Question I have concerns about the strict requirements needed to run it ?

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Fatalzo

Fatalzo

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May 7, 2021
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So Windows 11 has some very strict system requirements, and we all know that - infact, most computers can't run it.

But there's an issue.

Whenever anything has a major successor, people are almost instant to jump on the train and then become one of the first, because they think it's cool and impressive, or they just really want it.

And this is proven - look at how much Hatchimals, PS5s, XBOX Series X's, RTX 3090s, and stuff like that have been flying around, getting dumped off the shelves and resold, and then they get a major recall.

But Windows 11 has some really unnecessary requirements.

A good amount of people are like me, using an old computer with stuff like a 3rd gen processor, and a weak GPU and PSU, since we don't do anything major with our computers, apart from maybe running light games like Roblox or Minecraft, or doing productive work.

But even more people have medium to low-end prebuilt computers that can usually be up to around 3 years old.

But the Windows 11 requirements are super strict, and as a result most computers, including these new ones, cannot run it.

Now, I think it's quite obvious what Microsoft's goal was - release an OS with very specific requirements, and then tell everyone who doesn't meet them to get a new computer. When someone buys a new computer that comes with Windows, which is almost any non-apple computer, and installation discs count too, Microsoft earns money.

They're quite evidently creating Windows 11 to earn a quick buck, but this actually has some very concerning issues.

When the PS5 and Xbox Series X were announced, they were so hoarded that there ended up being a semiconductor shortage.
When RTX 3090s were sold, they were so hoarded that they sold for more than $10000 dollars, and created a massive graphics shortage, causing even weak GPUs like mine to skyrocket.
With this in mind, Windows 11 has the potential to make TPM chips literally more valuable than their weight in gold. You could literally see thousand-dollar TPM chips flying around the market, but that's not all.

They require very new CPU technologies. Your CPU's generation is also limited by your motherboard. For example, my Z220 Workstation's motherboard can't support a 6th gen CPU, or anything after Ivy Bridge for that matter.

There's already a minor CPU storage, and this might also spark a motherboard shortage, while making new CPUs more valuable than their weight in gold.

Should I be worried about all of this?
 
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It's always easy to pin the excuse as corporate greed, but let's look at it from another point of view: why do you need Windows 11? Nobody's pointing a gun at your head and saying "upgrade to Windows 11 or I'll pull the trigger." Developers aren't going to force your hand either, unless said developers start looking into DRM features that require TPM 2.0. If you want to keep using Windows 10 past its support date, it's perfectly doable. The only thing you have to remember is the further you go without security patches, the higher the risk you present yourself to exploits and vulnerabilities (unless something so bad happens that Microsoft's hand is forced).

I mean the guy who wrote Game of Thrones uses an old DOS computer and WordStar to write the manuscripts. If it gets the job done, does it need to be the latest and greatest?

EDIT: Also if we went by computer hardware timelines, complaining that your 3rd Gen Core processor can't run Windows 11 is like complaining your Pentium 4 Northwood or AMD Athlon XP computer can't run Windows 8, which required certain processor features that were not present on anything before x86-64.
 
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First, as others have pointed out, you'll still be able to use your older computers with W10, just like you're doing now, for years to come. So you shouldn't have any concerns for 4 to 10 years.

Second, the W11 requirements are only for updates through the standard windows update function and new installations from the standard W11 ISO.

Third, at this point in time we don't know what alternative ISOs microsoft will make available for installation by OEMs and other customers that do not require any or all of the new requirements.

Lastly, the new requirements are only for update and installation purposes. Older computers will still RUN W11 the same as W10. (Some of us have tried and verified this). However its preferred that we don't discuss how that's done here.
 
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Fatalzo said:
Now, I think it's quite obvious what Microsoft's goal was - release an OS with very specific requirements, and then tell everyone who doesn't meet them to get a new computer. When someone buys a new computer that comes with Windows, which is almost any non-apple computer, and installation discs count too, Microsoft earns money.
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Relatively few people ever upgrade their existing computer to a newer OS. The vast majority stick with whatever ships with their computer, so the hardware requirements won't likely affect much outside of tech-enthusiasts building and upgrading their own systems. And seeing as Windows 11 seems to be getting a lot of mixed feedback, without really providing any must-have features in the near-term, I wouldn't expect most to be rushing out to upgrade to it.

Fatalzo said:
With this in mind, Windows 11 has the potential to make TPM chips literally more valuable than their weight in gold. You could literally see thousand-dollar TPM chips flying around the market, but that's not all.
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How many people are going to buy a "thousand-dollar" TPM chip when even budget CPUs have support for the feature built-in?

hotaru.hino said:
EDIT: Also if we went by computer hardware timelines, complaining that your 3rd Gen Core processor can't run Windows 11 is like complaining your Pentium 4 Northwood or AMD Athlon XP computer can't run Windows 8, which required certain processor features that were not present on anything before x86-64.
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That's not exactly a good comparison though, since hardware performance was progressing faster back then, while the advances in the last decade have been less significant. An i7-3770K, for example, performs not all that far behind the current i3 processors, with the same core and thread count. Even the fastest desktop CPUs from the P4/Athlon XP era, by comparison, were only single-core processors that couldn't come close to competing with the 3rd-gen Core i3s, which would have offered somewhere around 3 times the per-core performance, in additiona to having multiple cores and threads to work with. From a performance perspective, those processors would have struggled to run Windows 8, whereas there's little reason a 3rd-gen i5 or i7 shouldn't be able to run the latest version of Windows smoothly.
 
