Technology

67201 readers

4154 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

330

E-waste or Linux? Charities face tough choices as Windows 10 support ends (www.techspot.com)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by cm0002 to c/technology

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In a nutshell: As Microsoft prepares to end free security updates for Windows 10 in October, a significant challenge looms for charities that refurbish and distribute older computers to those in need. With an estimated 240 million PCs unable to meet the stringent hardware requirements for Windows 11, these organizations face a difficult decision: provide potentially insecure Windows 10 systems, send them to e-waste recyclers, or explore alternative operating systems like Linux.

Microsoft's requirements for Windows 11 include a 1GHz or faster CPU with at least two cores, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, Secure Boot capability, and TPM 2.0 compatibility. However, the supported Intel CPU list only goes back to 8th Gen chips, introduced in 2017, while the AMD list includes Ryzen 2000 series and above.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] [email protected] -6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

What if the SSD and everything else are 9 years old? Is that worth risking data loss over?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If it's that valuable, you should have backups anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

And chances are it's all cloud work that they're doing on the computers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

With the age of those computers you might even be looking at a HDD. Those should definitely be replaced, SSDs, it depends.

In any case a new 128G SDD is on the order of 15 bucks, well worth the investment even for an age-old system (unless you have a bit more extra cash because the GB/buck optimum is in the 0.5-2T range).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Well, an additional problem with this Lenovo ThinkPad is that its "A" key is coming loose if not pressed on the rightmost side. I've also dropped it 3x from over a foot's distance (knocked off a table, etc.), which damaged its Bluetooth receiver. So I'm wondering if it's even still worth maintaining...

It's definitely got 2×256 GB SSDs in it, though they're also all from 2016-17, hence my predicament of sorts...