Microsoft says you won't be able to swerve Windows 11 min specs

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think you missed my comment - Microsoft do not make the real money from Windows anymore - Its Azure, office 365 and other services.

You also seem to want me to be a Microsoft apologist - I'm not - they are a business and will make decisions based on where they think they can make money. They must have analysed it and decided this was in THEIR best interest.

I also think you need to take into account that Microsoft themselves have started selling android device (The duo) and are adding support for Android apps - they know which way the consumer is going and are embracing it to make money from services.

Also everyone making the comment about why not make Window more enthusiast friendly (And configurable) - You can blame Apple for that - This is the way home OSes are going (Just look and lack of root for Android and efforts to prevent 3rd party app stores). It sucks but home users want a secure just works environment which is polar opposite of what we want.

(I work for a software house that used to make a lot of money chasing specialist desktop/server app sales - we've now mostly transitioned to cloud and Software as a Service - its where the real money is in this industry so I feel qualified to talk about this somewhat).

I think you missed my point too. People stayed on Windows due to its tweakability compared to Android,etc and also the fact Wintel had much better CPUs than an ARM based device. People stayed on Windows because the lifespan of support for hardware is longer.

But if you are trying to make Windows more like Android/iOS,then intend to depreciate platform features,lifespan,etc and you are using platform agnostic server based apps,WHY do you need to use Windows anymore?

When you have 4 billion users of Android/iOS surely it means that using Windows and either Android/iOS is a jarring experience as they are different. With things such as dockable smartphones/wireless displays and modern ARM based tablets being decently powerful,why even bother with the Windows ecosystem? If you are then saying to more techy types,go use Linux(essentially) what market is MS trying to target with the Windows 11 changes. They have zero to do with business as even 2016 enterprise notebooks supported TPM2.

Look at it from the point of view of a non-techy or someone who has grown up with iOS/Android as their first introduction to computing. Don't you think its much easier for them to invest in one ecosystem of phones and tablets,with a unified UI and apps??

With MS they failed with smartphones,so they can never have this. MS is chasing after the tails of iOS/Android whilst leaving its existing "loyal" userbase in the dust. Guess what?? Non-techy types are not that loyal to MS.

People seem to have this weird view people HAVE to run Windows. Its quite clear many of us are older,and have not seen the titanic shift in what is determined to be a PC for many. It isn't Windows anymore,its their iOS/Android smartphone/tablet. Many of us might not like it but that is the reality of things. This is why smartphone games more money than PC games. Tencent is the biggest gaming vendor in the world,and that is mostly built off mobile OSes.

If you don't believe me - look at the massive smartphone apps,which have appeared mostly on iOS/Android. They were not targetting Windows as a primary OS but have made billions of USD.

You can see that with your own company - if they have transitioned to cloud services,they are admitting locking themselves to just Windows makes them less money. Its clear that targetting other OSes is a more futureproof strategy,so they are keeping their options open.

This would have NEVER been the case 10 or 20 years ago. Times have moved on,and people need to stop thinking Windows is the bees knees - even with the MS latest figures it proved what I was saying. Windows sales are in decline and MS has realised they are just going to become a provider of services for other OSes.

That proves beyond a point they have given up on Windows and don't care anymore.

This is why they are just letting the B-team poke around with Windows,and seem out of touch with what is happening. The reason Windows 10 was free,was because people were not willing to pay for it,and even those OEMs have never paid much for Windows either. There is not much value in it,especially with stuff like Android being free to OEMs from the very start. The fact that companies such as Huawei,can use the underlying Android source code to make their own OS legally.

Windows 11 is still a consumer focused OS,but MS sadly does not understand the market for its OS.

Plus if you think that Windows will automatically have the automatic business lock in,in 10 years,I am uncertain whether that will be the case by then. If the US Military has no issues using customised iOS/Android devices,then the fact is as time progresses,there are going to be less need for companies/governments to use Windows especially as the device is essentially just a "cloud" terminal for cloud apps.

