Microsoft officially announces Windows 11

[VivienM]

If they do that, they won't just shoot themselves in the foot. They'll blow off both their feet. I do hope they realise that.

Gamers will move to Linux (perhaps SteamOS). Rest will just abandon Windows over time as their hardware is no longer supported, and it'll be corporate only.

And... corporate customers will run Windows on nice little hosted Windows 365 desktops in Azure and pay nice big subscription fees for them. And connect to those hosted desktops using... who cares? Two or three months of Windows 365 is probably more profitable than the OEM Windows licence for whatever device is used to connect to Windows 365.

Maybe that's the end goal. They're certainly destroying the market for off-lease corporate desktops with this move. They're telling every enthusiast who has a house full of aging Windows computers of some form or other that, well, they should probably get rid of all of the aging systems. I suspect this is going to push more and more non-gamers in the consumer sphere towards Macs - I can tell you that the second I heard my dad's i5-6xxx laptop would not be supported, I started thinking about how nice it would be for my parents to be all Apple...

But to return to my point - if you were in my shoes with a nice 7700 with 64 gigs of RAM, a 3070, a bunch of SSDs, etc - would you go and build a new 12th gen or Ryzen whatever system in the next 6 months? And if you did... do you seriously think it would be allowed to run Windows 12? And yes, I agree with you - gamers and enthusiasts would go beyond ballistic, but based on the condescending PR from Microsoft that generally supposes "newer PCs are better" (umm... I can walk into Worst Buy tomorrow and pick out 10 PCs that will be dramatically worse than a decent 5-7-year-old box), I don't think they care at all about gamers/enthusiasts. And the argument for the 12th-gen Intel not being supported in Windows 12 is not going to be any different than the 7th-gen not being supported in Windows 11 - I am sure they can make up some BS about reliability, security, etc.

 

[mikeymikec]

it'll be corporate only.

IMO a lot of business users will be even less enthusiastic about aggressive new hardware requirements. IMO MS needs to get on top of this and state some long term goals with respect to hardware support. Especially given how they yanked support from Windows 7 and 8 users with Office 2019.

 

[mikeymikec]

I can tell you that the second I heard my dad's i5-6xxx laptop would not be supported, I started thinking about how nice it would be for my parents to be all Apple...

Given Apple's history with 'legacy' hardware support, that certainly would be a really odd switch in the IT world

 

[Insert_Nickname]

IMO a lot of business users will be even less enthusiastic about aggressive new hardware requirements.

I wrote corporate on purpose. Small and medium businesses will _not_ be happy about this either. This seems like a very transparent push (if not shove) towards cloudows. Same thing that has happened with Office.

 

[Ajay]

But to return to my point - if you were in my shoes with a nice 7700 with 64 gigs of RAM, a 3070, a bunch of SSDs, etc - would you go and build a new 12th gen or Ryzen whatever system in the next 6 months? And if you did... do you seriously think it would be allowed to run Windows 12? And yes, I agree with you - gamers and enthusiasts would go beyond ballistic, but based on the condescending PR from Microsoft that generally supposes "newer PCs are better" (umm... I can walk into Worst Buy tomorrow and pick out 10 PCs that will be dramatically worse than a decent 5-7-year-old box), I don't think they care at all about gamers/enthusiasts. And the argument for the 12th-gen Intel not being supported in Windows 12 is not going to be any different than the 7th-gen not being supported in Windows 11 - I am sure they can make up some BS about reliability, security, etc.

Well, Windows 10 will have support till what, 2025? So no worries right now. And, I’d imagine, that Windows 12 won’t see the light of day for at least 5 years after 11 is released, so why so much pent up worry? By 2025 your system will be pretty old anyways.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Well, Windows 10 will have support till what, 2025? So no worries right now.

For basic stuff my 2012 3770non-K w/16GB RAM is still perfectly viable, if getting a bit "entry-level". Yet MS just decided that come 2025, it's not. Heck, my 2009 LGA-1366 Nehalem system is still in use, if getting a bit long in the tooth.

CPU performance has plateaued to the point where it doesn't matter for basic stuff like browsing or Office. That's the real problem, no reason to buy new for most people and businesses when what they have works just fine.

