WATCH OUT FOR RAM PRICES!

Marie SWE said:

If microsoft really want people to stop using win10 when Ram/disk prices is like they are, so people cant afford upgrade to required hardware... Microsoft has the power to just change the installer so win11 can be installed on older hardware.
As long bypassing works, then its no real minimum requirements.. just preferred requirements.

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That should be easy, Setup is almost there already. From 24H2 on if you use a few registry changes to bypass compatibility requirements it already has a 'disclaimer' ready that you need to accept before completing the upgrade or install.

Marie SWE said:

If microsoft really want people to stop using win10 when Ram/disk prices is like they are, so people cant afford upgrade to required hardware... Microsoft has the power to just change the installer so win11 can be installed on older hardware.
As long bypassing works, then its no real minimum requirements.. just preferred requirements.

Click to expand...

Exactly, Marie.

The thing that has always made me believe these hardware 'restrictions' for Windows 11 are just a 'ploy' to get home users to buy new PC's or upgrade their hardware is the fact that none of these 'restrictions' apply to Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC (or whatever it is called these days) for business which can be installed on older hardware (I don't know if the latest additions to the 'restricted' list - SSE4.2 and PopCnt - also apply here or not).

And this is probably the main reason why home users are still able to bypass these 'restrictions' in Home and Pro. For the time being, at least.

MS should just release a version of Windows 11 that works with anything for people with older hardware that they can't afford to or don't want to upgrade with the understanding (they could add it to their Windows EULA which no one reads anyway) that MS will not be responsible for any issues resulting from people using Windows 11 on any older hardware.

Edit: Ah, I see it has already been added to the EULA (thanks, Bree). As I said - no one usually reads it. I know I never have.

Microsoft is absolved of all liability regardless if you are using old or new, compliant or non-compliant hardware. You use their OS at your own risk and you pay them to do so. That's the deal in a nutshell. A few years back I suggested the same things that CarlSD has shared here and was laughed to scorn for it. Not so many are laughing anymore. It's a gimmick and it always was a gimmick to get people to buy newer hardware and it was orchestrated by a consortium group that pretty much includes all the big names in compute. All of this can be easily researched and validated. MS is part of the consortium group so MS isn't about to change their policy. Today, we live in a technocracy where the Consortium calls the shots. Even the judges and politicians know it.

TraderGary said:

I agree, I too am always using up to date hardware and software. However, there are some with very limited incomes that have no choice. They either use what they have, or they are no longer online.

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And not just "very limited" incomes. Even the so-called middle class is being impacted hard by the current economic situation overall, and not just the datacenter build out; If the AI/datacenter hits some serious obstacles, that would have consequences for the entire US (and other countries') economies. It is hard to know what to wish for. You just might get it.

cheaterslick said:

Better yet, go back to this....

WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS)

During the late 1980's, WordPerfect was THE standard word processor for DOS based PCs in big business. Under DOS, it competed mostly against Wordstar. WordPerfect for Windows enjoyed some success in the early Windows environments, but was quickly displaced by Microsoft Word for Windows. Later...

winworldpc.com

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Decidedly not Word document compatible.

CarlSD said:

Exactly, Marie.

The thing that has always made me believe these hardware 'restrictions' for Windows 11 are just a 'ploy' to get home users to buy new PC's or upgrade their hardware is the fact that none of these 'restrictions' apply to Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC (or whatever it is called these days) for business which can be installed on older hardware (I don't know if the latest additions to the 'restricted' list - SSE4.2 and PopCnt - also apply here or not).

And this is probably the main reason why home users are still able to bypass these 'restrictions' in Home and Pro. For the time being, at least.

MS should just release a version of Windows 11 that works with anything for people with older hardware that they can't afford to or don't want to upgrade with the understanding (they could add it to their Windows EULA which no one reads anyway) that MS will not be responsible for any issues resulting from people using Windows 11 on any older hardware.

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And what about the security offerred by TPM 2.0?

CarlSD said:

Edit: Ah, I see it has already been added to the EULA (thanks, Bree). As I said - no one usually reads it. I know I never have.

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Me neither. If I didn't agree, exactly what could I do about it, assuming I need the product? Bupkis. (look it up)

CarlSD said:

Exactly, Marie.

