My old 6600 from 2016 is still running fine, I replaced the SSD (Intel 400GB to X25-E 64GB that will last 20 years minimum), the RAM (Micron to Samsung from aliexpress before the price hike... got 8 sticks of 16GB for $40 a pop for backup) and even the old trusty monitor (Both Eizo 5:4 matte VA; mercury tube to led, with f.lux/redshift the blue light is ok).
But with a 3050 upgrade from the 1050 and later 1030 (best GPU for eternity if you discount VR) I had in it it's good for another decade. If a game comes out that does not run on it I wont play it... simple as that... 150W is enough. So far only PUBG stutters, what a joke of bloat and poor engineering that game has become...
Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.
YMMV but recommendation is still: do not buy new X86 hardware; do not use new OS/languages.
Build something good with what you have right now.
Make it so good it's still in use after 100 years.
> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7
Windows 7 doesn't have compressed memory (ZRAM). Doesn't support TRIM for NVMe SSDs. Doesn't have WSL. Doesn't have ISO mounting built in. Doesn't have HDR, variable refresh rate, etc...
The better statement is 'Win 10 improved nothing directly user-facing over Win 7'. Sure, there are several technical improvements under the hood, but those are completely detached from what the user actually sees and experiences, and there's no real reason we couldn't have the Windows 10 technical improvements with a Windows 7 UI, other than Microsoft being the abusive parent that it is.
I'd still disagree but UI changes are far more subjective with approval. The start menu in 10 is a lot more customizable vs. Windows 7 which I think is a good thing. Task View (virtual desktops) were added in 10. Task Manager is so much better, that one is probably objective.
> The start menu in 10 is a lot more customizable vs. Windows 7 which I think is a good thing.
I installed Open-Shell day 1 when I got Windows 8, and continued with that on 10, since the new start menu did not convince me, so I can't really vouch for that. I don't see a need in having tiles and such in my start menu.
> Task View (virtual desktops) were added in 10.
Never used it in Windows. On my Mac I use it to put individual apps in full-screen, so they're easy to switch to with 3-finger swipe. Then again, I have three screens, so the demand for more desktop space is close to zero on what would be my Windows machine.
> Task Manager is so much better, that one is probably objective.
Technically a Windows 8 addition, but I'll give you that one. I'll have the old task manager back if I could get the old photo viewer back though. I can manage with the old task manager. I couldn't manager with the Win10 Photo app, and had to install Irfanview to get a usable picture viewer (at least before I went to Linux).
Are those really improvements though.
RAM maybe wears quicker if compressed?
NVMe will break long before a good old SATA drive.
WSL... lol
ISO you can do with daemon tools for free...
Displays are good enough at 60Hz 5:4 matte.
WSL is an excellent Micro-Soft technology.
> NVMe will break long before a good old SATA drive.
What gave you that idea?
> RAM maybe wears quicker if compressed?
Is this serious? The rest of your post seems serious, but that's such a silly idea.
> What gave you that idea?
If you run Windows 7 on it then it sure will!
I have fedora xfce running beautifully on a 2011 i5 Mac mini. Replacing the hard disk with modern SSD was all it took to get it running at acceptable speeds where interacting with xfce is roughly instantaneous
> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.
You had me up to this point. The problem is that there are actually quite a few improvements under the hood over those upgrade paths, but they are unfortunately hidden under all of the bullshit. I was an early adopter of Windows 11 specifically because of their efficiency core support over Windows 10 when I upgraded my CPU.
You need to look at the cost of improvements, and they overshadow all progress.
I'm going linux with TWM (desktop with design look from the 70s) on ARM because M$ is clearly not thinking about the long perspective.
We need a stable platform to build quality software.
And that's saying alot seen how linux is deprecating libc after very short time and the legacy joystick API is not being compiled into modern kernels anymore.
Stability is way more important than bells and whistles.