I've even encountered a few who think of PCs as appliances. Can't say I blame them either.

 

[VivienM]

Well, Windows 10 will have support till what, 2025? So no worries right now. And, I’d imagine, that Windows 12 won’t see the light of day for at least 5 years after 11 is released, so why so much pent up worry? By 2025 your system will be pretty old anyways.

So your view is "just accept that you will not be running the current OS for 3+ years, keep the 7700 running until 2025, go directly to Windows 12 if at all possible"?

What I don't understand is why so many people in enthusiast forums are okay with the "just keep running Windows 10 until 2025 and don't worry about it."

My history of Windows upgrades:
- bought Windows 95 on Aug. 24, 1995 (still have the CD too)
- would have bought Windows 98 on launch day except I was owed a free upgrade by a PC manufacturer
- dumped Windows 98 SE for Windows 2000 at... a random time not related to launch
- did not go to Windows XP until building a new system in late Dec. 2001 (so ~2 months late). Later discovered my older system would have run it fine.
- Microsoft started doing public betas with Vista, ran public betas of Vista on my Dec. 2001 system while I had built a new E6600 running XP
- installed Vista at launch, had some problems due to a bad video card, went back to XP, figured out the video card was the problem, went back to Vista, was mostly happy with it once I fed it lots and lots and lots of RAM
- upgraded to Win7 at launch
- ignored Win8/8.1 (though I did have the betas on random older machines) and bought a MacBook Pro instead of a newer Windows laptop because Win8/8.1's focus on tablets was an insult
... and I can't remember what I did with 10 before building the i7 7700. My main desktop before then was seriously aging, I suspect I must have had 10 on other systems though...

So, really, other than the 8/8.1 debacle, my longest time before adopting the new OS was about two months. And, until all this about TPMs and minimum processor requirements came around, especially if 11 was a free upgrade, I would have told you that every one of my machines on October 6 would be running Windows 11. Instead, other than one really really crappy 8th-gen Intel laptop that crashes every few days (but according to Microsoft, is 'reliable'), I have nothing that supports Windows 11.

That's what my anger is coming from - I would have expected to install this everywhere on October 6. If they told me 'sorry buddy, UEFI boot is mandatory, so your two Sandy Bridge laptops that only do BIOS/MBR are out', I would have been grumpy but... fine. The TPM (and especially TPM 2.0) requirement would have knocked out more systems. But at least my big desktop (which meets every requirement other than the processor age) should have been okay. Instead, I get insulting condescending BS from MS about how newer PCs are more reliable, and most people's solution to this is 'just keep running the old OS until 2025, and by 2025, you'll probably be wanting a big upgrade anyways.' And maybe I will - but then what? After not running the current OS until 2024 or 2025, how long will it be until my new hardware is again, not able to run the current OS?

This is the first time that Microsoft has ever said to enthusiasts with 'good' hardware, the type of people who normally jump on a new OS (and then maybe regret it) - sorry, we don't want you on our new OS (even though you'd want it), please stick to your old OS until we stop supporting it and then throw your hardware out (and probably for a pre-built PC from Worst Buy).

 

[VivienM]

For basic stuff my 2012 3770non-K w/16GB RAM is still perfectly viable, if getting a bit "entry-level". Yet MS just decided that come 2025, it's not. Heck, my 2009 LGA-1366 Nehalem system is still in use, if getting a bit long in the tooth.

CPU performance has plateaued to the point where it doesn't matter for basic stuff like browsing or Office. That's the real problem, no reason to buy new for most people and businesses when what they have works just fine.

I've even encountered a few who think of PCs as appliances. Can't say I blame them either.

Bingo. At the beginning of covid, I picked up (for no good reason) an off-lease Dell desktop with an i5 4590 and 8 gigs of RAM. Replaced the HDD with an SSD, rammed it up to 24 gigs. This system cost me $189 CAD, plus $99 CAD for a 500 gig Samsung 860 Evo SSD, plus... I forget how much for the RAM. And a few dollars for the proper Dell 2.5" drive brackets. For that money, I have a rock solid, quiet, reliable Windows 10 desktop that performs shockingly well for anything that doesn't require discrete graphics. I would recommend one of these for any non-technical user (e.g. if my grandmothers were still in this world) in a heartbeat - half the cost of some new thing at Worst Buy, probably performs about the same, less power-efficient, rock solid drivers, easy to work on, etc.

