Electronic waste and Windows 11 requirements

[Petri-X]

Hey,

When looking for the requirements to get Win11 (not for mine Coffee Lake) I started to wonder how much electronic waste Microsoft generate by launching Win11. Perhaps MS already knows that, as by running the PC Health App the statics become visible to them or they just have that information already from elsewhere. Of course it could always be so, that they have seen that this does not impact so many device owners and not so much waste will be generated. I'm just exception on big picture

Neither I'm not sure did they read the newspapers either? As there is still global lack with chips, and other components. We could ask, was it really good timing to ask people to put well working hardware into bin. The prices are always too high when there are more buyers than offers.

Yes, we always can choose to stay on Win10 and earlier Windows, or stay/move to other OS platforms. At the end, this is up to all of us, if we believe that step to Win11 is a good choice for: wallet/planet/people/companies. But we will see how people are reacting to this.

Stay safe !

[#2]

@Petri-X 

Yes, but believe me Windows11 is the safest system than all previous releases.
And the requirements are the result of analysis and testing - because older computers crashed therefore were excluded. The Insider Program has confirmed this.
You are definitely right
Greetings 

Update on Windows 11 minimum system requirements and the PC Health Check app | Windows Insider Blog

Windows Update to leverage renewable energy,! Testing is already underway. - Microsoft Community Hub

[#3]

@A1-A1 

Yes, unsupported systems crashed "52% more" according to Microsoft. Given that they say Win11 supported systems are "99.8% crash-free", the 52% figure actually means that unsupported systems are about 99.7% crash-free. What a huge difference which totally justifies encouraging users to dump all of their 4+ year old hardware, right?

[#4]

Security is also a factor that decided in this matter - it should be remembered that this is a decision with the active participation of Microsoft partners.
Best regards

[#5]

There are many "unsupported" CPUs that have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot capabilities. VBS is clearly not ready to be rolled out en masse given the performance issues that have been seen so far, particular in GPU-heavy applicaitons, so this shouldn't really be the reason to create such a huge amount of e-waste either.

I trust the "Microsoft partners" about as much as I trust MS themselves - they're all focused on profit, and Microsoft's recent commitment to "zero waste" by 2030 is completely hollow if they're essentially making users dump their perfectly good devices under the guise of "security".

[#6]

No doubt, the security is high critical on this, but is this really the only way to better security? And do we really believe after this there are no security incidents anymore?

We should also keep in our mind, that "Microsoft Partners" could be more privileged than regular citizen. This is something we often forget. And if the proposal like this has went through of them without any complains, then we could ask: why nobody though about the waste what we currently are generating more and more.

One wish I have had long time is, all devices/toys must have is "Best Before Day". So it would be clear for everybody who buy new device, how long time the device/toy would get security fixes and would be useful. Good thing on that is, then it would be clear to all time time line and that could (should) lead manufactories to build better devices.

[#7]

Of course you are right!

[#8]

That's alright; they can send all those now-unsupported machines my way, and I'll install Linux on them. *PLENTY* of extra years worth of usage on them then.

[#9]

@Petri-XYou brought a good point.

Windows 11 might be the safest OS on the planet. However this is not the point in my opinion.

I have a HP Zbook G6 running windows 10. It works flawlessly. I installed windows 11 and also run without any issues for about a year. All of a sudden I couldn't install a security update. It turned out that I had to go back to windows 10 (after a two weeks discussion with HP).

After this event, I started thinking on the point you raised. It is really a devious approach from both Microsoft and HP.

Especially during times where we need to decarbonise our economies, Microsoft and computer makers comes and drop this bomb on us.

[#10]

Sounds very much like anti-trust cartel activity between Microsoft and the computer manufacturers, doesn't it?

But companies like Apple, Microsoft, etc shouldn't be allowed to get away with claims of being "Green" when their engineering decisions are designed to create MORE e-waste and the throw-away culture. Realistically they are completely free to implement whatever business model they want, but they should be FORBIDDEN from waving the "Green" flag when their business models undermine that, and they should be forbidden from blocking any efforts to promote alternatives (and enforced bundling of one OS to the exclusion of all others is part of that).

[#11]

@Jelabarre59 

The term "cartel" is perhaps a bit too strong word for this. At least I haven't never heard about such thoughts/rumors. That should requires more investigations how the big managers are exchanging the ideas. But as I wrote, only Microsoft knows how much waste they are causing by this decision. Recently they excluded also XEON chips from W11, but that might be rarely scenarios. Unfortunately they most likely would not publishing this.

Still, at the end it is us, consumers, who could make difference as well. If we are not jumping every time when puppet master (marketing people) are asking us to go buy the latest and greatest. One good thing what EU seems to bring on the manufactories, they are asking companies to support repairing in much easier than last years.