Microsoft Ending Support For Windows 10 Could Send 240 Million PCs To Landfills, Study Finds (reuters.com) 156
According to Canalys Research, Microsoft's plan to end support for Windows 10 could result in about 240 million computers being sent to landfills. "The electronic waste from these PCs could weigh an estimated 480 million kilograms, equivalent to 320,000 cars," adds Reuters. From the report: While many PCs could remain functional for years post the end of OS support, Canalys warned demand for devices without security updates could be low. Microsoft announced a plan to provide security updates for Windows 10 devices until October 2028 for an undisclosed annual price. If the pricing structure for extended Windows 10 support mirrors past trends, migrating to newer PCs could be more cost-effective, increasing the number of older PCs heading to scrap, Canalys said.
Scrap heap (Score:2)
Those PCs were going on the scrap heap by 2028 anyway, except in rare circumstances where people don't have planned upgrade cycles. Some of them could be dumped on secondary markets (eBay, etc) which can still happen, since the people selling them will take no responsibility for OS support.
Re:Scrap heap (Score:4, Insightful)
Increasing the rate of ewaste is a bad thing.
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Increasing the rate of ewaste is a bad thing.
Running power-sucking obsolete hardware is also wasteful.
Re: Scrap heap (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to a new PC with 400+ watt RTX video card?
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As opposed to a new PC with 400+ watt RTX video card?
Yes. Your power number may sound extreme, but quoting peak numbers is like saying a Ferrari can't be driven through a school zone because it can do 250mph. Quote performance per watt numbers. Peak power draw is meaningless.
Computer GPUs spend a vast majority of their life idle, and that's assuming that a new PC will have a 400+ watt RTX video card in the first place. (Sorry but the last 5 computers I have bought have had a mixture of Intel Iris and AMD Radeon APUs, which together make up the most popular gr
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> Running power-sucking obsolete hardware is also wasteful.
AI said the same thing about humans.
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Running power-sucking obsolete hardware is also wasteful.
My ten year old PC shows 78 watts sitting here reading this thread. Looks like the old baseboard heater pentium4's used even less power https://www.orbitsit.co.uk/201... [orbitsit.co.uk]
Older P4 running XP, 64.2, 68.7, 106.2 (idle, low, high)
Core I7, running windows 7: 45.2, 49.1, 66.8 (idle, low, high)
So much for that theory huh?
And since when does anyone care about power use? Each bitcoin transaction uses something absurd like 1600 kwh, about 60 days worth of electricity in an avg home is what the article said.
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You should be locked up in solitary confinement for running XP in 2023
Or maybe get him scheduled for an MRI to help determine what sort of brain injury is causing this behavior.
Over exposure to Bonzai Buddy, maybe?
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Again you are talking about PCs that don't even have a TPM2.0 chip. Those are several years old by now, and they will be even older come 2028. The vast majority of these PCs are corporate laptops and desktops that are already part of a departmental upgrade cycle. Those are the same corporate customers that might actually pay for continued security updates for Win10 through 2028.
No corporate customer is going to keep PCs in-house from 2018 or earlier up to and beyond 2028. Most affected PCs are already
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No corporate customer is going to keep PCs in-house from 2018 or earlier up to and beyond 2028.
The NHS in the UK is still using some PCs running Windows 7.
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Haha
Typical backwards government organization. Obviously THEY don't have to worry since their operating systems already EoLed.
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Due to the end of support, they are heading to the scrap heap 3 years earlier, in 2025.
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See above reply, this is mostly false. Most people will ditch pre-TPM2.0 haedware before even 2025. It's a non-issue.
Re:Scrap heap (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me one consumer with "planned upgrade cycles". One.
This isn't the late 1990s when you had to get a new computer every other year anyway because the one you had was too slow for every new game you wanted. The ability to run current software hasn't depended on you having a new computer for at least 10 years now. I know that because that's the age of the majority of parts in mine. The only thing that changed since was the GPU. That's currently one from 2019.
And frankly, there isn't any reason to upgrade either right now. I'll probably finally make the transition to Linux for good, the only programs that I still need that run on Windows exclusively are some that will run perfectly fine in VMs.