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'.. good amount of people are like me, using an old computer with stuff like a 3rd gen processor,'

Problem solved with no effort on your part, as you needn't worry about Win11, knowing well ahead of time the TPM and/or secure boot requirements will not make 'the cut'!

Press on with WIn10 for 5 more years, minimum. Then worry about which Linux distro or Win11 you wish to migrate to with a new computer then, about 2026 or 2027.... :)
 
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cryoburner said:
That's not exactly a good comparison though, since hardware performance was progressing faster back then, while the advances in the last decade have been less significant. An i7-3770K, for example, performs not all that far behind the current i3 processors, with the same core and thread count. Even the fastest desktop CPUs from the P4/Athlon XP era, by comparison, were only single-core processors that couldn't come close to competing with the 3rd-gen Core i3s, which would have offered somewhere around 3 times the per-core performance, in additiona to having multiple cores and threads to work with. From a performance perspective, those processors would have struggled to run Windows 8, whereas there's little reason a 3rd-gen i5 or i7 shouldn't be able to run the latest version of Windows smoothly.
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In hindsight, yes, it wasn't the best example.

So I present you another: Being unable to run Vista or 7 because you don't have a DirectX 9 compatible GPU. A GeForce 3 should've been fine to render the desktop, but it's not supported on Vista or 7. And yet the laughably weaker Intel iGPUs could run on either OS.

EDIT: At the end of the day though, hardware doesn't become obsolete because there's something better performing out. It becomes obsolete because it doesn't support certain features. If Microsoft feels that it needs to beef up its security, have it standardized as much as possible, and TPM is the only way to do it, then that's what's going to happen. Windows 10 still has support until 2025. If that computer is still alive by that time and you're fine with it, great. And nothing's going to stop you from continuing to use it.

I wish people would keep in mind that software companies would really like to use the latest and greatest features in hardware because it tends to make their lives easier. Especially since hardware companies will drop support anyway for older hardware.

EDIT 2: Here's some food for thought. I recall in around 2007 or so, I recall there was a security vulnerability that affected Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Except it was much harder to exploit in Vista. Why? UAC. Or at the very least, a better security model implemented in Vista. I can't remember the exact issue, but this one looks close enough: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2008/ms08-067

Notice that for Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003, the issue is deemed "Critical", but for Vista and Server 2008, it's "Important." The ratings can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/security-update-severity-rating-system but the difference is Critical issues can happen without user interaction while Important issues require user interaction.

Considering the increased sophistication of attacks, especially with things like the supply chain attack from the Solar Winds hack, the TPM requirement may as well be similar to implementing UAC in Vista in terms of reducing the severity of vulnerabilities, if not making them outright not work.
 
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Microsoft aren't a charity. Of course they releasing Win 11 to make money, they need it to survive. Reaches a point where selling win 10 doesn't make as much as most people who were going to upgrade to it have by now, so releasing something people might pay to upgrade to is a reasonable approach. Get a lot of those 100 million win 10 users to swap.

Were you happy with win 10 before June? What changed? Its still the same OS and isn't suddenly worse just cause 11 is announced and is a buggy mess right now and not something you want right now. Maybe all those that want it to be win 8 again and be ignored will be right, we shall see.

There is always something newer. Its like my CPU, I got a 3600XT and 2 months later the 5600x was released. My CPU isn't any slower suddenly just cause a new one exists. You just have to deal with fact new things exist and they might be unavailable to you. Sure, CPU comparison not best as I could just spend money to fix that but so can you.

Win 11 is just the desktop, I don't see rush. Most of underneath is 10, I doubt I notice a difference after a few days. All this fuss over nothing.
 
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The TPM requirement is a valid complaint, because unlike previous versions, it's not a raw power issue. It's a security issue. It's an artificial restraint.
 
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revodo said:
The TPM requirement is a valid complaint, because unlike previous versions, it's not a raw power issue. It's a security issue. It's an artificial restraint.
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I would argue the TPM requirement more practical than the DirectX 9 compatible GPU requirement for Vista and 7, in which perfectly capable GPUs had no driver support, but Intel iGPUs were perfectly fine even though they couldn't run Aero.

EDIT: Really most software requirements aren't about performance, they're about features. Whatever dream PC you could've built 10 years ago didn't become obsolete because it's too slow, it became obsolete because it doesn't support the features future hardware provides.

