Microsoft wobbles the Windows 11 hardware goalposts

[excalibur1814]

Microsoft: Here's something for free. Windows 10 was a success, despite the initial MOANING.
Nearly everyone here: Moan, complain, give me my money back! (Installs Win 11 anyway).

Usual.

Use your hosts file to block MS services if you're that annoyed. Business updates are NOT an issue, as you have WSUS.

[Saracen999]

Microsoft: Here's something for free. Windows 10 was a success, despite the initial MOANING.
Nearly everyone here: Moan, complain, give me my money back! (Installs Win 11 anyway).

Usual.

Use your hosts file to block MS services if you're that annoyed. Business updates are NOT an issue, as you have WSUS.

It was quite a long way short of nearly everyone. Some of those that objected to aspects of W10 moved to Linux. Most of my stuff did. Some more would like to but can't for work reasons. I have W10 on just two machibes, and even that because a factor in my circumstances changed that significantly shifted my assessment, but it was entirely external to MS. I am using W10 out of pragmatism, not because my opinion of it has changed, which it hasn't. The hosts file solves a subset of objections but not all. I certainly never said either anything about expecting money back, and would have been stupid to assert it wouldn't be a success.

As for W11, the same pragmatism applies, except that I have the option of sticking wth W10 and don't yet know if I will, because we don't yet know what the final product will be.

[Corky34]

Microsoft: Here's something for free. Windows 10 was a success, despite the initial MOANING.

Yea, how dare people complain. Don't they know we're British.

[philehidiot]

Microsoft: Here's something for free. Windows 10 was a success, despite the initial MOANING.
Nearly everyone here: Moan, complain, give me my money back! (Installs Win 11 anyway).

Usual.

Use your hosts file to block MS services if you're that annoyed. Business updates are NOT an issue, as you have WSUS.

Free? Really?!

No.

Linux is free and it gets a lot of slack as a result. Windows is a product, whether you paid directly for it or not.

If you can't see the revenue source for a product, you need to keep looking until you do. The odds are it's somewhere hidden and unpleasant, because otherwise they'd tell you about it.

Windows also gets a lot of abuse because they keep telling us how amazing it is whilst they keep breaking the things we depend on for work and productivity with updates which are nearly impossible to avoid and retain an internet connection. I wouldn't mind so much if I installed an update manually at a time of my choosing, but they decide and their underdone QA means their actions break my PC and I have to fix the problem. If your mechanic did that to your car (came round and "serviced" it on your drive whilst you slept, broke it, tells you how much better it is and leaves you to undo the work), you'd be angry. I'd rather have the option to pay for an OS that doesn't do that to me.

Something I rely on being "free" isn't a benefit if it also breaks on a regular basis. "Free" car that breaks Vs paid for car that doesn't. Hmm.

All this whilst MS makes it harder and harder to use alternatives and guarantee compatibility with Office, etc.

So yes, we're complaining. Because the market leader has dumped their QA team, is using spyware to make money and actively making it harder to use alternatives and guarantee compatibility.

And people have the temerity to say "it's free, stop whinging". It's not free; they're selling your personal data and they collect your consent by obfuscation in pages of legalese.

And I do not trust modifying a file in an OS designed to spy on you to stop it spying on you. If I was designing something like this, I'd make a mildly technical way of "stopping it" to fool the unwary and exfiltrate the data some other way.

As Saracen says, it's about pragmatism. Having to use something for pragmatic reasons doesn't make it a good product.

The advantage of Windows over a Mac is that at least when Windows fails it's only the software and the hardware is intact. Apple play a very different game as they control the hardware and that makes for an exercise in terrible PCB design. When your 50-70V backlight and 3.3V display data test points are next to each other under the keyboard, you can expect some blown BGA chips or even CPUs with that one and, guess what, Apple will always prescribe a new logic board for 75% of the cost of a new Mac! Or you could use a USB-C charger not from Apple on your Mac. Same connector is for compatibility, right?! Oh no, they use the same connector and same name but a slightly different standard for ripple. Use a standard USB charger and they'll have you paying for a new logic board. Why? Because the IC that controls the USB charging, whilst almost identical to every other one out there, was custom made for Apple and TI have been instructed to sell it to no one else, especially not repair shops. Did I mention that you'd better be using Apple Cloud as any repair will potentially erase your data.

Hello, Windows Rock, meet the hard place - Apple.

And If you want to use Linux, you'll possibly have to give up some hardware and be technically minded because that one is genuinely free, so requires a little effort from you.

[watercooled]

Not completely disputing the revenue source model (and nor do I want to go down that rabbit hole), but there's another aspect to consider.

Microsoft make most of their Windows sales revenue from pre-built computers, laptops, volume licensing, etc. Relatively little came from retail sales or retail upgrades in the first place.

However, people hanging around indefinitely on deprecated versions of Windows were/are a significant PITA for Microsoft, who inevitably had to keep tending to the long-mothballed OS install base for fear of allowing major malware spread for example. The 'free' upgrade actually makes a lot of sense even when you look at it solely from that angle.

Sure, MS would probably prefer if they could get that many people to move *and* have them all pay for it. But weighing up the options of having to support and endless legacy of deprecated OSes or just saving themselves the hassle by pulling people over to the latest build, it's not hard to see why they could have evaluated it as the better option.

Apple are very much a paid-for type of company, and their proponents like to emphasise that when compared against the 'free' Android. However, they also give their users 'free' OS upgrades, and do so for an impressive period of time. Typically for far longer than Android, in fact. Having users on a current build of your software just makes a lot of things so much less complicated, and trying to charge customers for the privilege of an update that benefits the manufacturer can be a tough sell at times, and be counter-productive. MS have just realised that.

MS charging for software updates would make them stand out against the current market, if anything.

Whether or not that wholly benefits the user is another debate. And I concur about not wanting poorly-tested feature updates to break things that previously worked. But as I've said before, MS are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to update policy. The problem with just leaving the updates entirely to the user, is that simply doesn't work. And yes, some people are capable of managing updates sensibly, for instance deferring, or blocking known-problematic updates, but many people who think they know better, don't. The amount of XP-era systems I encountered with Windows Update fully disabled by 'experts' was quite remarkable.