Of course IT people will be familiar with this…
M$ have “stopped support” on win10 a few months ago. So now, when you start up certain programs – in this case Autodesk Fusion – you see e.g.
Does it matter?
Not if you work alone, in isolation, but if you need to import designs from people on win11, you won’t be able to open them after Autodesk stops updates on win10 – because Autodesk rigged Fusion so each new version outputs a .f3d file which will not open with a previous version 
This is a program rented for about £80/month!
So why not move to win11?
Win11 needs a fairly new computer, made approx. in the past 5-7 years. The Dell laptop I am typing this on, a £1800 high grade machine, from 2018, win10, cannot take win11 because it doesn’t have the whole set of features “stipulated” (pointlessly) by M$ (UEFI, secure boot, TPM, etc) except via a hack.
Rufus is a popular hack utility, used by countless “criminal gangs” selling thousands of ex corporate (frequently ex-NHS) machines, chucked out by large organisations who got caught by this scam and, to tick the “due diligence” box, had to chuck all their win10 computers out. The resulting win11 installation does not receive major OS updates, although it should fool these silly applications like Fusion.
What will be fun to see is whether Autodesk will one day stop Fusion running on win10. It is a rented program, regularly checking back with the “church”, so they have the power to do it. Legally, are they entitled? There is a precedent e.g. the UK Govt HMRC pension contribution calculation program, running fine on win7-64 for years, updated itself to a version which did not run on win7-64, so dropped users in the s**t. Recovery from this was complicated, involving a new install on win10 (or in a win10 VM) and locating undocumented database files and copying them over.
On the subject of Autodesk I wouldn’t be surprised if “piracy” would become more mainstream with companies.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ks/pr/two-kansas-companies-sentenced-using-illegal-software
For juridical entities the only repercursions if they’re caught are fines and legal fees, so depending on your enviroment, your activity and your capital, the risk could be virtually non-existant where as the reward is significant cost savings.
It’s already a known fact that there are lots of small buisnesses who use for comercial purposes cracked CAD software.
JoeMama_the_Pilot wrote:
It’s already a known fact that there are lots of small buisnesses who use for comercial purposes cracked CAD software.
Surprisingly, many small companies are starting to look at FreeCAD, and actually use it for Production flows (including FEA, CFD and machining).
Reasons being that:
- many commercial software manufacturers charge you monthly;
- many commercial software manufacturers make it imposible to use offline software (you have stay in their “cloud”) and
- many commercial software manufacturers increase the cost of their monthly subscriptions until the software becomes prohibitively expensive.
And yes, FreeCAD, I was somewhat surprised (although it has recently became much better, apparently). On the other hand, if you keep the binaries, this software would run forever, even if the software is no longer maintained, which is not possible for the modern commercial products.
Large company can afford to change the CAD software as they please, but for small companies it is MUCH harder. And for an individual it is impossible – you can pretty much guarantee that the project will never finish if that commercial CAD is no longer available.
And it is not just the CAD, but many other software products.
There is a free “student” version of Fusion but it has exactly the same OS version related file compatibility problem, so anti bootleg policy doesn’t come into it, other than that they retain the ability to kill the free version at any time.
If I was doing mechanical CAD work myself, I would use Freecad, because the archival requirement is key. Accordingly I use EDA CAD
(Protel, Orcad, etc) from the 1990s, paid for but later undongled.
The win11 hardware requirements are the really stupid problem. So this is a mixture of two idiotic policies 
I have two machines with a hacked win11 and they get updates but not the major ones.
I have one machine that also was claimed to be missing TPM 2.0 but it turned out it was there and just disabled in the bios.
Microsoft have shafted people
the biggest “shaft” is imho the move to office 365.
I got a new PC with Win11 (old one died) and tried to re-install my Office 2010. Nope. Won’t reckognize the licence no matter what I do, instead i get bombarded with “upgrade to Office 365”. No dam it, I paid for 2010 Pro and it still does on my other PC’s what I need it to do.
Probably I’ll end up on some “free office” variant if it continues like this.
I use Orifice 2007 and it works everywhere.
Compatibility mode perhaps?
There is always VMWARE.
IMHO the free office stuff is no good if you want to exchange docs.
I have a couple of older computers incompatible with Win11, but my IT people ‘forced’ the upgrade (if that’s the right word) with the caveat that Windows will eventually block updates.
The last couple of times they cloned the old hard drive and built a new PC around it, to get a new computer on the same Windows and Office licences.
I did read a couple of years ago that MS Office 2024 will be the last that can be bought outright, rather than as a monthly subscription to M365. Not sure if this is still the case.
The MS Office 97 CD was completely unrestricted and we used it on countless computers For basic word-processing and spreadsheets Libre Office (free) is good and supports all the filetypes.
I have a couple of older computers incompatible with Win11, but my IT people ‘forced’ the upgrade (if that’s the right word) with the caveat that Windows will eventually block updates.
That is correct; it blocks major updates (like “25H2”) but you get the “security updates” and antivirus updates etc – for some unknown time. I can personally confirm this.
Crucially, stupid apps which demand win11 should work ok with any “win11” version.
I did read a couple of years ago that MS Office 2024 will be the last that can be bought outright, rather than as a monthly subscription to M365. Not sure if this is still the case.
Yes that is true. You can get special deals on Office 2024 like this (not sure if that link goes anywhere now but it worked a few months ago).
The MS Office 97 CD was completely unrestricted and we used it on countless computers smiley
Office 2003 was better, with the same “lack of limitations” But I tend to buy 2007, legit, and you can get it very very cheaply.
For basic word-processing and spreadsheets Libre Office (free) is good and supports all the filetypes.
Lots of things break when you want to exchange files with M$ users, however.
Peter wrote:
For basic word-processing and spreadsheets Libre Office (free) is good and supports all the filetypes.Lots of things break when you want to exchange files with M$ users, however.
It depends! For certain diagrams and formatting it breaks even if you save in Old Office and read in New Office, so not everything works, but most things do.