Microsoft's official requirements for Windows 7, 8, and 10 are the same, to put things in perspective.
 
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hotaru.hino said:
I would argue the TPM requirement more practical than the DirectX 9 compatible GPU requirement for Vista and 7, in which perfectly capable GPUs had no driver support, but Intel iGPUs were perfectly fine even though they couldn't run Aero.

EDIT: Really most software requirements aren't about performance, they're about features. Whatever dream PC you could've built 10 years ago didn't become obsolete because it's too slow, it became obsolete because it doesn't support the features future hardware provides.

Microsoft's official requirements for Windows 7, 8, and 10 are the same, to put things in perspective.
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I agree that driver support was ridiculous in Vista, but at least it revolved around hardware that powered the computer, instead of a security feature.
 
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revodo said:
I agree that driver support was ridiculous in Vista, but at least it revolved around hardware that powered the computer, instead of a security feature.
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Meanwhile, MS is repeatedly yelled at for "poor security".

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveyw...000-vulnerabilities-revealed/?sh=5e3f8d0936b9

https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/this-week-in-security-bad-signs-from-microsoft-an-epyc-vm-escape/

https://tech.co/news/microsoft-accused-transcription-security-2020-01


So, in an attempt to work on that....they are yelled at.
 
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revodo said:
I agree that driver support was ridiculous in Vista, but at least it revolved around hardware that powered the computer, instead of a security feature.
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If you are pointing to things that are necessary to run in a computer, is a good foundation for security not one of them? At least one that is connected to the internet?

Maybe we should get rid of the MMU. That pesky little thing is yet another step between the CPU accessing the memory.
 
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So they would get yelled at and abused no matter when they made it a restriction. It was going to happen at some stage and waiting for hardware makers to add it might have taken a while unless CPU makers got behind it. and pushed them.
 
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hotaru.hino said:
If you are pointing to things that are necessary to run in a computer, is a good foundation for security not one of them? At least one that is connected to the internet?

Maybe we should get rid of the MMU. That pesky little thing is yet another step between the CPU accessing the memory.
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[edit] Ok if a word that was a literal medical word 50 years ago isn't ok to use, the rest of my comment isn't needed either. Jesus Christ. It was even contextually relevant to what I was saying.
 
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USAFRet said:
Meanwhile, MS is repeatedly yelled at for "poor security".

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveyw...000-vulnerabilities-revealed/?sh=5e3f8d0936b9

https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/this-week-in-security-bad-signs-from-microsoft-an-epyc-vm-escape/

https://tech.co/news/microsoft-accused-transcription-security-2020-01


So, in an attempt to work on that....they are yelled at.
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Oh no, mean words.

Means literally nothing to a giant like Microsoft. It isn't hurting their sales at all. Azure is their cashcow now, as well as Office. And there is a different between working on your operating system and forcing manufacturers to install additional hardware, or the users themselves, especially over something that isn't a requirement to actually making your OS run. A roll cage in a car is nice to have, but it's not required for the rest of the car to actually operate.
 
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revodo said:
And there is a different between working on your operating system and forcing manufacturers to install additional hardware, or the users themselves, especially over something that isn't a requirement to actually making your OS run.
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Neither is literally every single advancement we made in computers. The only thing that's required for a computer to be a computer is an ALU (or some execution thing) and some memory.

revodo said:
A roll cage in a car is nice to have, but it's not required for the rest of the car to actually operate.
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Neither are air bags, seat belts, anti-lock brakes, traction control, etc. People should just learn how to drive better 🙄
 
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The TPM requirement might be more about enabling more resilient DRM than improving actual security for the user. They seem to be heavily pushing the Windows store with Windows 11, and while it might not happen right away, it would not be surprising if their long-term plans are to eventually roll out DRM that requires use of the TPM chip, once there is a large enough userbase guaranteed to have the hardware. While security might potentially see improvements, they may be also looking at the wider picture of locking down the OS and the content running on it in general.
 
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hotaru.hino said:
Neither is literally every single advancement we made in computers. The only thing that's required for a computer to be a computer is an ALU (or some execution thing) and some memory.
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An advancement is fine, an ability to tap into in advancement is also fine, making it a requirement can only be justified if it's actually needed. Remember when 3d accelerators came out? Maybe you don't, maybe you're too young, but I do. Remember how they made them a requirement to operate Windows just a few years after the technology was released? Yeah, me either. You're not going to win this argument. TPM is not needed to run Windows. Would you be ok with them requiring a set of speakers being plugged into a 3.5mm jack at all times just to run Windows as well? It's absurd. If you're going to keep harping on "muh security" then Windows should also require all computers be connected to a physical firewall like SonicWall at all times, just to browse YouTube.

hotaru.hino said:
Neither are air bags, seat belts, anti-lock brakes, traction control, etc. People should just learn how to drive better 🙄
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I'd actually agree with that. Basic human psychology shows that the more safety nets someone has, the more risks they take, and lazier they become, ironically increasing the number of accidents they cause.
 
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