I just down loaded the trial version of PL 6 and tried to install it and got an error message that PL 6 required Win 10 ver. 20H2 to run. My Win 10 ver. is 1909 and my perfectly good Dell Precision M4800, which runs PL 5 great can not be upgraded to gain the support from Win ver. 20H2. So, it looks as if DXO will miss out on the little bit of profit they would have made from me, c’est la vie.
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Sorry to hear your hardware is too old for Microsofts updates as the 1909 went end of life 18 months ago - I believe.
It will not receive any additional security updates from Microsoft it’s a bit of calculated risk you have to consider.
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Is there a reason why you are not running a more recent version of Win 10? Version 1909 reached end-of-life back in May 2021, i.e. MS no longer provide security patches for it. I’d be surprised if your machine can’t be updated to a currently supported version of Win 10 (20H2, 21H1, 21H2 and the imminent 22H2).
I was also a bit surprised when he indicated his machine was not upgradable to a later version of Windowsc10,
Mark
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I could understand if he’d said his machine could not be updated to Win 11, since that does have minimum hardware requirements that an old machine won’t meet. My desktop PC comes into that category but Win 10 on it still gets version as well as security updates.
I agree.I would have also thought that should be the case, but perhaps some limitation does exist with certain hardware.
Mark
I suppose that’s a possibility but I’ve not come across that sort of thing with Win 10 version updates.
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In that case it probably is a limitation by Dell, as I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to upgrade Windows otherwise.
@larrymc
Relentless of not being able to update to PhotoLab 6, I would really urge you to check if you can’t update Windows due to an error or something, as you will lose the essential security updates as well if Windows isn’t updated at all. That’s not something you should want nowadays.
Otherwise, you could try to reset Windows Update as described here
My home desktop PC is a Dell, quite an old one but it’s never had a problem running any version of Win 10.
My (until I retired recently) work laptop was also a Dell, not as old as my home machine but updates came through regularly. Having said that, there was a feature update that required the manual intervention of the IT people. I don’t know why, I assumed it was something to do with the way they managed updates in their corporate environment.
@larrymc another thing to investigate is the ‘Dell Command Update’ utility. It will scan your machine and find and offer Dell updates (e.g. BIOS updates). Perhaps your machine needs a BIOS update???
@stuck
Just mentioning it as I saw some manufacturer tooling intervene with updates, even Windows Updates, in the past. Everything had to go through their tool. Can’t recall if it was a Dell or another big manufacturer though.
But it could also be a problem with Windows Update itself. I linked to a workaround for that.
Ok, here is the reason my system could not update to the latest version 20H2 . For some reason only known to Microsoft when I went to update to version 20H2 Microsoft stated that my processor was not qualified would not support 20H2 even though lesser processors would support 20H2 in early 2021. Even today my processor will not support 20H2. So I just forgot about the up upgrade since my system was running without problems with the end of life version 1909. Fast forward to the 5th of this month I decided to download and install the trial PL6 up grade and was informed my Win 10 version would not support PL6, that Win 10 version 20H1 was the minimal required Win 10 version that would work. Just by chance I wondered if a later 2021 version might have changed things and unbelievably Version 21H2 was supported, go figure! It took me three tries to complete the upgrade over a day and a half but it got accomplished. So I have support until 2024 or 2027 based upon which article I’ve read is correct.
So now I’m trialing PL6 and I haven’t seen any features I absolutely can’t do with out, if anyone can change my mind please inform me. So DXO still might miss out on my upgrade money unless the Black Friday deals a really good.
We can’t know which new features would be compelling enough for you to purchase PL 6 and whether you might miss out not having them. Only you can know that. If you trialed PL 6 and tested out all the new features and remain underwhelmed ,I, for one, am not going to try to convince you otherwise.
Mark
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But at least you’re Windows installation is up to date again 
For the rest I agree with @mwsilvers: if you think PL6 doesn’t bring you enough, I’m not going to try to convince you.
For me, the reasons to update are the new ReTouch tooling and DeepPrime XD because I use their predecessors both a lot
Well if your machine is to old to support even an upgrade of Windows 10 it might be time to buy a new one anyway.
I recently had to upgrade my computer and was astonished by the differences in performance. Since the old one died I had no choise but before that I found out that it was not compatible with Windows 11 anyway, so it was really a dead end.
I also found out that the system demands of Photolab 6 Deep Prime XD was twice of the older Deep Prime and if I would have tried it on my old computer it would have been painful.
Deep Prime exports takes about 3-4 seconds with 24 MP files now and Deep Prime XD 7-8. With my old PC it took more than 30 seconds the last days of it’s life. Double that at least with XD.
I wonder if people that reluctant to upgrading know about this and are completely indifferent to spending a lot off time just staring at their monitors waiting for Photolab to finish their exports. Mac and PC performance has taken big steps the last years. I have read even more dramatic performace gains with the new Macs. The choice is yours. I’m pretty sure there have never been a time where an upgrade of computers have given more benefits than now.
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Thanks for your advice. I fully realize how long it takes for exporting a Deep Prime 26MP file to disk and I’m OK with it as I don’t sit staring at the screen while the export is happening plus I don’t batch export at all. Yes the choice is mine and I chose to do what I do with my processing. For me, the time to export Deep Prime vs Deep Prime XD is virtuallythe same with my PC. Plus even zoomed to 200% it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD.
Nothing wrong with not upgrading both Windows and Photolab if there is nothing that makes it worth it for you. I´m not astonished by either Deep Prime XD or the “new” Retouch (Heal and Clone) but for me there are other things like some important changes in the metadata support that justifies it for me and there are many that upgrades their Macs and PCs that welcomes the quite astonishing performance boosts.
For me it also makes the reindexing of metadata catalogs with many files a much less painful task than before.
Many like myself are here on DXO Forums to discuss and learn from others achievements, experiences, empiric tests and mistakes. My mistake was to sit with an old OS too long really. Photolab is also a very complicated software and there is a lot to learn many times. I think I have had a lot to learn from others for example about how the metadata-system in Photolab works and sometimes don´t and if one is not interested in some topics it´s just to ignore.
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Whether to upgrade is entirely a personal decision, what someone else thinks is irrelevant.Do as you please 
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What brought me to DXO and mainly PhotoLab originally is the rendering I get from PhotoLab with relative ease. I chose early on to stay clear of the Adobe model. For my simple cataloging system I use Zoner ZPS X no complicated processes and it works for me. What intrigues me is the new “Color Space” feature available.
… finally catching up with the competition
Looking into that, apparently Lightroom Classic uses ProPhoto RGB, and Capture One “works in a very large color space, similar to that captured by camera sensors” but doesn’t say which color space that is.