But the big issue is what happens,if Apple,etc decide they want some of that Office 365 revenue,and end up producing better suites. MS as a provider of services for other OSes,can potentially paint itself into a corner here in another 5~10 years.

Even Apple despite a behemoth of the PC market in the 1980s,ended up nearly going bankrupt in the late 90s because of hubris. Both Apple and Google are bigger than MS now.

[Core2Extreme]

Good.

Vista arrived with Superfetch, which actively used your ram to cache often launched applications. Acer shipped desktops with 256Kb/512Kb ram.

Yeah. That much. Cue screams of, "Vista sucks and eats ram!"

Can't win either way.

Man, I knew Acer was awfully cheap back then, but I didn't realize they shipped desktops with half a megabyte or less of RAM. I'm surprised Vista ran at all on those; I think the lowest RAM use I ever got Vista to use was over three hundred megabytes. But I guess even if 640k wasn't enough for everybody, it was enough for Acer...

Okay, so you probably meant Mb, not Kb. 512 MB I can believe, did they really ship desktops with 256 MB? If anyone did, it would be Acer (or maybe eMachines). If so, they really should have just kept shipping them with XP. I had Vista on a laptop with 2 GB of RAM, and one of the fastest mobile processors you could buy, and that was adequate from a hardware standpoint, although Vista still really sucked back in the pre-SP1 days. Admittedly half the blame goes to the half-baked nVIDIA drivers, but Vista as a whole was bad enough that I wound up reverting to XP (and never going back to Vista) even though my hardware was sufficiently powerful for the newer OS.

Having learned the hard way to always wait for SP1, I'm not too bummed that my desktop isn't compatible with Windows 11 without an upgrade.

[Iota]

It looks like a similar scenario with Windows 11, only they're forcing users to have TPM enabled hardware for more security (boot protection). I don't see how that's bad, especially given the amount of nasties out there these days. In a world where things have always moved quickly, supporting 4-year old hardware on a brand new OS is perfectly acceptable, I think.

Is it? Where does it stop, annual hardware upgrades so people can run Windows? If Microsoft are really trying to improve security of devices, then surely supporting older hardware for a longer period is the better option? This isn't about security.

Not sure how blocking people from upgrading is going to keep devices more productive, have a better experience, and better security than ever before so they can stay protected, in just over 3 years they won't be, they'll just be a mountain of e-waste.

Also i know companies want people to always buy the new thing they've just released but calling their own devices "capable but slightly out of date" when they're only 4 years old is a bit extreme, even Apple support their hardware longer than that.

100% Agreed.

All I can see by then if MS makes it harder to run Windows 11,people will just ditch their Windows 10 devices and not bother with another Windows device. They can just put more money into their Android/iOS/ChromeOS devices. In fact in many countries,and especially among much younger people worldwide their Android/iOS device is their main PC.

For power users,Linux exists. The reality is outside of PC gamers increasingly Windows does not have that ironclad grip it once had. However,even PC gaming revenue is still smaller than smartphones,tablets and consoles overall.

Many here because they are older,seem to have this weird view people HAVE to run Windows.

Honestly unless Microsoft alter the way in which they're locking out the older hardware, when the time comes for Windows 10 support to end, I will not upgrade my Mum's PC to accommodate arbitrary business decisions by Microsoft. It'll be upgraded to an Apple iMac, seeing as it'll integrate well with her iPad and iPhone (ease of use with minimal UI confusion). Applications she uses are available on all Apple devices, so it'll probably be just fine. The "PC" with a Windows install was always the cheaper option, however if Microsoft are going to start limiting the useful lifetime of PC hardware then cost wise it'll be more sensible to actually purchase an Apple device due to length of support.

In terms of myself my current hardware is supported, however if it drops support and I do not feel like upgrading, I'll switch to Linux. I'm fairly certain even as someone who likes to play games, at least some of them will run fine once I've learned what I'm doing. I don't upgrade my PC on any specific hardware cycle and I'm certainly not going to be forced into doing so by the choice of OS when I have other options available.

