Microsoft is threatening to withhold Windows 11 updates if your CPU is old

Re:Microsoft is threatening to withhold Windows 11 updates i... by jsnell on Saturday August 28, 2021 @05:06PM (#28341499)

So, let's think about this and assume Microsoft are behaving rationally rather than just being out to screw users for the hell of it. Most of Microsoft's incentives are to get as many people as possible to upgrade to Windows 11. Why aren't they making it as easy as possible?

I think it's because they're planning on supporting Windows 11 for 10 years. Supporting 20 year old hardware in 2031 would be a massive pain, both in terms of testing and in terms of still not being able to depend on platform features and needing all kinds of kludgy fallbacks (e.g. virtualization or the TPM).

The cost of allowing installation on older hardware for now is basically zero, and is an easy concession to make to help with the negative PR. The cost of promising updates on that old hardware is impossible to estimate, but could be quite high.

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Re:Microsoft is threatening to withhold Windows 11 updates i... by zozbot234 on Sunday August 29, 2021 @02:56AM (#28344784)

Linux supports the bulk of 20-year-old hardware today with zero issue. And Windows 10 has abandoned support for some hardware as well.

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Re:Microsoft is threatening to withhold Windows 11 updates i... by kyriakos on Sunday August 29, 2021 @08:12AM (#28346083)

Linux does support but if an obscure combination of components doesn't work no one will go hunt down Linux developers but Microsoft will be required to provide support either way. So yes it's not a matter of not being able to support it today but a case of being able to cheaply support older hardware at an acceptable level that a commercial vendor such as Microsoft is supposed to.

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