With prices and ensh!tification of everything, how many of you are buying old hardware?

cheaterslick · 2026-10-31T20:48:38-0400

Buddywh said:
That's a perfectly good way to be about this. The same way corporate IT are: they don't want their techs spending thousands of man-hours tinkering with modern software on old hardware. They either don't change either... or upgrade their users' computers on 3-5 year cycle.

Yup, been there, done that. You are limited to replace things by the budget for the year and capital gains on equipment. And the too-cheap-to-do-the-right-thing bean counters who get in the way.

Buddywh said:
I like to tinker. I keep my old system running on Win11 simply because Microsoft said it shouldn't.

Oh I'll do it if I have a gun pointed to my head, but no, it's not something I would go out of my way of doing and I shouldn't have to.

Scannerman · 2026-10-31T20:59:13-0400

cheaterslick said:
Oh I'll do it if I have a gun pointed to my head, but no, it's not something I would go out of my way of doing and I shouldn't have to.

I can think of at least a dozen other ways that I would prefer to tinker. Making an operating system function on an unsupported platform isn't one of them. I want my PC to be perfectly functional for at least 10 years (15 would be optimum). But the golden era of the PC (i.e. desktop and laptops) is fading away and hand held devices are what is in vogue. Maybe the ultimate goal is to get people off laptops and desktops. Perhaps the Consortium groups could use this argument to bolster how at least by volume they are limiting the amount of toxic waste they generate through obsoletion. I certainly wouldn't put it past them.

cheaterslick · 2026-10-31T21:08:04-0400

Scannerman said:
TPM has been hacked and cracked dozens of times so it behooves one to ask for what other reason is it being promoted and why is it being promoted in a fashion that would render a majority of PCs obsolete.

THIS!!

Yes, some security is better than nothing, but I've also never been convinced totally of the merits of TPM. They said 2.0 can't be hacked but they also said that about 1.2 a few years back.

So they want people to rest on their laurels and think everything's fine, when I believe misused AI will hack 2.0 sooner or later, if it hasn't already.

Scannerman said:
Maybe the ultimate goal is to get people off laptops and desktops.

That I'll never happen. There's too many things you can't do with a phone and that won't work for some people. Especially for people with physical limitations.

One size does not fit all.

Scannerman · 2026-10-31T21:26:46-0400

cheaterslick said:
Yes, some security is better than nothing, but I've also never been convinced totally of the merits of TPM. They said 2.0 can't be hacked but they also said that about 1.2 a few years back.

I hate to point this out but to the best of my knowledge TPM2 has already been hacked twice and security keys stolen to prove it. Of course the issue has been remedied (we are told) but there it is... Hello, new boss.. same as..

cheaterslick said:
There's too many things you can't do with a phone and that won't work for some people.

The exception only proves the rule. Sometimes being the exception proves to be rather expensive.

cheaterslick · 2026-10-31T21:39:59-0400

Scannerman said:
I hate to point this out but to the best of my knowledge TPM2 has already been hacked twice and security keys stolen to prove it. Of course the issue has been remedied (we are told) but there it is... Hello, new boss.. same as..

Well there ya go... :wink:

Scannerman said:
The exception only proves the rule. Sometimes being the exception proves to be rather expensive.

Those are the costs of doing business. Not everybody out there has full mobility or good eyesight and yes, we sometimes have to pay for those costs. Especially as we get older and some of us find ourselves in the same position as those we criticize and don't want to pay for.

Scannerman · 2026-10-31T21:50:14-0400

Micro computers are vast becoming popular. It is impressive what Nucs, Raspberry Pi, and the rest of them are capable of. Keyboards are a bit of a different matter though. Whoever would have thought that a keyboard could be larger than the PC it plugs into? Large monitors will also be around for a long time. Handheld devices were built for mobility but if these can satisfy the lion's share of PC user requirements the big boxes and large laptops are bound to fall into the specialty category. I suspect the main reason they're still around is due to the popularity of these older style devices with gamers and hobbyists.

cheaterslick · 2026-10-31T22:06:12-0400

Scannerman said:
I suspect the main reason they're still around is due to the popularity of these older style devices with gamers and hobbyists.

Could be. The places I worked at in the last few years were either using thin clients (with mini-drives in them) or some were hooked directly into the cloud like a bank terminal using a closed network. Some workstations still required a full CPU because the cloud at the time couldn't handle all the local processing that was required for certain areas. If the cloud went down (and it frequently did) then most everybody's at a standstill. Long coffee breaks occurred and did. It was the nature of the beast.

hsehestedt · 2026-10-31T22:35:52-0400

cheaterslick said:
They can only update to 23H2 or 24H2 and can't update beyond that

That has nothing to do with a TPM. I run Windows on many systems with NO TPM, not 2.0 and not even 1.2.

cheaterslick · 2026-11-01T01:02:09-0400

hsehestedt said:
That has nothing to do with a TPM. I run Windows on many systems with NO TPM, not 2.0 and not even 1.2.

I only use TPM as an example here. It could be any set of instructions that shows up in CPU-Z.

With prices and ensh!tification of everything, how many of you are buying old hardware?

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