Here's an idea. Use more efficient software.

My work lappie is now six years old, and my personal machine is coming up for 11. Both work fine, because I'm not using an OS which grows obscenely with every new major version.

I may be looking for alternatives to GTK 3 based applications soon though.

Exactly this.

Microsoft again is using gaslighting and manipulation to persuade businesses to buy better hardware, because they can't implement an operating system that is efficient.

It's only because they have billions and huge influence that nobody dares to question their propaganda.

Have you missed all the penguinistas boldly calling to install Linux on practically every Borkzilla article ?

It's a small, but rather vocal minority.

Microsoft exists to make money; everything else is either PR (aka lies) or a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

anon for obvious reasons.

>Microsoft exists to make money;

That's the irony !

Old machine too crap to run Windows11 Turbo Super Edition?

Use Microsoft Online for only $$$/month (payable for ever)

Special offer if all your users switch to Microsoft everything online

An easy fix to to buy a new laptop that will run Windows 11 and plan to buy another one in a couple of years to run Windows 12 ... but if this is a good fix then you might make more money by investing in Microsoft shares instead of buying a new laptop.

It is strange how the message doesn't seem to get through though..

Who wouldn't want a system that does what THEY tell it to, not what someone else does..

And yes, except for some increasingly rare use cases, it DOES work for everything you need.

e.g. the most common excuse is gaming: Steam/Proton is so much better these days. There is little/no difference in performance, and I am yet to find a game that doesn't work.

Desktop environment: KDE has matured in the last few years, you should try it out.

Full-disk encryption: It's trivially easy to set up these days.

A system that does what you tell it to, after you spend weeks of searching multiple support forums for anyone who encountered the problem of X distro linux not working with Y generic component (keyboard, mouse, joystick, printer, monitor etc.)

Then factor in the question every Linux user has to answer, do I risk installing the latest OS update patch and breaking something/everything, or do I skip it so productive work can continue and we just pray we don't get hacked because we don't have the latest security patch.

I'm not a Penguinista by vocation, I just get to use the stuff because for the work I do its the better platform. Realistically the only reason for using Windows is that "the company made me do it", its something that you put up with rather than choose willingly. Most embedded and hardware development toolsets are based on a customized version of Eclipse which, in a Windows environment, is invariably hosted on Cygwin. Its true that with newer versions of Windows we now have Microsoft scripting support via Powershell and native Linux support but we'd be very unwise to convert to this because the conversion is always one way and there's the perennial likelihood that you'll be left high and dry by a future Microsoft release. The easiest way around this mess is just to carry on doing what you've always been doing and maybe using a secondary computer for the Office stuff. (....another problem with Windows is that USB support is still a bit hit and miss which makes using some JTAG debuggers a crap shoot.)

I've also noticed that for most Office like tasks a Raspberry Pi seems to the job. Obviously it won't run Office itself -- most Microsoft products are system hogs (always have been (since the 80s), always will be) so you'd need too much system just for a "Hello World". But for routine stuff a Pi4 has more than adequate performance.

' because for the work I do its the better platform' +10 if I could for this statement. 20+ years in, that has always been my mantra!

Yeah, WTF is wrong with Windows USB driver support.

It doesn't support composite devices using more than one driver. You have to use a flaky 3rd party utility called Zadig to switch between modes of a composite device (if say, you have a DFU bootloader on your USB device or you have dual CDC/HID modes to communicate with it...)

Windows thinks that "one device = one device driver, preferably from the manufacturer" but they haven't quite got their heads round standard USB class drivers yet, never mind composite devices.

Really pisses me off when blows wants to reinstall the driver every time my mouse changes USB port..

There's one obvious solution.

"manipulation to persuade businesses to buy better hardware, because they can't implement an operating system that is efficient."

Another explanation is that new hardware means new Windows licences.

The two are far from mutually exclusive. In fact synergistic is probably nearer the mark.

"It's only because they have billions and huge influence that nobody dares to question their propaganda."

Yeah but, billions and a lot of influence go a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyy long way.

My personal machine is also about 11 years old, a trusty [1]i5-2500K based jobby.