I'm not convinced Microsoft have really thought this hardware lockout through properly. If this OS is meant to be consumer focused, they seem oblivious to all of the options open to end consumers.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Honestly unless Microsoft alter the way in which they're locking out the older hardware, when the time comes for Windows 10 support to end, I will not upgrade my Mum's PC to accommodate arbitrary business decisions by Microsoft. It'll be upgraded to an Apple iMac, seeing as it'll integrate well with her iPad and iPhone (ease of use with minimal UI confusion). Applications she uses are available on all Apple devices, so it'll probably be just fine. The "PC" with a Windows install was always the cheaper option, however if Microsoft are going to start limiting the useful lifetime of PC hardware then cost wise it'll be more sensible to actually purchase an Apple device due to length of support.

In terms of myself my current hardware is supported, however if it drops support and I do not feel like upgrading, I'll switch to Linux. I'm fairly certain even as someone who likes to play games, at least some of them will run fine once I've learned what I'm doing. I don't upgrade my PC on any specific hardware cycle and I'm certainly not going to be forced into doing so by the choice of OS when I have other options available.

I'm not convinced Microsoft have really thought this hardware lockout through properly. If this OS is meant to be consumer focused, they seem oblivious to all of the options open to end consumers.

I have seen it with family members who are older,and have not kept upto date with the newest tech. I found it easier to suggest a tablet for them,because it has commonality in UI elements to their smartphone. The Windows PC is now gathering dust.

Also WRT to Linux gaming - I on purpose tried to run modded Fallout:New Vegas on Kubuntu because the tools are old,and modding older games under Linux is more finicky. Yet,through a mixture of Proton,Lutris and some tweaking got a decently modded Fallout:New Vegas game to mostly run OK. Valheim runs fine,but a GTX960 4GB only goes so far!

[guybrush1966]

So my 2 cents is, in 2015 Microsoft declared Windows 10 as the "last" Windows version and I and many others like me invested full on in Windows 10. I have six Windows 10 systems in various guises NONE of which qualify for Windows 11! Including my gaming rig, which has a "paltry" i7 6700K 4Ghz that still doesn't break sweat on any maxed out game. Adding insult to injury, all my systems have secure boot and TPM 2.0. Microsoft and their whining partners (Hello Intel)have all realised that hardware is going to last people waaaay longer under the same OS....the "Last" OS. Less new systems needing to be purchased. Billions of dollars at stake. Deals have been done and backs have been scratched, and Hello Windows 11. The new Windows that was "never" to be consigning perfectly adequate systems to obsolescence overnight. This is bad enough for many Consumers, but imagine the potential impact on businesses. I genuinely hope they migrate to more user friendly cheaper options. Makes me seethe....I've always been pro-Microsoft, but for the 1st time ever I genuinely hope they feel. On the plus side, I'm a huge fan of Windows 10, so it's not all bad :-)

[3dcandy]

So my 2 cents is, in 2015 Microsoft declared Windows 10 as the "last" Windows version and I and many others like me invested full on in Windows 10. I have six Windows 10 systems in various guises NONE of which qualify for Windows 11! Including my gaming rig, which has a "paltry" i7 6700K 4Ghz that still doesn't break sweat on any maxed out game. Adding insult to injury, all my systems have secure boot and TPM 2.0. Microsoft and their whining partners (Hello Intel)have all realised that hardware is going to last people waaaay longer under the same OS....the "Last" OS. Less new systems needing to be purchased. Billions of dollars at stake. Deals have been done and backs have been scratched, and Hello Windows 11. The new Windows that was "never" to be consigning perfectly adequate systems to obsolescence overnight. This is bad enough for many Consumers, but imagine the potential impact on businesses. I genuinely hope they migrate to more user friendly cheaper options. Makes me seethe....I've always been pro-Microsoft, but for the 1st time ever I genuinely hope they feel. On the plus side, I'm a huge fan of Windows 10, so it's not all bad :-)

Do you really think businesses will? I have zero confidence that Windows will lose it's grip. Cat does, you seem to but I don't. Many big businesses are standardising on Windows after flirting with other solutions. I've seen massive shifts back to Windows machines in lockdown because loads of people worked from home and they were given or bought a laptop with Win 10 on and have to use office 365 or office and teams and zoom for their working day. One OS, one system of emails/word/excel and onedrive for collaborating and they are sorted.

