Windows 10 is making too many PCs obsolete | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10 is making too many PCs obsolete

computerworld.com

45 pointsimartin2k51 comments

Blame Intel more than Microsoft for this one.

Intel has been turning out Atom chips and machines based on Atom that are purposefully crippled in various ways. For instance I had a Netbook that had a crummy screen (too small to run some programs that expect a larger screen) and would let you plug in a VGA monitor, but not run in a dual-monitor mode. You could plug it into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and use it as a mini-desktop, but it would not boot unless you unfolded the machine first, etc.

In the case of "Clover Trail", Intel packaged a PowerVR GPU instead of an Intel GPU and their contract with Imagination didn't come with continued support to update drivers.

On the other hand, WDDM drivers have been pretty stable since Vista so why exactly Win 10 Creators Edition needs updated drivers is an interesting question.

Unlike the ARM ecosystem, Intel makes a very limited number of SKUs (and can afford to spend much more developing each SKU, thus get higher performance) and those SKUs themselves are frequently variations of the same die where various features are artificially fused off.

On some sense "pay for the features you use" makes sense, but on another level, it's anti-consumer behavior.

At this point, I wonder why Intel doesn't buy Imagination.

Intel makes it's own GPUs now. (Barely) good enough GPUs that mainstream users don't feel the need for a discrete GPU; this might have starved NVIDIA for business if it wasn't for the "Deep Learning" boom. That doesn't stop Intel from starving their platforms of PCIe lanes to limit the usefulness of discrete graphics.

Oh, I know, just thinking from a patent, acquihire perspective. Imagination is for sale, at one would assume a bargain price, after losing Apple as a customer.

Intel has made plenty of Atom variants with their own GPU since.

Not that it relates directly to this article, but it bugs the shit out of me that Intel uses ECC memory as a differentiation. It might have been something that only enterprise needed 15 years ago, but with row hammer becoming a viable attack (not to mention the stories I've heard from some Micron engineers) consumers deserve ECC also.

I agree. There is no reason for ECC to not be the norm. And once scaled up, it would be as cheap as regular RAM.

I'm not sure that would ever be the case. To get ECC you're adding 1/8 extra SDRAM to a memory module to hold the parity bit. That same extra SDRAM could just be used as system memory without ECC giving you 1/8 extra RAM for the same components/price.

What I'm hoping doesn't happen is that RAM manufacturers start relying on ECC, shipping partially bad chips that'll have their problematic areas transparently fixed by ECC.

I could see that increasing yield enough to account for increased die space. There's an non trivial chance that they already do this for LPDDR where the bit lanes aren't spread across chips.

>why exactly Win 10 Creators Edition needs updated drivers is an interesting question.

From what I've read, they improved their Graphics API to deal with High DPI monitors.

You got to give this to Apple, wether you consider their computers overpriced or not; their newest OS is still officially supported by computers going back to 2009. That's 8 years, and 8 major OS releases.

There are certainly many more moving pieces in the Windows realm though, simply considering how backwards compatible Windows tends to be, how much it has changed in the past few years and how many different systems it runs on. I'm very curious to know what the reasons behind Windows CU's incompatibility are.

I still use my mid-2010 17" MBP, fully up-to-date on the newest OS release. It's showing its age, but still gets the job done.

Complexities aside, Apple keeps things running. I have never had to worry about my MBP simply failing to work due to OS compatibility issues.

I still use my early-2004 15" Thinkpad T42p, fully up-to-date on the newest OS (Debian Sid) release. It is showing its age - mostly when browsing JS-encumbered sites - but still gets the job done. I have never had to worry about my T42p simply failing to work due to OS compatibility issues.

Of course this machine was expensive when new, just like Apple-branded hardware is expensive. Sometimes all that money buys you something worthwhile like your 7 year old MBP or my 13 year old T42p. Other times it is just a lot of money down the drain like I expect the recent touch-strip-addled MBP series or any machine which has consumables glued in-place to keep pesky users from getting a few more years out of their investments.

It's good to hear that. At some point their OS updates did break that tradition. But I do remember people with an old iMac (1st gen maybe) who enjoyed getting OS X support until very far down the road. Considering the pace of change and the limited hardware I was pretty stumped. It was a slower, but usable, and new features made it worth the cost.

Windows rarely felt that way. Linux does feel this way most of the time if your needs are "tech saavy". If people could register that a recent eOS, arch+gnome3 or mint+xfce can make their machine fast, cute and even more functional than ever ... I try to show them but they fall into the grumpy reflex (ewwww that key doesn't do what it did, delete linux !)

They are definitely doing better than before, though considering they essentially replaced their OS with 10.0, and then went through a whole architecture change to Intel, I still have to give them props.

The PPC to Intel migration was handled beautifully. Rosetta was straight up magic. It "just worked" and was around a few versions.

Intel Clover is not even a different architecture, it's still x86. Makes me wonder if (and believe that) Microsoft could've made this transition more graceful had they wanted to.

I would imagine that vast majority of similarly aged (and older) PCs that are in the same price bracket as Apple hardware continues to be supported by Windows 10

Isn't this for the same reason that iOS can be quicker than Android, because Apple control the hardware and can thus optimise and focus their efforts?

Yeah, they are much more focused and control the whole stack (especially in iOS, where they build the SoC too) from hardware to applications.

On other side update iphone 4s (2011) to ios 8 (2014) makes it horribly slow, while technically still 'works'.

On the other hand, my iPhone 5 from 2012 is still plenty fast on iOS 10.

Its even worse than that. Apple blocks you from going back to the older version of the OS. I had to literally throw away my 4s, (it was working fine otherwise) because it had become unusable for me after updating the OS.

