Seriously, Microsoft are you proposing a subscription module now for your OS?
Many users of earlier versions of Windows can not upgrade to the latest version because Microsoft chooses not to support some hardware component such as the graphics card. That happened with my last laptop which was a pretty decent computer. Now I have desktops and laptops over 10 years old purring along using Linux instead of becoming landfill. Consider how many Windows 10 computers will go to land fill in 2025. Hopefully some of the owners of Windows 10 computers will see the light and go Linux.
Thatâs ok, Iâll be on Linux before then, but Iâd really wish for at least GIMP to be good, or Krita to have foreground extraction selection tool before then (which my patch has bugs that I canât resolve). Iâll have to figure out how to get the necessary 3D programs I need to work, and no Blender is not a replacement to NURBS-specialized softwares, and there isnât any FOSS alternative on that front.
I am no linux expert, but if you list the programs you need to run there may be others on the forum who could advice how to do this. I saw recently that there is a linux distro that runs .exe files to try and resolve some of these issues.
That is to be expected. That said, recent Windows iterations have been a pain to use for regular users and a pain to configure for power users. It takes so much more time to set up, customize and accommodate a fresh copy of Windows (not factoring the bloat, adware, telematics and other antics that reintroduce and reproduce themselves like the plague with every Windows Update).
I gave up on MS many years ago. Not only landfill - it is also quite a big money grab from people. The latest computer that I bought was with Linux pre installed. The oldest one running is 13 yo. Still very much in use daily. The 10 yo still have windows 10 on one partition (but it wonât upgrade to 11) so I donât know how long I am going to keep it.
One of the best windows I ever had 2000 pro in a vm (somebody gave it to me - the install disk). The second best was 3.11 (because I can stop it and remain on the terminal). Probably the worst money ever spent on a program - MS office - 7 or something like this. Even when I had it I still liked Libre Office / Open Office more.
I left Windows years ago when âWindows Genuine Advantageâ demanded to check my completely legal Windows version on my work computer and even offered me this as an advantage to protect me from software piracy.
Itâs for enterprise customers, who wonât upgrade. Updates mean development + testing work, plus infrastructure to deliver them. Windows 10 came out in 2015, meaning a (free) support lifetime of over 10 years. I donât think it is unreasonable to ask money for extended support.
Did run for a whole year Linux Mint on a laptop and I was only missing some windows programs and utilities.
So wrote my own utilities first in script (bash) and later moved to powershell and managed to have that working correctly, so that code base is usable on Windows and Linux.
Back on Windows because of things that are not available on Linux for me, VM did not fit.
If I have the space I would not mind having a Win 10 or 11 machine only for those apps that require it and further use Debian.
There is only one thing that is tricky, if you like Dolby Atmos, streaming in 4k or 1080, specific audio processing, you donât have that on Linux, partially on Windows, best bet is a Mac or a dedicated device. This due to codec restrictions and so on, so DisneyPlus for example is only in 720p even if you run Microsoft Edge on Debian (tried it all).
The price is $61 per device, but that price doubles every year for three years. [âŚ] If you choose to join the program one or two years in, you will be required to pay for the years of updates you've missed first.
US$427 per device for 3 years of updates
For the first time ever, Microsoft will also allow individual users to subscribe to the extended support program.
for all users and tiers.
What photography related purchases would you make for that sum?
Excessive forced upgrades can of course be a problem but dragging along old systems (and the customers who canât â or wonât â upgrade) for decades was near or at the top of our Biggest Issues list for my time in IT. The amount of time and effort spent trying to stay compliant with old stuff was phenomenal.
But that is how public service, government and other slow moving organizations work. Keep what âworksâ until it does not or bad actors wreak havoc, which forces change.
I really recommend you to look into the update history of windows 7. when it was declared EOL and when it still received updates. Microsoft even made one super critical update available for free well after it was really EOL already.
Also on keeping old hardware around. it might often be way more efficient to replace those old machines with something new and in the smaller category and you would still get a faster system out of it.
That sounds familiar, but I canât recall the exact update.
I worked for an electric utility, so there were tons of governance, compliance and auditing requirements because we were by default considered CIP. I wasnât personally in the field as much as some (they kept me behind locked data center doors LOL) but I remember other guys having to deal with a lot of vendor-supplied SCADA systems at the power plants that were ages-old yet couldnât be replaced (and hadnât been patched in years). We just had the fun of replacing shared old Windows servers⌠When I retired in 2021 I think we had finally eradicated all the known Windows 7 systems, but now and then one would pop up out of nowhere. By that time we were eradicating Server 2008, best we could.
My âfavoriteâ one (because I wasnât responsible for it!) was older than Win 7. A coworker was down in Accounts Receivable one day doing something and noticed an old (apparently powered-off) headless desktop sitting in a dusty corner. He offered to get rid of it for them, to which they replied, âOh no â That computer runs our incoming payments software. Without it, we canât bill customers.â
Yikes.
It gets worse â This was in the late 2000s and it was an MS-DOS machine running some ancient software directly off a 3.5" diskette. Backups? What do you mean, backups? It wasnât on the network (MS-DOS, after all) and until that day we knew nothing of its existence.