Re: Scrap heap (Score:2)
First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just thinking my 15 year-old Thinkpad was showing its age running Debian 12. Looking forward to seeing these laptops hit the used computer market.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is not a new idea. I helped install Linux on a school's computers 20 years ago. Sadly (for software freedom), these ideas never seem to take off. The problem is, people start seeing Linux as the "lesser" or "hand me down" OS (when of course it is not). So the first thing they try to do to improve themselves is get something better that can run Windows. Or worse, Mac, as Apple has cultivated the idea that it is a "premium" product that deserves the extra money you have to pay for it. There are man
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I was just thinking my 15 year-old Thinkpad was showing its age running Debian 12. Looking forward to seeing these laptops hit the used computer market.
My dozen year old laptop running Ubuntu 22 is getting due for replacement also, even though it still does everything I require of it.
I'll grab a six year old one cheap and run if for another six years, and it will still do everything I require of it even better.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can still install win 11 with only local account. It's in fact better to do so to avoid it effectively having a ransomware moment with bitlocker, which will encrypt your main drive without clearly warning you or giving you keys in an obvious in your face "you won't have access to you data if you don't take this key and store it somwhere" warning.
Two ways to do it. First it to just tell it you're using you machine for work or school when installing. It also lets you skip a bunch of personal quesitons, so
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I just recommissioned a desktop I bought in 2010 into a storage and media server. 32GB of RAM, Phenom II 720, Nvidia graphics card. It'll run VMs and ZFS just fine for years to come.
they could remove some of the cpu locks linux will (Score:2)
they could remove some of the cpu locks Linux will run very well for lots of stuff on hardware that M$ blocked from windows 11
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Windows 10 breathed new life into my 2012 MacBook Pro. Apple dropped support for it years ago, and while Linux distros run okay on it, they have trouble getting the trackpad right, and game emulation just isn't good enough. Windows 10 on it is pretty good. Just in time for MS to drop support.
Shoehorning newer MacOS releases with OpenCore Legacy Patcher is possible, but still exposes the gaming weaknesses of macOS.
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Running Win 10 on a dual-core 1st generation Intel i3 from over a decade ago with 4 GB RAM. Upgraded the HDD to a SSD and it works perfectly. It's actually snappy and responsive. No it won't run photoshop but it works for 90+% of users. What's the point of forcing all this hardware into a wastebin?
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What's the point of forcing all this hardware into a wastebin?
To make people buy new hardware, of course.
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What have you been smoking, and where can I get my hands on some? There is no such thing as a "consumer version of Linux" unless you mean those distros that are designed specifically for servers or other heavy duty business/industrial tasks. And, of course, people who expect to be using computers that way wouldn't be interested in these, partly because they can't handle enough RAM to be useful. And why do you think those distros come stuffed with bloatware? Do you rea
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My guess is what he means with "consumer versions" is the various distris that go out of their way to hold your hand where the installation routine goes above and beyond how many clicks it should take to get the damn system installed, and that also comes along with enough training wheels that yes, this can weigh down the system sufficiently to make it unusable because everything you start comes with its own "wizard".
But, dear GP, you do know that you can just turn that junk off, right? It's not Windows, you
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I don’t know why you would post this but if it was even sort of kind of true there would be zero reason to post it as AC.
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2028 is not the date for regular support, it's for extended support whose price you'd be able to buy a new computer every year for.
It's not meant for normal people but for milking dry those who are locked into a given version of Windows by a company policy, govt regulation, need for specific hardware, etc -- as those kind of folks are also required to have security support.
Re: they could remove some of the cpu locks linux (Score:2)
Read the summary.
Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap Linux Boxes Incoming
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Exactly. There will be +240 million Linux PC's soon :D
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There are currently TONS of fairly inexpensive Dell laptops on Amazon and eBay right now. For $250 ~ $300 you can get a banger of a laptop.
For $239 I snagged a Dell Latitude 7490 (14" touchscreen, i7 8th Gen 512GB SSD 16GB RAM Win 10, fingerprint reader, SIM card slot, CAT card reader, etc etc etc).