The primary cause of that sort of thing appears to be the significant leaps forward[0] they've made with their ARM hardware every year.

At some point it will plateau the way PC hardware has, and new major OS versions won't be as much an issue.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/06/review-10-5-inch-ipad-...

To be fair, those same Apple machines from 2009 that are compatible with Sierra are also compatible with Windows 10 since they didn't put a gimped Intel atom chip in them.

I'm still running an 8 yr old PC with an Intel Core2 that continues to be supported by Windows 10 and all its updates. I would say it's more chip based than MS fault.

According to wiki, processor in my wife's PC is from 2009. Windows 10 runs on it no problem.

A machine from 2013 is older, it's slower, the hardware has seen better days and there are features built into a modern OS that just won't work with a chip set that the user bought from Best Buy at the bargain rack.

We all wanted Windows and MS to push computing forward for the longest time and now that they actually are, people are bitching about it. Not because it's bad for business, it's bad for them personally and anecdotally. Go figure.

This article seems like a rant and not supported by data.

And yet none of those things will totally preclude it from running a modern OS. I've got a CPU and motherboard in my desktop from 2012, and it's never been taxed enough to make me upgrade. What features does Windows 10 have that require a chipset upgrade?

If it runs fine with its current OS and hardware, there's no need to upgrade. Keep your current OS, your current hardware and you're fine. It's not Microsofts duty to support very old hardware.

That's not an answer to the question of what Windows 10 can do that makes my hardware obsolete? It's definitely not performance.

Actually it is, Windows 10 is supported until 2020 and I think it's entirely reasonable to expect all Win10 hardware to be updateable until then as MS very clearly say the OS is not supported without all updates installed. Cf support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

>What features does Windows 10 have that require a chipset upgrade?

The original Windows 10 already works on those machines. In an update to W10, the graphics API has changed, and the GPU vendor isn't willing to update the drivers. I suppose MS thought it would be best to block the W10 update. From what I've read, the changes are to do with the newer features surrounding High DPI monitors.

I have to disagree. Computers are not getting faster at a rate that they did a decade ago. I just upgraded from a 2013 laptop to a 2016, it is not appreciably faster in any way except gaming.

You can blame Microsoft for crummy support, or the manufacturers for poor business practices, but a 2013 machine is not slower or depreciated. And I'm not sure what "hardware has seen better days" means, chips don't wear out like automobile parts.

If you didn't need to upgrade, you wouldn't have. You got a gaming computer because you wanted to upgrade to faster hardware and a faster GPU chipset.

The hardware isn't just a chipset, it's the fans, the drives, etc.

Windows 10 has a hardware specification. That specification hasn't changed. Why shouldn't spec compliant hardware be expected to work?

> there are features built into a modern OS that just won't work with a chip set that the user bought from Best Buy at the bargain rack

what features?

I think this might be related to the fact that the GPU used in those machines is normally a smartphone GPU and it's a bit of a pain to support.

I don't get how - if MS will give them support until 2023 then it means 10yrs support which for those low end PCs is enough. And if somebody wants to use it after that date - LXDE/XFCE might be better anyway for this type of HW.

It is better. I bought an Intel Compute Stick when they first came out. Used Windows 8 on it just long enough for someone, Ian Morrison(http://www.linuxium.com.au/), to get the Linux version on the internet. Besides some occasional wireless issues, mostly Bluetooth now, Lubuntu 17.04 works great. I use it on vacations all the time just plug it into the hotel TV and load up Netflix and wait for the buffering to finish over the overloaded hotel Wifi.

I'd like to see discussion about this on the front page, but I'd prefer articles with more substance. This is just a rant.

Did the graphics driver ABI change in Win 10? If not, what's the problem? So if Intel is not willing to support PowerVR GPU, we still have old tested driver that works under Win 10, right? So it's more about MS' willingness to test newer versions of Win 10 for compatibility with last Clover Trail drivers. They can probably dedicate 5 people to do that without experiencing significant dent to their revenue and the one employee/multiple revenue streams philosophy they adhere to, right?

LXDE

Doesn't even have to be light. Gnome and/or KDE will run happily on any PC - they are monsters for goodness sakes! Totally OP for most distros. A lot of the early linux adoption compatibilty issues (winmodems stole too much of my youth) are gone now. Everything just works. Just wipe Windows.

In other words Windows 10 is making itself obsolete.

Linux is a better fit for netbooks anyway.

I'm a bit confused by the author's position here.

They complain about MS "forcing" Win10 down their throat, and then again about them not supporting Clover Trail and so not being able to force Creators down their throat.

It all feels a bit incoherent to me. I mean sure we all love a good incoherent rant about how Microsoft are the devil, but I really do have to question why some people are so fanatically anti-Microsoft, and yet somehow still end up owning Microsoft devices.

First with the Skylake CPUs only being supported on Windows 10, now with these Atoms not being supported anymore. That makes two.

Strike three and you're out, Microsoft! And I mean if this happens again soon, it should be clear to everyone that Microsoft is indeed abandoning hardware at a much faster rate with Windows 10.

I fail to see the problem. If you don't like Windows, don't use it. They're under no obligation to support whatever hardware you want to use. In reality, people are going to do whatever it takes to keep using Windows, and if that means having to run out and buy brand-new hardware to do so, that's what people will do. Microsoft could restrict Windows to a small number of allowable systems and customers will happily toss their old stuff in the trash and buy these approved systems just to keep using Windows.

i have nearly 2000 games in my Steam account. i'll stick with windows for that.

That's fine, just don't complain about it then.

hmm.... but why?

Skylake and these Atoms are two entirely different issues.

Skylake is not supported EARLIER than W10. These Atoms are not supported PAST W10 CU.

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