[3dcandy]

I'm also not going to quote cat and his long post. But I don't agree at all with it. Yes games are not big on Windows, MS know that, they want you to go xbox. xbox pass helps and is a quick and dirty way to keep gamers sweet. Windows is free not because people won't pay for it, but because they want you to have office365. Cat is dead on with office being used because Apple haven't got it right yet, but they also don't seem too bothered. New hardware for windows 11 is fine, it will be 2 years at least before businesses swap in large numbers and by then it will be time for another round of the usual hardware upgrades that will all be fine... I'll say it again, MS don't care one bit about consumer or home users really with Windows any more...

[badass]

Not for me. Playing around with autoexec.bat and config.sys, declaring what memory is available and the interrupts of your sound card, having graphics cards which aren't compatible with each other... I think that very few people will honestly miss that.

PCs these days largely work. Sure, sometimes they don't, and because they're a lot more complex it can be harder to understand why. But it's still way better than how they were in the old days, at least on the PC side, when you pretty much had to be an enthusiast to use them.

Now the Amiga, that was better.

Autoconfig! It's like plug and play that actually worked! Except it was over 10 years earlier. The Amiga hardware and OS were so ahead of their time.

[Iota]

a GTX960 4GB only goes so far!

That's the only real part that concerns me, official Nvidia driver support. Who knows, maybe it will not come to that. However I do have to wonder about long term hardware support from Microsoft, especially if they're going to start locking out consumers based on arbitrary hardware age.

[Firejack]

If Microsoft wants to introduce restrictions in the form of higher system requirements to focus Windows on its strengths. Honestly, I think I'm OK with that. I've been dual booting with some flavour of Linux since Windows 8.0. I don't need Windows to be a does-everything multi-tool that stores my files, plays my games, runs programs for work, serves my media, communicates with my family/friends - any more. There are better choices in terms of OS's that match what a device is and what its function is. Yes it's convenient that Windows does pretty much everything. The cost of the convenience has meant Windows became average at many tasks. I'm really struggling to think of any situation were Windows 11 would be first choice on any of my computers. If I wanted an OS for an older laptop I'd use ChromeOS. If I wanted an OS for storing files I'd use TrueNAS CORE, and so on.

The only edge ( ) Windows 11 potentially has as a platform for me is work. I've always preferred the Windows desktop for productivity. If Microsoft can build on the market lead it has in this area with Office etc and make the experience better. Then that would be good for me personally.

[Saracen999]

If Microsoft wants to introduce restrictions in the form of higher system requirements to focus Windows on its strengths. Honestly, I think I'm OK with that. I've been dual booting with some flavour of Linux since Windows 8.0. I don't need Windows to be a does-everything multi-tool that stores my files, plays my games, runs programs for work, serves my media, communicates with my family/friends - any more. There are better choices in terms of OS's that match what a device is and what its function is. Yes it's convenient that Windows does pretty much everything. The cost of the convenience has meant Windows became average at many tasks. I'm really struggling to think of any situation were Windows 11 would be first choice on any of my computers. If I wanted an OS for an older laptop I'd use ChromeOS. If I wanted an OS for storing files I'd use TrueNAS CORE, and so on.

The only edge ( ) Windows 11 potentially has as a platform for me is work. I've always preferred the Windows desktop for productivity. If Microsoft can build on the market lead it has in this area with Office etc and make the experience better. Then that would be good for me personally.

