Posted on 06/30/2021 9:31:12 AM PDT by upchuck
The official announcement of Windows 11 last month brought both excitement and confusion for enthusiasts. A brand-new Windows operating system only comes around every few years, but Microsoft’s hardware requirements left many scratching their heads. Chief among them is the instance on mandatory TPM 2.0 modules and AMD Ryzen 2000 or 7th generation Intel Core (and newer) processors. The processor cutoff was particularly puzzling, considering that AMD’s first-generation Ryzen 1000 processors came out in 2017, which is not that old in the grand scheme of things. For example, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 1800X is still a perfectly acceptable processor for everyday productivity tasks.
After hearing the outcry from the PC community, Microsoft posted a new blog today detailing a rethink of its minimum system requirements. “As we release to Windows Insiders and partner with our OEMs, we will test to identify devices running on Intel 7th generation and AMD Zen 1 that may meet our principles,” wrote the Windows Team. “We’re committed to sharing updates with you on the results of our testing over time, as well as sharing additional technical blogs.”
The fact that Microsoft is looking into these older processors is promising, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll meet its performance standards for Windows 11.
(Excerpt) Read more at hothardware.com ...
They’ll revamp the requirements to quiet down the complaints, then revert back to the more stringent hardware requirements at a late time.
As an IT security professional, I can’t begin to tell you the headaches caused by legacy hardware. While their intentions are lauded by the security communities, they’re a bit tone deaf to the current state of the semiconductor market.
If you value data security, you understand why this is a good thing. Otherwise, I expect FUD from most folks.
I leave my Windows 10 PC on 24/7 and there haven’t been any notifications of an update to Win11. To me that’s a good thing.
What is it about an operating system that requires more and more processing power?
I can understand programs such as Adobe Premier or Photoshop, and of course the myriad of video games, that require more and more processing power, but an OS should be a minimalist gatekeeper filing system that should in this day and age be processor and memory agnostic for the most part.
[[what happens when Microsoft gives its blessing to a rootkit?
That’s what happened a few months ago and was just now discovered thanks to G DATA Software security analyst Karsten Hahn. Initially, the company received a false-positive alert from a driver that was signed by Microsoft. After a lot of investigation into the matter, it turns out that the positive was valid. A driver signed by Microsoft was redirecting traffic bound for hundreds of IP addresses to a server in China]]
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3972232/posts
Windows Ping heads up!
I guess my 8088 just won’t do...................
Many enterprises do not upgrade OSes until EOL. The switchover time is a larger part of the reason than the hardware cost alone. Also, Microsoft products in general require a bit more prudence in implementation. A lot of folks like to wait for at least one service pack or major patch release before jumping in at the enterprise level.
John McAfee @officialmcafee
Founder of McAfee Anti-virus
14K Following - 1.1M Followers
· Jun 3
In my last tweet I explained the virtual impossibility of identifying backdoors or other malicious code developed by a foreign agent in the guise of a software engineer.
I will now explain the process of embedding these agents into targeted companies.
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1400482858741948424
Bloatware.
Hopefully they don’t try forcing that upgrade like they did with 10. I left my machine on a few days while my fea software was running a simulation. I came back and windows 10 had installled and wiped out all the engineering software. Luckily I have backups and rolled back that upgrade. But what a pain.
It’s coming at the end of the year as the next annual update.
It needs far more powerful hardware because of the bloat and spyware it’s forcing on people.
Windows update check told me my 8 year dell laptop would not run Windows 11.
Guess what downloaded on its own 2 days later, Windoes 11. I let it install, runs fine.
I am in the industry and I can say the personal computers do not need TPM 2.0 ready boards for any appreciable security at home.
If businesses want it, they already buy systems with such capability.
It’s overkill for any home user. If a business has issues with their corporate tools allowing inappropriate software downloads, it’s not a problem with the use of TPM 1.x or before. It’s a problem with their whole environmental setup.
It’s not really the power of the processor that’s the problem. Instead, it’s the security protocols it supports.
Among other things, Microsoft wants to stop supporting the 16-bit bios that is used in aging legacy systems. So, this new OS is only going to support UEFI. That seems to be a done deal and that alone is going to eliminate quite a few processors/chipsets that probably have more than enough computing power to run the OS, which isn’t going to be architecturally dissimilar to WIN10.
At some point, they also want to make TPM the standard. But, if they do that, there are going to be a TREMENDOUS number of PCs that can’t be supported including devices that Microsoft sold themselves as recently as a couple years ago. So, that likely won’t be a final system requirement.
I get Microsoft’s concern. They’re starting to slowly lose market share to Apple and one of the reasons that drives people to the Apple ecosystem is security. Now that Apple has migrated to their own silicon, their security has only become stronger whereas WIN10 is a mess. UEFI and TPM would help Microsoft in this regard...minimally.
"As an IT security professional, I can’t begin to tell you the headaches caused by legacy hardware. While their intentions are lauded by the security communities, they’re a bit tone deaf to the current state of the semiconductor market.Definitely bears repeating, given the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in *ALL* processor families. Kernel fixes in all OS, including all Linux distros, had to compromise performance for security to address these exploitable shortcomings."If you value data security, you understand why this is a good thing. Otherwise, I expect FUD from most folks."
bkmk
There are two benefits to TPM that some home users might want; (easier) full disk encryption and Windows Hello IR.
Just do it. Within a week you will wish you had done it a long time ago.
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