# New Cheap PC for Windows 11 or supporting Discourse discussion {Also obsoleting Browsers & OP systems}

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-cheap-pc-for-windows-11-or-supporting-discourse-discussion-also-obsoleting-browsers-op-systems/1016577>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Tags:** computer-hardware\
**Created:** [April 3, 2025, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-cheap-pc-for-windows-11-or-supporting-discourse-discussion-also-obsoleting-browsers-op-systems/1016577 "2025-04-03T16:26:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 43

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-cheap-pc-for-windows-11-or-supporting-discourse-discussion-also-obsoleting-browsers-op-systems/1016577/43 "2025-04-03T16:02:25Z")

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> [@Apparently I'm going to be kicked off the boards (Discourse upcoming incompatibility){New cheap PC posts moved out}](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apparently-im-going-to-be-kicked-off-the-boards-discourse-upcoming-incompatibility-new-cheap-pc-posts-moved-out/1016432/17):
>
> > [@Apparently I'm going to be kicked off the boards (Discourse upcoming incompatibility){New cheap PC posts moved out}](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apparently-im-going-to-be-kicked-off-the-boards-discourse-upcoming-incompatibility-new-cheap-pc-posts-moved-out/1016432/17):
> >
> > In my view this an absolutely asinine move by Discourse which is very disruptive to users on older platforms and brings very minimal benefits (like, none at all that I can see). ⁢
> 
> Non-Windows 10 & 11 have a collective [market share of less than 3%](https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide) of just desktop windows and desktop windows likely is less than 50% of all access to this board. What’s more damning is that the market share of non-Win 10 & 11 appears to be very stable over time which means Discourse doesn’t gain much by dragging this out another year or two because it won’t substantially decrease the number of people it affects. They might as well rip the bandaid off now.
> 
> What you’re not seeing is the collective drag on software development speed from supporting a wider range of platforms. Every software development team constantly has to balance the tradeoff between supporting more users vs building more features. The costs are real, even if they’re invisible to the consumer. ⁢

This sort of thing would be a lot more convincing if, you know, it wasn’t just Discourse. Best practices for handling obsolescence are already in practice all over the web. Discourse’s attitude of either “full support or HTML only uselessness” has **NEVER** been the standard. HTML and JavaScript were _designed_ around graceful fallback.

It’s not some inevitability that they have to deal with. If it were, you’d constantly be running into websites saying “sorry, we can’t work on your browser.” It’s a choice. They don’t have to constantly rewrite everything to use the latest and greatest.

It seems unlikely every other website is weighing the technical debt wrong. Ripping off the bandaid seems a horrible strategy in general (as users resist forced obsolescence), and especially so in this case, as message board users skew older and thus are more likely to use older hardware.

I get some hints of choice supportive bias when people defend Discourse for things that other websites and webapps don’t do.

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