That's more or less where I am. I didn't like the way MS handled W8 and moved a lot of my stuff to Linux, kept some on W7 and very reluctantly, switched some applications. One was to migrate from Office to Libre (or OpenOffice at that point) knowing full well that subsequently switching even more from Win to Linux was facilitated by that. And for my needs, Libre does everything I need, and does it well. I get that that might be different for businesses using it in ays I wasn't, but for me the switch to such alternatives was a pain to do, but that pain was some year ago. Nothing I currently still use Windos for needs the PC to be net-connected, and some of those things also have either Linux or Mac versions. I'm not buying a new PC just to run some new version of Windows, and the new PC I am buying, well, I don't care if it'll run W11 or not, even though I haven't yet bought it. I'd be surprised if it wouldn't run W11, but whether it does or not in't a factor in my choice of machine. I'm not even conidering that as an issue.

[cheesemp]

I don't want to quote your post CAT-THE-FIFTH but I think your arguing against something that Microsoft just don't care about. Do Microsoft care that Windows is almost increasingly unused outside of the workplace? I just don't think they do. They know its a market that makes ever decreasing revenue. Google only bother with a consumer OS as they make money on advertising. Microsoft only care because you buy Office 365 or a business user with hybrid azure AD, outlook and office. Microsoft don't even care if they lose us 'experts' - If we wanted real configurability we'd be on Linux by now and if we had cash to burn be using Apple products. The ground has shifted on consumer OS and Microsoft have acknowledge this - Windows is now a legacy tech for Microsoft and not the big earner like it use to be. Its the gateway for all the money business will happily chuck their way (and if a few consumers still use them all the better)!

(You keep mentioning IBM - IBM flounder due to the end of mainframe but now make good money with services. Microsoft noticed a similar end to home computing and have already shifted before the bottom drops out!)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't want to quote your post CAT-THE-FIFTH but I think your arguing against something that Microsoft just don't care about. Do Microsoft care that Windows is almost increasingly unused outside of the workplace? I just don't think they do. They know its a market that makes ever decreasing revenue. Google only bother with a consumer OS as they make money on advertising. Microsoft only care because you buy Office 365 or a business user with hybrid azure AD, outlook and office. Microsoft don't even care if they lose us 'experts' - If we wanted real configurability we'd be on Linux by now and if we had cash to burn be using Apple products. The ground has shifted on consumer OS and Microsoft have acknowledge this - Windows is now a legacy tech for Microsoft and not the big earner like it use to be. Its the gateway for all the money business will happily chuck their way (and if a few consumers still use them all the better)!

(You keep mentioning IBM - IBM flounder due to the end of mainframe but now make good money with services. Microsoft noticed a similar end to home computing and have already shifted before the bottom drops out!)

But the problem is both you and 3dcandy can't see the bigger issue. If MS is hedging on cloud applications,that longterm means it opens up more competition due to the lack of Windows lock-in. Some of you are just looking right now when MS is doing well,but people were pointing out the issues internally at Intel years ago. The same at IBM and all these cases these companies were doing well. Another company I have some experience is Nokia - Nokia was doing very well,but I heard things from people I knew who worked there,and they saw the writing on the wall years before the issues starting to hit home.

The issue is that it takes years for eventually bad tactical decisions to hit,and it is often preceded by some of the best years companies have. Why?? Because it leads to mass hubris,and overconfidence in the decision making. This is what "too big to fail" is about and why people suddenly get very shocked when it hits home. A very famous example is Kodak,who had everything in place but it went to crap,and indeed Apple by the early 1990s.

Some of you have forgotten what happened in the 1980s - Microsoft was the upstart,and IBM and Apple had the market. Plenty of people were argueng like in this thread how IBM and Apple would never lose share to MS,because it was buggier,less secure,did less,etc. Busineses would save them,etc. But MS entered the market with less restrictive licensing conditions which separated the hardware and software requirements. It was the same with servers,where people were argueing Windows would never amount to much. Now you see the same thing MS is doing,its become a bigger,less agile company like Intel became.

The problem here,again what happens in 10 years time. Both Android/iOS/ChromeOS are evolving especially with more capable hardware. If the US military has no problem using Android/iOS for critical stuff in the field,and other militaries are doing the same,are you telling me that companies now like Samsung with the "enterprise supported" Android devices,are not gunning to take share from MS?? The reality is the ground is starting to shift and some of you are so wedded to Windows,its no different than all the same people who thought Apple/IBM PC would persevere longer term.

