TPM 2.0 is old table stakes, circa 2014-2015. The processor requirement (8th gen Intel) is probably more of a concern, but even that is almost 6 years old at this point. I'd wager most business laptops/desktops are Win 11 ready, though that doesn't mean anyone wants it.
TPM 2.0 existed in 2015. That doesn't mean every PC purchased then has it.
But the general point is that they keep coming up with things like this.
Compare modern CPUs to ones from ten years ago and they're maybe twice as fast per core, and have more cores which applications the majority of people use don't support. For most people the ten year old machine is perfectly adequate.
But it doesn't have TPM 2.0 or whatever, and the copy of Windows 7 it came with is no longer supported, so you eventually have to buy a new one (or stop using any supported version of Windows).
It's the same scam with phones but even worse there, because at least I can install an up to date version of Linux on a ten year old PC. Or a twenty year old one for that matter.
hardware TPM is only required if your CPU doesn't support it as an onboard thing... almost all Ryzens have TPM 2.0 support via fTPM for example.
And the hard requirement for a TPM is only for OEM procurement anyway. You as a company can probably put Win11 on anything you want, just build your image and deploy it same as ever.
Even if you can technically do it, many people won't know that when making purchasing decisions, or won't want to run hardware that isn't officially supported.
Meanwhile the requirement means third party software can soon start relying on all recent hardware having that feature and you may soon run into trouble if your hardware doesn't have it.
"Nobody got fired for buying IBM" was a thing for a reason. If you spend the same amount you did last year on new PCs, nobody asks questions. If you put the money somewhere else and then after three years Enterprise Vault Thing 4.0 comes out and requires TPM 2.0, the CEO is mad because you need three years worth of budget in one year to replace all the old PCs.
Smarter companies will find better ways to avoid this, but 50% of companies are below average.
Updooted yesterday but didn't have time to respond, but yup, fair.
Again though I think the fact that soft-TPM has existed for a long time softens that blow. If you have Intel 8000 series or higher or Ryzen 2000 series or higher (iirc) then you have TPM 2.0. Do you need a standalone TPM for a specific reason? Or maybe calling it "soft" is even a misnomer, it's hardware, it's iTPM vs dTPM I guess.
And sure at an enterprise scale going forward why not, it's ten bucks at scale. But it just seems like a lot of todo about nothing... your legacy machines can be imaged up if you want, everything purchased in the last 5 years has hardware support already, and yeah you can toss a whole second module in going forward if you want. But I don't see a hard barrier here to keep enterprise from moving to Win11.
Especially given how much hardware was purchased during COVID WFH... all of that stuff already has support, it's really only stuff that is 2+ years pre-covid that is even an issue.
