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Gede: Here is something I don't understand: if Intel won't support Windows 7 after a certain date, wouldn't that create a market opportunity for AMD? Why are they following Intel in a similar time frame? Did the three companies have a meeting to discuss this matter or something?
The question here is why support legacy software, when the new one is going to be updated to take more advantage of newer hardware? You just can't ask for new blazing fast hardware, and then ask for it to support the not on sale Windows 7, when Windows 10 will probably make better use of the hardware.
Post edited January 16, 2016 by PookaMustard
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Starkrun: this is FUD... stop tracking it all over... I have a 200 large catalog and I've tested it.. every game that worked in 7 works in 10...

Those with issues (older adventure some rare dos titles) were even more stable. Hell some ran better due to memory and process management improvements in 10.

GOG doesn't take this lightly or sitting down, but there are very certain conditions that need to exists for a game to not work in 10. Two of which is certain forms of DRM and specific code strings in the runtimes. And both GOG can/has fixed.
Oddly, first you claim everything works just as fine or even better in Windows 10 than it did in 7, yet in the end you manage to admit that there may be compatibility problems after all that GOG needs to fix.

GOG has managed to fix many of the games to work on Windows 10, but there are still many that aren't fixed. Then there are obviously the non-GOG games that GOG will not fix.
Post edited January 16, 2016 by timppu
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Elenarie: This means that after 18 months, drivers for hardware running older OSes won't be developed anymore. If you see, this trend has already started as companies are dropping complete support for Vista and 7 from their drivers portfolio. Microsoft does not guarantee
I wonder if that really matters...

A few some months ago i pulled out a old webcam, which was a logitec quick cam 5000 or something. The only 'latest' drivers i could find were for vista, and the installer said i had the wrong version of windows and refused to work. So i forcibly extracted all the files, and then did a search and found the drivers that matched my webcam. Installed them, worked perfectly.

Also keep in mind... unless you're wanting the newest hardware i don't see why it matters. If you need a printer, there's plenty of older ones with good drivers, same with video cards, modems, sound cards, etc etc.

Still i'm annoyed at them forcing and pushing 10 so much...

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tinyE: The punchline is they will continue to support XP. :P
I certainly hope so. :P

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Tarm: Everything after XP feels like a desperate marketing department gone haywire. Fuck the users. We need to sell sell SELL!
I'll have to agree. Somehow we have to convince them to buy something that they don't need because they already have something that does the job or along those lines. Like convincing you to get a $40 laser etched corkscrew when you got the $2 one in the drawer that works just fine.


Truth be told, XP had such a long life cycle that it's sorta the base standard and you'll still have software made for it. For me Windows 7 is a 64bit version of XP, and that's how i treat it.

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viperfdl: Steve Balmer who called Linux a cancer and also said that it is communism.
Sign me on!

Communism is treated as a bad word when in fact everyone being treated equally and ethically isn't a bad thing. Of course Communism is generally looked bad on because it's never properly implemented. Much like Anarchy (lack of government) is seen as horrible when they are confusing the term with Chaos.

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real.geizterfahr: which means that new features and tweaks will be added, ended one year ago! That's why Windows 7 doesn't get DirectX 12 ;)
Screw DX12, i don't want it. I was happy with DX9 which let me play Morrowind, and i've been happy with it since. Actually i'd prefer things pushed more for openGL but what can you do?

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real.geizterfahr: No. It's economy. They kept on developing Windows 7 for 5 years! That's a long time already and you can't keep on throwing money into a product that you don't even sell anymore (since a bit more than 2 years) forever.
Huhh?? If i understand it right, every new computer that's sold at say NewEgg and at Walmart and Office Depot, usually come with windows, which means have paid/bundled licenses on them, meaning Microsoft would still get sales, just not boxed copies from the store...

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wpegg: And yet nobody complains when firefox auto-updates and only provides bug fixes in its latest release, or when google chrome only supports its latest version.
I'm running V15 and V25, definitely out of date... no problems... nothing that a few plugins for privacy can't fix.

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Gede: Here is something I don't understand: if Intel won't support Windows 7 after a certain date, wouldn't that create a market opportunity for AMD? Why are they following Intel in a similar time frame? Did the three companies have a meeting to discuss this matter or something?
Although the 'newest features' of a chip won't be available, i'm very sure the systems will work just fine.

The 8-bit guy recently put up a video where he talks of computer speed, and the gaps in performance over generations. However recently he put Windows 8/10 32bit on a computer from like 2000 and it works just fine. Good theories on it, but the largest one is that since XP was on the market so long and the requirements for XP sorta became the standard, newer programs aren't sucking as much resources as they could have been had the OS only had the usual 3-5 year lifespan.

