Last night I attempted to install Windows 11 on a new laptop, released 2022. The installer doesn't allow you to continue without connecting to the Internet first, and Windows doesn't have the right WiFi drivers built in.
I'm lazy, so I installed Fedora instead
I know this isn't precisely related, but these anti-patterns add up. It does not feel good to be a Microsoft customer.
That's the main reason that made me switch to Linux. A Windows 10 update caused bluescreens on boot and reinstalling didn't help because the official installation image already included the faulty update. After months of bugs and annoyances and then that I had enough of spending a weekend on fixing the system.
There's a bypass, but it's not officially documented fwict. Some tech news outlets have reported on it, though. Here's a Microsoft answers post documenting it:
I wonder what is going on here, market wise. Microsoft displays one anti-consumer move after another. Classic monopolist behaviour.
Meanwhile, people literally prefer buying a new PC, tolerate the ads, tolerate the disrespect for their preferences, take the risk of cloud providers closing accounts and taking their life history with it.
The PC market seems ready for a shake up. I wish BEOS started today.
Well, a lack of competition. The other main players are Linux and macOS; Linux projects' open source nature stunts public appeal and Apple only cares to appeal to a small segment of the market.
Open source projects are made and managed by software developers. Not by graphic designers, not by UI/UX experts. Developers will make something that works, that scratches their itch. But it can take years if not decades for a project to actually look polished, be easy for a casual computer user to use. For most open source projects, the way to contribute is "make a pull request", which usually involves more programming than a design person can or wants to contribute in order to make things look good. For a project to be user friendly, it needs people besides software developers working on it.
See, for example, Mastodon and Lemmy. They're excellent federated social media, they should replace Twitter and reddit. But I heard someone say the word "Federated" at a bar last night while describing them, and I pegged them instantly as a software developer. Federation? Choosing an instance? Casual users glaze over. Without a dead simple onboarding process, they will never replace corporate social media.
As a long time Ubuntu user, I get annoyed at the way they've moved towards kiddy proofing a number of things, but I can tell they're doing their best to make it usable by more casual computer users. It's still not 100% there, but it's way closer than it has been, and it's one of the most user friendly distros.
The public market consists of a wide variety of people. From computer experts, to grandmas who barely know what email is. Linux will never work for those grandma types, whereas closed source stuff like Mac OS does all those complicated things for you (but you have no control over). Grandmas like that, computer experts don't.
Now who do you think the public is mostly made up of? People who fall closer to computer experts or grandmas?
I have a 2019 Microsoft Surface laptop which cost a pretty penny (bought it for the wife). It doesn’t support Windows 11, I think because of TPM.
With end of life at 2025, I would have gotten about same life from a Chromebook which famously have expiration dates, for a fraction of the cost.
Is there really no way to work around the missing hardware with virtualization? Apple supports processor changes for several version (I have an Intel and an M2 MacBook both running same software). What is the deal? Forget extending windows 10 — get Windows 11 working somehow.
Both Surface Laptops that would have been sold in 2019 support Windows 11. You might need to enable something in the BIOS, but the Surface Laptop 2 and 3 are listed as supporting 11.
I'm in the same boat, with a 2020 Surface Go. It's not a powerful machine but works just fine for taking notes and light browsing. I'm fine with it being stuck on Windows 10 - 11 would probably make it unusably slow - but when I purchased it I reasonably expected it to have similar longevity to the then 6 year old iPad it replaced.
Saying "2020 Surface Go" implies the 2020 model. Which yours isn't the model from 2020, it's the model from 2018.
Which is why it's a lot better to use the actual product names instead of just the year you purchased it. If I buy a 1950s car in 2023 I probably shouldn't call it a 2023 car.
2018-2025 is seven years of support. Apple supports iPads for like 5-9 years. I'd like for it to be longer, but it's not like Microsoft is being some kind of outlier here in the midrange tablet market.
Are you sure its really not supported? You might have to enable the software TPM in the BIOS but if it has an 8th+ Gen Intel CPU as a 2019/2018 Surface Laptop should, you should be able to. Only the first Gen Surface laptop with 7th gen CPUs are technically unsupported.
Its not like Windows 11 has to be supported. This is effectively a 400M device niche that will open up, not sure how thats a bad thing. People shouldnt use Windows, its not that great.
> This is effectively a 400M device niche that will open up, not sure how thats a bad thing.
The Android fragmentation problem suggests that no market will open up, and the 400M pool of devices running Windows 10 will simply continue using an operating system that won't receive security updates.
> People shouldnt use Windows, its not that great.
If you are a Windows user who uses Windows software, what better option is there?
> If you are a Windows user who uses Windows software
then keep doing that, if thats productive. But once that turns into "If you are a (oudated, unsecure) Windows user who uses (outdated, unsecure) Windows software", there is an argument to be made for someone to make an alternative that is easy to transition to. I dont think its on the users, I'm saying this should be seen as opening up a niche and take the opportunity to exploit this market weakness.
Real headline: 400M machines have unpatchable hardware bugs caused by Intel's incompetence that have to be destroyed/removed from prod before the end of their intended lifespan; Microsoft considers it a liability to keep those machines in use.
Especially considering the mount of electronic waste that 400M of PCs represents. I think this should be one argument authorities should use against Microsoft when it makes all this hardware obsolete with a software update.
If there are software workarounds that can prolong the use of that hardware, even at the cost of performance, they should be liable (and maybe subsidized) to implement them.
They don't have to keep supporting Windows 10 but they knowingly decided to cut support for 400M devices because of some arbitrary hardware features, and that's unreasonable imho.
So there may be a good # of systems lacking that but otherwise fully functional.
CPU bugs or vulnerabilities hardly ever prevent running a newer OS. Never mind that those may have been patched or mitigated in the meantime by BIOS or microcode updates.
So imho this is just forced upgrading (as usual). "Buy new PC, get new OS". Hopefully this crap drives more users to Linux or *BSD.
I had a 4790K which was vulnerable to basically everything and while I'm sure the patches had a noticeable impact in benchmarks I couldn't notice much during regular use. So yes, I blame Microsoft.
I'm lazy, so I installed Fedora instead
I know this isn't precisely related, but these anti-patterns add up. It does not feel good to be a Microsoft customer.