The thing that has always made me believe these hardware 'restrictions' for Windows 11 are just a 'ploy' to get home users to buy new PC's or upgrade their hardware is the fact that none of these 'restrictions' apply to Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC (or whatever it is called these days) for business which can be installed on older hardware (I don't know if the latest additions to the 'restricted' list - SSE4.2 and PopCnt - also apply here or not).

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that SSE4.2 and PopCnt are required to run Windows 11, even bypassing the other requirements. Those requirements are hard coded into the Windows code now.

Scannerman said:

Microsoft is absolved of all liability regardless if you are using old or new, compliant or non-compliant hardware. You use their OS at your own risk and you pay them to do so. That's the deal in a nutshell. A few years back I suggested the same things that CarlSD has shared here and was laughed to scorn for it. Not so many are laughing anymore. It's a gimmick and it always was a gimmick to get people to buy newer hardware and it was orchestrated by a consortium group that pretty much includes all the big names in compute. All of this can be easily researched and validated. MS is part of the consortium group so MS isn't about to change their policy. Today, we live in a technocracy where the Consortium calls the shots. Even the judges and politicians know it.

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I think you're mixing two different issues.

It's fair to argue that Microsoft's Windows 11 requirements accelerated hardware replacement and benefited PC manufacturers, chip makers, and Microsoft. That's a reasonable opinion.

However, claiming there was some coordinated scheme by a "consortium" to force upgrades requires evidence. The fact that multiple companies benefit from a decision doesn't automatically prove they secretly orchestrated it.

Also, Microsoft's liability disclaimer isn't really relevant to whether the requirements are justified. Software companies have always limited their liability. The more relevant question is whether TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and newer CPU requirements provide enough security and reliability benefits to justify leaving millions of otherwise functional Windows 10 PCs behind.

Personally, I think that's where the strongest criticism of Microsoft lies. There are many older systems that run Windows 11 perfectly well despite being officially unsupported. The existence of those systems makes it reasonable to question whether the hardware cutoff was set too aggressively.

But that's very different from saying "the Consortium controls everything" or that politicians and judges are taking orders from technology companies. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And, it isn't as if MS doesn't have previous 'form' for things like this. I'm sure everyone remembers what happened with Windows Updates for Windows 7 (and 8.1) not long after Windows 10 was released. People with Windows 7 especially going to Windows Update and looking at "Checking for Updates" for hours and even days while Windows 10 had no problems with updates.

There was also the infamous "Unsupported Hardware" message people with 7th Generation and lower CPU's started getting when checking Windows Update a couple of years after Windows 10 was released. This turned out to be quite easy to bypass which proved there was no valid reason for it and it was only an(other) attempt to get more people onto Windows 10.

Speaking of older hardware, for the fun of it I've just finished cleaning and rebuilding a very old desktop PC for a friend of mine. It has an ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP motherboard from 2007, an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 8GB (4x2GB) sticks of DDR2 RAM. He originally had Windows 7 on it and at some point it was upgraded to Windows 10. He recently asked me if I could upgrade it to Windows 11 but because it doesn't have SSE4.2 and PopCnt you can't install anything past Windows 11 23H2.

Just recently it was booting into the BIOS when the PC was turned on (probably because the CR2032 motherboard battery was totally dead) and when he managed to get it into Windows 10 it would 'freeze up' or reboot after a few minutes.

I've sold him one of my 3 desktop PC's with a 12th Generation Intel CPU and 32GB of DDR4 RAM and Windows 11 Pro (bought long before the recent huge price increases) and I decided to disassemble and clean his old PC. It was so full of dust and dirt - especially the CPU heatsink and fan, it was probably overheating. And, having it on the floor for over 10 years wasn't the best place to put it as far as keeping it clean is concerned.

His old motherboard is now inside a new case with a new power supply and a SSD (attached image). I can't install anything past Windows 11 23H2 (using Rufus of course) which I have done and I've had it running perfectly (even if a bit slow by today's standards) for hours. Amazing what a good clean and CPU thermal paste replacement can do. I probably could put Linux on it but I'll be giving it back to him to keep as a spare and I don't think he will like using Linux, he has enough trouble using Windows sometimes.