Processing power hasn't really gotten all that much greater in the intervening years, what has significantly improved, though, is the efficiency of the chips.

Compare specs with a new-ish [2]i5-1135G7 and while there is a bit of an uptick in GHz, and there's double the threads supported, the TDP has dropped from 98W to 28W.

Combining that uplift in efficiency across my whole system and I wonder what power savings I achieve in upgrading, and how long that will take to pay for itself (somewhat more rapidly if I have to change energy tariff soon with the current price hikes!).

The only significant increase in performance is seen in graphics cards - I have an old Radeon 5770 which was a good one when I bought it, and still does a reasonable job on the games I can run (e.g. CS:GO)

Overall, there's nothing in my system that screams "upgrade me", but it's a bit annoying that the latest iterations of WinOS (and graphics card drivers) mean that I can't run any new games that I might be interested in.

Beyond limiting (artificially?) new software products/features to new OS versions, I see no reason that upgrading a reasonably specced machine from the last 10 years will increase most people's productivity (excepting those that hammer C/GPU cores in their work)

[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/52210/intel-core-i52500k-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html

[2] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/208658/intel-core-i51135g7-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html

I've just upgraded from an Ivy Bridge i7-3770 to a Castle Peak Threadripper Pro 3945WX.

My new computer has 128GB RAM with the ability to upgrade to 512GB, whereas my old one was maxxed out at 32GB. That was the main reason for upgrading.

It also has 10GB LAN, though right now everything else on the network is 1GB so obviously I don't see any benefit from that.

The new CPU is about 10x faster, though most of the time, the 3770 was fast enough, and I don't notice the difference in speed. Both are basically instant. There are however some tasks where the difference in speed is very noticeable.

Seems like you're at a different point on the price curve than me :) The Threadripper is ~£1k for the CPU alone. I aim a bit lower down the curve before it starts to spike upwards - the i5-1135G7 is probably around the £200 mark, similar to what I paid for the i5-2500K IIRC

Something launched in 2012 would have served perfectly fine for most.

When you see a AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX Thinkstation Listed for $18,000 that is totally out of budget for a lot of people. AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 64-Core / 128-Threads 3995WX 4.20GHz (Socket WRX8) Processor - Retail is still £4,999.99*

My old £900 Nvidia 850m i7-4710MQ laptop is still working perfectly fine and apart from Windows now being a bit slower. I might still an SSD in it or Wifi6 card but apart from that...

I see no point upgrading so I can then run Windows 11.

Wow... You've got a 1GB LAN? Most people are limited to 1Gb.

I wonder what power savings I achieve in upgrading, and how long that will take to pay for itself

The original fit computers at work (interactives, 17 years ago) were Pentiums with 7k2 3½" SATA boot discs, 2x 10k SCSI 320 data drives (in RAID 0 for heaven's sake) and Matrox dual-head graphics. Only 1GB RAM in most of them, some with 2GB. WinXP. Totally overkill to be honest, and when I started here we settled on Core 2 Duo replacements for dead machines (keep the case and PSU) with 2x 2½" SATA drives and some low-end passively cooled graphics card. The idle power consumption came down from about 160W to about 80W, but with electricity prices at the time somewhere around 7p/kWh that amounted to a saving of less than 4½p per working day (7½ hours) so payback was basically, never (worked it out to something like 15 years IIRC).

More recently we have been using AMD A8 with a single SSD and onboard graphics. Idle consumption is lower again, around 35W from memory, and while electricity is more expensive and (the last batch of) components cheaper, payback is still probably beyond the expected life of the machines.

And now, of course, AMD has ditched the Bulldozer-based line, so they really don't have any "cheap but good enough" processors and neither does Intel, so component prices when we next buy replacement stock will be much higher.

Not happy.

M.

Yep. I dropped Windows 10 this year, after dithering for a couple of years. With Windows 11 not being compatible with my Ryzen 1700 (8 cores, 32GB RAM, 3 SSDs). Even though it is much more capable than my work laptop (4 cores, 8GB RAM, 1SSD), it is insufficient for Windows 11, so I chucked Windows in the proverbial bin and stuck Linux on it.

It runs really nicely, it takes about 8 seconds to boot and another 3 to load the desktop after I have entered my password. Much better than Windows managed on the same hardware.

