Taking Advantage Of Microsoft’s New Hardware Requirements
Microsoft is discontinuing general support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 and their use of the POPCNT CPU instruction set in the upcoming Windows 11 patch means that older computers will no longer be able to boot once that update rolls out. This means a significant chunk of money will need to be spent by large business to update their aging fleets of computers if they want to continue to run Windows securely.
Alphabet is taking advantage of this decision and is offering a free way to move those computers to ChromeOS Flex instead of replacing them. This would not only save the corporations from the expense of buying modern hardware for their employees, but it will also keep those machines from ending up in landfills. It is an interesting way to try to get their relatively unpopular OS onto a large number of machines, and takes advantage of the current drive by large businesses to at least appear to be adopting green initiatives.
While we can’t keep using the same old hardware forever, and people who have a job to do deserve a computer that was made sometime in the last decade, suddenly dumping vast quantities of hardware in the garbage because they no longer receive security updates is problematic.
