Hippy status, rev 2.0

Flenser

Senior Member
I too put of upgrading from XP at home for as long as I could because XP ran all the programs I wanted to run and I thought XP did everything I wanted however ....

Over the years our work laptops were upgraded from XP to Win7 and more recently to Win10. After working with Win7 on my work laptop I quickly came to love being able to have taskbar shortcuts I can get to with a single click for all the apps I commonly use together with a pinned list of documents I can get to by hovering and a single click.

For example, here are the list of pinned documents I get on my personal laptop when I hover over the Acrobat reader in the taskbar. Next to the Acrobat reader is the PE app that I can start up with just a single click.
24962
 
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Goeytex

Senior Member
Goeytex said:
I think "crotchety curmudgeon" might be an appropriate description of my relationship with MS
I expect that applies to many people who are of our age or also came to love XP, consider it the best OS Microsoft ever produced. I suspect most of us would have been happy with Windows 7, 10 and 11, if only they had kept the Classic Shell theme.
That was not me you quoted, but I am a bit crotchety at times. :)

Goey
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Getting VB6 to run on Win 10 turned out to be a doddle which may be of help to those who still have VB6 Apps they would like to keep working on rather than porting. I simply found a Backup CD, copied the entire "X:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio" tree to a new folder on Win 10
Was that a backup of a Windows XP machine?
Well spotted - Tthat's actually a backup of a Win 7 VB6 installation. XP probably has it in plain "C:\Program Files"

One shout out I had fogotten; BobSpwg for MPVCI- https://mpvci.co.uk. Claws-Mail stubbornly refused to run with "Missing MSVCR110.DLL" or similar. MPVCI got me whatever C++ runtime was actually neeeded when what was suggested by Microsoft failed to do so.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Goeytex said:
I think "crotchety curmudgeon" might be an appropriate description of my relationship with MS
I expect that applies to many people who are of our age or also came to love XP, consider it the best OS Microsoft ever produced. I suspect most of us would have been happy with Windows 7, 10 and 11, if only they had kept the Classic Shell theme.
That was not me you quoted, but I am a bit crotchety at times. :)
Apologies for the incorrect attribution. Not sure how that happened but suspect it was the forum holding onto unsent replies. I had started a reply to your post #78 and then decided it wasn't needed. When I did reply to the quote, it added that , and I guess I edited the tags showing who it was from incorrectly. I have corrected the earlier post.
 

Goeytex

Senior Member
Processor Support for Windows 11

Looking at the list of supported Intel Processors, I see that mine is incompatible with Win11. I have a Dell Optiplex with Core i5-3470 . So it looks like only 8th gen and above Intel Processors will be supported. This means that millions of people will need to purchase a new system (or systemboard with processor) to upgrade to Win11. I don't suspect that Win11 sales will be too brisk after official rollout.

Here is Microsoft's official list of supported Intel Processors. ===> Win 11 Supported Intel Processors
Here is Microsoft's official list of supported AMD Processors. ===> Win11 Supported AMD Processors

Goey
 
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hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Looking at the list of supported Intel Processors, I see that mine is incompatible with Win11. I have a Dell Optiplex with Core i5-3470 . So it looks like only 8th gen and above Intel Processors will be supported.
Except., it appears, for a few legacy CPU which Microsoft use in their own products. Which has led people to suspect Win 11 would likely work with other older CPU if Microsoft were not insisting on things which are not strictly needed, like SecureBoot and TPM, and the fact they are simply not on the supported list.

That seems to be the case for those who have achieved installation on a non-supported CPU.

If people cannot upgrade a Win 10 system which is working perfectly well and would otherwise be capable of being upgraded, I expect they will choose to stick with Win 10 until they do buy a new PC. I would suspect, if that proves to be the case, and take-up is slow, Microsoft might relax the requirements. There will be plenty of guides on how to get Win 11 installed even if not supported., even Microsoft have an official How To for that.

