Microsoft Issues New Warning for 70% of All Windows Users
forbes.com
forbes.com
We don't need repeated fucking full-screen reminders that Windows 11 exists. WE KNOW. Willy hears ya. Willy don't care[1].
Seriously, who's in charge here anymore? Shouldn't users get to decide what software they are running on their own computers? The user owns the computer, not Microsoft! If you publish software and users won't use it, stop and consider maybe you're wrong and not your users.
Rich from a company who, decades ago, asked "Where do -you- want to go today?" Today, it's more like "Where do -we- want to coerce you into going today?"
You make it seem like this wasn't intentional. This came from the top and I expect there were a lot of people in the implementation path that did not like it. It's a feature not a bug.
I left Windows a long, long time ago. But, I will say that I think Microsoft is following Apple more here. Apple supports (with bug/security fixes) the last 3 major releases. Yeah, you can run an unsupported macOS forever (without ads for the newer one), but they don't go as far back as Microsoft ever did.
Oh, yes. It's bad that the two biggest desktop OS vendors seem to be working in lock-step against user choice. Apple always seems to do it first, then Microsoft copies it in a more extreme, yet hamfisted way.
Apple also nags you to upgrade the OS, but they do it subtly, in a notification that is annoying but not that intrusive and it's dismissible. Microsoft barrels in and says "Hey, I wanna do that too!" but instead throws up trashy full-screen popups and "warnings" to the user (as if the user is a naughty puppy).
Apple really wants you to have an Apple ID, too, and has various subtle ways of reminding you just how much of a sad person you are for not having one. Microsoft then comes barreling in with "Hahah! We're going to FORCE you get a Microsoft ID, and require you to use it to log in to your own PC! Howbout that!?"
I use (soon to be used) Windows on my home PC since Windows 95. I really liked Windows 7. The free upgrade to Windows 10 was... underwhelming, to say the least. Windows 11 is ten times worse. So, yeah, the year of the Linux desktop arrived for me because Windows is now complete crap.
I don’t even like Windows but definitely a solid advantage for customers was if Microsoft put out a release you didn’t want, you skipped it and maybe got the next one and that would be the signal to Microsoft “oh, damn, customers didn’t like this one”. Now it just reeks of desperation trying to force all their customers to upgrade to a release they don’t want, even if it is free.
Not if you want to do anything other than email and web.
Xcode and all the supporting utilities deprecate pretty fast. It doesn't take very long before your old Xcode can't be used to sign or install anything.
My biggest concern was gaming but Steam really makes it work seamlessly. Lutrix/GOG is not as seamless but works well enough. Could be better but it works and the crap coming into Windows just pushed the final nail into the coffin. Will be retiring Windows forever in the next month.
Gaming, which was always why Windows had to be installed on my desktop, has gotten quite stale lately so my Steam Deck and Anbernic devices have been a blast playing through some nostalgic retro games.
It's also quite interesting how stable and uneventful my time (almost 2 years now) with Linux Mint has been. I remember the time when I couldn't wait for new Windows versions to come out. Now? I never want a new one to ever come out again in favor of stability and predictability.
Windows doesnt play well with dual boot, so I had to literally detach the SATA cable to keep it from eating my GRUB bootloader partition.
I switched to using the System76 distribution Pop! OS, which bakes in GPU drivers (among other things). I used the rust-based Cosmic desktop, but that choice is a different discussion.
On Linux, I was able to run almost every single Windows game well on a Nvidia 3060.
Storage was easy, pretty much everything supports FAT reads at a bare minimum, NTFS is possible with the FUSE drivers that are package-installable.
Development was easy, multimonitor was easy, suspend was a little wonky on my hardware, sleep was great.
Bluetooth ended up taking some serious wrangling for usb devices, about that point is when cli chops come in handy. Wifi was natural if a bit clunky UI-side.
All that said, they're still in early days, YMMV.
I can't really feel sorry for windows users sorry. They have known the Microsoft rules for decades, has plenty of years to switch to other OS/vendors and decided to stick with it.
