Haven’t they always done this for corporate customers with EoL products?
False; it’s now going to be offered to consumers, too.
That’s the entire article, you’re welcome.
Given that the alternative for consumers was to not get security updates at all, that’s pretty sweet. I’d either upgrade to Windows 11, or swap to Linux though.
In this case machines sold as recently as 2020 are not supported and for the for the last 8 years since 10 came out old computers were less obsolete than in prior eras as SSD were already common and other than gaming or specialized apps computer software hadn’t become notably heavier.
Basically many of those now forcibly obsolete machines bought as late as 2020 would have been expected to be in service for years yet either as primary machines or hand me downs. Basically much bitching will be heard.
Phrased differently: Microsoft announces the end of support for a product. If you want to pay for it, they will make an exception and continue to support it just for you.
I understand people dislike Windows 11, but complaining about life cycle management isn’t going to help that.
This is absolutely nothing new, and the workaround is usually just a small registry tweak so Windows Update pulls from the extended support patches “channel”. Same thing happened with Vista, 7, and 8.
Alternatively there are ways to download from the Windows Update servers using plenty of third party tools. It’s a neccessity if you’re going to streamline patches into your install media to save the post install mess of waiting for it to download and install all the updates that have come out since they first made the install .iso
Is this news? This is expected, it’s what they did with 7 and XP after those reached full EOL, which happened on the day they said it would for 7 at the time 7 launched, and a few years after the date they said when XP launched.
The 2025 date has been known since 2015 when 10 launched and is the standard Microsoft ten year support cycle for operating systems.
And yet, in spite of this, every single time the tech media published these breathless and shocked articles about how horrible it is that Microsoft is suddenly dropping support for their ten year old systems.
These articles are like clockwork. I’d say we’ll be getting them for Windows 11 in about seven or eight years, but they have a new “modern” lifestyle they’ve adopted for it that’s more based on last major update release or something and it’ll probably come sooner than that this time around.
Although I generally agree with the sentiment the problem here is that most computers can’t be upgraded to windows 11 and that pretty much never happened before.
Doubt that most cannot run W11. Unless you have a CPU before 2018 you should have TPM 2.0 and if you do not, you can bypass that requirement with 1 reg value. This officiall bypass still requires TPM 1.2, but most probably have it.
I’m still rocking an i7-4790K from 2016 with a 3070Ti and 32GB DDR3. While I know my rig is due a refresh, there isn’t a game or VR game or program I’ve thrown at it that it can’t handle properly.
But I can’t upgrade to Win11 because no TPM 2.0. And I don’t have 1000$ to throw in a new mobo + gen 12/13/14 CPU + DDR5 + M.2.
Generally I would agree with you, as the 10 year lifecycle you described is what’s to be expected. With Windows 10 however, Microsoft said on release it would be the last Windows and they move to windows-as-a-service. So Windows 10 not being the last Windows and the upgrade path being closed by default for many older PCs is newsworthy.
It’s different this time because of the tpm + other requirements of W11.
In the past it was never a big deal and people who didn’t upgrade from xp or 7 could be labeled as luddites because MS provided an easy and even free upgrade path.
But for the first time ever, anything older than 7 years isn’t supported.
I live in a 3rd world country and I can promise you that this is going to lead to a large percentage of the population using an insecure version of Windows 10 or just using mobile devices.
I doubt many people here will switch to Linux, but I can only hope. Maybe businesses will do that instead of buying new hardware. Recently, I saw a shop using Banana Pis as their checkout terminal.
Is this because the free upgrade to Windows 11 is too large of a download?
MANY devices have hardware that’s just outright not supported by windows 11. Even CPUs just a few years old aren’t supported. I don’t own a single device that supports Windows 11, and my stuff isn’t exactly ancient. I imagine poorer countries have resold/used hardware in the majority of cases that aren’t new enough for it
My last laptop I bought with the top of the line latest CPU at that time, and Windows 10 on it. I think originally that processor wasn’t even going to be supported by anything older than 10, which created a big stink at the time.
That proc generation isn’t supported by 11, so really, it was only ever a Windows 10 processor.
I’m generally okay with ending hardware support at some point, but that was really quick to cut off something like the processor that could easily have 10+ years of usable life.
In my case the Intel Core i7 processor family is not supported for windows 11. Granted my rig is over 6 years old but it still does everything I want it to and I have no reason to upgrade.
i7 isn’t a processor family its a marketing segment. Every generation of intel CPU has a i3 i5 i7. i7 means you have a nicer version of whatever year processor you have but you could have something 14 years old or released yesterday. I know it is absolutely confusing and awful and it makes it very hard to compare different generations without a spec sheet and benchmarks.
Yeah it’s what the other person said essentially.
If your computer is more than 4-5 years old, then you likely can’t upgrade to windows 11.
My computer made the cut by a single cpu generation. If it were a year older I’d be out of luck.
My computer is still way more power than I need and will have it for years to come.
If my computer were just a year older, I’d be in the same boat if not needing a new computer for years, but not have access to a secure system.
In addition, i can afford a new computer, but I wouldn’t spend the money on a new computer just to have security updates.
Hmm, I have a system running a 6000 series i7 (released mid 2015) and it was upgraded to Windows 11 a few months ago.
The version must be more of a recommendation than a firm requirement
So, this has been a standard phase of the Windows product lifecycle for 20+ years now. It doesn’t really answer the problem with Windows 10 retirement and unsupported hardware on 11+ but it shouldn’t be a shock to anyone.
Well, not supporting certain high end cpu’s for Windows 11 is a problem. They are forcing me to either switch cpu, AND mb or not get Windows 11. The last one is fine with me, but now they stop support for Windows 10… That kinda rubs me the wrong way.
You’re welcome to try Linux, it’s free, easy to use, easy and free to update, and stable. I use Ubuntu because I prefer something I don’t have to mess around with too much.
Yep.
I’m working on switching to Linux. My OneNote notebooks are the bigger barrier. Testing options currently.
As the other reply said, I’d definitely give Linux a try. Even the gaming situation has gotten a lot better though it’s still not perfect.
The CPU thing with 11 is kinda dumb but I do see why they did it. They wanted users running all the virtualization-based security features that were optional in 10. Some of those depend on a feature to minimize the amount of times the virtualized parts of the OS needs to swap to the hypervisor and back when it needs to change between user and kernel mode memory pages. All the Intel CPUs supported and all but the earliest AMD CPUs supported have a hardware feature called MBEC/GMET that speeds this up drastically. Unsupported CPUs (and AMD Zen+ which are supported) have to fall back to an emulated version of this feature but the performance penalties are high. When I was running an AMD Zen+ architecture CPU the difference in game performance between virtualization-based security being enabled/disabled was often in the range of 15-20%. It’s likely the earlier CPUs from Intel and AMD suffered from far worse impacts. If I had to guess Microsoft opted for the bad press from incompatible CPUs instead of being inundated with news about Windows 11 being dogshit slow.