The only reason I am currently thinking about a new PC are the spiralling electricity prices - they have shot up from ~24c/kWh to over 34c/kWh since July. A more economical PC would be very welcome, but in performance terms, what I have is more than good enough for the next several years.

I'm using a somewhat elderly (> 5 y.o.) work supplied laptop with RHEL 8.4 on it. It has 'only' 8GB of memory.

Up until a short while ago, it coped with standard office type applications fine. But then the company switched it's IM to Slack, and increased the use of conferencing using Webex (and switched to a flatpak version of firefox in one of the system updates). Now, 8GB is too little memory, and during my morning conference call, it starts paging.

I would be quite happy with a memory upgrade (and an SSD, if they could stretch that far - about £120 max. at the prices I would pay but cheaper for them), but when they allow it (device refreshes are currently on hold), I will have to have a new system.

But this could be almost completely avoided with more memory efficient software. I would be quite happy keeping my current laptop, even if it is more clunky and not as sleek as the current offerings.

My personal laptop running Ubuntu, several years older still, with 8GB of memory and an SSD works fine for what I need it for.

Use more efficient software.

GOOD! JOB! (nice way to lead off the comments)

I might add that Micros~1 should WRITE MORE EFFICIENT SOFTWARE

Oh, the irony of it all...

getting full use out of your hardware is probably more eco friendly than tossing it for something that can run Windows II, regardless of whether or not the old one gets recycled - in the place this stuff is usually made, they are apparently not too concerned with polluting their environment - seen photos of Beijing air quality? And none of these hardware makers, Micros~1 included, would be very happy if China were to implement the kinds of air quality standards (for example) that we have in the places that CONSUME the things they make, for it would increase their costs SIGNIFICANTLY. So, indirectly, they POLLUTE *OVER* *THERE* instead, then attend conferences to show how much they *CARE* about the environment...

(and they could AT LEAST do something practical, instead, that does NOT require replacing perfectly good equipment JUST to run their BLOATWARE)

Replace my company Mondeo with a Ferrari. Well it would help me go faster - yes please. Try to achieve that in London, the UK or anywhere with a 70mph type limit. You just reduced the productivity of the company by having to invest in something that does more than required to do the job. In many cases improving the broadband connection will do far more to enhance the WFH experience.

Squeezing more value from your assets is what you have to do in a competitive world. Of course if you have cornered a little monopoly in corporate operating systems then that doesn't apply. You can concentrate on producing self-serving numbers that would fail you on Statistics 101.

In many cases improving the broadband connection will do far more to enhance the WFH experience.

Yes. Yes, please! (As long as the employer and/or client will pay.)

Wait, problem: Their respective VPNs also need an upgrade (client's especially; my current connection is faster than it can handle).

As for the hardware: One laptop is 3.5 years old and running fine, only slowing down when hit by the weekly McAfee scan. I might as well take vacation on Tuesdays. (I keep forgetting to leave it running Monday nights, but even then the scan still continues until almost noon.) The other one is newer but I'm not the first user and it's part tablet so it's limited.

I've got a 6 year old laptop decided was getting too slow so I got myself an 8 core monster and then put an SSD in the old one. I could easily go back to it.

Well, that would be fine if you run Linux on it.

Biggest speed boost for just about any PC is replace spinning disk with SSD. No need to replace the whole thing. Numerous older PCs reported as too slow just had an SSD chucked in them and now fly.

Apart from gaming and some niche use cases like rendering or CAD any PC with a CPU from the last decade and sensible amount of RAM should do the job (unless you want to upgrade to Win11 of course) if you install an SSD.

I found springing for an NVMe boot drive made even more difference than the SATA SSD I used on the previous box. NVMe smokes on IO rates. :)

And just about every box I had for the past decade had a slot, sitting unused because I didn't know any better. :(

This and replacing the M2 Wifi card with a newer Wifi 6 card boosted speeds up too.

