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Microsoft tells Windows 10 users to just trade in their PC for a newer one, because how hard can it be?
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Hot take from an IT guy: save your important data, make a plain vanilla W11 boot USB (nothing fancy, no Rufus tricks), wipe your hard drive to zeroes, and install W11 like normal. I've reimaged a ton of older PCs and literally never seen it not work. My 10 year old Optiplex, supposedly ineligible for W11, runs W11 just fine.
Microsoft might someday break it, sure. That's not new. Microsoft products were always, in practice, available to us at Microsoft's pleasure. This is the same company that allows massgrave to exist on github because they'd rather we pirate MS Office than allow LibreOffice any oxygen. We'll probably be fine.
I'm imagining me doing this to my building of elderly, it dies and then opening my eyes to 40 work orders. Lmao
Why not install Linux for them once Windows 10 is dead?
They are a prime candidate for a dead simple Linux distro with the "Web", "Mail" and "Documents" shortcuts on the desktop and nothing else. Can't get a virus, can't get scammed by fake Microsoft support and most won't even notice.
I have installed Fedora Kinoite for my mom and have had zero complaints.
It's on the to do list for sure. Currently getting them off their external antivirus' is a challenge. They have to come to the conclusion themselves (most of the time)
Most are in their 80s. Think it'll be next generation honestly. Some dont even have phones or email addresses.
Had one who got a Chromebook and was just at a loss. Tbf that was an ass Chromebook but that was still too much for her.
Most have ollllld computers that are hitting the hardware failure stage. I've seen a god damn Vista machine at work.
I'm gonna convert someone. Just finding someone who is aware of what a tab in a browser is a rare occurrence currently lol
Well, yeah. That's life as an admin under the best circumstances. There's a running list of Windows ticking time bombs over on r/sysadmin. There are lots of good reasons to ditch Windows, but I wouldn't say the risk of MS shutting down technically unsupported hardware is one of them (because I don't agree it's a substantial risk).