Also to note, it's stupid to remove backwards compatibility, unless there's a really good reason behind it, especially with the x86 instruction set, so i highly doubt newer chips will refuse to work with an older OS, or older chips with a newer OS.
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wpegg: And yet nobody complains when firefox auto-updates and only provides bug fixes in its latest release, or when google chrome only supports its latest version.
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rtcvb32: I'm running V15 and V25, definitely out of date... no problems... nothing that a few plugins for privacy can't fix.
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Cavalary: I do, and tend to not allow auto-updates for anything (bar definitions for the antivirus). Also, won't touch Chrome.
But do you complain that they're not retro-fixing bugs in those versions, or just use the earlier versions? The latter is entire reasonable, you don't want to upgrade, it's your choice. The former is entirely unreasonable as you cannot expect someone to forever support a something that was sold (or in browser cases given away) as a final product.
high rated
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real.geizterfahr: No. It's economy. They kept on developing Windows 7 for 5 years! That's a long time already and you can't keep on throwing money into a product that you don't even sell anymore (since a bit more than 2 years) forever.
I agree that MS is no longer selling Windows 7 anymore, but did Microsoft stop selling Windows 7 because people stopped buying it, or did people stop buying it because Microsoft stopped selling it.

The former is Microsoft adapting to the market. The latter is forcing the market to adapt to Microsoft.
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wpegg: But do you complain that they're not retro-fixing bugs in those versions, or just use the earlier versions? The latter is entire reasonable, you don't want to upgrade, it's your choice. The former is entirely unreasonable as you cannot expect someone to forever support a something that was sold (or in browser cases given away) as a final product.
Why not?

HTML 4 works just fine as it is, just ignore the pushing of JAVASCRIPT EVERYWHERE! ENABLE JAVASCRIPT OR YOU WON'T HAVE A GOOD EXPERIENCE! stuff that's going on. I was personally happy using lynx for years, no one supported it, but the entire purpose of a browser and HTML is to format content and display it, not really anything else. And if i write web based pages, they will be mostly HTML 4 and CSS, nothing else.


It's sorta like comparing cars. There's the 2010 model of a car, and the 2015 model of a car, and the big difference (other than the year they were made) is perhaps one has a CD player and one has heated seats... But as cars they are both fully functional for their purpose.

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agogfan: I agree that MS is no longer selling Windows 7 anymore, but did Microsoft stop selling Windows 7 because people stopped buying it, or did people stop buying it because Microsoft stopped selling it.
I think people would still buy 7, not so sure about 8 as almost no one liked it...
Post edited January 16, 2016 by rtcvb32
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rtcvb32: Why not?
You're missing my point. There is no "not" that I'm trying to suggest with regard to using old versions. You're fine to do that, I have no problem, MS have no problem, Mozilla have no problem with it, and you seem happy to do that.

The "not" I'm suggesting is that you shouldn't expect MS, Mozilla, or any other vendor to provide software updates other than to the latest version (unless you paid for something otherwise). You don't seem to have this assumption, so there's no problem. Others in this thread appeared to be suggesting that MS have a duty to forever support the product, that is what I was suggesting was not fair.
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Elenarie: If you see, this trend has already started as companies are dropping complete support for Vista and 7 from their drivers portfolio. Microsoft does not guarantee
But now it's not "Microsoft does not guarantee", it's "Microsoft guarantees it won't work". That's a huge difference. Starting with the next hardware generation, if you want to upgrade your CPU you will be forced to buy a new OS. It won't be up to the OEM's to provide hardware support for older OS's, it will simply be forbidden.

The only way this isn't bad news is if Microsoft plans to offer all future OS upgrades for free.

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wpegg: And yet nobody complains when firefox auto-updates and only provides bug fixes in its latest release, or when google chrome only supports its latest version.
This is wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, people do complain about older versions being dropped, so your first assertion is false. If you stick to "fewer people complain", I will grant you that.

Secondly, these programs are free. As I said above, if Windows goes free for upgrades (and I think there's a chance of that), then that alleviates part of the problem. If not, then buying a new CPU and having to pay a $100 (or whatever) Windows tax on that would justifiably cause complaints.

Thirdly, these programs are open source. So if Firefox does a shitty move like dropping tab groups, people can take the source and make that into an extension. If you want different features, use Pale Moon. If you want more anonymity, use the Tor client. With forced Windows, you will be forced to use whatever features changes happen, whether you like them or not.

Fourthly, you can still download all the old versions of Firefox and use them. Sure, there's no guaranteed compatibility and they will have security problems, but nobody is forcing you to change right now if the new version has something you don't like.

