This was an amazing and informative answer. Thank you.

I could be way off base here, but I’d probably start with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 to hack it into working.

First, you want a 32-bit OS – unless you can get one of the 16-bit OSes virtualized well, but I have no experience with that. 32-bit Windows has NTVDM for running emulated 16-bit apps. 64-bit Windows only has the WOW64 (Windows-on-Windows) emulator for running 32-bit apps.

Also, Windows 7 has a large collection of shims and compatibility layers built in, plus a ton of tweaks you can do with the Application Compatibility Toolkit. I don’t know if there are ACT limitations with 16-bit apps though since I haven’t had to do any serious work with it since the XP -> 7 upgrade wave.

Yeah Win11 will probably be a noticeable performance hit on that. Especially Explorer which they made dog slow when adding tabs and the new context menu.

The Office apps and browser will probably be about the same.

I’m running Windows 11 on a 12 year old X79 platform. Runs just fine.

But it was definitely top of the line in its day and 48GB of RAM keeps any system relatively snappy.

I’ve been using Droid48 forever. It’s perfect.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48

https://github.com/shagr4th/droid48

Look man, this is just exhausting. I’m well aware of that security policy. I have enabled it at some of my clients. But it’s not a default setting and would never be on a random non-enterprise PC. This is what I mean when I say the only people who are getting locked out this way were screwing with their computers in ways they don’t understand, installing random garbage and following bad advice on the internet.

From your link:

If you set the value to 0, or leave blank, the computer or device will never be locked as a result of this policy setting.

I don’t care what you think. I’m playing chess with a pigeon here. Test it yourself.

Edit: And sorry for being a jerk. Back to my original point, I’m pretty much fed up with the “technical” communities of Lemmy where correct information is downvote to oblivion and blatantly wrong information is lionized as absolute truth. And when I have tried to actually help and provide useful information I get met with the hordes of confidently incorrect people trying to discredit me.

That’s the BitLocker PIN, not the OS PIN. Go away.

Bitlocker activates when you enter an incorrect OS password too many times.

This is completely false. Please stop spreading misinformation. You clearly have no idea how BitLocker works, nor Secure Boot, BCD, TPM, or PCRs. Or anything really.

Maybe you should stick to an iPad. I’m done replying to this blithering nonsense.

I’m actually 46.

Here’s a cookie:

Bitlocker activated because of an OS update

This did not happen. You did something to enable it.

I don’t have an MS account, because I have no need to give MS all of my data

If you had one, all of your data would have been safe in OneDrive and easily recoverable. But I’m sure the irony is completely lost on all the anti-MS people here. Nah, it must be Microsoft’s fault you didn’t have backups when you broke your tablet.

Do you really want me to count the number of times I’ve switched default browsers away from Edge, only to have it reverted back?

So you suck at managing computers. Got it. This has never happened to me, but I also don’t install every third party app under the sun trying to fight how Windows is designed to work. I bet you have some shady custom start menu app and run CCleaner and defrag on a schedule.

I’ve used MS OSes since MS-DOS 3.0.

Ooh, big flex. I can go back even further but it doesn’t matter because only one of us here seems to know how to use MS OSes without everything randomly changing on them due to *checks notes* “dark patterns.”

They’re not dark patterns. You kids love throwing that term at everything. They’re simply secure defaults because the average user doesn’t change defaults. And “continuously?” Please. 🙄

I’m rocking a 12-year-old 3930k with BitLocker on all drives and it’s perfectly fine.

Agreed. The immature iamsosmart user base is making me strongly consider leaving Lemmy for good. There just aren’t enough actual professionals here for any serious discussion in a technical community. It’s just a bunch of 20-year-olds who think they have the world figured out. And they all downvote based on emotion rather than facts (which I am quite prepared for).

Microsoft accounts, OneDrive, and BitLocker are absolutely great features for the average user providing SSO, cloud storage with ransomware-proof backups, and seamless full-disk encryption.

I love Linux too, but there seems to be no room for nuance on Lemmy. These children are insufferable.

Yeah but $30 USD vs $100 USD targets completely different customers and use cases.

I was willing to spend $30 per TV. But not $100.

Well they’re discontinuing the OG Chromecast and Chromecast w/ Google TV for this. So you’re probably right.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214471/google-chromecast-line-discontinued

Never invest too heavily in Google anything.

Use a Chromium browser to inspect the cert.

If anyone knows how to get Firefox to show a bad cert before loading the page, I’d love to know.