With laptops, the move towards built-in batteries has basically set an end-of-life date on most laptops - if batteries start failing, swelling, etc after 4-5 years, good luck finding an original replacement battery for most PC laptops and that's the end of the road. (Apple, again, is better there - they will offer battery replacements for 7+ years after a model is discontinued) But desktops, unless they have bad capacitors (a problem that seems to have been fixed in the 2010s), will basically run forever and do the tasks 'normal' people need them to do forever. Even Google Chrome is unlikely to find a way to guzzle up more than 16-32 gigs of RAM in the next 5-10 years.

So Microsoft... comes along... and decrees that all of those will be e-waste come 2025. And encourages people to waltz down to Worst Buy and buy a new PC that will be better because it's new, when in fact there are a lot of laptops, especially, on the shelf of WB that are objectively worse. Frankly, I think making Windows 10 a free upgrade was a tragedy - now what Microsoft can't get their $129 for home, $229 for pro, upgrade revenue, their incentives are entirely to make more systems be e-wasted sooner and sell more OEM licences.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's what my anger is coming from - I would have expected to install this everywhere on October 6. If they told me 'sorry buddy, UEFI boot is mandatory, so your two Sandy Bridge laptops that only do BIOS/MBR are out', I would have been grumpy but... fine. The TPM (and especially TPM 2.0) requirement would have knocked out more systems. But at least my big desktop (which meets every requirement other than the processor age) should have been okay. Instead, I get insulting condescending BS from MS about how newer PCs are more reliable, and most people's solution to this is 'just keep running the old OS until 2025, and by 2025, you'll probably be wanting a big upgrade anyways.' And maybe I will - but then what? After not running the current OS until 2024 or 2025, how long will it be until my new hardware is again, not able to run the current OS?

This is the first time that Microsoft has ever said to enthusiasts with 'good' hardware, the type of people who normally jump on a new OS (and then maybe regret it) - sorry, we don't want you on our new OS (even though you'd want it), please stick to your old OS until we stop supporting it and then throw your hardware out (and probably for a pre-built PC from Worst Buy).

Microsoft probably hatched this plan for Win11 system requirements, not based on any technological need or technical requirement, but probably a lot of back-room deals with HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, etc., on "how do we sell MORE pre-built PCs, going forward".

 

[Insert_Nickname]

That's what my anger is coming from - I would have expected to install this everywhere on October 6. If they told me 'sorry buddy, UEFI boot is mandatory, so your two Sandy Bridge laptops that only do BIOS/MBR are out', I would have been grumpy but... fine. The TPM (and especially TPM 2.0) requirement would have knocked out more systems. But at least my big desktop (which meets every requirement other than the processor age) should have been okay. Instead, I get insulting condescending BS from MS about how newer PCs are more reliable, and most people's solution to this is 'just keep running the old OS until 2025, and by 2025, you'll probably be wanting a big upgrade anyways.' And maybe I will - but then what? After not running the current OS until 2024 or 2025, how long will it be until my new hardware is again, not able to run the current OS?

This^^

 

[VivienM]

Given Apple's history with 'legacy' hardware support, that certainly would be a really odd switch in the IT world

Other than Apple's rather rapid abandonment of the last-gen PowerPC systems over a decade ago, when have they ever told someone with a 3-year-old Mac "sorry, you are not getting our new OS, have a nice life"? They normally say that around... 6-8 years... after that machine was introduced. That's a lot better than Microsoft's processor age requirement in Windows 11, which is dropping 2.5-year-old Ryzens.

(And yes, I am looking at 'getting the new OS', not 'no longer getting security updates'. The reality is that my mid-2014 MBP runs Big Sur from 2020 with almost full feature set, full compatibility with third-party things that run on Big Sur, etc. Getting dropped for Monterey. My early-2017 i7 7700 cannot run the new OS from Microsoft, will never be compatible with anything that requires Windows 11, etc. All it can do is spent the next 4 years in an obsolescent state just trudging along and getting its security updates until the end finally comes in 2025.)

