Post by c***@invalid.comI'm thinking of moving from Windows 7 to Windows 11.
Can someone give me some names of the usenet groups for 11?
I see bunches of refurbished Win 11 machines for about $200 to $300
dollars from Amazon, Best Buy, Ebay, etc. Why are these so cheap
compared to the ridiculous new prices?
The processor generation might be 6th or 7th. Check the
processor model number here.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html
Maybe a machine has one of these, a quad core. Above about
six cores, the OS itself does not use additional cores to any
purpose. Only user programs really use all the cores. Four cores
is sufficient to not slow down while Windows Defender is running
and the Search Indexer is running.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/88195/intel-core-i7-6700k-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html
A Skylake would work with Windows 7, but Microsoft only allows
Windows 11 Refurbisher OS to ship on refurbished machines. It
could be a Windows 11 Pro OS. Record the license key on a slip
of paper, as these machines, the refurbisher does not place
a COA sticker on the machine. And a piece of paper will be your COA,
by you writing the key on it. The license key is "for future reference",
like a passport photo.
That processor would not have MBEC support in hardware.
Intel now lists various supports, whereas before they
did not bother. The 6700K does not list "MBEC No", they simply
don't list MBEC as an item. Then the newer processors, they finally
indicate MBEC support in hardware, so the user has some idea it will be
dragging its feet a little less. This is not a big deal, and I'm just
illustrating that Intel fixed the information to make it more relevant
to users visiting Ark. the 6700K would not have that line.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134599/intel-core-i9-12900k-processor-30m-cache-up-to-5-20-ghz.html
Mode-based Execute Control (MBEC) Yes
The refurbished machine won't support a local version of AI (no NPU),
but seeing as that hasn't shipped yet, this is hardly something
to cry about :-) As shipped, the machine is "most compatible" with
23H2. What happens on future updates, who knows. windows Defender should
continue to work, even if AI-themed stuff does not.
Basically, the machine will boot just fine, and the speed is
whatever it happens to be. Like my 4th generation machine here,
it works fine, but they've sure slowed it down over the years.
One of the problems with older machines (my Optiplex 780 E8400 refurb).
is that E8400 is destined to crash when attempting to boot Windows 11 24H2.
And that's the SSE4.2 requirement. The refurbs all have SSE4.2.
The graphics in a machine can also be limiting, the Optiplex 780
GMA integrated graphics slid out of support (XDDM driver only),
so even Windows 10 22H2 would not install, until I stuck a
barely adequate (standards-wise) HD6450 in it. Worked fine after
that. The Optiplex 780 (which is unlikely to be for sale today),
is "on the edge" or "on life support" as it were. The current refurbs
aren't that bad.
You can add a new graphics card, but the BIOS on the refurb had
better be UEFI. And it most likely is a UEFI BIOS, so you're
covered there.
A SATA SSD (at 530MB/sec) is fine for the OS shipped in the machine.
A hard drive as a boot drive is a little too slow to be practical,
but hard drives are still good as backup storage devices. I was
running a 4TB drive yesterday, attempted to defrag it, and it took
forever to do that. An SSD in the machine, makes the machine usable.
They probably could not ship the machine if it didn't have a
physical TPM chip (my Optiplex 780 had one but not the BIOS
to support it). Some machines have fTPM and the BIOS of course
supports that for Secure Boot purposes. It would be silly to have
an fTPM (emulation) in the BIOS, and then not be able to boot off it :-)
I would say that today, these machines run, with no promise as to
what happens in the future. I can't run an AI locally on this machine, and
"speaking to my computer" is not high on my todo list. Just yesterday,
someone demoed an AI singing along to Eleanor Rigby (even though the
AI was given a prompt to NOT sing along, the user tricked it into singing).
Exciting times for sure.
I'm hoping at the moment, this fixation with buying nuclear reactors
for this shit, dies out quickly. We need that power for more basic
things than frippery (computer sings while you play guitar).
I would say the price of the machines, reflects their usefulness.
They work, but they're not fire breathing dragons. Like in my 780,
having to fit a graphics card so the OS could upgrade, that's an example
of an expense. Or having to add an SSD would be an expense. Maybe the
machine does not have an NVMe socket. You can fit a PCIe card with an
NVMe socket. But the machines don't have a lot of PCIe slots, so
expansion options tend to be limited. The Optiplex for example, only
allowed a video card to go in the x16 slot. So a fancy NVMe card in x16 would
be rejected by the BIOS, out of hand. All the machines you're looking at,
they are likely to have NVMe support at BIOS level. But the manufacturer
only puts such a thing in the machine, if they plan to ship an NVMe with
it. Which for cheap machines, isn't always part of their game plan.
What you're looking for then, in a machine, is slots that can be
used, as the need arises. Not many people even take the side off
the computer, so it's unlikely you would be adding or fitting stuff.
But from a strategy perspective, it's nice to know that some capability
is there. For example, on the Optiplex 780, I got USB3 by adding
a card to it :-) Since the card cage was dented (... not a Grade A machine),
the video card does not fit all that well.
Paul
