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Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

zdnet.com

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#11
post #3

windows 10 will be here at least for another 4 years, by that point those workstations will likely be upgraded

Yep, most desktops nowadays are on 4 year upgrade cycles and laptops are three years. Win11's successor will be along not long after that.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#12
What enterprise laptop/desktop (Think* for Lenovo, Dell Precision/XPS/Latitude, HP Pro* and Elite*) hasn’t been sold with a TPM in the last five years? I know Intel has been shipping them standard since Sandy Bridge or so. I’m 90% sure my X220 has one.

I think the bigger problem might be the CPU compatibility list, but that isn’t being enforced to my knowledge.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#14
post #12

What enterprise laptop/desktop (Think* for Lenovo, Dell Precision/XPS/Latitude, HP Pro* and Elite*) hasn’t been sold with a TPM in the last five years? I know Intel has been shipping them standard since Sandy Bridge or so. I’m 90% sure my X220 has one. I think the bigger problem might be the CPU compatibility list, but that isn’t being enforced to my knowledge.

Lots, if not most, big corporations have desktops still.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#15

I saw "Red Hat" on the login screen of a retail cash register a few years ago. If Ubuntu is ready and able to be installed on old workstations with Win 10 that are otherwise about to lose security updates, that could be millions of dollars cheaper than replacing 10,000+ Dells just to get Win 11. And there are still enterprises around that financially reward bean counters that successfully cut costs to increase profit…

I think this idea is kind of nuts. Even if there is a Linux distro with 1:1 feature parity with Windows for a particular business application--which I don't think is a given--there are still massive hurdles:

- The cost of retraining users

- The cost of evaluating whether, for each use case, the Linux distro has feature parity

- The cost of transitioning each old PC

- The dissatisfaction among the employee base about having to re-learn a system, even if the necessary features are there

- The fact that most business with 10k+ users are going to have business-specific apps that barely run on Windows 10, with no equivalent on Linux

- The risk to the decision-makers if it doesn't pan out -- it's the opposite of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM"

- The fact that all of the back-end infrastructure--active directory domains, security, etc--is going to have to be transitioned too.

- The likely costs to the business itself in terms of lost opportunities, errors, and so on while the transition occurs.

The hardware itself is relatively cheap compared to the cost and logistics of getting that hardware set up and training users. My guess is that basically every business with that quantity of users would choose to just buy new hardware and keep their existing infrastructure and training over the alternative.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#17
> Another problem for enterprises, assuming they want to upgrade to Windows 11, is that Microsoft's minimum hardware requirements also apply to virtual machine platforms such as Microsoft HyperV, VMware and Oracle VM Virtual Box.

Are VMs that prevalent? I use them all the time, but I always assumed that was because I'm a weird nerd.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#18
post #3

windows 10 will be here at least for another 4 years, by that point those workstations will likely be upgraded

Do we still need to upgrade every x years, in my opinion we've reached quite a plateau. E.g. my 4 year old phone is still fast enough. Mandating an upgrade by obsoleting the OS is going to add to our environmental disaster, the newest IPCC report says probably +1.5 C more by 2040 at current trajectories. I wish influential environmentalists would start shaming Microsoft.

I'd argue that on the desktop, we reached that plateau years ago. I'm not doing anything on my computer that I couldn't have done on a computer ten years ago.

Which isn't to say that modern apps and websites would run well on ten-year-old hardware—but there are equivalent apps and websites that would have run fine. In other words, the only thing you're getting with new hardware software bloat...

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#19
post #15

I saw "Red Hat" on the login screen of a retail cash register a few years ago. If Ubuntu is ready and able to be installed on old workstations with Win 10 that are otherwise about to lose security updates, that could be millions of dollars cheaper than replacing 10,000+ Dells just to get Win 11. And there are still enterprises around that financially reward bean counters that successfully cut costs to increase profit…

I think this idea is kind of nuts. Even if there is a Linux distro with 1:1 feature parity with Windows for a particular business application--which I don't think is a given--there are still massive hurdles: - The cost of retraining users - The cost of evaluating whether, for each use case, the Linux distro has feature parity - The cost of transitioning each old PC - The dissatisfaction among the employee base about…

One way to look at it though is how easily many consumers are migrating to Chromebooks from Windows PCs (Chromebooks sales have increased over 600% during the pandemic). Since so much can be done in a web browser now, the migration isn't too hard for a considerable number of users. I think the strongest point on your list is the security migration. Hardened Linux has become a preferred OS for militaries and intelligence agencies, but there certainly is a great deal of training and certification involved with setting up SELinux, AppArmor, etc.

Re: Windows 11: Half of enterprise workstations don't meet the system requirements

#20
post #12

What enterprise laptop/desktop (Think* for Lenovo, Dell Precision/XPS/Latitude, HP Pro* and Elite*) hasn’t been sold with a TPM in the last five years? I know Intel has been shipping them standard since Sandy Bridge or so. I’m 90% sure my X220 has one. I think the bigger problem might be the CPU compatibility list, but that isn’t being enforced to my knowledge.

The cpu limitations are enforced indirectly. For one you can only clean install and then cannot receive updates.
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