Then you have the other shift - more countries are developing indigenous CPUs,which won't be running Windows in any form.

So the issue here,is that increasingly you can see MS floundering along and again MS moving to Cloud apps,is not a good longterm strategy. The reason is because most of that Office usage is because of legacy Windows usage. Companies like Apple and Google are not going to tolerate MS taking money from them,on their own platforms. Basically your entire survival on an office suite and pc gaming,is not going to work longterm.

Again,the biggest platform for gaming is Android/iOS in terms of revenue.

You only have to look at Apple,and how its trying to diversify and enter the same area. Google is doing the same,and they make more money than MS. The fact is MS not having its own smartphone OS is its major failure,just like Intel ignoring Apple for mobile smartphone processors.

MS has repeatedly made poor decisions over the last 20 years or so - look at how they dismissed out of hand what Apple was doing. They allowed an upstart like Google to not only make a better smartphone OS than they could,but a whole ad and search infrastructure,software insfrastruture,etc.

They are increasingly the trend follower,not the trend setter.

The issue is again,longer term older people like us are the same who would always use Intel,even if AMD,ARM,etc were better. But as time progresses,there will be generations of people who won't be as loyal to MS as most of us appear to be. You can see that with servers - younger blood basically has pushed companies to look at other alternatives or develop their own.

I find it really weird at the nostalgia some of you have with MS,when its quite clear they have been mostly coasting along on past glories. No different than so many companies including Intel.

Edit!!

Another thing - some of you keep trying to talk about "businesses" will save MS.

Guess what?? MS with an unproven Windows upstaged BOTH Apple and IBM,by the late 80s/early 90s. Even businesses won't just stay wedded to an OS from two tech heavyweights of the 1980s. For decades X86 consumer CPUs had no real alternatives(outside IBM/Motorola for a while). This is why Windows persevered despite its problems - there was not much performance alternatives(especially as IBM/Motorola started flailing around,and couldn't deliver efficient mobile CPUs by the G5).

With ARM based hardware being more than fast enough to do "business work",there is no need now to use X86. But that means Wintel is not a need anymore. So if you are using Cloud apps,why use a MS platform for them?

Then if you are not wedded to Windows,why be wedded to Office over the next 5~10 years?? Think about it for a second - MS is essentially a company relying on a word processor and associated software.

It only takes a massive company like Apple to start really pushing its own alternatives then MS is put in a bind. Apple went from nowhere to making amazing mobile CPUs. Nobody expected this.

Plus if MS relies too much on Office,and keeps raising prices(as they rely on it for revenue growth),it means other cheaper alternatives will gain traction.It only takes huge markets like China,etc to start deciding it does not wants to be spending lots of money on foreign software suites,and has an impetus to make their own. Then these get seeded through their companies to the rest of the world at lowish cost. Then what??

Remember consumer is where it all starts. Nobody thought X86 would be viable for supercomputers,but consumer momentum meant economies of scale. MS longterm might not have this.

[DanceswithUnix]

MS have been based around Office sales for decades now. It used to be a much tighter walled garden: you need Windows to run Office and Office only runs under Windows. Step outside the wall, and you can't do business with all the other people sending you MS Office documents.

I credit MS at least for recognising that they have lost the platform dominance to Android and iOS. I regularly stop in a car park to take a meeting on Teams on my phone, which also gets my Outlook mail when out and about. If that wasn't possible, then the company would have found something else as we all do that.

It was the same with servers,where people were argueing Windows would never amount to much.

It never did, there are however a gazillion x86 servers out there running Linux
Before that there were SCO Unix boxes.

Heck, the whole point of the Linux subsystem for Windows is to try and make graduates who went through university using Linux and LAMP stacks employable at Microsoft.

