News Microsoft's Reportedly Trying to Kill HDD Boot Drives for Windows 11 PCs by 2023

[Joe Shades]

I going to bet it did not have much memory and that was the problem it had not the hdd.

After a few years my PC with 16GB of RAM was like this, the PC was almost unusable for up to 10 minutes

 

[USAFRet]

After a few years my PC with 16GB of RAM was like this, the PC was almost unusable for up to 10 minutes

And that was a change in your software.
Especially things in Startup.

 

[Joe Shades]

And that was a change in your software.
Especially things in Startup.

Actually that was 12 GB of RAM, current PC has 16, I doubt my current pc will be nearly as painful as that became although after things got settled it ran fine even after 8 years

 

[countmackula]

Industry analyst firm Trendfocus reports that Microsoft is moving to force OEMs to stop using HDDs for boot drives.

Microsoft's Reportedly Trying to Kill HDD Boot Drives for Windows 11 PCs by 2023 : Read more

This is one of those things that probably sounds cool in a fancy clickbaity announcement but will not pan out in a positive way for consumers.

Firstly, I thought this was an article from 2020 because as many comments here reflect (albeit likely comments from "techs" / "enthusiasts" / "power users" / insert technical user name here) SSDs have been the go to for a while now and they have been affordable for a while now as well. (and yes I know the article mentions "developed countries") 1 TB SATA drives on the egg that's new are sub one hundo currently already.

But, in my opinion, OEMs could have driven this themselves long ago without needing Microsoft to push them.. but there's a reason they don't. That reason is: marketing and sales. Consider this. In the storage industry, hardware (specifically storage manufacturers) have been milking a decaying product for YEARS. I mean, seriously, 7200 RPM HDDs came out in the 1990s and they continued shipping 5400 RPM drives for decades and charging a premium for 7200 and 10k drives.

They're doing the same thing now with SSDs. Offering you a low performance HDD with a large markup to get that SSD performance. Why? The same reason (music) synth keyboard manufacturers charged multiple grands for a few decades to include USB midi support, because once they give you a $200 piano that you plug into your PC and unlock unlimited sounds, the less chance you're gonna fork out $2000 for that feature and not have to settle for like 10 sounds that Yahama/Korg whoever rations out to you.. Because once you buy that new tech, the old tech will be replaced forever. Once they ship even just SATA SSDs across the board, the system speeds will be so good, it will be harder to create that same situation again. That situation is the same business model that Apple and Samsung use on their phones: Charge you an insane price for storage upgrades to 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB. How many years of those guys been milking those same storage sizes? Why? because for the vast majority of people, once they creep the bottom, most entry level phones to 500 GB, that's a wrap, they'll have a harder time upselling abover $500 to over $1000 for 1 TB - 2 TB potentially when a lot of users can manage with 256-500, but 128 is kinda tight for many.

And I love NVME and PCIe-5.0 just as much as the next guru, but that's not an easy sell to non techie people.
For MANY entry level users, a 128GB-500GB SATA SSD is ALL they will EVER need for their laptop. This upcoming weekend, I will be literally installing a 500GB SATA SSD (and upgrading a lawyer's RAM from 4GB to 16 GB) in a core i3 Dell. That $100 Samsung SATA drive will probably let that 2018 machine feel super rejuvenated and maybe last another 10+ years (except if his system doesn't have the TPM 2.0 chip to let him convert to Win11 when forced) Anyways, the point about all that is that the OEMs will probably continue to fight MS on this so they can try to milk the HDD situation for as long as possible. Midrange systems already exist (in developed countries) with a smaller SSD primary drive and a 1 TB HDD secondary drive, so I think OEMS are just trying their hardest to milk HDDs for as long as possible to give them midrange and high end options they can try to upsell people on to these way way overpriced 1500-2400 laptops but it is inevitable: as 2TB and 4TB SSD prices fall to current 1 TB levels, it will be all over with. I mean, already now, at the time of this comment, a Samsung EVO 870 is 99 bucks USD retail at not old egg (100 bucks aint even worth what it used to be now either; that's barely more than filling up 3/4 of my truck's gas tank currently)

Also, another reason for the initial line of this comment is, well that means this could allow Microsoft to be lazier and not try to push Windows performance faster. Instead of figuring out how to lighten the bloat load of their OS this would be like instead, "hey, just give everyone SSDs so we don't have to improve our performance" and that let's them be lazier.

end rant

 

[hotaru.hino]

TL;DR windows is slow and badly coded Microsoft need you to use a SDD for the operating system to be usable!