I'll scrape Win 10 off of it and put Mint on it eventually, but the stripped-down, secure contractor-version of Win 10 it comes with actually runs very well, super snappy. I think it's because the stripped-down v
Linux (Score:2)
Margrethe Vestager worried about phone chargers (Score:4, Interesting)
"Filling landfills with unnecessary cables" was the justification for the USB-C connector mandate on Apple. What will the EU do about all these computers made useless by Microsoft?
Re: Margrethe Vestager worried about phone charger (Score:2)
https://environment.ec.europa.... [europa.eu]
Re:Margrethe Vestager worried about phone chargers (Score:4, Insightful)
??? The computers were NOT "made useless by Microsoft".
They run perfectly fine. You can run an outdated MS Windows if you like and everything will work.
Or you can even install Linux in it and it will go better and updated.
No need to tag something as "useless" because you lack basic computing knowledge.
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??? The computers were NOT "made useless by Microsoft".
They absolutely WERE made useless - or at least not very good - even if the owners didn't know better. The machines contained a collection of spyware, adware, rentware, bloatware, and shovelware masquerading as an OS. Now they may have a chance at being made useful by a true OS, such as Linux.
They run perfectly fine. You can run an outdated MS Windows if you like and everything will work.
Until said 'outdated Windows' becomes a security hazard and/or won't run newer programs.
Or you can even install Linux in it and it will go better and updated.
Now you're talking!
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Until said 'outdated Windows' becomes a security hazard and/or won't run newer programs.
GFY. I ran Windows 7 quite happily until earlier this year, when I was forced to upgrade to Windows 10 for no actual reason other than forced application incompatibility.
Adobe's about to pull the same shit with Photoshop now, with their new image-generation feature requiring Windows 11 for no reason on God's green earth.
Oh, and the last virus I had was called happy99.exe. Got it when I didn't pay enough attention to wh
moot point (Score:2)
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It's all so pointless. 10 is a perfectly serviceable OS. it cannot possibly be harder for MS's devs to shit out incremental security patches on a FINISHED (sorta) OS, vs rolling an entirely new OS that's arguably worse than the preceding version every 5 or 6 years.
how long can that trend actually continue?
for the average user there is absolutely no reason to go to 11. And in a few years when MS needs to boost some quarterlies, there will be no reason to move to 12. The only way they can force this bullshit
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Deprecating all this old hardware for their shareholders is such a massive affront to global conservation efforts and common sense. It's pretty sickening. Legislation should force them to remove W11's secure boot requirements.
Re: moot point (Score:2)
Actually 12 will probably be the one to upgrade to. Windows is on the tick/tock cycle. XP good Vista bad. 7 good 8 bad. 10 good 11 bad.
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You'll need new hardware for that too, most likely.
You don't expect Office 365 to complete your grandkid's schoolwork without Clippy-ChatGPT-Composer 2027?
Post-plagiarism requires the scan of your previous essays locally on your computer. Nothing is ever processed in the cloud and since its based on your own work, it adopts your unique writing style and quirks.
Good luck, teachers, on trying to prove that a computer wrote Jemima Smith's assignment - given that it is full of Jemima-isms!
And that will require
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Current news is that win 10 will continue to be supported, but you'll have to pay a subscription to microsoft for support to keep receiving updates.
Re: moot point (Score:2)
Microsoft is deprecating a lot of stuff in Windows 11. Windows 10 will be the last OS where 32 bit drivers and lots of software back to the DOS days runs, they are even deprecating features introduced with Windows XP and Vista.
Windows 10 is unmaintainable in the security realms these days, basically from a security perspective, Windows 10 is the Windows ME of today and the project to continue the promised endless minor updates became too big of a mess.
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However... booting from a Windows 10 USB stick in recovery mode I got the same problem. Every second boot, Kmode error. So I tried a Windows 11 USB stick - worked fine every time. I installed a new HD, put
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Regardless of time, wouldn't they all end up in landfill?
If computers are landfilled after five years instead of ten years, then over time, twice as many computers will go to the landfill.
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What makes you think the affected PCs aren't already 5 years old or older? This is not new hardware. The average age of a PC is 5.29 years according to Statista. All affected hardware has exceeded that age.
PCs are 5.29 years old when what happens? (Score:2)
Statista happens not to be part of my current subscription plan. Is 5.29 years the average age of a PC in service or the average age of a PC when it gets replaced?