The issue is again,longer term older people like us are the same who would always use Intel

Pfft, youngster. I came up through the 8 bit Z80/6502/6809 route before discovering the joy of the 68000, no love for Intel here

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

MS have been based around Office sales for decades now. It used to be a much tighter walled garden: you need Windows to run Office and Office only runs under Windows. Step outside the wall, and you can't do business with all the other people sending you MS Office documents.

I credit MS at least for recognising that they have lost the platform dominance to Android and iOS. I regularly stop in a car park to take a meeting on Teams on my phone, which also gets my Outlook mail when out and about. If that wasn't possible, then the company would have found something else as we all do that.



It never did, there are however a gazillion x86 servers out there running Linux
Before that there were SCO Unix boxes.

Heck, the whole point of the Linux subsystem for Windows is to try and make graduates who went through university using Linux and LAMP stacks employable at Microsoft.



Pfft, youngster. I came up through the 8 bit Z80/6502/6809 route before discovering the joy of the 68000, no love for Intel here

ATM,everyone is so wedded to MS Windows,and its legacy software people out of habit are using it. But the reality newer generations of people are not going to really have grown up using just Windows - if anything iOS/Android is more likely. With the ARM SOCs being more powerful,by extension iOS,Android,etc are also going to start expanding in capabilities. Going to the cloud also means,it removes even more of the lock-in.

Outlook used to be at the top,but look where it is now:
https://www.litmus.com/blog/email-cl...share-2021-q1/

You can see rumblings from Google,Qualcomm,Samsung,etc about extending Android support,improved Enterprise support(5 years at least),etc. They want a piece of what MS is having.Why wouldn't they??

Its like all the people who were "you never got fired" for buying Intel in enterprise in the last 20 years,because at home they grew up with Intel. The people before then would have used something else.Now younger people have gotten in,you have all sorts of interesting non-X86 designs coming to fruition. They have grown up with iOS,Android,etc so again more open to looking at alternatives.

Look at how things have changed in only 10 years.

Problem is that both Apple and Google are looking for more areas of revenue growth. The issue here is will they tolerate,over the next 10 years, MS taken revenue for services they could provide? Now think how things have changed compared to 10 years ago?? The tech market as a whole has been expanding rapidly over the last 10 or so,but look at the relatively rates of increase?Think how far Apple did by chucking money at CPU development,and outbidding competitors to partially fund TSMC new node R and D??

In 2010,MS made more than Apple in yearly revenue. In 2021,Apple makes over double the yearly revenue of MS. In 2010,Google made less than half the revenue of MS,now it makes more than MS. This is despite Google piddling away money on all sorts of things.

MS had everything in place to stop this from happening,but over the last decade,they had no focus,and get repeatedly ignoring even what their customers wanted. Just look at Vista,8/8.1,etc and how they were considered failures by businesses and the public alike? All because they just ignored what customers were saying,and they were preaching "you are doing it all wrong". They ignore their own existing customer base,but at the same time don't bring anything new to tempt away users from these other platforms. They literally ran Nokia into the ground with a half-baked ecosystem,when Nokia had so many good hardware engineers,who knew something about making decent hardware.

People on tech forums were the most forgiving of all the MS mistakes,and the issue is the Q and A session is more of the same IMHO.

That's the only real part that concerns me, official Nvidia driver support. Who knows, maybe it will not come to that. However I do have to wonder about long term hardware support from Microsoft, especially if they're going to start locking out consumers based on arbitrary hardware age.

That is why I eventually want an AMD GPU to replace it. However,AMD is now the company of the highend,so it might be cheaper just to get another Nvidia GPU!

[Axle_Grease]

"The minimum requirements as they stand will "keep devices more productive, have a better experience..."

My nearly 12 year old first gen i5 machine runs W10 perfectly fine. What kind of crap are they putting in W11 that means that it will be "less productive" on machines that are 6 years newer than mine?

In actual fact there is nothing in Win11 when running on old hardware (e.g. my Jan 2009 build) that makes it "less productive" than Windows 10. There are people at Microsoft pushing Win11 that are bald-face liars. MS would have had more credibility had it focused entirely on security.