TraderGary said:

But that's very different from saying "the Consortium controls everything"

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The "Consortium" probably hired you, long ago.

CarlSD said:

I probably could put Linux on it but I'll be giving it back to him to keep as a spare and I don't think he will like using Linux

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Windows 10 LTSC IoT, security updates to 2031 (i think it was, i run W10 IoT)

Marie SWE said:

Windows 10 LTSC IoT, security updates to 2031 (i think it was, i run W10 IoT)

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Nearly correct, actually January 13, 2032. Ending Support in 2032 - Microsoft Lifecycle

Bree said:

Nearly correct, actually January 13, 2032. Ending Support in 2032 - Microsoft Lifecycle

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at least i was wrong on the positive side, so they get more then i wrote.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Decidedly not Word document compatible.

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So who needs that. Make the world WordPerfect with DOS compatible.

PhilB said:

And what about the security offerred by TPM 2.0?

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What about it. If it's a choice between convenience vs. security, guess which one's gonna win? Not that I agree with the outcome.

For non-tech people out there, they wouldn't know what TPM 2.0 is. I doubt it would be much of a selling point, but if more people find out about it, then it might bring even more unwanted attention to MS that they don't want. They'd think 2.0 was some kind of gimmick used to sell computers, made up the same way used car salesman do when they sell used cars.

PhilB said:

Me neither. If I didn't agree, exactly what could I do about it, assuming I need the product? Bupkis. (look it up)

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Well I guess people could pick "No" and then take the machine back for a refund since whatever you were doing before is now going to get permanently interrupted.

gunrunnerjohn said:

I'm pretty sure that SSE4.2 and PopCnt are required to run Windows 11, even bypassing the other requirements. Those requirements are hard coded into the Windows code now.

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And maybe sinking themselves (MS and the end users) into a new hole that they can't get out of. What will happen is we will have less hardware security as OSes continue to go out of date on old, unsupported equipment, and people don't have any way to extend them. Or more than likely, they're not tech-savvy and just ignore any bubble warnings that appear about expirations and all that, and take their chances with infection.

And you know what Joe Dunderhead says:

If you can't update, then you ignore, by golly by gosh! The machine still runs! The machine still runs! And because of that, code like SSE4.2 and PopCnt can be ignored, by golly by gosh!

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TraderGary said:

However, claiming there was some coordinated scheme by a "consortium" to force upgrades requires evidence. The fact that multiple companies benefit from a decision doesn't automatically prove they secretly orchestrated it.

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Yeah, but it's all too coincidental. All following the same 'trend' at roughly the same time.

TraderGary said:

The more relevant question is whether TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and newer CPU requirements provide enough security and reliability benefits to justify leaving millions of otherwise functional Windows 10 PCs behind.

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And do they? I'm supposed to take their word for it but part of me is unconvinced whether that really makes any difference or not. I get just as much malware as before.

Color me very skeptical...

-

CarlSD said:

the fact that none of these 'restrictions' apply to Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC (or whatever it is called these days) for business which can be installed on older hardware (I don't know if the latest additions to the 'restricted' list - SSE4.2 and PopCnt - also apply here or not).

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Gee, wonder why... inquiring minds want to know... /s

~

lol, seriously, I did not know LTSC didn't have any of those restrictions. If you can install it on a Pentium 4 or a Core2Duo, then good luck. I hope it lasts.

Marie SWE said:

If microsoft really want people to stop using win10 when Ram/disk prices is like they are, so people cant afford upgrade to required hardware... Microsoft has the power to just change the installer so win11 can be installed on older hardware.
As long bypassing works, then its no real minimum requirements.. just preferred requirements.

Click to expand...

They could have allowed a seamless Win10 to Win11 upgrade on most of the existing Win10 base of systems.
But IMHO Microsoft got greedy and likely worked behind the scenes with the system hardware vendors to push the new hardware 'required' for Win11.
But lots of customers balked, and thus the ESU path to keep running Win10.
Then system AI developers came in and with their massive demands for hardware that blew up the Win10 to Win11 hardware upgrade path,
making it impossible or prohibitively expensive to replace existing Win10 system with a new Win11 system.
Next year Microsoft is going to want you to ditch your Win11 system anyway and go out and replace it with a brand new AI enabled system.