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The average age of a device when in use is only about half the average service life. It has to be - the average is in the middle of the distribution, not at one end.
If 5.29 years is the average age of a PC today, then that means that the average service life of a PC today is over 10 years. Not terribly surprising considering the specs for a high end PC today are not actually much better than they were a decade ago. 3D cards notwithstanding.
Consider: if the average service life of a widget is 10 years, lo
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Regardless of time, wouldn't they all end up in landfill? Does something magical happen if Win10 sticks around?
The Recycle Fairies come and spirit the hardware away to the Shadow Realm, where it magically transforms into pixie dust and is then fed to unicorns.
Can they run ... (Score:2)
TPM / Secure Boot (Score:3, Informative)
Re: TPM / Secure Boot (Score:2)
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Sure, there's a hack that allows you to install Win11 without them, but it's an unofficial hack and MS can at any time stop it from working. So that's not a solution. Keeping an unsafe Windows 10 isn't either.
When the date comes closer, more old folks (the ones that don't game and don't need a powerful machines) will start to notice and some may desert to Ubuntu. I'm considering it, also because MS has been pushing me too hard with Windows 10 updates and constant nagging to connect to their cloud, so I'm ho
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Or Microsoft could just remove the stupid TPM and Secure Boot requirements and all these computer could run Windows 11 just fine.
And sacrifice shareholder returns and c-suite bonuses? Hush child!
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Line that c-suit and shareholders up on a wall, mow them down, problem solved.
Creates less waste than forced obsolescence.
Re: TPM / Secure Boot (Score:2)
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Indeed. There is absolutely no sound technological reason for these machines to not be able to run Win11.
Re:TPM / Secure Boot (Score:4, Informative)
That is complete nonsense. Insightless nonsense at that. These systems are fine. With SSDs, useful lifetimes have extended dramatically and the rest of the hardware was never really "wear out" after 5 years except possibly for the PSUs, which are easy to replace.
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Fine according to whom? Do you really think everyone keeps their desktops or laptops for more than 6 years? No, they do not. They will dispose of them in an average of 5.29 years.
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hardware was never really "wear out" after 5 years except possibly for the PSUs, which are easy to replace.
What the fuck crappy nasty PSUs are you buying that wear out after 5 years? Shit all my PSUs have a 10 year warranty on them, to say nothing of "wearing out".
Home vs. business, big vs. small, rich vs. poor (Score:3)
Not having a Statista subscription myself, I can only make educated guesses based on my experience. The PC replacement cycle depends a lot on the difference between home computers and business computers, and the difference between computers owned by large enterprises and computers owned by small local businesses or charities, and the difference between computers owned by wealthy families and computers owned by less well-off families, and the difference between computers in rich countries and computers in le
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You can actually read the chart without a subscription.
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You can actually read the chart without a subscription.
I opened the document Desktop PC replacement cycle length in the United States from 2022 to 2027 [statista.com] in Firefox 121.0 in a private window. The chart was covered up by two modal dialog boxes. One was a cookie consent request, which I dismissed by choosing necessary cookies only. The other stated:
Under a guess that you meant a
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My main system is running a core i7 from 2014 and it's working absolutely fine, why the hell would I upgrade the hardware if there is zero reason to do so?
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You can do that with your own PC, but the IT staff at work isn't going to do that for every system at the office.
Windows is never finished! (Score:3)
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No software that is actively used, is ever finished.
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Yes, there is always a pointless upgrade to add, so the software is 'modern': Online voice recognition, advertising in the client window or OS toolbar, mandatory update alerts, no-rollback updates, re-installing deleted applets. This year it is applets using device back-up to the cloud. This has been available for many years and most times, this makes sense but for sensitive data it is very wrong. (At least until Android OS offers "Save as encrypted file" with applet-generated key. Desktop OSs with a le
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How about Linux? Is it finished? There's nothing "modern" about it.
How many elephants is that? (Score:3)
The electronic waste from these PCs could weigh an estimated 480 million kilograms, equivalent to 320,000 cars,
I'm having trouble picturing 320,000 cars. How many elephants would that be? And if you stacked the elephants one on top of the other, how many Empire State Buildings would that be?
