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From: John Rumm <see.my.signature@nowhere.null>
Newsgroups: comp.misc,uk.d-i-y
Subject: Re: Laptop replacement
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:07:08 +0000
Organization: Internode Ltd
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On 27/03/2025 08:28, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 27/03/2025 in message <vs2ptj$3jchh$2@dont-email.me> Lawrence 
> D'Oliveiro wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:02:39 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> Well I have had pretty good results for MY needs with HP laptops BUT
>>> anything to run Windows 11 seems very expensive. Like £400
>>>
>>> Whereas a Windows ten capable refurbished is under £100
>>
>> Would you entrust mission-critical business operations to obsolete,
>> unsupported software?
> 
> I use Windows 8.1 on all my machines that will run it because it allows 
> me to download updates and install them when convenient to me. Why this 
> facility doesn't exit on Win 10 goodness knows.

You do have some level of control on pro versions, and full control on 
enterprise ones.

The sad reality is that the majority of hacks on systems exploit holes 
that have already been fixed for some time, but for whatever reason the 
patches have not been applied.

Professional IT admins in business *aught* to know better, but I expect 
that many home users see the interruptions to their use of a system and 
the potential complications from unexpected changes in UI, performance, 
functionality, and workflow etc that come with patches and updates are a 
PITA and things to be avoided and whinged about.

So MS have decided the only way they can improve this situation for home 
users, is to take control of the patching process. Based on the number 
of people I have met that proudly boast that they have "never installed 
any updates, and my system still works just fine", they are probably right!

> I see you've been suckered by MSFT marketing bullshit :-)

Says the man running an OS that has not had any security patches since 
January 10, 2023. :-)

Remember that there are substantial amounts of shared code in successive 
versions of windows (or any OS for that matter), so each time that MS or 
another vendor issue a patch for a critical vulnerability in a current 
version of your OS or app, those patches by their very nature will 
identify what was changed, and usually give strong clues what the actual 
vulnerability was. Armed with that information, you can then work out if 
the same vulnerability exists in older unsupported versions, and how it 
can be exploited.

Generally not "easy" problems to deal with.

Having said that, at least it can be done for actively supported 
consumer OSs. In the IoT and embedded systems market however, the whole 
system is a cluster fsck! How often do people update the firmware in 
their routers, CCTV systems, phone systems etc? How often do they rip 
out and replace hardware that is still working because it is no longer 
supported? How much electronic tat has never been supported, for which 
there is no obvious update mechanism, and was riddled with bugs from day 
one? There are loads of them that are now in bot nets and happily up to 
mischief at their masters behest!


-- 
Cheers,

John.

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