Fifthly, while these browsers might break some plugins with their updates, that's unlikely to cause you serious trouble (and, if it does, you can keep using the old version). What happens if you want to upgrade your CPU, you're forced to upgrade Windows, and your old printer (or other piece of hardware) isn't compatible with the latest version of Windows? Now you have to spent even more money on that upgrade.
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wpegg: Others in this thread appeared to be suggesting that MS have a duty to forever support the product, that is what I was suggesting was not fair.
Well, first of all Microsoft doesn't have a duty to update it's products. It's expected, for example, that Windows 8.1 will get general updates up to January 2018, and users will expect these updates to include support for new hardware and technologies. That has been the case in the past.

Secondly, it looks like Microsoft is blocking OEM's from supporting older OS's. This won't only be troublesome for users, but also make competition harder. If AMD, say, wants to draw users by allowing them to switch to a new gen CPU in the current socket and carry on with their old OS, they won't be able to.
Post edited January 17, 2016 by ET3D
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wpegg: And yet nobody complains when firefox auto-updates and only provides bug fixes in its latest release, or when google chrome only supports its latest version.
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ET3D: This is wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, people do complain about older versions being dropped, so your first assertion is false. If you stick to "fewer people complain", I will grant you that.
Accepted, some people object to this, but there's not the same level of hate that MS get.

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ET3D: Secondly, these programs are free. As I said above, if Windows goes free for upgrades (and I think there's a chance of that), then that alleviates part of the problem. If not, then buying a new CPU and having to pay a $100 (or whatever) Windows tax on that would justifiably cause complaints.
Can you suggest even a paid product that provides updates to versions other than it's latest? As for the Windows tax, I will address that further down.

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ET3D: Thirdly, these programs are open source. So if Firefox does a shitty move like dropping tab groups, people can take the source and make that into an extension. If you want different features, use Pale Moon. If you want more anonymity, use the Tor client. With forced Windows, you will be forced to use whatever features changes happen, whether you like them or not.
Also, will address with my final point.

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ET3D: Fourthly, you can still download all the old versions of Firefox and use them. Sure, there's no guaranteed compatibility and they will have security problems, but nobody is forcing you to change right now if the new version has something you don't like.
Nobody is making you upgrade windows, they're just not supporting some devices on old versions.

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ET3D: Fifthly, while these browsers might break some plugins with their updates, that's unlikely to cause you serious trouble (and, if it does, you can keep using the old version). What happens if you want to upgrade your CPU, you're forced to upgrade Windows, and your old printer (or other piece of hardware) isn't compatible with the latest version of Windows? Now you have to spent even more money on that upgrade.
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wpegg: Others in this thread appeared to be suggesting that MS have a duty to forever support the product, that is what I was suggesting was not fair.
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ET3D: Well, first of all Microsoft doesn't have a duty to update it's products. It's expected, for example, that Windows 8.1 will get general updates up to January 2018, and users will expect these updates to include support for new hardware and technologies. That has been the case in the past.

Secondly, it looks like Microsoft is blocking OEM's from supporting older OS's. This won't only be troublesome for users, but also make competition harder. If AMD, say, wants to draw users by allowing them to switch to a new gen CPU in the current socket and carry on with their old OS, they won't be able to.
My grand final point - you don't have to buy it! Use linux, use Chrome OS, be a mac fanbois, there are alternatives. However MS sell a product, it's a pretty fundamental one, and most people use it, but it's just a product. There is a sense of entitlement I get from people that because it's an operating system MS are in some way more bound by these invisible "consumer regulations" that seem to mean they must service your needs. They sell an OS, it's not compulsory, they don't have to do anything they haven't agreed to. You either bought it, or got it bundled with your purchased PC.
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wpegg: Others in this thread appeared to be suggesting that MS have a duty to forever support the product, that is what I was suggesting was not fair.
Last thing (and sorry, I'll read your responses tomorrow, it's very late), people don't think it's Microsoft's "duty", they think it's the right thing to do and not doing it is anti-consumer. And they are right.

I can perfectly understand why companies use DRM, prevent sales of physical copies of games, break off content and sell it separately, or sell their customer database to advertisers. These are all legitimate things (well, maybe the last one isn't, I'm not sure), and companies don't have any duty to do otherwise. However, these are still anti-consumer practices, and it's not only legitimate, but should also be encouraged, that consumers speak against them.
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ET3D: <snip_40>
I'll let you read my grand final point, I think it covers this too. I fully agree this things are positive customer attracting things. However the best way to combat anti consumer practices is competition. Using an alternative, or even better providing such an alternative, is the best way to prevent companies taking the piss. Sense of duty will not work on a company, and they all become evil at a certain size. Competition keeps them good.

Hope you sleep well (given you're reading this tomorrow - hope you slept well :))
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ET3D: But now it's not "Microsoft does not guarantee", it's "Microsoft guarantees it won't work". That's a huge difference. Starting with the next hardware generation, if you want to upgrade your CPU you will be forced to buy a new OS. It won't be up to the OEM's to provide hardware support for older OS's, it will simply be forbidden.

