With regard to Win10 soon not being supported any more, most of the time I present customers with "older" computers with 3 - 4 options:
1 - do nothing: I explain the downside of this approach mainly with regard to the security implications.
2 - an "unsupported PC" upgrade to Windows 11: I explain how I will need to visit every other year to feed the computer a feature update to allow it to continue getting updates, as well as the theoretical possibility that a future Win11 update that hasn't been designed very well and assumes specs compliance could be problematic.
3 - replace the computer.
The alternative approach, background first: I have a customer with a Win7 PC I built back in 2011-ish (Core i7-870), upgraded to include an SSD several years ago. The customer is retired but has SolidWorks (2011 I think?) installed, a 3D design/rendering program for architectural purposes I believe and comes with a hefty price tag that has now become a hefty rental price tag. It's reputed to be not compatible with Win10 IIRC. Any act that involves reinstalling SolidWorks carries a risk of having to contact the software maker and reactivate a no-longer-supported product. The customer still uses it from time to time and would prefer to avoid the licencing of a new version. We've discussed various options such as having a new computer alongside the old one, nothing is decided yet.
Something that occurred to me this morning is IMO a bit of a perverse configuration, but my idea is to furnish his PC with enough RAM and install a virtual machine with Win7 as the host, and inside the virtual machine he runs the higher-risk apps (or newer version apps that won't run on Win7) such as a web browser, e-mail program, etc. I call it perverse because my usual view is that while the highest profile target for security compromises is the web browser, a full system compromise might start with user level privs achieved from a web browser exploit followed by OS exploits to escalate privs, and the VM would still be running on top of a less secure OS (the perverse bit), in a way it's kind of more secure than say a new PC running say Win11? Yes, I have heard of VM exploits to gain host privs but it's safe to say that the likelihood of such an exploit is somewhat lower than exploits designed with a single OS in mind.
Such a setup would have a couple of usability points knocked off unless the linkage was virtually seamless so that when guest OS app saves to the Documents folder that it ends up in host OS's user's Documents folder, all perfectly possible I would guess, but surely some things are going to be harder. Provision of a new printer would need to happen in both environments I guess.
Thoughts?
1 - do nothing: I explain the downside of this approach mainly with regard to the security implications.
2 - an "unsupported PC" upgrade to Windows 11: I explain how I will need to visit every other year to feed the computer a feature update to allow it to continue getting updates, as well as the theoretical possibility that a future Win11 update that hasn't been designed very well and assumes specs compliance could be problematic.
3 - replace the computer.
The alternative approach, background first: I have a customer with a Win7 PC I built back in 2011-ish (Core i7-870), upgraded to include an SSD several years ago. The customer is retired but has SolidWorks (2011 I think?) installed, a 3D design/rendering program for architectural purposes I believe and comes with a hefty price tag that has now become a hefty rental price tag. It's reputed to be not compatible with Win10 IIRC. Any act that involves reinstalling SolidWorks carries a risk of having to contact the software maker and reactivate a no-longer-supported product. The customer still uses it from time to time and would prefer to avoid the licencing of a new version. We've discussed various options such as having a new computer alongside the old one, nothing is decided yet.
Something that occurred to me this morning is IMO a bit of a perverse configuration, but my idea is to furnish his PC with enough RAM and install a virtual machine with Win7 as the host, and inside the virtual machine he runs the higher-risk apps (or newer version apps that won't run on Win7) such as a web browser, e-mail program, etc. I call it perverse because my usual view is that while the highest profile target for security compromises is the web browser, a full system compromise might start with user level privs achieved from a web browser exploit followed by OS exploits to escalate privs, and the VM would still be running on top of a less secure OS (the perverse bit), in a way it's kind of more secure than say a new PC running say Win11? Yes, I have heard of VM exploits to gain host privs but it's safe to say that the likelihood of such an exploit is somewhat lower than exploits designed with a single OS in mind.
Such a setup would have a couple of usability points knocked off unless the linkage was virtually seamless so that when guest OS app saves to the Documents folder that it ends up in host OS's user's Documents folder, all perfectly possible I would guess, but surely some things are going to be harder. Provision of a new printer would need to happen in both environments I guess.
Thoughts?
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