Windows 11 upgrade?

[user 35280]

Oh that. Not fixed in M1, unknown in M1 Pro or Max. But not really something that affects anyone, certainly not a reason to avoid M1-based machines.

I’m definitely avoiding until Apple at least addresses it and will encourage everyone do the same.

 

[heada]

I have a question about computer lag. My wife bought $200 Win boxes for our daughters. They take forever to load Windows 10, and forever to open any program. I mean any, across the board. I have cleaned them up as much as my limited knowledge would go, defrag, Malware, viruses, programs running in the background, programs that load on boot and uninstalled useless software, All to no avail, they still run like cold molasses.
They are so slow.....
(How slow are they?)
My grrls would rather use their Chromebook or phone.

What can I do?

99% chance that they're using a cheap 5400rpm spinning hard drive. Upgrade/replace that drive with a SSD and you should see a HUGE improvement. You can get a 1TB 2.5" SATA3 SSD for ~$100 and that is WAY overkill for most PCs like you're describing. Check to see if they support a M.2 drive (either SSD or NVMe) and that would be a better option but slightly more $$$

EDIT: 500GB for $55
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B073SBZ8YH?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

 

[n3tjm]

I have a question about computer lag. My wife bought $200 Win boxes for our daughters. They take forever to load Windows 10, and forever to open any program. I mean any, across the board. I have cleaned them up as much as my limited knowledge would go, defrag, Malware, viruses, programs running in the background, programs that load on boot and uninstalled useless software, All to no avail, they still run like cold molasses.
They are so slow.....
(How slow are they?)
My grrls would rather use their Chromebook or phone.

What can I do?

A $200 new PC would mean it will be either a ATOM, Pentium, or Celeron Processor. Lets just say there is a reason why Apple does not use anything less than an Intel i5 (occasionally they use i3's in some models of the Mac mini's). Performance of those "Dollar Spot" processors are are dismal. When people ask me what to look for when buying a laptop, I always say at least a i5 or Ryzen 5 if you can afford it, and if you have to, i3 would work if it has a SSD (but I think pretty much all laptops have SSD's now anyways)

When I have a customer turn in a laptop and says its slow as molasses, the first thing I look for is what processor it has, and if its the above mention processor, I do the best I can for them. Usually cleaning bloatware. But if its a good processor, that is a sign that something more serious going on.

If it was a USED pc, then at that price point the issue may be CPU but most likely main culprit will be the hard drive. Windows 10 really needs a SSD. M2 preferred but upgrading an old system with SATA 7200 RPM hard drive to a SATA SSD the difference in performance is night and day. Windows 10 will constantly run a normal Hard Drive at 100% which will kill performance. Its a known problem with Windows 10.

Unfortunately it has to be said, MOST PC's are installed with Bloatware that kills the computers performance. It shouldn't have to be done, but as an IT person, this is the first thing I always do when I buy a computer.... after making sure the license is activated, get a USB disk with Windows install on it and wipe the Drive. Do a clean windows install. Remove all the junk that the manufacturer puts on the computer. Nothing kills a computers performance worse than McAfee and most computers Ive seen come with it installed and you can't simply uninstall it. This is one thing that APPLE does right (and some smaller PC Manufactures like Maingear too), they don't install bloatware.

Most of the computers we use at work at used 3rd gen i5's that we upgraded with SATA SSD's running Windows 10. Performance is fine for basic office work. For offices that need more power, we have more modern computers built with either Ryzen 7's or Intel's i7's. I also should mention, Windows 10 runs so much better on these older computers than the "current" version of Windows 7.

 

[n3tjm]

<deleted - Fat finger syndrome hit the wrong button and did something I wasn't expecting>

 

[Marc_G]

I have a question about computer lag. My wife bought $200 Win boxes for our daughters. They take forever to load Windows 10, and forever to open any program. I mean any, across the board. I have cleaned them up as much as my limited knowledge would go, defrag, Malware, viruses, programs running in the background, programs that load on boot and uninstalled useless software, All to no avail, they still run like cold molasses.
They are so slow.....
(How slow are they?)
My grrls would rather use their Chromebook or phone.

What can I do?

One thing to check, is do these use a solid state drive? Having the OS on an SSD is the single most useful way to speed up a slow computer.

 

[James Duffy]

But to me, BSD is a "flavor" of Linux...

BSD Unix predates the very first distributions of Linux by almost a decade and a half.

 

[Pem Tech]

One thing to check, is do these use a solid state drive? Having the OS on an SSD is the single most useful way to speed up a slow computer.

