimedia extensions, a set of 57 "instructions," or code, built into the Pentium that helps it process stereo audio, full-motion video and 3-D graphics faster.

 

[Red Squirrel]

MMX was great, just try to avoid floating point calculations.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Enthusiasts always hunger for more power, whether they need it or not. The moment they see something more powerful than what they have that they can acquire at a reasonable price, they will jump at the chance. Plus, don't underestimate the need to brag. It's a VERY human need.

That used to be me, but with inflation now days I can barely afford necessities, so PCs kind of took a back burner years ago.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I wonder why they've done that. AFAIK you don't get any feature updates on unsupported hardware (that's my experience anyway), in a year or two users will start getting warnings that they're on an out-of-date version of Windows.

There's ways to bypass for feature upgrades too. We have this as an option at my work for one-off vms, we're not big enough to bother with a kms infrastructure for VMware.

 

[lxskllr]

I quit gaming, and that was the only real high power need I had in computers. I get the occasional game from gog, but so far I haven't completed any. Last one was Star Trek Elite Force. I played a couple levels, but had more fun pulling sound files out of the game to use as event sounds on my phone. I can turn everything all the way up on old games, and my integrated gfx don't even break a sweat :^D

 

[Captante]

I quit gaming, and that was the only real high power need I had in computers. I get the occasional game from gog, but so far I haven't completed any. Last one was Star Trek Elite Force. I played a couple levels, but had more fun pulling sound files out of the game to use as event sounds on my phone. I can turn everything all the way up on old games, and my integrated gfx don't even break a sweat :^D

No doubt about it.... if not for gaming I certainly wouldn't need my high-powered/expensive GPU at least.

I don't play games as much as I used to but that has as much to do with lack of quality story-driven content on PC these days as anything else.

For example I played (and kinda enjoyed to be fair) God of War on PC BUT despite being described as "story-rich" on Steam the plot was a real snoozer for the most part.

I miss classic Bioware.

 

[lxskllr]

I wouldn't mind playing Bioshock Infinite, but afaik, it isn't on linux, and I'm not interested in any kind of drm, even velvet cuffs like steam. I want to pay my money, get my files, and not have any more interaction with the company aside from patches, which I'd then download, and file away.

I miss the old single player games with rich modding communities. Haven't been into games in awhile, but it seems like most modders focused on multiplayer in later years. It's a lot easier not having to deal with a story I guess. Make a map, and people just battle it out.