> Hmm, I got that slightly backwards, Win10 will not work on older CPUs

That makes more sense.

I remember that years ago, there was this tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory floating around that Microsoft and Intel had some kind of deal that new versions of Windows would pretty much require one to get a new computer so it would run decently, in order to boost Intel's sales. Maybe there was something to it? ;-)

OTOH: "For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon" - that does indeed sound like one could run into trouble trying to run older versions of Windows on new chips... I wonder if there are hard technical reasons for this. After all, both Intel and Microsoft had put a lot of hard work into preserving backwards compatibility.

I can't see that surviving first contact with large corporate / government customers saying "No, we're going to stay on Windows 7 Enterprise for the next little while thanks - and by the way, we need to buy new PCs sometimes".