 

[WilliamM2]

Since when do "enthusiasts" run 10 year old systems? Sure doesn't mean what it used to.

And as an FYI, most non enthusiasts have considered PC's just an appliance for over a decade. Most non enthusiasts don't even use them at home anymore, just a smart phone.

 

[VivienM]

Microsoft probably hatched this plan for Win11 system requirements, not based on any technological need or technical requirement, but probably a lot of back-room deals with HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, etc., on "how do we sell MORE pre-built PCs, going forward".

That's what I think. And also, "how do we gut the useful life of an off-lease Dell/HP/Lenovo corporate PC"?

Every single off-lease PC is now e-waste in 2025. The first Windows 11-supported off-lease PCs will probably start hitting the market next year, and who knows how long they will be good for before Windows 12 drops them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Every single off-lease PC is now e-waste in 2025.

Speaking of 'Carrots' and 'Sticks'... if the TPM 2.0 requirement is the Stick, where is the carrot? BestBuy "old PC" trade-in towards a new Win11 PC imminent? Maybe some of those older off-lease PCs will be useful for trade-in fodder. (Only IF you like pre-builts, but they do offer gaming pre-builts that aren't absolutely horrible now.)

 

[VivienM]

Since when do "enthusiasts" run 10 year old systems? Sure doesn't mean what it used to.

I think many "enthusiasts" have, over the years, real estate permitting, come to have a number of aging systems. There's the 'flagship' system, your nice desktop or gaming laptop with the nicest GPU and the fastest SSD you own. In my case, that's my abandoned-by-Microsoft i7 7700 with 64 gigs of RAM, an NVMe SSD and two more SATA SSDs, a 3070, etc. Then there are other systems that might be used for experimenting, HTPCs, casual use elsewhere in the house, spouses/family members, etc. Sometimes those are just the previous flagship systems sticking around. Sometimes they may be systems acquired from wherever. And the simple reality is that a 10-year-old 'enthusiast' system (which would be a Sandy Bridge with 16+ gigs of RAM and an SSD) is... more than capable... of doing the latter tasks.

Also, in the case of my 10 year old laptops - these are quad-core Sandy Bridges with 16GB of RAM, SSDs, and upgraded 802.11ac wifi. With ivy bridge, the laptop world started to move to dual-core U-series chips, and it took... I don't know how many years... for quad cores to seriously come back outside gaming laptops and mobile workstations. I don't take them anywhere, just use them at home for web browsing/email on the couch, etc. But they run Windows 10 with all the latest patches, they don't crash ever, they get the job done, and because they have removable batteries, I managed to get original replacement batteries around the time Dell discontinued them. Sure, newer laptops are thinner, more power efficient, but also less upgradable, so tell me, why would I e-waste them?

I'll tell you something else funny - at one point, one of the Sandy Bridges had a moody SSD, I had some credit card offer from Dell, so I figured, you know what, I'll buy a low end new 17" laptop. (This is for use at home so want the bigger screen) Got an Inspiron 3780 with an i5-8xxx, 1920x1080 screen, etc, upgraded it to 32 gigs of RAM (I had picked that model). It is a complete piece of junk. Crashes every few days. Had a crazy bug for a few months where any time the screen went blank, it would crash (that got fixed in a BIOS update). Only has single-whatever 802.11ac wifi (max 433 megabits) instead of dual-whatever like my sandy bridges (max 867 megabits). Only has 100 megabit Ethernet when my sandy bridges have gigabit. Does weigh less than the Sandy Bridges and the power adapter is about 1/6th the size. Lots of driver issues seemingly having to do with the (unnecessary) AMD switchable graphics. Complete piece of junk of a laptop. But hey, it meets the performance and reliability requirements to run Windows 11, says Microsoft.

And as an FYI, most non enthusiasts have considered PC's just an appliance for over a decade. Most non enthusiasts don't even use them at home anymore, just a smart phone.

Then those people will be shocked when they are told their 'appliances' need to be e-wasted in 2025 or else be exposed to crazy malware risks.

