Windows 11
 

As you probably heard, not all "gaming" rigs will make it.
My motherboard does not have TPM chip.
Means, sorry, no bonus.

Now I have to decide will I buy a new rig just for win11 or screwitt and continue plodding on win10.

Apart from that, if you are already using win10, the upgrade to win11 will be - free.

Is there any interest at all to change, except once Windows 10 is not supported? Which is not soon, 2025-ish, will probably be postponed several times as usual. Anyway you'll probably have a new system by the time Win11 is stable enough, no?

That is true but I work as IT support and want to experiment and break stuff on my own PC before it goes live in the firm. ;)

TBH, I think the idea of declaring Windows 11 is largely a marketing exercise. Windows 10 was designed to be a rolling release. 11, 12, whatever.

It's going to be a free upgrade from Win 10 at the end of the year. No word on how long they're going to do that.

I'll wait and see what people say. It's going to have Android app compatibility which I think is interesting, and Xbox Game Pass is built in.

To sum it up they took parts of Win 10 and merged it with Mac OS basically. Not something I would enjoy using but we will all be forced to upgrade at one point.

According to history, every second version of Windows is complete and utter shit.

Now that would be hilarious: Windows Utter Shit: Complete Edition :biggrin:

Wasn't that the unofficial name of Windows ME?

You don't need a TPM chip, for all modern Intel CPUs you can turn on PTT in your BIOS, and all modern AMD chips you turn on fTPM. Your CPU would have to be truly ancient (>6-7 years old) to not have it.

Probably is mostly marketing, but could also be that they wanted a convenient excuse to leave old systems behind. The requirement for TPM, UEFI, and a DX12-compatible GPU gets rid of a lot of really old computers that they now no longer will have to care about or support. Telling a bunch of people that their ancient hardware is no longer allowed to run Windows might not go over so well as part of a Windows 10 bi-annual update.

Well, Windows 7 was great, Windows 10 is mostly garbage, would that mean Windows 11 is actually good? ;)

The only interesting feature for me in Windows 10 is the Windows System for Linux (WSL), but even that is heavy and limited, Cygwin is more practical (or a VMware). Windows 11's Android support seems to be the same kind of layer with CPU emulation.

It's more than marketing, this Bridge technology extends their reach quite a lot. Perhaps a response to macOS?

I think Windows 10 gets a worse rap than it deserves. I've never had any major issues with it, and game compatibility, even with older titles, has been just as good as Windows 7 in my experience.

The only Windows I ever really disliked was Windows 8. That was an abomination.

I agree, win 10 has no serious issues and is quite customisable too unlike 8.

I also think win 11 is just a number to ensure they can move support off of older devices.

As someone else said, it's probably just going to be the same base code and a rolling upgrade.

I hate 10 as much as I loved the improvements in 7. What I dislike is mostly the bloatware, ads and all the privacy concerns, and regressions on the UI ergonomics. I want the OS to be just that, an operating system, not an ad or a spying platform.

Simple example, recently on each update, MS forces the "News and interests" large band in the taskbar, and in a foreign language on top of that. It doesn't seem possible to remove it, only to hide it every time it reappears. And I'm pretty sure they'll go one step further in Win11.

Don't even get me started on forced updates or the messy app installation, doing IT support on that was a nightmare in my company (we're switching to Linux now, it was the final nail in the coffin).

At home I'm probably switching to Linux on the next forced iteration of Windows, even more so because of the hardware-locked enforcement they're pushing further (TPM chip). It's become a good alternative despite its fragmentation on the UI front. Unfortunately there too, we have to cope up with Canonical's increasing presence, but there are other well-supported distros. It means bye-bye to most of gaming though.

It's always been a delicate balance for any platform, between being successful enough and not getting ruined by this success. Always the same pattern, repeating over and over.

Rant's over ;)

Removing that is easy, took me about 10 seconds once it first appeared (a few weeks ago?) Has never re-appeared since. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you how, I don't remember…

edit: found it again… Right-click on your taskbar, find the "News and interests" line in the menu, expand it out, hit the "Turn off" line. Has stayed off just fine for me on every computer I use.

Thanks! But that's the way I did, they make it reappear on each update. I'll probably go medieval on this feature if they do it again ;)

You're too optimistic.
If you check supported CPUs list, it seems all CPUs older released before 2018. are doomed to stay on win10.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win…tel-processors

I've seen some suggestions on how you can "hack" the installation not to check for TPM presence, but what's the point of such workrounds if OS will want it later to work properly with whatevers part of it.

During worst times to upgrade your rig, it feels kinda odd Microsoft made a requirement like this.

Yeah, that's really not the best time to buy new hardware. They're almost shooting themselves in the foot :lol:

I have a feeling that requirement will be removed or lessened near it's official release date. To me it sounds like Microsoft are trying to turn PC's into Apple phones.

Anyway that requirement can be hacked out based on certain forums I visit. Seems a lot of us will be using bootlegged/hacked/edited Window 11 versions in the future.

They need some way to strong-arm people into buying new machines.

Thus is the tech circle of life

Yeah the Apple way. Every new update version forces you to buy a new phone. Thing is PCs are not phones they cost a lot more. Unless you buy top of the line $2,000 phones.

I'll be sticking with windows seven until they pry it from my cold, dead hands. Or something like that!!