Nope, no SSD's. Old fashion platters, they aren't worth enough to put a SSD in.

 

[Marc_G]

Nope, no SSD's. Old fashion platters, they aren't worth enough to put a SSD in.

But trading up can be worth it... Get a bigger SSD for one of your better computers, and put the old smaller SSD into the el cheapo laptop. Would be a huge improvement

 

[Rocketjunkie]

One thing not on the poll is - have a newer PC that I could upgrade but choose not to. Plenty of crap with Win 10, why go through it all over again? Win 7 was good, stable, and not full of crap. Should have kept it and kept up the security problems.

 

[Huxter]

There are a couple things I noticed that I did not care for, like removing the right click the task bar to get to task manager

Task Manager is available right-clicking the Start button tho? Close.

 

[n3tjm]

Task Manager is available right-clicking the Start button tho? Close.

True. But that takes getting used to

 

[H_Rocket]

I am running a HP Z840 workstation with two Xeon E5-2637 v4 CPUs (4 cores each), 128GB of RAM, 2T of SSD, 1T of RAMDISK, and an NVida Quadro P4000. It is less than four years old.

It can't be upgraded.

Screw them.

 

[rkoenn]

I have an older PC. It was bought as a refurbished model some 7 or 8 years ago, real cheap.
It runs fine, and has not given me any problems. It does what I need it to do.
When running Windows update I got a message that my PC cannot upgrade to the new Windows 11.
Are there any of you in the same situation, and what would you do?

From some of my research it appears there are some security rules in 11 that require certain hardware to implement. There are some other more hardware HP requirements too. From a bit of what I've seen depending on how new your system is you can do a hack to get it installed if you want it. My current machine is about 5 years old and although an Intel six core CPU and lots of HP it doesn't have the security requirements but I can add a TPM module to the MB which might solve that but 10 has been working great for me so I may not. I am right now building my son a new AMD system and will install 10 and will consider doing the upgrade right away as I can always start again if he doesn't like it. The other thing that really bugs me is creating an MS account to install. I think I have one but don't like being forced to do that even though Google makes me have an account for my phone. I'm not paranoid of such things but just don't like being told it is required.

 

[CalebJ]

From some of my research it appears there are some security rules in 11 that require certain hardware to implement. There are some other more hardware HP requirements too. From a bit of what I've seen depending on how new your system is you can do a hack to get it installed if you want it. My current machine is about 5 years old and although an Intel six core CPU and lots of HP it doesn't have the security requirements but I can add a TPM module to the MB which might solve that but 10 has been working great for me so I may not. I am right now building my son a new AMD system and will install 10 and will consider doing the upgrade right away as I can always start again if he doesn't like it. The other thing that really bugs me is creating an MS account to install. I think I have one but don't like being forced to do that even though Google makes me have an account for my phone. I'm not paranoid of such things but just don't like being told it is required.

For what it's worth, i have set up two windows 11 laptops so far and definitely haven't used Microsoft accounts on them.

 

[rkoenn]

I have many computers of many vintages.

I've taken all of the ones likely to be used for anything worthwhile up to Windows 10.

I have an experimental box running windows 11. It is lower than recommended minimum specs (i5-6500 I think) but worked fine on the dev channel and made transition to release version without complaint.

No plans to take either of my most recent computers (desktop and laptop, meet specs) to win 11 anytime soon. No benefit. They work fine.

I have multiple production servers (home theater, camera systems) that work fine on Win11 and are staying there indefinitely. These are under recommended spec but could be installed as 11, similar to my experiment box.

My wife and kids: no plans, no benefit.

I am curious, did the hardware meet MS's security and hardware requirements? I have a 5 year old or so I7 but it doesn't have the security requirements. My MB has a plug for a TPM module that might take care of that but I wonder if it is worth it. 10 is very good and I'll probably just wait until I build a new machine.

 

[rkoenn]

For what it's worth, i have set up two windows 11 laptops so far and definitely haven't used Microsoft accounts on them.

Thanks for that remark, perhaps they changed the requirement when users complained. Did you do upgrades or clean installs?

 

[H_Rocket]

From some of my research it appears there are some security rules in 11 that require certain hardware to implement.

It's the TPM (Trusted Machine Platform) hardware. It's interesting as that was previously only required to implement the security features of Windows Enterprise (things like Bitlocker).