 

[VivienM]

Speaking of 'Carrots' and 'Sticks'... if the TPM 2.0 requirement is the Stick, where is the carrot? BestBuy "old PC" trade-in towards a new Win11 PC imminent? Maybe some of those older off-lease PCs will be useful for trade-in fodder. (Only IF you like pre-builts, but they do offer gaming pre-builts that aren't absolutely horrible now.)

Let's see what happens in a year or two. Since they already have various parts of Windows Update displaying that your system is too old to get Windows 11 (e.g. try to join the insider program on a non-Win11 system and the first screen you see in the 'Settings app' tells you your PC is too old), it wouldn't surprise me if home systems started to get popups in a year or two about how your PC is too old for Windows 11 and to get the newest security and reliability improvements, you should really consider buying a new one running Windows 11.

I think they'll try to motivate people to buy Win11 PCs without offering trade-in type carrots.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Since when do "enthusiasts" run 10 year old systems? Sure doesn't mean what it used to.

My Amiga 600 still works. I think. The oldest PC I run is a K6-2 450MHz in an Epox MVP3G2 with 160MB RAM, and Windows 98. SE of course. It's coming up on 22 years old. 10 years? Pah.

And as an FYI, most non enthusiasts have considered PC's just an appliance for over a decade. Most non enthusiasts don't even use them at home anymore, just a smart phone.

Here PC access is all but mandatory if you want to access municipal and government services. You can't get by on just a smartphone. You'll need one of those too of course, since it's de facto a requirement for our national single sign-on wannabe digital signature service (NemID). YMMV.

 

[WilliamM2]

Then those people will be shocked when they are told their 'appliances' need to be e-wasted in 2025 or else be exposed to crazy malware risks.

I'm sure they won't care that the PC they haven't even booted since 2012 needs to be replaced. They already got rid of it, and don't even have a home PC anymore. Or it has sat in the corner abandoned.

 

[taisingera]

For general use (browsing, documents, media playback) of old computers that can't update to 11, install Linux if it is still in working order.

 

[mikeymikec]

Other than Apple's rather rapid abandonment of the last-gen PowerPC systems over a decade ago, when have they ever told someone with a 3-year-old Mac "sorry, you are not getting our new OS, have a nice life"? They normally say that around... 6-8 years... after that machine was introduced. That's a lot better than Microsoft's processor age requirement in Windows 11, which is dropping 2.5-year-old Ryzens.

3-6 years isn't exactly an impressive lifespan for a computer (the last time I did a platform upgrade for myself within that time frame was 2001), and unless there's a solid policy and reasoning for an exception, who's to say it won't happen again. It looks like Apple will ditch x64 for ARM in the not-too-distant future too.

While I'm loathe to side with Apple in any case, at least Apple is more likely to maintain a consistent position because they don't seem to be changing their minds every few years like MS seems to be.

 

[VivienM]

3-6 years isn't exactly an impressive lifespan for a computer (the last time I did a platform upgrade for myself within that time frame was 2001), and unless there's a solid policy and reasoning for an exception, who's to say it won't happen again. It looks like Apple will ditch x64 for ARM in the not-too-distant future too.

While I'm loathe to side with Apple in any case, at least Apple is more likely to maintain a consistent position because they don't seem to be changing their minds every few years like MS seems to be.

I agree re 3-6 years not being an impressive lifespan, but that's what Microsoft is pushing towards. My i7 7700, built Jan. 2017, obsoleted Oct. 2021, e-waste 2025. And my i7 7700 isn't even the youngest system abandoned - I think AMD launched the first supported Ryzens in Apr. 2018, so... you could have built a new Ryzen system in Feb. 2018, obsoleted Oct. 2021, e-waste 2025. Or I'm sure some people bought unsupported pre-built systems mid-2018.

It is revolting when you realize that, unlike in the 1990s when a computer was unable to run a new version of Microsoft Office after about 3-5 years, this is all artificial. The C2Ds/C2Qs with 8GB of RAM sitting unplugged in my closet would still be very adequate for plenty of purposes...

 

[Ajay]

Apparently, Micro$oft has gotten really good about pissing off some people twice a decade with new Windows version. I guess that’s part of the deal when you’re the 800lbs gorilla of OSes.

