As unsafe as it may be, I plan to just keep using Windows 10 past the EOL date this October. I practice reasonable discipline in regards to online security and I will just handle all of my sensitive accounts and login activity on my Mac. I just really don't want to use the mess that is Windows 11 unless absolutely necessary. The way I see it, that's probably a few years away.
Edit: I am also comfortable using Linux, and I may end up spending a lot of time searching for the best distro that will work for me as a daily driver. I'm certainly open to that, but for now I plan to just keep chugging along with what I've got until I build a new PC.
Windows 11 recently pushed an update to discontinue Windows Mixed Reality (WMR), bricking my <5 years old, $500 Reverb G2 VR headset, which I bought after Meta bought out Oculus and started requiring a Meta account, essentially bricking my Rift S. No thanks.
As a non-Windows user, can someone neatly summarize what the problem is? I recently used Windows 11 a bit to port an app, and while it's a horrible OS to dev on, the UX just seemed like any other Windows.
The TPM requirements rule out a lot of computers older than 5 years old.
With the pace of modern hardware development, a lot of these computers are still perfectly serviceable.
People are unhappy at being told to buy new hardware when they have working hardware.
(Other things that have concerned people: Further attempts to force people to microsoft accounts, more invasive copilot promotion, recall, A/B tested ads in explorer, etc.)
I'm a long time Linux user. I think the first version I installed was 0.11 back in the early-mid 90s. I worked in IT for most of my career until I retired a few years ago. After all that, I still don't have the patience to migrate to Linux. Between the games I enjoy and the music production software I'm used to using, is not worth the amount of time it requires fiddling with stuff. I wish it were different.
There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are aware of the risks and know what you are doing. I still use Windows 7 with R2 patches, and Firefox ESR. I don't plan on changing anytime soon.
I've been looking into this. Any app that currently works should keep working, but new versions (especially new games, or new patches for games) may not. New versions of GPU drivers, DirectX and so on were a particular area of issue.
Good choice for a machine built for a particular purpose that doesn't need to run any new software.
In case you want or need security fixes for older windows machines, there is a company/product called https://0patch.com/ which provides "micropatches" all the way back to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
There is a free tier but it only includes some patches. They have prices listed on the website for the paid tiers.
I have no experience with using them, but just sharing in case it's useful those who doesn't want to or can't throw away their old systems.
They're starting to get desperate because a billion machines can't/won't 'upgrade' to 11. The ewaste from excluding a billion machines is just incredible. This from a company that claims to be green.
>The ewaste from excluding a billion machines is just incredible.
Genuine question: In which country do you live where working Windows 10 PCs are sent to the landfill?
I look on my country's used market online every day for my hobby, and every functioning PC/laptop all the way from the MS-DOS, Windows 95 era, XP, Vista, and 10, finds a buyer for the right price. Pentium 4s, Pentium 3s, Pentium 2s, Pentium MMXs, 486s, you name it. Nobody's throwing them away in the landfill when there's always a buyer/taker for them if you have patience.
I feel like people are making up imaginary ewaste on the Windows 10 topic just to cause a hubbub, but where I live there's literally no such thing going on, nor have I seen any proof of it happening anywhere else. Even PCs older than Windows 10 always find a buyer! Let that sink in.
If people in your country throw working windows 10 PCs in landfills, I feel like the issue is with the people in that country being needlessly wasteful and uncaring to sell/give away to those in need, not with Microsoft.
Edit1: would the downvoters care to explain themselves with some arguments? Or do people love overreacting to ideas they don't like via a button instead of formulating a though?
Edit2: @kstrauser below:
1) why would you throw away a working PC instead of giving it away for free? Who have you met who throws away working PCs in the trash when they no longer get the latest OS? There's old people still using Windows 7 PCs just because it works for them and it didn't break down. What makes you think they'll throw away working Windows 10 PCs in dumpsters now?
2) Why would you ship the PC in another country using fuel, when someone locally will pick it up for free to use it? Like I said, there's always a taker.
I see no arguments so far against my points just imaginary scenarios of super wasteful people who throw away good stuff randomly, but then not Microsoft nor anyone can stop them throwing Bugattis off cliffs if that's their jam.