Or it could be simply a problem with system builders in their race to the bottom getting sponsorships from software companies to add their software to the computer, on top of other things the system builder may try to throw in there. So you end up with an OS install with two dozen apps all trying to open up at once. This is also on top of what people do with their computers. People don't really pause and think about what else they could be installing on top of the app they're installing to see if it's really necessary or not some sort of PUP.

 

[countmackula]

Yeah sounds like the people that say they like the Apps on Smart Tvs then a year later they are using Apple' TVs or Rokus because the smart tv apps are unusable

the previous comment did need to get burned, but I'm going to guess you don't have an LG OLED65 with magic remote and WebOS, making that kind of statement. Ever since I got one (and it's a C8 so a few years older now) my xbox collects dust. The native apps are fast with the OLED processor and offer native 4k and HDR without needing an HDMI 2.1 device attached

 

[wr3zzz]

Had Microsoft already released DirectStorage for Windows nobody would find this development surprising. Just call it Windows 11.1 and make SSD boot drive a requirement for OEM to get that Windows sticker.

 

[Colif]

Once you go ssd, its really hard to go back

given Fast startup is off by default on win 11 if it recognises you have ssd or nvme, then it makes sense they want to stop people having hdd as boot drives. Fast startup made sense 10 years ago, no so much now. It makes no difference on ssd or nvme.

Just cause win 11 can run in 128gb ssd, doesn't mean I would buy one. Better to give yourself wiggle room.

Someone will release a device that only just matches minimum, as its allowed. I wouldn't buy it but I am sure we will see them here in coming years. People trying to run a version update where device doesn't have any free space to run the files. Seen it already in 10.

 

[Joe Shades]

the previous comment did need to get burned, but I'm going to guess you don't have an LG OLED65 with magic remote and WebOS, making that kind of statement. Ever since I got one (and it's a C8 so a few years older now) my xbox collects dust. The native apps are fast with the OLED processor and offer native 4k and HDR without needing an HDMI 2.1 device attached

No but I will check that out

 

[TopHatProductions115]

Industry analyst firm Trendfocus reports that Microsoft is moving to force OEMs to stop using HDDs for boot drives.

Microsoft's Reportedly Trying to Kill HDD Boot Drives for Windows 11 PCs by 2023 : Read more

I'd like to assume this will be a positive change, but there are a few things nagging me about this. After skimming some of the comments, I can see that the sentiment I'm about to share isn't just held by me. I'll go point-by-point, to keep things in some kind of order, I suppose. Also, ignoring the fact that Windows in general could just become a lighter-weight OS to make hardware age a little slower. Linux is a pretty good example of how to make things last if you know what you're doing. Focusing primarily on the OEM/ODM front instead for this one...


1.

A recent executive brief from data storage industry analyst firm Trendfocus reports that OEMs have disclosed that Microsoft is pushing them to drop HDDs as the primary storage device in pre-built Windows 11 PCs and use SSDs instead, with the current deadlines for the switchover set for 2023.

What will this change incur in the OEM/ODM market? I can see a few possibilities for how this could go down:

• OEMs/ODMs increase prices to accommodate for the new requirements, and SSDs picked are okay for regular use
• Prices remain almost unchanged, but OEMs use low-(quality/performance) SSDs to meet minimum requirements
• OEMs/ODMs provide varying SSD solutions, as another differentiator between low-end and high-end options
• OEMs/ODMs don't budge, and leave SSDs as an option for primarily high-end options for the time being
• HDDs become the default low-end option, but still provide higher capacities than SSD-equipped options
• OEMs/ODMs push the switchover date temporarily or indefinitely, leaving Microsoft in a bad mood
• SSHDs somehow start to make a comeback, and I head-desk in utter confusion
• Some combination of the options above, for product tiering/differentiation that convinces buyers to spend more

Drive type and quality will now become yet another factor for the layman to shop around. I also wonder how this will affect of both HDDs and the pre-builts they come in, years down the line. This could get interesting...

2.

