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Comment by chocochunks | Hacker News Reader

Any computer that can't run Windows 11 is almost a decade old. There has been plenty of improvement. Compare a laptop with a high end Intel i7 7920HK to even a lower end part like the Core Ultra 5 226V. Right now prices on pre-builts and laptops aren't totally reflecting the craziness at least.

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A decade in computing used to mean revolutionary improvements:

- from the C64 to the Pentium

- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360

- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.

Each of these in roughly a decade.

But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.

And when enthusiasts upgrade, the old parts usually find new homes. My old 6th-gen i7 from a decade ago still has more than enough power for my Dad to use as a home PC for basic photo editing, web browsing, and spreadsheets. But Win10 end-of-life wants to turn that machine into e-waste.

I think that is normal across most technologies or fields. Progress is an S curve (or series of curves), and it's easy to be amazed when looking at the steep bit. Early on progress is slow due to not much investment and going down lots of dead ends, while later progress faces increased complexity and no low hanging fruit left.

The middle bit is where the disadvantages of the early phase has gone, but the disadvantages of late phase hasn't kicked in yet.

Cool, but my decade-old machine works perfectly well for my needs, as too I imagine a million other such machines.

I'm sure it works, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been improvements.

Not really. Improvements like what?

I have a brand-new work laptop which absolutely crawls compared to my nearly-15-year-old Thinkpad T430. Is this slowness the Windows 11 advantage? My personal laptop runs plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 perfectly, and everything works.

In my experience, i don't consider work laptops as worth anything performance wise since they're loaded up with antivirus, scanning and compulsory work sync software accessing the network for every mouse click that means it crawls and has half second latency for anything.

Not a lot of people benefit from having 20 cores to hit.

If by improvements you mean that suspend works like shit on newer machines, yes there have been.

Which doesn't count for that much when a whole lot of stuff has also become worse.

There's a reason as to why people were reluctant to jump on win10. There's a reason people didn't want win8 at all.

But somehow, apps and websites load just as fast on my decade old personal laptop as on my brand new work laptop.

The antivirus / EDR / monitoring / inventory software that most corporate IT departments installs ages computers ten years. We constantly had problems with such services slamming the disk, holding files open, breaking software, running CPUs at 100%, etc.

Not my problem. You wouldn't need an antivirus with a properly locked browser with UBlock Origin and OFC no damn HTML email. GPO's blocking anything not being under an executable whitelist.

If any, your email client should open any attachment under a sandbox, such as Sandboxie, under a libre license:

https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie

Of course no Office macros would be allowed, ever.

Crowdstrike Falcon is likely the only reason my work M1 Pro machine runs like a dog. Any time it's being a laggy piece of junk you can open Activity Monitor and see Falcon just slamming it.

My daily desktop is mostly 2012 vintage. This hardware is still in use and works fine.

For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.

It's triggers broom :-p

Anybody who can upgrade a computer completely deserves a medal from the council.

Many budget laptops from 2020 don't support Windows 11. HP laptops with AMD A4-9125, HP notebooks with AMD A6-7310 APU, HP Envy x360 models with first-generation AMD Ryzen processors.

The software I use for hobbies is locked in to windows. A lot of extremely good software in the DIY world is locked to windows.

Coincidentally I can run it all on a 10 year old PC. I see no reason I need to upgrade. I’d happily pay a small yearly fee for patches.

But that’s not why Microsoft did all of this. Their goal is to Hoover all your data into their cloud and lock your PC down so you can’t do anything but use their stuff. Their profit numbers are insane despite losing marketshare. It’s working because the current CEO is a ruthless non-tech moron.

People want to hate on Microsoft. Rightfully so. Apple has done the same thing. Once you’re locked into the Apple ecosystem it’s hard to switch. They push iCloud and Siri on you at every turn. They just made a “one OS” choice so it doesn’t feel as bad.

Anyone who says Linux solves all the problems has not tried to make something like solidworks and masterCAM run on it. I love Linux, I use it on servers, but it has 3% marketshare for a reason.

I have sub 1year old enterprise CPUs in my home lab. Disabling TPM is the first thing I do on bring up. Assuming that's a hard requirement, how do I install w11?

2020 Apple MacBook pro has an i9-9880HK, more than enough, but lacks TPM2.0. The issue is this is just a waste of resources and money for a large number of people and the TPM2.0 requirement is silly.

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