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Early Monday L.A. traffic before the lockdown.
Better now?
thanks, i'll keep an eye out (Score:3)
Monopoly Powers (Score:2)
They have a monopoly on desktop OS's. They shouldn't be allowed to contribute to such a massive eWaste crisis just b/c they're tired of supporting old hardware. I hope regulation forces them to walk back their policy. There's soo much hardware that works perfectly fine for 90% of users. Web browsing, 1080p videos, Excel documents, web apps. All of it works perfectly on basically anything with a dual-core CPU and 4 GB+ of RAM.
Only 8 years old- moving to subscription model (Score:2)
Imagine if your car, microwave, or television was automatically obsolete every 8 years.
Linux Can Keep 240 Million Computers from Landfill (Score:3)
Windows Security is Infererer ot Linux (Score:2)
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And as an added joke, there are fewer security issues with it, too.
Makes you wonder what that "secure" stuff really is supposed to "secure"...
I guess... (Score:2)
I guess 2024 will be the year of the Linux Desktop afterall?
They're going there eventually anywhere. (Score:2)
And the same pearl clutching has happened with every EOLing anyway.
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Put Linux on them (Score:4)
2 years ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Two years ago I won a municipality auction consisting of 26 ten year old computers for $75, approx $3 per PC. I installed Linux and Windows 7 Pro (dual boot) onto each one, spent maybe a total of $125 extra to upgrade and repair a few of them, and then resold them on eBay for $75 each. I made about $1500 profit for two weeks worth of part-time work. Send all those "obsolete" computers my way, I'll make them usable for years to come and sell them cheap so others can also reap the benefit. About 10 years ago a local company donated 30 "obsolete" computers to a local church (they were 3 to 5 years old). I donated my time setting them up with dual boot operating systems and a few programming languages for the congregation to learn. I then networked them all together in a single room with access to the Internet. That church computer room and all those computers are still utilized to this day (well, 2 have died since then beyond repair). I go back every once in a while to physically clean them out, run Tronscript on them, and clean up the files on the hard drive. Nothing is obsolete if you can still find good uses for it.
My 2008 Windows Server Still Runs Fine. (Score:2)
And so does an old Windows 7 machine. They are both dual boot to Linux so I don't care about the status of my OS in respect to the manufacturers suggestions.
Why does Apple get a free pass on this one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple will probably be dropping Mac OS X support for their 2015/2016 era Mac products around the same time frame. Just like Windows 10, the MacOS versions they're currently running will no longer get security patches and they will not be able to upgrade to the latest MacOS release.
Why aren't news organizations also giving them a hard time about creating a bunch of new e-waste?
to non-geeks, (Score:3)
"no updates, who care? It still works"
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"no updates, who care? It still works"
Also on a related note, why do I not have money in my bank account? Why is my ISP telling me I've been sending spam emails? And why is my power bill $1000 this month it's not like I'm bitcoin mining or anything?
Some companies may still need them... (Score:3)
I have barely even learned how to use it (Score:2)
Or 8. I guess when the only use for an operating system is to load a web browser and an ssh terminal...
Right, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
"The electronic waste from these PCs could weigh an estimated 480 million kilograms, equivalent to 320,000 cars," adds Reuters.
Sure, but what would the weight be in baby ocelots or Sumerian clay tablets? Those would be units of weight I could easily understand.
(And what the fuck is a 'kilogram'? Are you guys making this shit up?)
Chrome Flex (Score:2)
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Yeah, they'll probably get sold on eBay/Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist as used surplus PC's. Offices will unload them in bulk, just like they did with their old Windows 7 workstations that weren't worth upgrading.
I'd imagine that most of them will get parted out, and a few of them will get repurposed into Linux workstations or converted into "retro" gaming PC's.
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Those PCs could almost certainly run any decent Linux distro for another decade or so.
As for recycling, it needs to be mandatory. We can't keep shuffling along making mountains of shit and then sending it to landfills when we're done with it. We can't keep pretending that this party will never run out of beer, which is exactly what we're doing now.
I mean, in our brains we know that the beer isn't unlimited and that it will run out, but as long as we have a cold one in our hand right now, it's like, "meh, we