I mean, people work for money, but money's a mean to satisfy our needs, few people work solely for it. If corporations are people, we raised them to be sociopaths.
Wouldn’t ever dare to take that machine online but there’s no reason why it couldn’t serve as a unitasker of some kind.
She probably wouldn't mind upgrading to windows 11, but she can't because MS decided that you must have TPM.
Windows 10 will be EOL in a year.
These companies will bs you about how eco friendly they are, but they expect you to throw a perfectly fine computer into the trash.
Which is enough time to find a Linux distro + DE/WM/theme I can live with and get Proton/WINE setup.
That's what people and companies said about Win NT. And Win 98. And Win XP. And Win 7.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
The results this time will be same as it was for users last time. Or you finally give up on the abusive practices of this vendor, and use something that respects your efforts and choices. But, there are still a TON of older hardware running those older OSes. Security and software updates be dammed.
Windows 10 actually breathed new life into some older PCs. Sad to see them cut compatibility so suddenly and without significant advantages.
Dear Microsoft, I will not upgrade to Windows 11 until you restore your removed accessibility features. I have ADHD and a mid-view taskbar (i.e. on the side of one of the screens in between my two monitors) is a requirement for me to be able to use an operating system.
I've submitted numerous tickets, it's pretty clear providing a solid UX is low on their priority list.
It is a conscious decision, not an accident
This part reduces the credibility of your request. You are actually unable to view a web page or start Excel if the task bar is not in your preferred space?
Having a side-docked taskbar is something I find genuinely helpful and I'd prefer that if they're going to take it away they give a compelling reason for it.
I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's because the general populace has spent the past 30 years being trained, often with on-the-spot reinforcement, that popups and banners == viruses.
I don't think the average person on the street could tell you even one thing that "windows 11 is capable of". People do not use operating systems, they use apps.
I can run my Win10 box (when I absolutely must, because there's no equivalent to a Windows app) via MRD and it's ... not terrible. Downgrading it to 11 would make it even less attractive than it is now, so why would I do that ?
I don't care about support - the only driver for me to downgrade it to 11 would be if the application authors stopped writing for 10. So far, so good.
(I don't really know about 11, I guess my VM has an incompatible disk partitioning.)
I can't even tell you which Windows is on my gaming laptop, much less what features separate it from other releases.
Off the top of my head (no cheating) I don't even know which new features have appeared in the last 5 versions of iOS and I develop for that and actually watch the WWDC videos. Even when deprecation warnings pop up in Xcode, they're utterly forgettable.
Normal users have even less reason to care about an OS than devs do.
Microsoft is essentially selling it on the basis of apps, so it's not surprising people are taking that attitude: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11
I only used Windows for games but recently had a game that I couldn’t make work on Windows but did work in Proton on Fedora. I haven’t booted my Windows partition since and will reclaim it when necessary.
Got my laptop in November 2021 and it was able to install Windows 11 (but came with Windows 10), so my computer must have been bought just before the hardware cutoff.
That's the only reason I haven't upgraded to Windows 11 yet. For all other Windows upgrades it's only been I couldn't install it because that computer was ancient. Feels dumb that I'm going to be forced to upgrade a 4 year old computer just to get security updates.
Not saying there's a definite time cutoff, just generally speaking it seems like somewhere around there more computers started including the TPM capabilities.
Still three years isn't that long. I'd hate to have to trash my motherboard and/or CPU just to get security updates.
So if I got confused and thought I didn't have it on my computer, probably many, many other people less tech savvy than me were similarly confused (or just wouldn't bother. BIOS changes can be weird and scary anyway, Windows couldn't even give good instructions on that part because BIOS menus tend to be pretty different).
If this is not true, what CPU features do the supported ix-8xxx "Kaby Lake R" and "Kaby Lake G" processors have that the unsupported ix-7xxx "Kaby Lake" processors lack?
The fact that the current supported CPU list for Windows 7[1] excludes all fourth generation and earlier Intel Core CPUs leads me to believe that these lists aren't derived from feature requirements alone, unless Windows 7 requires features that first became available with CPUs released in 2014.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/mi...
