Everything is turning into disgusting subscription services. Most recently I saw home printers that required a monthly subscription service in order to print.
So, how long before Windows is a subscription? They have already brought ads into Windows.
Yes, I think I’ll sign up for the…hm, the “Casual Gamer” tier, which allows 2 hours per week of gaming. Although I could always watch an ad to unlock 30 more minutes.
This is all pretty valid, but the reality is that the TPM 2.0 requirement is literally entirely arbitrary, at least when it comes to consumer-level Windows.
I understand the ease of just making both business and consumer versions have the same requirement, because the enhanced security literally won’t matter for the average consumer.
So in effect they lost years of use of their hardware because of an arbitrary limitation. There’s plenty of consumer hardware that otherwise meets the Windows 11 specs but only lacks the TPM 2.0 chip.
I only wish more people would consider Linux as an alternative.
It’s to set up a baseline feature set. Just like you can build an Android app and be confident there will be a touchscreen, motion controls, and GPS, Microsoft is trying to do the same for Windows. Otherwise, windows software will be limited to the lowest common denominator.
That said, the use cases for requiring TPM 2.0 are not encouraging. The biggest use case (aside from full disk encryption, like BitLocker) is anti-piracy tools like Denuvo.
The TPM requirement, I agree seemed a bit much without enough warning to the hardware industry. It’s all the more puzzling because it is trivial to install with the TPM requirement disabled.
That being said, I’ve done tech support forever ago, and I still help my in-laws with technology, and I get it. Microsoft is pushing improvements for people who otherwise wouldn’t do anything for their security or even continuity of operations. Windows hello, for all my gripes with it, gives people a password reset and recovery option for their OS.
But to your point again, I think the TPM requirement should have been phased in more slowly.
Have a great night!