What to say?
Windows 11 abandons some old stuff, major OS upgrades tend to do that. A point is being made about new technical requirements for improved security. The supported CPU list for Windows 11 is not gathering a huge fan base in the internet.
But in the end these technicalities don’t really matter from my point of view, as there’s a bigger question to answer at the core of the problem.
Microsoft already asked you (as users in general, I don’t mean anybody personally) once whether you really wanted to (or had to) continue using Windows at the support end of the much respected Windows 7 (respect inside the Windows world, that is).
You are still using Windows?
Ok, now Microsoft is asking you again whether you really want to (or have to) continue using Windows with the switch from Windows 10 to 11 and the accompanying hardware cut.
To petition or beg them to soften the hardware requirements is missing the point for me, it’s just kicking the can down the road until something like this happens again.
Just answer the question earnestly to base decisions on this: Do you really want to (or have to) continue using Windows?
No? Fine, there are alternatives. Use one of them.
Yes? Fine, then meet the requirements. If you are a private Windows user, you are not the boss, Microsoft is, and you are fine with that, you made that choice, everybody knows what Windows is and what it does. (I’m using Windows mostly, by the way, just to clear that up in case it doesn’t show
.)
You want to have more time to make the switch to Windows 11? Also fine, apparently you will be able to buy more time … Microsoft: Support extension for Windows 10 also for private users | heise online. While such plans have existed for a long time at the end of each Windows support cycle for businesses and organisations (and, looking at the price tag, are used in a shocking scope every time, just ask some governments or some local city halls), the supposed plan for private users would be new.
For me the big drama now comes from painting the scary mental picture of PCs ending up in the trash, but it’s up to PC owners to actually put them there or not. Even if you want to get rid of them, of course there are alternatives to the trash heap, and everybody knows this.
I’m not a big fan of over-dramatisation.
It’s up to the users to let this all play out as a big drama, or not.
Effort for change should go into bringing European governments to drop the dependence on Microsoft in their IT and improve digital sovereignty, and more businesses need to get out of the still huge Microsoft lock-in in the business realm. That would be effort more well spent overall, I think.