First immediate follow-up step: Virtualize that computer
Second immediate follow-up step: Get a current version of the (or any replacement) software and put it on new hardware with a supported OS.
This is off-topic (not related to MS support costs), but I have a recurring question.
I sometimes wonder about that. So, thereâs an old box, consuming, say, 150 W. And there is a new one, consuming 20 W. So, one can replace the old system, and save 130 W, which, with 10 hours of utilisation per day, 365 days a year, means 474.5 kWh per year. But then how much does it take to manufacture the new computer? That is, if I can keep using the old one for 2 more years before it breaks, which is better: upgrade now, saving 949 kWh in 2 years, or keep using the current one, until it has to be replaced, and then get an even better new system (âbetterâ in terms of consumption and/or performance)?
The same goes for cars, fridges, any equipment.
Do you know of any resource that can help with such assessments?
Personally, I own a laptop with Microsoft 10 with a powerful hardware (Intel cpu,16 gb Ram, Nvidia card).
I have been proposed several times, by Microsoft, to upgrade it for free to Windows 11.
The same offer occured with a computer with Windows 8.1 where I was asked whether I wanted to upgrade this pc to Windows 10 (for free).
Naturally, they try hard to push all users towards the new system in order to reduce their burden to maintain many systems.
I am pretty sure the same offer has been made to others users (for sure it happened to my coworkers).
Whenever you decide to keep an old system, for whatever raison, IMHO, you can not demand the software house to keep it secure for ever (unless you are willing to pay the costs: money, security risks etcâŚ)
It occurs the same whenever you buy a new smartphone (e.g. Android). Only a few years are free for security updatesâŚ
The average estimated carbon footprint of a laptop is around 331kg, which includes the carbon emissions during production, transportation and first 4 years of use.
Our research of 230 specific laptops suggests an average carbon footprint of 331 kilograms of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) for a new laptop during production. Build â The manufacture of a laptop is between 75% â 85% of the overall carbon footprint, where most emissions come from the production and materials used for the motherboard, SSD and display.
With the consideration of the CO2 emissions created as mentioned above, there are also 190,000 litres of water used and 1,200kgs of earth mined. The components of a typical laptop also routinely contain mercury, lead, chromium, and other heavy metals that provide power and maintain functionality. Shipping â Transportation is another factor that adds to the carbon footprint of laptops, as the emissions caused by vehicles in the supply chain impact Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions.
Most emissions of this kind come from the air transport of the laptops from the country of assembly to the country of use. Far less CO2 would be emitted if the laptop were transported via ocean or land only.
Most manufacturers state between 6% â 12% of the laptopâs CO2 emissions are during transportation. For this article, we have stated the transportation emissions as 30 kgCO2eq.
Carbon footprint during use of a laptop Carbon footprint during use of a laptop
[âŚ] For our calculations of overall carbon footprint, we used the median figure 61.5 kgCO2eq.
(What Is The Carbon Footprint Of A Laptop? - Circular Computingâ˘)
So, if (using the example from my previous post), in 2 years, I could save 949 kWh, or nearly 200 kg of CO2 by upgrading. On the other hand, if the laptopâs life span is 4 years (could be way more, of course, but not necessarily in corporate environments), upgrading 2 years early would mean half of that life span, or half of the manufacturing + shipping (331 + 30) footprint of 361 kg, about 180 kg. So, the two figures are quite close â and I have no idea if they reflect reality.
Or when you buy a car. Getting original parts for repairs after 20 years may be impossible. Only, we are used to longer support, and that software is flexible.
Software is a weird beast, for example, if I buy a phone/laptop, the warranty covers hardware issues, but not one with software. If something crashes because of a driver bug, or if I pay for some software (so itâs not just the machine and OS), and that crashes, there is no warranty. Yet, looking at it, the OS is a very important component of a laptop/PC (especially if you buy them bundled/preinstalled), and an application (Office, Photoshop, and so on) that you purchase is the whole product you paid for.
I understand why this notion is appealing, but it does not work.
Processes that have not been used for a while often fail to work when needed. Specifically, if you are trying to upgrade an old system (in IT, practically 5+ years; 10+ is ancient), often you will find that it is very costly to do this because a lot of implicit knowledge was forgotten, employees left or retired, etc. You will soon arrive at a state where any change is impossible or exorbitantly costly; you just pray that stuff will keep working otherwise the whole organization grinds to a halt.
IMO the cheapest way to run enterprise IT is to keep up with changes (with a sensible lag). Desktops apply all security fixes and follow OS an application versions, server infrastructure is redundant, modular, and parts are updated and tightened continuously. Backups are continuous and incremental, and aim at restoring everything from scratch should disaster strike.
Except for some very special cases, organizations which are still running versions of an OS released 10 years ago are often in a self-inflicted trap, so they are willing to pay a lot of money to just keep things running and pretend that this is fine. This is usually very costly and just delays the inevitable; the more you postpone updates the more they will hurt.
None of this is about desktops/laptops for personal use, which are trivial to upgrade in a painless manner, you just backup/save your files and restore them after a reinstall.