I do wonder whether there is a case for the old large grey box that can be VNCed to for doing serious grunt work. I've got a dual GPU box which does Wake on Lan that I use for doing AI and other massively computational bits and pieces which I tend to do on sunny days so the PV takes the weight. Its not the sort of thing you want in an office as it gets quite noisy when its running hot but coming from pre PC days I can easily see this as being the sort of thing to be shared around so long as you can keep the miners off it.

"More than a third of employees who received new devices since the onset of COVID-19 reported a resulting increase in their productivity,"

So 2/3 didn't?

'"The report claims 16 per cent of employees (3,027 UK staffers were surveyed) reckon a new device "would increase their motivation." "

1 in 6 reckon so?

This is supposed to be an argument for refresh? As reported, Microsoft is giving companies an argument for delay!

I'm not against updating, having somehow managed that early in the year. (Everything was available for maybe a month?) But it was for quadrupling the memory, etc., not for Windows 11.

72.45% of statistics are made up on the spot!

That was only 18 months ago ... OK: the kit was probably not new then.

If the employee is doing the same job then why should their PC/laptop need to be replaced with something more powerful ?

My PC is 9 years old and my laptop 5 years old, both still run well. One runs Debian the other Linux Mint.

my 14 year old spare workstation went titsup recently, had to get new motherboard+cpu+ram+power supply (had a case ready to go though). Same hard drive, though (running FreeBSD). Booted immediately like nothing had happened.

"they expect to be given efficient devices, not something that just about gets the job done, or slows them down as a result.""

So delete PowerPoint.

Then Teams...

Then Windoze?

You need to change your icon. That is not a joke.

Or get their bosses to delete Excel?

Not that I am a cynic at all but clearly this is driven as an excuse to drive sales for new devices that will be supported by Windows 11 (apologies for pointing out the bleeding obvious).

I've upgraded a handful of friends older devices this last couple of years simply by dropping in an SSD. Even a 2.5" SATA SSD is an order of magnitude faster than spinning rust. Occasionally a bit of extra RAM to help things along and they are pretty much as snappy as a new machine.

^ This.

My old laptop was starting to flag a little, not because it is getting slower but because our demands of it were growing. 1TB SSD from conventional drive and upgrade memory to 32GB completely transformed it.

Easily added another 5 years of useful life.

The wife's 5 year old Windows 10 laptop had been getting slower and slower over recent months. A cynic may put that down to Microsoft deliberately providing bloated updates with exactly that result in mind. However, having now got rid of Windows 10 and installing Linux Mint on it, the laptop now runs like greased lightening. No Windows 11 for us thank you.

It's enough to make one suspect that WinD'ohs has a plan to sell SaaS already installed on Devices as a Service in the future, and are testing the water.

Yep, put a cheap £40 SSD into an 11 year old iMac, gave it to my sister-in-law early last year and she's still happily tapping along on it!

" two-thirds of employees with a company laptop were still using the same kit they had at the start of the pandemic. That just won't do. "

We must keep the wheels of the consumer economy profligacy turning. It'll be fine as long as we paint it all green.

But business is so much more different than the start of the pandemic.

Adding those new letters to the alphabet, and Global Britain switching back to L.S.D. and feet/furlongs/leagues is going to need a lot more processing power

"nearly nine out of 10 employees would actually take a cut in pay if they could choose their own work device."

What with ransomware and the like this seems a reasonable prediction. Was that what was meant?

Nobody in their right mind would take a pay cut to chose a device they have to use for work and work alone. It will be locked down or damn well should be as it's a work device. Like I'm going to choose a monster gaming rig that I can't install games on? Not that I game much anyway. It's the most ridiculous thing that Microsoft have said and that's saying something with everything else being truly ridiculous.

I agree with you. I don't know anyone who would do that, unless the computer was so broken they couldn't do their job and they thought they'd be fired for it. I'd like to see the survey that gave us that statistic. The other numbers reported I can accept; Microsoft's just drawing conclusions from it that I wouldn't draw. That is the only number I flatly don't believe is real.

that nearly nine out of 10 employees would actually take a cut in pay if they could choose their own work device.

Haha of course. It's like asking workers to partially buy tools for the employer, because poor employer (who likely has to avoid paying taxes, because they can't afford them either) need support of those wealthy workers. Why don't those pesky workers pay their salaries themselves as well?