Interestingly, these actions from Microsoft come without any firm SSD requirement listed for Windows 11 PCs, and OEMs have pushed back on the deadlines. We reached out to Microsoft for comment on the matter, but the company says it "has nothing to share on this topic at this time."

Well, that may be a small issue. If Microsoft doesn't tell what kind of SSD needs to me used, is anything fair game? :

• eMMC
• mSATA
• SATA2/3 (7-pin)
• SAS
• SATA over M.2
• NVMe

Of course, I threw in a few odd balls for laughs. Also, what about DRAM-equipped SSDs vs. ones without DRAM? The list is nowhere near exhaustive for available bootable SSD options. But I think the list of existing SSD options is long enough to warrant some specificity. Each one of these will perform differently, and unsuspecting end-users (who expect pretty much any SSD to be faster than an HDD) may end up with a nasty surprise when the dust settles. If anything goes, how will this impact the buying experience? Won't features like DirectStorage need high-speed NVMe SSDs to stretch their legs? If so, then will this restrict the feature to only high-end options from OEMs/ODMs?

3.

Microsoft's most current(opens in new tab) list of hardware requirements calls for a '64 GB or larger storage device' for Windows 11, so an SSD isn't a minimum requirement for a standard install. However, Microsoft stipulates that two features, DirectStorage and the Windows Subsystem for Android(opens in new tab), require an SSD, but you don't have to use those features. It is unclear whether or not Microsoft plans to change the minimum specifications for Windows 11 PCs after the 2023 switchover to SSDs for pre-built systems.

Already asked about DirectStorage, but I wonder how WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android) will do on different types of SSDs. On a random note, I just ran into this online:

• https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

Reminded me of the time I walked into a Java programming course, and almost no one knew what RAM was. Or why memory management, for programming in general, is important. We're at a point where most of the population walks around with at least 2 computing devices, possibly without knowing it, and don't know how to use much of it at all. "Where did you save your project?", becomes an advanced question, because users don't know what a file is - let alone a filesystem. If we overlay this onto the SSD situation, I wonder how that'll turn out. People who don't know what an SSD is? People who don't know that computers can have multiple drives? Let's cut to the chase - how will we fair when the tech-illiterate have to deal with this?

4.

The move to force OEMs to adopt SSDs instead of HDDs for boot volumes makes plenty of sense from a performance standpoint — SSDs are multitudes of orders faster for operating systems than hard drives, thus providing a snappier, more responsive user experience. Many laptops and desktop PCs already ship with an SSD for the boot drive, and some use a secondary hard drive for bulk storage of large files, like pictures and videos. However, some lower-end models, particularly in developing/emerging markets, still use a hard drive as the boot device.

The first sentence assumes that OEMs and ODMs won't cut corners and find a way to screw this up. If they use DRAM-less SSDs or cheap SATA SSDs, how will that go? Also, shipping with a secondary HDD as a mass storage device only works for users that understand the concept well enough to move their large and/or less used files to the larger HDD, to save their boot drive for (potentially smaller) files they will access more often. I've dealt with this issue before personally, and burned few a few weekends as a result. It's a good setup, for those who understand how to use it.

5.

As always, the issue with switching all systems to SSDs boils down to cost: Trendfocus Vice President John Chen tells us that replacing a 1TB HDD requires stepping down to a low-cost 256 GB SSD, which OEMs don't consider to be enough capacity for most users. Conversely, stepping up to a 512 GB SSD would 'break the budget' for lower-end machines with a strict price limit.

And for users that tend to quickly fill up their devices' internal storage, I guess paid cloud solutions will have to be used? Not the only option, since one can always clone their data to a larger drive in the future when the time comes. But, do most regular people actually consider this option? Maybe I'm just not convinced that 512GB is enough in 2022 when everyone's phones can record 4K HDR, and people go around installing a butt-ton of apps and games on their devices. It's not everyone that's doing so, but I've dealt with this issue often enough to conclude that less than 1TB is a bit thin now. What are people buying as storage options for their phones, I wonder? Also, didn't I end up asking about some of this in points 1 and 2?

6.

The majority of PCs in developed markets have already transitioned to SSDs for boot drives, but there are exceptions. Chen notes that it is possible that Microsoft could make some exceptions, but the firm predicts that dual-drive desktop PCs and gaming laptops with both an SSD for the boot drive and an HDD for bulk storage will be the only mass-market PCs with an HDD.