Edit 3: @SECProto below:
I asked how many people you know who throw in dumpsters working Windows 10 PCs, and you went on a tangent answered something completely different, in bad faith I would say. Of course all computing tech eventually gets landfilled due to obsolescence, that's inevitable, but if you post an ad for a Windows 10 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it, if you post an ad for a Pentium 3 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it. There's no excuse to just throw working PCs in a landfill other than malice. If your society mass landfills PCs the moment $LATEST_SW doesn't run on them, instead of finding new owners, then your society is at fault.
But anyway, technology is so dense where I leave that you can’t give away some stuff. A 10 year old PC? Maybe. 15-20 years? No way, unless someone needs a specific part from it. There is zero demand otherwise for such a thing. There’s so much new tech that slightly older is nearly valueless locally.
> Genuine question: In which country do you live where working Windows 10 PCs are sent to the landfill? [...] Nobody's throwing them away in the landfill when there's always a buyer/taker for them if you have patience
> Edit: would the downvoters care to explain themselves with some arguments?
I'll bite. I know many many many people who had all the era's of PC you mentioned. None of them still have them. None of them sold them. They may have put them on the curb, or "recycled" them, or sent them to the landfill - I don't know and it doesn't impact the fact that I don't know anyone who has a single one of them still in use.
This is easy to confirm by doing some order of magnitude math on how many of these machines were made (many), and how many are still in use (very few).
Regarding the Windows 10 specific question: it is still supported and receives updates, so of course they aren't going to landfill yet. The question is what will happen in a year or so once they are no longer supported (most non-techy users wont be installing LTSC). Spoiler: the vast majority of them will be sent to landfill or "recycler", not sold and kept in use.
Nearly everyone in the world throws out stuff someone else could gladly reuse. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is an old saying.
I’m not claiming I’d throw out a Windows 10 PC. I’d personally install Linux on it instead. But I can certainly imagine someone seeing nothing worth salvaging from a 10 year old PC and tossing it, and I can’t say they’re objectively wrong for doing it. Should they personally ship it to another country at some cost in fuel?
I think people are downvoting at your feigned incredulity at something not bizarrely “wrong” to a lot of people.
Hi, not sure why you edited instead of replying - most of the time I would not see that at all, I just happened to come back to look.
If you hit a "throttle limit" as you said in a sibling comment - I don't know what that is, but you should take it as a helpful suggestion to post less, not circumvent by editting responses into comments.
> I asked how many people you know who throw in dumpsters working Windows 10 PCs, and you went on a tangent answered something completely different, in bad faith I would say.
Anyway, I was responding in good faith to your comment in context, not in isolation. You asked about working windows 10 PCs going to landfill, yes - in a thread where the context is Microsoft discontinuing windows 10 security updates later this year. So no, I agree, working windows 10 PCs probably don't go to the landfill right now - but this situation will change in a year or two, and that is what the whole discussion is about. This was a good faith read on your whole comment, because you talked about all the different generations of PCs, from MS DOS to current, not just windows 10.
If you want only my comment about Windows 10 PCs, read the last paragraph of my other response.
> if you post an ad for a Pentium 3 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it
This is not accurate. Best case, someone might take it, pull the hard drive to try to find something valuable, and dump the rest in a dumpster.
I have a half dozen older PCs (MS-DOS, windows 95, ME, XP, XP) in various boxes. You're welcome to them if you'd like - I would have to pay someone to take them off my hands. This isn't a localized thing, either - I've lived in a number of developed countries (north america, east asia) and the same would apply in all of them. I would say your situation is the unusual one.
> There's no excuse to just throw working PCs in a landfill other than malice
If your PC isn't getting security updates, it is not working. I wouldn't use it for anything online, ever. And if I want to play an old game, emulation is lower energy cost than an old PC.
My PC is gonna stay on Win10, and I'm not doing anything about it (including signing up for this). Like Vista and 8, 11 doesn't exist, and 12 will supersede 10. Idc what they say, if there's some serious vuln in the meantime, they'll patch Win10 too.
Not only 5 year old PCs are still actual, but even 10 year old machines are still lot in use. Because there are already enough performance for everyday tasks for majority of tasks - videos, emails, messengers, etc.
But this is a problem for Microsoft and computer manufacturers, they are overstocked and have to convince users somehow to upgrade even if there is no reason to do so.
I feel like I might be the only one who thinks Windows 11 is a good OS. The only tweak I needed to make was to turn of bing searches from the start menu.
I wish user accounts were still local only and did not back up to OneDrive, but I can understand that this is actually probably a valuable feature for 99% of windows users.
They removed the ability to drag objects onto the task bar to interact with programs, which is a big part of a lot of people's daily workflows. The worst, nay egregious, part is that they haven't offered any alternative, and they haven't added it back.
I've been using Windows since 95, and I dislike the fact that Windows nowadays hide a lot of options in context menu. That means I almost always have to click on 'Show more options' to do what I need. Also, Windows Explorer is laggier and it feels like they just slapped a web-page like UI on top of an existing (legacy) code base. I feel like Microsoft hired a bunch of UX/UI designers who never properly learned the principles of UI and try to do the right (logical) thing for the users.
With people talking about ads and such, I'm reluctant to get a new computer with Windows 11.
Explorer around Win98, I think as part of IE4, got the capability of hosting a web page in an explorer window (or part of it anyway for things like showing details) but it wasn't the control used for actually navigating through files. They did try and simulate it by allowing files to be single click to open and giving them blue underlines. MS kept using good ol' list views up through today for most of it. It is in the newer experiences where they're thrashing about and adding galleries, suggestions, and whatever will get someone promoted.
I like how if you go by the fact a $5 Xbox giftcard is about 3500 points, they are valuing the Windows 10 updates at about $1.40 but charge $30 for them. Takes very little time to get 1000 Microsoft rewards too.
Readit News
Edit: I am also comfortable using Linux, and I may end up spending a lot of time searching for the best distro that will work for me as a daily driver. I'm certainly open to that, but for now I plan to just keep chugging along with what I've got until I build a new PC.
If I'm running Windows 11 Professional, I don't need the Windows Store to tell me I should check out Avowed Premium Edition in a meeting.
Or is somebody going to tell me it's my fault for leaving notifications on?
With the pace of modern hardware development, a lot of these computers are still perfectly serviceable.
People are unhappy at being told to buy new hardware when they have working hardware.
(Other things that have concerned people: Further attempts to force people to microsoft accounts, more invasive copilot promotion, recall, A/B tested ads in explorer, etc.)
https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-iot-enterprise-2021-l...
Good choice for a machine built for a particular purpose that doesn't need to run any new software.
There is a free tier but it only includes some patches. They have prices listed on the website for the paid tiers.
I have no experience with using them, but just sharing in case it's useful those who doesn't want to or can't throw away their old systems.
Genuine question: In which country do you live where working Windows 10 PCs are sent to the landfill?
I look on my country's used market online every day for my hobby, and every functioning PC/laptop all the way from the MS-DOS, Windows 95 era, XP, Vista, and 10, finds a buyer for the right price. Pentium 4s, Pentium 3s, Pentium 2s, Pentium MMXs, 486s, you name it. Nobody's throwing them away in the landfill when there's always a buyer/taker for them if you have patience.
I feel like people are making up imaginary ewaste on the Windows 10 topic just to cause a hubbub, but where I live there's literally no such thing going on, nor have I seen any proof of it happening anywhere else. Even PCs older than Windows 10 always find a buyer! Let that sink in.
If people in your country throw working windows 10 PCs in landfills, I feel like the issue is with the people in that country being needlessly wasteful and uncaring to sell/give away to those in need, not with Microsoft.
Edit1: would the downvoters care to explain themselves with some arguments? Or do people love overreacting to ideas they don't like via a button instead of formulating a though?
Edit2: @kstrauser below:
1) why would you throw away a working PC instead of giving it away for free? Who have you met who throws away working PCs in the trash when they no longer get the latest OS? There's old people still using Windows 7 PCs just because it works for them and it didn't break down. What makes you think they'll throw away working Windows 10 PCs in dumpsters now?