The only way this isn't bad news is if Microsoft plans to offer all future OS upgrades for free.
Hmm i can understand that since they are moving to 64bit machines and 32bit OSes aren't going to be considered at all anymore... But it seems like maybe they are planning to make huge pushes in processor changes, i'm not sure.

Maybe... we're all moving to RISC machines?
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wpegg: But do you complain that they're not retro-fixing bugs in those versions, or just use the earlier versions? The latter is entire reasonable, you don't want to upgrade, it's your choice. The former is entirely unreasonable as you cannot expect someone to forever support a something that was sold (or in browser cases given away) as a final product.
MS stated that extended support, meaning security and bug fixes, will be available for Windows 7 up to 2020, so I expect them to provide all those fixes up to 2020. Also, that they are free to no longer provide their own enhancements after 2015, when the full support ended, that's one thing, but to make it (whether by directly enforcing or by behind the scenes deals) so third parties no longer provide support either because they no longer do is one hell of a problem.

And frankly, considering where they're going with Windows, I'd rather be given an option to purchase a new license and get another 5-7 years of full support on 7, with drivers and other hardware-related software components, security enhancements (instead of just fixes) and so on... As opposed to not even being able to find 7 at all anymore.

Also, there's a difference between a fully free product (as in both no money and open source) and a completely non-free (both paid and proprietary) one. The expectations from the latter are incomparably higher.

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agogfan: I agree that MS is no longer selling Windows 7 anymore, but did Microsoft stop selling Windows 7 because people stopped buying it, or did people stop buying it because Microsoft stopped selling it.

The former is Microsoft adapting to the market. The latter is forcing the market to adapt to Microsoft.
Exactly, and they can do that because they have such a dominant position and serious competition is darn difficult to create... Plus that it'd require people to pretty much re-learn to use computers.

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rtcvb32: Hmm i can understand that since they are moving to 64bit machines and 32bit OSes aren't going to be considered at all anymore...
I'm still on 32-bit. 4 Gb of RAM, at the moment integrated graphics, no benefit for 64-bit. Was going to switch when upgrading, which as I said was considered for this year but likely moved to the next, but now with this piece of news, no idea anymore. Either way, I'll definitely keep using 32-bit software for a long, long time to come; I'm on GOG and part of the older guard here after all :p

Which leads us to the issue that somebody needs to create a good free full older Windows emulation, covering 3.x, 9x and XP, so older software will just run through it the same way DOS software runs through DOSBox. But because Windows is not free (as in freedom), that's a problem...
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real.geizterfahr: No. It's economy. They kept on developing Windows 7 for 5 years! That's a long time already and you can't keep on throwing money into a product that you don't even sell anymore (since a bit more than 2 years) forever.
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agogfan: I agree that MS is no longer selling Windows 7 anymore, but did Microsoft stop selling Windows 7 because people stopped buying it, or did people stop buying it because Microsoft stopped selling it.

The former is Microsoft adapting to the market. The latter is forcing the market to adapt to Microsoft.
iPhones get released, and Apple does worse with the iPhones, including updating the older iPhones but without some of the candy and perhaps even performance issues on older iPhones, yet people still buy the latest iPhone with the latest in everything. Why is it that when Microsoft advances by releasing a new system, its NOW bending the market over to Microsoft, when it has worked this way since forever?



Expecting new hardware to support old OSes, that doesn't even sound as worthy a reason to bash as the usually clueless 'spying' issue is, that is assuming it exists.
Just another of Intel's anticonsumer practices. They have the objectively better product, but I'll never buy from them because of shit like this. Seriously, they built hardware level barriers into processors that make them un-patchable on older OSes? If open source OS folks aren't alarmed at this, they should be. Why should the hardware manufacturer have any control on what OS you use? This kind of cartel behavior needs to stop.
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agogfan: I agree that MS is no longer selling Windows 7 anymore, but did Microsoft stop selling Windows 7 because people stopped buying it, or did people stop buying it because Microsoft stopped selling it.

The former is Microsoft adapting to the market. The latter is forcing the market to adapt to Microsoft.
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PookaMustard: iPhones get released, and Apple does worse with the iPhones, including updating the older iPhones but without some of the candy and perhaps even performance issues on older iPhones, yet people still buy the latest iPhone with the latest in everything. Why is it that when Microsoft advances by releasing a new system, its NOW bending the market over to Microsoft, when it has worked this way since forever?

Expecting new hardware to support old OSes, that doesn't even sound as worthy a reason to bash as the usually clueless 'spying' issue is, that is assuming it exists.
Because it is not Intel's business to put in hardware level barriers that prevent older Windows from running when no similar OS wouldn't have a problem with the older hardware. Will the same processors using older versions of Linux have to upgrade too? I don't think so.
Post edited January 17, 2016 by Shadowstalker16