Well, the first part sounds promising...

But what kinds of SSDs are they putting in this machines? Are they faster and/or better than HDDs that were used before? I mentioned the hybrid config option (SSD+HDD) in point 4. To add onto that, how many non-techies actually know how to troubleshoot this when a drive seems to disappear from Explorer?

7.

As you can see in the table above, even though SSD pricing dropped rapidly during the first few years of adoption, you'll still pay far less per gigabyte of HDD storage than you would with an SSD.

Can't deny that. I wonder how that will affect consumer decision making if they have to pick between an eMMC-equipped laptop and a SATA SSD equipped laptop. Will they just pick the cheaper one if both appear to have the same amount of storage? Will OEMs/ODMs warn people that eMMC is pretty slow? Or that DRAM-less SSDs can be as slow as HDDs in some scenarios (but not all)? Will most consumers know better? Or will a ton of people walk away with buyers' remorse when this drops?

8.

Be aware that storage pricing can fluctuate wildly and OEMs undoubtedly pay less, but the high-performance 1TB NVMe SK hynix Platinum P41(opens in new tab), which tops our list of best SSDs, retails for around $0.14 a gigabyte. Moving down to the extreme low-end SATA SSDs finds the bargain-basement 1TB Crucial BX500(opens in new tab) for $0.08 per gigabyte. In comparison, a 1TB Seagate Barracuda(opens in new tab) hard drive costs a mere $0.05-per-GB.

How will fluctuations in NAND prices impact OEM/ODM pricing on pre-builts if we have another chip shortage? Will it be more severe, or will things not change much from how they are now? What about cars and other products that are quickly becoming more computerised by the day?

9.

It's unclear what measures, if any, Microsoft would take with OEMs if they don't comply with its wishes, and the company has decided not to comment on the matter. Trendfocus says the switchover will have implications for HDD demand next year. We'll update you if we learn more, but it looks like SSDs will finally supplant HDDs entirely in consumer PCs soon. Hopefully we won't see the historical downward trend of SSD pricing flatten as their biggest competitor on cost, the HDD, recedes completely into bulk storage applications.

I think I briefly asked about that in point 1. I'm no oracle, but I think HDDs are still going to be around for quite a while if this goes anything like what I think may happen. I think that Microsoft needs to clear a few things up before this goes into effect.


Maybe I'm just being too pessimistic or short-sighted about this? Who knows...


EDIT: So, I just had 2 of my pals on Discord remind me that Intel Optane exists, and was supposed to help with this. Raise your hand if you use Optane!

 

[TopHatProductions115]

I think they'll go even lower than that. I wouldn't be surprised if instead low-end laptop makers would consider sticking in say a 64GB or 128GB eMMC drive, which is like combining the worst of both worlds. After all, if the requirement is at least 64GB, why bother settling for anything but the bare minimum?

Now that, I think I've seen before. And yes, it is garbage tier XD

 

[Deleted member 2783327]

No one would buy it.
I remember running win 10 on a laptop with a hdd once, oh the pain, after it would load windows it would still saturate the hdd for 10 minutes and the laptop was unusable until it was done.

Agreed. I bought an Acer Aspire VX5. It took four minutes to boot and another few to become usable. I installed a Samsung Evo 960 250GB and the boot time dropped to less than 10 seconds.

Microsoft wants SSDs as boot drive because their OS is becoming so bloated and with poor code to hide their declining OS performance

 

[KyaraM]

I built my desktop 9 years ago and put an SSD into it. Ever since then I have pushed SSD to friends and family. I even worked at Best Buy for a while and the people with the $1k+ budgets I tried to get them on SSD.

While power users can use bigger SSD, I like to segment the drives. Lots of motherboards have 2 M.2 slots now so you can have you can have your 512GB SSD for OS/Applications and then 1+TB for anything else. I've found it is hard to fill 512GB with applications even on my personal desktop I have 40GB free on a 240GB drive and I need a lot of different things for work on it.

I don't know, I only have 200GB free space left on my 1TB SSD, on a system I bought just this year, and that's after I pushed all less-frequently played games etc. to the data grave HDD xD
I seriously consider getting a second SSD... that would certainly help my storage woes, lol.

