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Comment by astrowilliam | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

>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.

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.

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

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

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?

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