Keizer: Windows 10 shows sign of enterprise upgrading

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Keizer’s Computerworld take relies on the numbers reported by Net Applications: Windows 10 actually slipped two-tenths of a percentage point in user s
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Pepsiboy, AJNorth

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The Enterprise version allows for more granular control of W10 than Home or Pro users have… and there is a slight drop in overall useage, despite more businesses converting. That leaves fewer personal PCs with Home or Pro on them… with an increase in Mac and Linux OS.

The Keizer article writes about the precipitous drop in home users buying new computers. He doesn’t make a link about Home users staying away from new computers, because they come with W10 on them… but the people I know are avoiding new purchases and making do with older systems that can run Win 7 and 8.1… The problem for Microsoft is understanding why so many people out and out avoided W10 in the first place… fix those things, and they’d have a lot higher adoption rates.

A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have thought of turning down a free Windows OS…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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AlexEiffel, Karlston, Bill C., Cybertooth, lurks about, abbodi86, BobbyB, Seff, lanceboil, AJNorth, ryegrass

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Elly,

When you say “fix those things” you are proposing removing the “features” that MS seems to be pushing the hardest.  MS wants to be in total control of your machine.  They want it to gobble up any horrible update they throw at it.  They don’t want the user to be able to say NO.  The longer game is S Mode, which will be phased in, and will soon be the only pre-installed option.  End game is full silo, total lock-in.  Only one place to get your software, and MS decides what gets offered.  I don’t see MS fixing those things.

– Bakharkan –

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HiFlyer, Elly

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I realize that Microsoft is on track to eliminate the things that I find essential in an OS… but haven’t given up hope that they might listen to their customer base before losing us entirely.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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HiFlyer, Ascaris

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Microsoft will ONLY listen to money and for that it is the Enterprise. Be gone home user rabble, after all you did not pay for your OS.

I have found that in my experiences and with my colleages, the biggest change has been the abandoning of laptops for iPads.

The reasons cited are primarily, 1. They do not need a laptop to browse and send email; 2. they did not like their Win10 laptop and it stopped working too often, or it no longer worked with their printer/scanner/camera, etc.; 3. they prefer to do major productivity on a desktop; and finally, 4. the iPad was much lighter without spending a fortune for a thin/light road warrior laptop.

For those with desktops they are sticking with Win7 and 8.1 due to friends’ complaints about Win10, or have grown tired of the constant reboots of their Win10 device(s).

Those with work provided Win10 laptops just complain and say they will never buy one with their own money, and just take it to the IT staff to get working right when it has an issue.

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HiFlyer, Bakharkan

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There was no good windows after 7, so I will stay on windows 7 even after 2020. And if usage of win7 gets too risky or too complicated after support ending, then I’ll have to swich to richman’s mac whatever I want or not. There is no other option… windows is dead.
Windows 8/8.1 simply were c*** and windows 10 is no operating system anymore, it’s full-blown gigabyte-eating spyware.

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PerthMike, HiFlyer, FakeNinja

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Don`t worry Steve Gibson will take care of us when 7 support runs out.  Just as he did for XP.

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Today, near all super-computers, Cloud Service Providers, website hosting service providers and 50% of web-servers run on free Linux. …
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/08/25-awesome-unexpected-things-powered-linux

As the EOL for Win 7 Ent in 2020 approaches, maybe some enterprises will move over to Red Hat Linux Ent, which only charges subscriptions for full 24-hour tech support or will move over to free Ubuntu/Linux Mint by hiring one or a few Linux System Admins.
___ Eg Facebook, Twitter, