FantasyAcquiesce Posted July 9, 2024 Posted July 9, 2024 I'm just praying for the day unofficial patches are enough for Windows 7 to last. It's so stupid. Microsoft is making perfectly good hardware over 15+ years old artificially useless. Even a Pentium 4 still has endless use when used correctly. None of us should be forced to fork over 600 USD for a basic computer.
mshultz Posted July 9, 2024 Posted July 9, 2024 8 hours ago, FantasyAcquiesce said: I'm just praying for the day unofficial patches are enough for Windows 7 to last. It's so stupid. Microsoft is making perfectly good hardware over 15+ years old artificially useless. Even a Pentium 4 still has endless use when used correctly. None of us should be forced to fork over 600 USD for a basic computer. I agree. Going from mechanical hard drives to SSDs made a big difference in my performance, as did going from DSL to fiber optic internet. But in terms of working with Microsoft Office programs, there is no noticeable difference from the Intel 3770S (65w) CPU with NVIDIA GeForce 210 I once had to the Intel 7700 (65w) and NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 I am currently using. When I went from a Skylake CPU to a Kaby Lake CPU, Windows 8.1 complained that it did not support this CPU. Microsoft is now complaining that I can't go to Windows 11, as it does not support it either. My current motherboard is TPM 2.0 compliant, too. Current hardware is robust; easily designed to last 10 years. There is no reason to require new hardware.
66cats Posted July 9, 2024 Posted July 9, 2024 8 hours ago, FantasyAcquiesce said: Microsoft is making perfectly good hardware over 15+ years old artificially useless. The alternative is to simply ignore new instructions, available on more recent CPUs.
cc333 Posted July 27, 2024 Posted July 27, 2024 On 7/9/2024 at 5:41 AM, 66cats said: The alternative is to simply ignore new instructions, available on more recent CPUs. Yes, but consider the late 90s and 2000s, where new CPUs showed up regularly with all kinds of fancy new instructions. MS took advantage of many of these new instructions, and, yet, they were simultaneously able to retain compatibility with older CPUs that lacked the new instructions. What is so different between then and now? The fundamentals of how the x86 architecture works haven't changed that much, have they? I think that dumping compatibility with 2-4 year old hardware "for security reasons" is just an excuse to be lazy. They can absolutely make use of the new stuff and still retain compatibility with most of the old. They did that for years and it worked well enough. Yes, it would be unrealistic to maintain full compatibility with, say, the i386, or anything else that can't run at least 1 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, but they could certainly keep, at a minimum, higher-end Core2 Duos and all 1st gen Core i stuff (Nehalem and Westmere, etc). c
66cats Posted July 27, 2024 Posted July 27, 2024 16 hours ago, cc333 said: MS took advantage of many of these new instructions, and, yet, they were simultaneously able to retain compatibility with older CPUs that lacked the new instructions. Windows 3.1 didn't run on 8088, 95 wanted a 386, 98 wanted a 486, XP wouldn't install on a 486, etc., no one thought it unreasonable. When MS set the bar too low for Vista, that's when everyone complained. If we don't insist on official support, sticking 11 on older/unsupported HW is as simple as checking a couple of boxes in Rufus. 16 hours ago, cc333 said: dumping compatibility with 2-4 year old hardware 11 officially supports Coffee Lake (2017). 16 hours ago, cc333 said: an excuse to be lazy Pouring time/money in outdated HW support is unlikely to result in higher profits. 17 hours ago, cc333 said: keep, at a minimum, higher-end Core2 Duos and all 1st gen Core i stuff (Nehalem and Westmere, etc). C2Ds came out in 2006, currently in the hands of a few labs/businesses (gear that doesn't have drivers/software for newer OSes, so XP) & hobbyists (who got C2Ds specifically to run XP on "period correct" HW). 11 on C2D is doable (maybe not 24H2), though can't see anyone doing it out of necessity.
cc333 Posted July 28, 2024 Posted July 28, 2024 @66catsAll very good points. I'm not opposed to "reasonable" cuts to old hardware support, if doing so would guarantee that the OS will run reliably and have reasonable performance, even when running on the minimum supported configuration (95 on a 486, which I ran exactly once, is painfully slow even by late 90s-early 2000s standards, but usable once fully booted; I wouldn't want to try 98 or XP on a 486, though (XP can now be forced to run on 486, apparently, but it's almost useless for anything other than a proof of concept), especially with all the IE integration). It's the lack of support for otherwise perfectly fine hardware on account of a relatively minor technicality that comes across as kind of irksome. I didn't realize that Coffee Lake (8th gen) was from 2017 for some reason, so that helps somewhat. But what about 6th and 7th gen? They're not much older (2015 and 2016, respectively), are very similar architecturally to Coffee Lake, and 11 runs perfectly fine on them, yet both are officially unsupported and Windows refuses to install without workarounds. c
mshultz Posted July 28, 2024 Posted July 28, 2024 4 hours ago, cc333 said: @66catsAll very good points. I'm not opposed to "reasonable" cuts to old hardware support, if doing so would guarantee that the OS will run reliably and have reasonable performance, even when running on the minimum supported configuration (95 on a 486, which I ran exactly once, is painfully slow even by late 90s-early 2000s standards, but usable once fully booted; I wouldn't want to try 98 or XP on a 486, though (XP can now be forced to run on 486, apparently, but it's almost useless for anything other than a proof of concept), especially with all the IE integration). It's the lack of support for otherwise perfectly fine hardware on account of a relatively minor technicality that comes across as kind of irksome. I didn't realize that Coffee Lake (8th gen) was from 2017 for some reason, so that helps somewhat. But what about 6th and 7th gen? They're not much older (2015 and 2016, respectively), are very similar architecturally to Coffee Lake, and 11 runs perfectly fine on them, yet both are officially unsupported and Windows refuses to install without workarounds. c My first computer, a 486/33 with 16mb memory, was a speed demon compared to the 8088s at the local community college. I think I was still running the same setup when I installed NT4 & Win 95 (dual boot). The speed improvements have slowed to a crawl since those early days. It is not unreasonable, in my humble opinion, to expect operating systems to support 10 year old hardware.
halohalo Posted July 29, 2024 Posted July 29, 2024 On 7/28/2024 at 3:45 PM, cc333 said: @66cats I didn't realize that Coffee Lake (8th gen) was from 2017 for some reason, so that helps somewhat. But what about 6th and 7th gen? They're not much older (2015 and 2016, respectively), are very similar architecturally to Coffee Lake, and 11 runs perfectly fine on them, yet both are officially unsupported and Windows refuses to install without workarounds. Intel no longer fixes security vulnerabilities for 6th gen processor graphics. Besides, Intel dropped support for 7th gen processor graphics at March. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005733/graphics.html
FantasyAcquiesce Posted August 10, 2024 Posted August 10, 2024 (edited) On 7/27/2024 at 2:11 PM, 66cats said: Windows 3.1 didn't run on 8088, 95 wanted a 386, 98 wanted a 486, XP wouldn't install on a 486, etc., no one thought it unreasonable. When MS set the bar too low for Vista, that's when everyone complained. If we don't insist on official support, sticking 11 on older/unsupported HW is as simple as checking a couple of boxes in Rufus. Actually, Windows XP held widespread complaints of being bloated during its first release. At the time, most PCs had like 32 or 64MB of ram. To put it in context, using even Windows Millennium addition was a solid choice compared to XP because ME held stronger backwards compatibility and did not consume a ton of ram on idle. You apparently can't run photoshop 9 on Windows XP with 256MB of ram, but will fare just fine on ME. The problem is we've reached a point where we don't need redundant features. Many of us only need to book-keep, surf the web, do some office work, maybe view images and edit a few photos, and view videos offline- all of this can still be done on an intel pentium 4 to this very day. And for Microsoft, they simply could have just continued selling their older versions of Windows while simply providing security patches. They've made plenty of money from the US Military for extra updates. Edited August 10, 2024 by FantasyAcquiesce
UCyborg Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 I don't have the patience to use single-core CPU computer in this age. I remember using it in the days of simpler WWW, it wasn't anything to be thrilled about. 1
mshultz Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 1 hour ago, UCyborg said: I don't have the patience to use single-core CPU computer in this age. I remember using it in the days of simpler WWW, it wasn't anything to be thrilled about. I think I was using NT4 when I got my first dual processor board, an Abit BP6. There was a marked improvement in performance. Whenever a stalled process brought one CPU to a halt, the other CPU continued to perform. I continued to buy dual CPU motherboards until dual core CPUs became available.
UCyborg Posted August 23, 2024 Posted August 23, 2024 We didn't have any such fancy multi-CPU computer at home back then. I heard about such boards at some point in the context of servers. One CPU just jumps from one task to another, multiple CPUs / cores allow true parallelism. You do get whole lot for money these days compared to earlier days. The computer I'm typing from was actually just about 500€ in 2009, excluding the dedicated graphics, which I bought later, integrated GPU could be used in the meantime. Besides another GPU swap 5 years later, majority of other investments were just expanded storage. Probably the slowest thing on Win10 is cold boot, then loading user session. Quite a contrast to earlier versions. Fast storage makes incredible job of hiding it. I don't mind slower disks, got spoiled by storage capacity and just didn't get the urge to replace spinning disks with solid state disks, I realize latter are much more economical today than they used to be.
D.Draker Posted August 24, 2024 Posted August 24, 2024 On 8/15/2024 at 4:27 AM, UCyborg said: I don't have the patience to use single-core CPU computer in this age. I remember using it in the days of simpler WWW, it wasn't anything to be thrilled about. I don't have the patience to use quad CPU computer in this age. I remember using it in the days of simpler WWW (2006-08), it wasn't anything to be thrilled about. I was in shock how poorly the over-popularised Q6600 was performing at the age when all games where optimised for two cores at most (2007-10), I was in shock when I tried to install the 2015 version of 10 on that PC, it took a day! The PC was prepared for a friend, trust me or not, I never loaded Win10 to even have a peek. 2
UCyborg Posted August 28, 2024 Posted August 28, 2024 I wasn't thinking much in terms of cores back then when I still used that single core computer. But I guess I wanted that one core to be faster than it was, hence resorting to overclocking. Quad core is still adequate for me these days, just I don't do much demanding stuff. Onto another subject, WIn10 (version 1809), I don't recall exactly how long it took to install on the slowest computer I have (year 2014, 1,35 GHz dual-core APU, 5400 RPM HDD). Heck, I really don't remember exact time length of any Windows install I did, but I'd recall if any took much over 1 hour, so that laptop wasn't an edge case. Not sure about usability after install if it took too long to even get there.
D.Draker Posted August 28, 2024 Posted August 28, 2024 11 hours ago, UCyborg said: I wasn't thinking much in terms of cores back then when I still used that single core computer. But I guess I wanted that one core to be faster than it was, hence resorting to overclocking. Quad core is still adequate for me these days, just I don't do much demanding stuff. Old quads have a very low speed FSB (front bus, not the KGB), one can overclock them to hell, it won't help gaming on Win10. Win10 itself eats up the whole bandwith with numerous processes, 1
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now