*** looks at my two AMD FX-8350 rigs and Surface Pro 1***

Yes, but Win 8.1 was pretty great. It ran so much better faster on my machines than Windows 7, and by using a couple add-ins, I didn't even use the start screen on my desktops (loved it on my Surface Pro though)

Gaming PC's cost more than phones. The average user probably spends less on their PC than they do on their phone though since most users can run everything they want on a sub $1k PC, but new iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones cost over $1k.

I will say this about Win 10. I've put it on some truly old machines (my Surface Pro 1, my dad's laptop that is even older) and it's always run great. I think in general MSFT does a good job of making their OS compatible with as many legacy systems as possible. Sometimes though, there's a feature in the hardware that comes out that they want to use, and can't work around for older machines.

Meh part of me knew Microsoft would go this way. It was inevitable. Like I said on the last page you can remove/hack out that requirement but I don't know what it will break.

I'm sure some hack group will fix it where it wont matter anyway.

I know I would get the chance to link to this article at some point in time:

"Microsoft confirms there will be no windiws 11"

https://www.techradar.com/news/softw…ows-11-1293309

:D

I hadn't seen that "supported CPUs list" yet, but I'm pretty sure that every CPU on that list supports either PTT or fTPM, so the whole TPM thing isn't an issue at all. I believe everyone who has one of those CPUs will also have TPM, whether it's an actual TPM chip, or PTT/fTPM.

That doesn't count … It was written in the previous decade :P

Hopefully you're right.
According to a thread I saw under a Rockpaprshotgun article that claimed you needed a bona fide TPM 2.0 chip on your motherboard (not just a header) there were people saying that all they had to do was go into their BIOS and ensure that firmware-based TPM was enabled (rather than discrete TPM), so stuff like CPU-based fTPM and TPP worked fine.
I have two newish machines, but a series of older ones (inc. the family gaming rig which is 4th gen i5), so I'm going to do a check with the WIndows11/TPM compatibility check stuff to see.

Well, the two Ryzen 3s are fine, naturally (both are less than a year old and just needed a BIOS setting changed), but the i5 4570 is a no-go (nothing TPM related even on the mobo). I've read that TPM 1.2 will become supported, which means another older Intel mobo I have with that may be usable, but really the family machine can stay on Windows 10 until it gets an upgrade.

I have a i7-6500U laptop that's 6 years old that is supported (has TPM 2.0), and it looks like it's older than anything on the official list.

Pretty sure the 4th gen chips have PTT, so if your BIOS won't let you activate it, then that's a motherboard/BIOS issue not a CPU issue. (Not that it helps you…)

Did the "Health Check" program say it's good to go? Maybe the "supported CPUs" list is meaningless in practice then.

Oops, sorry, no. The Health Check says that the processor is not supported, but TPM check (via running tpm.msc) says that it has TPM 2.0 enabled, so according to lots of articles I've read it should be…
I guess it's a wait-and-see.

My mother is playing solitaire card games on the family PC (notebook). When I try to work with it, it's almost impossible to filter out advertisement from real stuff. Even the MS solitaire card games have advertisement windows, if I saw that correctly.

I heavily assume that this was intentional by Microsoft : To let the border between advertisement and serious software blur.

I still hate waterworks err that UI.

I actually watched the live stream for the introduction. It's still on YouTube. Very handy if dinner is a couple of hours away and you're already hungry. (eye roll)

I didn't see much interesting. Aero is nice to have - fully taking us back to Win7. The killer feature for me will be DirectStorage, though. DX12U will eventually be must-have, but that's a long way off.

There could be more interesting stuff going on under the hood that will be important at work. Given that we're still stuck in a 2018 version of Win10, though, that will also be a long wait.

Man you gotta love scalpers and bots. :roll:

Seems after this announcement some of them bought most of the TPM 2.0 Modules on the market that you can install yourself. Just like everything else the price has gone up.

Link - https://www.techpowerup.com/283812/t…pm-2-0-modules

So it seems that when Microsoft first put out the Win11 announcement, there was some intent of there being a "hard floor" of TPM 1.2+ (with no CPU requirement), and a "soft floor" of TPM 2.0+ and a supported CPU. Only the hard floor was truly required. But since then, they silently changed web pages and the "Health Check" program to make it clear that TPM 2.0+ and a supported CPU is going to be required. (Also, the "Health Check" program now displays the reason your computer isn't good enough, instead of just saying it isn't good enough.) So maybe the CPU requirement will really be enforced?

If it is, then the TPM requirement is meaningless, because I'd imagine every CPU on the supported list has builtin TPM (PTT or fTPM). The list is basically Intel 8th gen and later CPUs, and AMD Zen+ and later CPUs. Roughly 2018+.

That's pretty insane.

We'll have to see if that stands from a legal point of view, it seems really out there.

In any case, RedHat will love this, more customers for them :D

I actually think this makes some sense. The security of desktop systems really is pitiful, even compared to the design of phones. Implementing a more secure OS, requiring a TPM, is a step forward, IMO. All future hardware will clearly now include a TPM, and it makes sense to have a version bump to clarify the distinction. Then Windows 10 can be supported long term, until it's likely everyone will have upgraded anyway. I'd be quite surprised if they try to force everyone to Windows 11 quickly, and say "tough luck" to millions of people.

Do you mean the security of applications, against piracy?