Programs nowadays, be it games or otherwise, can get really big. I also use my machine for CAD and GIS frequently both privately and for work, and they eat a lot of space even with data and projects saved to the D-drive.

Still, I think this is the right direction. SSDs are getting ever cheaper, and for most people, 500GB will be enough. Like my dad, who is using that in his laptop and will never get it to full. Most people aren't me is the simple truth here. So yeah, definitely support this.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I going to bet it did not have much memory and that was the problem it had not the hdd.

That is total BS. I’ve experienced the same thing with windows 10 on a slow laptop the hard drive made it unusable it has nothing to do with the ram

And to the people who write word walls, do you think other people actually read that garbage?

 

[yankeeDDL]

No one would buy it.
I remeber running win 10 on a laptop with a hdd once, oh the pain, after it would load windows it would still saturate the hdd for 10 minutes and the laptop was unusable until it was done.

I tend to agree on the 64GB, however, in the company where I work, until LAST YEAR, we were using laptops with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This was the default company laptops.
If IT in a multinational high-tech is so shortsighted to order 256GB laptops in 2022, I don't see why unexperienced, non-technical customers cannot fall for one with 128GB.

 

[KyaraM]

I tend to agree on the 64GB, however, in the company where I work, until LAST YEAR, we were using laptops with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This was the default company laptops.
If IT in a multinational high-tech is so shortsighted to order 256GB laptops in 2022, I don't see why unexperienced, non-technical customers cannot fall for one with 128GB.

That's so weird considering you can get laptops with 500GB with 16GB RAM and decent APU for 500 bucks or less already...

 

[peachpuff]

I going to bet it did not have much memory and that was the problem it had not the hdd.

16gb not enough?

 

[Shawn Eary]

Back when Win 8.0 came out, it seemed pretty zippy and performant. Now, modern versions of Win 10 seem sluggish and unnecessarily incompatible with certain older hardware. I've seen a lot of unnecessary disk drive access come from Win 10 builds after 1809 and I think the bloated MS Teams. Version 1809 was the last decent Win 10 build. Sure, WSL2 enhancements and Direct ML are "cool" but they aren't enough to make me want to rush out and spend several hundred dollars to get a TPM and compatible MotherBoard. Then there might be another two hundred or so to get a 2 TB SSD. I could probably get by on a 1 TB SSD for a while, but I have a ton of family pictures many of which I lost due to a mysterious mechanical HD crash [1] which was potentially exacerbated by Win 10's excessive HD use and poor reporting of hard drive status. GNU\Linux uses much less disk drive bandwidth and it reports drive health better than Win 10 does.

Instead of constantly forcing people to upgrade their hardware, I wish Microsoft would focus more on efficiency. I'm tired of bloated MS Operating Systems.

[1] - There is a long story about the "backup" of those pictures...

 

[Shawn Eary]

That's so weird considering you can get laptops with 500GB with 16GB RAM and decent APU for 500 bucks or less already...

$500 for a business is "nothing". $500 for some "detached" males can be a VERY large sum of money regardless what college degree and/or technical training they may have...

 

[Shawn Eary]

Badly coded?

OK, what OS would NOT benefit from having an SSD?

Builds of Windows 10 after Version 1809 are extremely bloated and poor performing.

 

[Shawn Eary]

A 128GB SSD is like $20 these days. I don't think regular HDDs can go that cheap, even with a single platter.

It's only people still rocking old computers that'll have trouble. They should just stay on whatever windows version they have, or pay someone to upgrade their hard drive if they can't do it themselves. Everything with a HDD should be swappable.

Alan Bradley rocked the pager. I would have Mr. Bradley on my team any day.

 

[yankeeDDL]

That's so weird considering you can get laptops with 500GB with 16GB RAM and decent APU for 500 bucks or less already...

My (very limited, and personal) experience is that large corporations tend to use Dell, HP or Lenovo. Dell and Lenovo used to be - de facto - intel-only for business laptops. Dell, to a large extent, still is: their offer for Intel's laptops is infinitely more appealing than that for AMD's, despite the large performance gap.
Which means the laptops are fairly pricey to begin with. Mine, replaced one month ago, has a gen11 Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD, however, the previous batch came and the end of last year with gen10 (Rocket Lake: those things are hot'n'slow! Not that Tiger late is competitive, but it is a noticeable step forward) with 8GB/256GB. And they all run close to 1Kusd. It's crazy.