I’ve long thought that MS should kill off systems lacking certain features every 10 years to allow them to use the latest hardware features to improve the OS. I imagine with hyper-V native to every Win 10 system (or is that just Pro and above?) - some stuff could be emulated for a speed trade-off. I wouldn't like to pay annually for a Windows subscription, but, if the price is reasonable, I would accept that. If MS moves to Windows as a service, forget about it. I have some familiarity with Linux, guess I'd be diving in head first If that happens.

MS is a for profit company. I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that they need to do what is most profitable for them, not what is most convenient for me.

 

[VivienM]

Apparently, Micro$oft has gotten really good about pissing off some people twice a decade with new Windows version. I guess that’s part of the deal when you’re the 800lbs gorilla of OSes.

I’ve long thought that MS should kill off systems lacking certain features every 10 years to allow them to use the latest hardware features to improve the OS. I imagine with hyper-V native to every Win 10 system (or is that just Pro and above?) - some stuff could be emulated for a speed trade-off. I wouldn't like to pay annually for a Windows subscription, but, if the price is reasonable, I would accept that. If MS moves to Windows as a service, forget about it. I have some familiarity with Linux, guess I'd be diving in head first If that happens.

MS is a for profit company. I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that they need to do what is most profitable for them, not what is most convenient for me.

A 10-year time span, sure, that sounds reasonable. If they said no more BIOS/MBR, maybe TPM 1.2, etc., it might push some things towards e-waste but I think that would be reasonably fair. But what they've done has two issues: 1) it puts the cut-off really, really, really close to present, and 2) it seems arbitrary. I don't know anything about instruction sets, etc., but I think most people who do have been unable to determine why the line was drawn where it was. And, as was seen by betas running on unsupported machines/VMs/etc, there was little evidence that they were actually doing things that would fail on those older systems.

As for paying for a Windows subscription, I... actually would be okayish with that at this point. I would much rather pay annually, or pay $129/$249 or whatever it used to be for a retail upgrade, than to be in a world where at some point, they are going to release Windows X + 1 and there's a good chance my hardware that runs Windows X is going to be left out. Motherboard/CPU/RAM for a decent system (i7-level CPU, if I got a new board I would want something with >gigabit networking, and min. 64 gigs of RAM of the matching speed) every 4-5 years or whatever becomes necessary to be able to always run the latest OS costs a LOT more than a boxed $249 Windows X Pro license.

I do wonder how they calculate what is more profitable to them - if they said 8th gen Intel/2nd gen Ryzen get free upgrade, 4th-7th gen Intel need to pay $129/$249, ivy bridges and older are SOL, would they not make more money from people buying upgrades for the 4th-7th gen systems than they will make selling Lenovo, Dell, HP and co. OEM licences for whatever machines they hope will be sold to replace these?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

And, as was seen by betas running on unsupported machines/VMs/etc, there was little evidence that they were actually doing things that would fail on those older systems.

MS apparently means business:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/17/windows_11_virtual_machines_requirements/

Now, you can't even run it in VirtualBox. My Haswell system has also just started complaining that it doesn't meet the requirements for 11.

I'm getting popcorn...

 

[VivienM]

MS apparently means business:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/17/windows_11_virtual_machines_requirements/

Now, you can't even run it in VirtualBox. My Haswell system has also just started complaining that it doesn't meet the requirements for 11.

I'm getting popcorn...

Yup, my VM did that too. And as the Register pointed out, they had explicitly said these requirements wouldn't be enforced in VMs a few months ago... until suddenly they are.

How is your Haswell system complaining? My VM says it won't install the new build in WU, when you click 'fix it', you get a dialog box that looks like the normal installer says that I'm missing TPM 2.0/Secure Boot. Is your Haswell doing that, or something more obnoxious outside WU too?

This reminds me of the Windows 7 upgrade eligibility shocker (i.e. when they removed the ability to just insert a disc for Windows X-1 or X-2 to clean install Windows X on a blank drive using upgrade media and didn't tell anybody so people discovered this the day the retail upgrades shipped). I think we are in for some unpleasant (but expected by pessimists like me) surprises as we get closer to the final build. And while I know many people are convinced they wouldn't go as far as to block cumulative updates, given how they've explicitly refused to confirm that with every member of the tech media who has asked, I think some people could be in for a nasty surprise when the first CU rolls around in November or whenever.