 

[Marc_G]

I am curious, did the hardware meet MS's security and hardware requirements? I have a 5 year old or so I7 but it doesn't have the security requirements. My MB has a plug for a TPM module that might take care of that but I wonder if it is worth it. 10 is very good and I'll probably just wait until I build a new machine.

Definitely not. i5-6500 (maybe 6400?) Doesn't have TPM2.0 and is maybe two generations before support starts. Installed fine via dev channel. Here is my current Properties:



Note that even at this moment the next build is downloading; I'm in the waiting room at doctor's office for a routine appointment with my son and remoted in to get the details. 22494.1000 is downloading now.

 

[jrap330]

Are they still issuing security updates for that?

No.....last patch for seven was in 2019....which is when I brought my new PC. I will update to W11 after sp many months when MS is finished "developing it" . They are reports a few things including complaint on new Start Bar will be "re-done"

 

[jrap330]

To me this is like saying a Ford is a flavor of a Volkswagen. I mean, technically it's true if you look at it a certain way, but most would consider that a weird statement. But whatever.

Again, common ancestry. Sudo is a Unix command from 1980.

Can we say Mac Os, and Linux are all descendants of Unix

 

[jrap330]

I call those type of machines "grandma computers"; they are cheap, slow and basically useless for anything other than Grandma browsing the Web, and there are better things for that too.

Yes what are the specs....no MS box can cost as low as $200 since MS charges developers for the OS. Stand alone version of Windows runs around $100 and in bulk, for developers maybe $50. So what she brought was a "glorified cheap IPAD or Smart Phone. Cheapest Windows laptop is at least $300 and my Black Friday I5 was $350

 

[kuririn]

Yes what are the specs....no MS box can cost as low as $200 since MS charges developers for the OS. Stand alone version of Windows runs around $100 and in bulk, for developers maybe $50. So what she brought was a "glorified cheap IPAD or Smart Phone. Cheapest Windows laptop is at least $300 and my Black Friday I5 was $350

You can buy refurb desktops with the OS loaded for around $200.

 

[jrap330]

Yes but that is not what is wife did. But you are correct.

 

[kuririn]

Yes but that is not what is wife did. But you are correct.

My wife bought $200 Win boxes for our daughters.

Win boxes would be desktops, probably refurbs at that price.

 

[Ronz Rocketz]

2 comments:
1) If your i9-based Macbook Pro is constantly beachballing, you have something wrong. That is not normal. It's a fast machine.
2) MacOs is based on BSD, not Linux.

For MACs, their solution is to buy a new MAC.

 

[jrap330]

Win boxes would be desktops, probably refurbs at that price.

Probably.... But I seen $200 laptops with a Pentium processor (not I3/I5) and 4 Gbyte of Ram that I did not buy. I would not trust them running W10 since I did not have any experience with W10. So to summarize you can not get a new W10 machine for $200...you need to spend at least $300. But for $200 you can get a Chrome Book and it will be quick since Chrome is a "slim down OS.

 

[Ronz Rocketz]

Here's an on point article about how pointless Windows 11 is. Of course I upgraded my laptop (because it let me and I'm curious). It was quick but it was a relatively new laptop. I then had to spend time removing the bloatware programs that offer low quality services unless you pay them $20 per month. Who do they think they are, Adobe? I thought MS was going to stay with 10 and provide free upgrades forever. My guess is that they needed a reason to install more bloatware on our computers under the guise of an improved OS.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3636788/windows-11-microsofts-pointless-update.html

 

[aerostadt]

As I recall I did not like the way Windows 10 looked like on my desktop, but I found some kind of emulator to make it look like my old Windows 7, which I like and still have. I ask what is the sense in doing that just to accommodate MS, but I have no choice. Right now for me Windows 10 is keeping viruses out fine for me. However, I am wondering and worrying that MS is somehow going to eventually de-support Windows 10 so that the virus protection goes away and I will again need to transition to the next version of Windows.

 

[Michael L]

Nope to 11 and not because the machine old

 

[GlueckAuf]

The two most worthwhile Microsoft operating systems I've ever used are Windows XP Media Center Edition (where the Tivo DVR-like Media Center application I still use was grudgingly retained with Windows Vista and Windows 8/8.1 before its abandonment with 10) and Windows Home Server>Home Server 2011 with (among several other killer features) its set-and-forget, nightly backup of every PC in the house and effective, image-based recovery capability. Niche products, for certain, but so effective and trouble-free for their purpose. Sad that mass appeal through hollow cosmetic "improvements" seem to trump utility in the Windows world these days.