For now I can't see that Win 11 would give me anything I want which I don't have in Win 10 so I'm not worried about upgrading.
 

inglewoodpete

Senior Member
... like SecureBoot and TPM.....
Microsoft tells me my computer is not compatible with W11 only because it does not have TPM software loaded. They're not falling over themselves to tell me what TPM does or why I should download/install it. A bit funny when they can download ("update") any of their proprietary software in Windows 10 "updates" without advising me.

And people wonder where conspiricy theories start.
 

Technoman

Senior Member
I confess using Picaxe and Ard... boards. The first Ard... had a serial interface for programming which was later replaced by a USB port using a programmed microcontroller (ATMega8U2 ) as interface chip. This seems to be a flexible solution as you can modify the program of this chip.
As a teacher, I have not a good souvenir of the tedious job installing the AXE027 driver on a bunch of PC (not plug-n-play!) and was once concerned not knowing if the new ordered PCs (not by me) has a RS232 port and if we could use AXE026 cables or should order AXE027. Fortunately they have it!
For education, as it is the main market, the next generation (M3?) would at least carry a USB interface.
 

steliosm

Senior Member
How is Picaxe used in schools? Are students using a project board or are they using bare chips with a breadboard?
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
For now I can't see that Win 11 would give me anything I want which I don't have in Win 10 so I'm not worried about upgrading.
An interesting parallel, would be the situation in mid-2000, when Windows 2000 Professional was the desktop Operating System of choice and along came Windows XP. It supposedly had the same end-of-life date (2008) and offered no new features - other than a totally different interface to learn. I thought I'd stick with Win 2000 Pro; a strategy I abandoned very shortly afterwards!

I have installed Windows 11 on a unsupported amd unit by following the instructions in this video
How to Install Windows 11 on Unsupported CPU & TPM 1.2 - YouTube
The "Rufus" Bootable USB Creator can do this in an automated manner. It can download and modify the official Window 11 Release ISO and write it to USB. I'm not sure if it will It doesn't support an 'upgrade', but the fresh install (i.e. boot the USB stick) definitely worked on a 10 year old, AMD-based desktop of mine (unsupported CPU, no UEFI/Secure boot and no TPM :cry: )

There is a caveat though - the resulting installation was unstable, until I switched off Virtual Machine support (no great detective work being required: every blue screen mentioned 'Hypervisor'!). So maybe some of the requirements stipulated are for good reasons ...

(Lack of Virtual Machine support would mean no 'Android on Windows' - should it ever materialise :()
 
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oracacle

Senior Member
The problem I have is the fact that people are complaining about increasing security and helping to close the security flaws that have been found within CPUs in the last few years. What's the betting that the people who complain about the TPM requirement are also the people who either don't have a clue about security issues or are the first to complain about them.

As I've said before, everyone wants the latest software and then want it to run on hardware that is our of date. There is only so many bugs that can be fixed with patches. If anyone remembers STUXNET, that made use of at least 7 back doors/black days within the Windows XP operating system, jumped so called air gaps to get to a free standing network. Changing your operating system moves those vulnerabilities as those who either do away or change making it harder for people to get in through those back doors.
 

Technoman

Senior Member
@steliosm
At school, we were using (being recently retired) different project boards (AXE020, AXE118, AXE401), a custom design board to drive robots (20M/20M2 + L293), a controller (28X1) made by a local dealer (A4) and lately the great AXE300 (20M2) fitted with 11 Grove sockets. For education, the Grove system is reliable and very convenient as the student does not have to care about electronics and allow a quick connection/de-connection before the next class. Many thanks to RevEd team who brought this board along with Blockly additional blocks.
The purpose of the course (system study through small projects) and the short duration of a class (1 to 1,5 hours) does not need and prevent us from breadboarding.
Furthermore, for some years, we had a robotics club animated by students in engineering ; breadboarding was used as the design was at component level.
 
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