Assuming your system meets all other Windows 11 system requirements (TPM 2.0, etc.), you should have no problem installing Windows 11. You'll have to download it yourself and trigger the upgrade manually (mount the ISO and run "setup.exe"), and click through a warning message, but AFAIK no other workarounds are required.
Whether doing so is advisable depends on your appetite for risk, but I'd personally be more worried about application developers than Microsoft when it comes to breaking changes in the future: Windows 11 updates have to remain compatible with every CPU on the supported list*; new applications and version upgrades have no similar requirements.
* AFAIK, this does not necessarily apply to new Windows 11 versions, though even here, I'd expect fewer breaking changes than with applications and games that typically have stricter CPU requirements to begin with.
Of all the downgrades when 'upgrading' to Win11, this one bothers me the most.
Also, lol: Microsoft: Windows 11 is an essential update to Windows 10 Forbes: Ads are an essential part of our articles
I wonder how it is doing relative to previous releases.
Edit: but yeah, peripherals will be the tricky part
Microsoft's full-screen reminders – upgrade to Windows 11 are back
Yes, I know you can force an unsupported upgrade, but I'm absolutely waiting for the other shoe to drop. Microsoft absolutely will start deactivating Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, mark my words.
Why?
It's simple: Windows 11 exists to force you to buy new hardware. While Windows is technically a retail product, nobody buys it. That's why they dropped the charade of upgrade copies and made Windows 10 a free update. Everyone buys Windows with their PC anyway, so the only way Microsoft gets more money out of Windows is if they make people upgrade their PCs more often so they buy more OEM licenses.
We've already seen with the whole local account debacle[0] and Edge[1] that Microsoft will do anything to users if they think they'll make a buck somewhere down the line. I could totally see Microsoft just saying the quiet part out loud, changing their EULA to make running Windows on unsupported hardware a form of piracy.
[0] To be clear, I like Microsoft account sign-in.
[1] Man, I remember when Edge came out. It was actually good but needed some polish. Then they switched to Chromium and somehow enshittified it more.
At some point Windows users need to wake up and stop being willfully ignorant of the perfectly viable alternative.
The easiest way to get someone to go back to M$ is to tell people to use an outdated linux distro.
Fedora/OpenSUSE are literally the best OS ever. Better across the board.
If you can't detect cheating in user space or with traditional telemetry I don't want to play your game. I refuse to run kernel-level anti-cheat.
a) Spreadsheets. Not talking about simple stuff here, Libre/OpenOffice is a joke when it comes to more advanced stuff, and whether we like it or not, the world is literally running on spreadsheets. Google Sheets is okay for less demanding tasks, Apps Script is a huge plus of that platform.
b) 2D graphics and photography software. Adobe CS is unfortunately still irreplaceable, even 20 years later. Again, I'm talking about professional graphic design and photography work (and workflows). Yes, there are masochists trying to do DTP on Linux. Yes, people think AI will replace those jobs. Neither will happen in the foreseeable future. Take typography as an example of such a highly specialized craft. Which is why Adobe (and some others) can afford to be so damn aggressive with their policies.
Wine doesn't cut it. I often wonder if anybody really uses it for anything except messing around.
Hence the only solid alternative is macOS.
On the other hand, all this also means opportunities... :)
In the meantime, they told me in 2015 that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows,
"Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10" [1]. That came from a Microsoft employee, was widely reported, and not corrected; so it may not have been an official statement, but it's not like it came from nowhere. My plan is still to move to FreeBSD on the desktop once Windows 10 is dead; but we'll see what happens to my plan when it comes time to actually do it.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinst...
On this Windows edition I haven't seen any nudges to upgrade to 11.
There's even a "curl $URL | sh"-esque command to get Windows activated, hosted on Microsoft's own Github: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
There is absolutely no sane reason why Skylake and Broadwell CPUs shouldn’t be able to run Windows 11.
Somehow I find this even more disgusting than Recall.