2) Why would you ship the PC in another country using fuel, when someone locally will pick it up for free to use it? Like I said, there's always a taker.
I see no arguments so far against my points just imaginary scenarios of super wasteful people who throw away good stuff randomly, but then not Microsoft nor anyone can stop them throwing Bugattis off cliffs if that's their jam.
Edit 3: @SECProto below:
I asked how many people you know who throw in dumpsters working Windows 10 PCs, and you went on a tangent answered something completely different, in bad faith I would say. Of course all computing tech eventually gets landfilled due to obsolescence, that's inevitable, but if you post an ad for a Windows 10 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it, if you post an ad for a Pentium 3 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it. There's no excuse to just throw working PCs in a landfill other than malice. If your society mass landfills PCs the moment $LATEST_SW doesn't run on them, instead of finding new owners, then your society is at fault.
But anyway, technology is so dense where I leave that you can’t give away some stuff. A 10 year old PC? Maybe. 15-20 years? No way, unless someone needs a specific part from it. There is zero demand otherwise for such a thing. There’s so much new tech that slightly older is nearly valueless locally.
> Edit: would the downvoters care to explain themselves with some arguments?
I'll bite. I know many many many people who had all the era's of PC you mentioned. None of them still have them. None of them sold them. They may have put them on the curb, or "recycled" them, or sent them to the landfill - I don't know and it doesn't impact the fact that I don't know anyone who has a single one of them still in use.
This is easy to confirm by doing some order of magnitude math on how many of these machines were made (many), and how many are still in use (very few).
Regarding the Windows 10 specific question: it is still supported and receives updates, so of course they aren't going to landfill yet. The question is what will happen in a year or so once they are no longer supported (most non-techy users wont be installing LTSC). Spoiler: the vast majority of them will be sent to landfill or "recycler", not sold and kept in use.
I’m not claiming I’d throw out a Windows 10 PC. I’d personally install Linux on it instead. But I can certainly imagine someone seeing nothing worth salvaging from a 10 year old PC and tossing it, and I can’t say they’re objectively wrong for doing it. Should they personally ship it to another country at some cost in fuel?
I think people are downvoting at your feigned incredulity at something not bizarrely “wrong” to a lot of people.
If you hit a "throttle limit" as you said in a sibling comment - I don't know what that is, but you should take it as a helpful suggestion to post less, not circumvent by editting responses into comments.
> I asked how many people you know who throw in dumpsters working Windows 10 PCs, and you went on a tangent answered something completely different, in bad faith I would say.
Regarding bad faith arguments, see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - assume someone is responding in good faith. It's a boring and antagonistic discussion topic.
Anyway, I was responding in good faith to your comment in context, not in isolation. You asked about working windows 10 PCs going to landfill, yes - in a thread where the context is Microsoft discontinuing windows 10 security updates later this year. So no, I agree, working windows 10 PCs probably don't go to the landfill right now - but this situation will change in a year or two, and that is what the whole discussion is about. This was a good faith read on your whole comment, because you talked about all the different generations of PCs, from MS DOS to current, not just windows 10.
If you want only my comment about Windows 10 PCs, read the last paragraph of my other response.
> if you post an ad for a Pentium 3 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it
This is not accurate. Best case, someone might take it, pull the hard drive to try to find something valuable, and dump the rest in a dumpster.
I have a half dozen older PCs (MS-DOS, windows 95, ME, XP, XP) in various boxes. You're welcome to them if you'd like - I would have to pay someone to take them off my hands. This isn't a localized thing, either - I've lived in a number of developed countries (north america, east asia) and the same would apply in all of them. I would say your situation is the unusual one.
> There's no excuse to just throw working PCs in a landfill other than malice
If your PC isn't getting security updates, it is not working. I wouldn't use it for anything online, ever. And if I want to play an old game, emulation is lower energy cost than an old PC.
I wish user accounts were still local only and did not back up to OneDrive, but I can understand that this is actually probably a valuable feature for 99% of windows users.
With people talking about ads and such, I'm reluctant to get a new computer with Windows 11.