Anyway, laptop with 256GB are sold because there are people who buy them. Who in the right mind would buy a laptop with a Rocket Lake APU, when Zen3 is available with massively better Perf/Watt? And yet, there they are.

 

[danlw]

Ok so triple the cost, for what? 70 times the performance almost assuming the HDD is getting 100MB and that NVME is getting 7000? Sounds like a good trade off for me. I got clients who want cheap. We get them cheap. Then wonder why it is so slow. yea you have a hard drive. You didn't want the upgrade. Its like common people. its a no brainer upgrade.

Those bean counters who still know nothing about computers are annoying. "$30 more for a system that boots to a useable desktop in a fraction of the time? No, I hate my employees, give em an HDD and the bare minimum RAM so their page file is required just to run Notepad!"

yeah right.... HDDs aren't going anywhere

Just like the horse and buggy isn't going anywhere. Just ask the folks in places like Lancaster PA!

Full disclosure: I still use HDDs for movies. But I don't ever plan to run an .exe file from an HDD again.

the previous comment did need to get burned, but I'm going to guess you don't have an LG OLED65 with magic remote and WebOS, making that kind of statement. Ever since I got one (and it's a C8 so a few years older now) my xbox collects dust. The native apps are fast with the OLED processor and offer native 4k and HDR without needing an HDMI 2.1 device attached

Can confirm. I have a ~6 year old LG OLED55B6P. The magic remote functions like a WII remote, but without the need for a sensor bar. LGs OS is responsive on their higher end sets, at least. Even feels better than my Nvidia Shield Pro. But yeah, I'm sure the smart functionality on those $300 65" TVs is trash.

 

[KyaraM]

My (very limited, and personal) experience is that large corporations tend to use Dell, HP or Lenovo. Dell and Lenovo used to be - de facto - intel-only for business laptops. Dell, to a large extent, still is: their offer for Intel's laptops is infinitely more appealing than that for AMD's, despite the large performance gap.
Which means the laptops are fairly pricey to begin with. Mine, replaced one month ago, has a gen11 Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD, however, the previous batch came and the end of last year with gen10 (Rocket Lake: those things are hot'n'slow! Not that Tiger late is competitive, but it is a noticeable step forward) with 8GB/256GB. And they all run close to 1Kusd. It's crazy.

Anyway, laptop with 256GB are sold because there are people who buy them. Who in the right mind would buy a laptop with a Rocket Lake APU, when Zen3 is available with massively better Perf/Watt? And yet, there they are.

That's true. Even smaller companies, actually. I got a Dell laptop for home office and certain tasks I need to perform outside the network from my employer. It got an 8th gen i7 inside. It was also quite expensive, about 1000 bucks iirc despite only having an MX250 GPU.... Even my workstation in the office is a Dell and has a Xeon processor, though I really dislike it since it's slow, which in turn is due to the very weird and idiotic reason that IT installed the OS on the HDD instead of the SSD because "it's bigger"... it drives me crazy. The laptop is so much nicer and faster despite the technically worse CPU, it's not even funny anymore.

Anyways. It's not always true that AMD is better, though. My gaming laptop I bought for work travel etc. that I bought January 2021 has a Ryzen 3000 CPU. The Intel model would have been better with similar battery life and pricing, but wasn't available at the time. It doesn't really matter, though. Not as if a 1650 needs an awesome processor anyways, lol. And the system is solely for gaming on the go that only needs to be able to run, like, the two most important (to me) games, so no big deal either way.

 

[Eximo]

Those bean counters who still know nothing about computers are annoying. "$30 more for a system that boots to a useable desktop in a fraction of the time? No, I hate my employees, give em an HDD and the bare minimum RAM so their page file is required just to run Notepad!"

I should tell you about the time our finance team asked if we had to keep paying the license for our software delivery tool. After we had just gone through the trouble of explaining how it would actually save money/time. They didn't care that delivery times would go from infinite/days to minutes, or that it would use almost no bandwidth relative to the existing tool(since the internet fees weren't under their budget). But they did care that we would be able to retire the old software deployment servers.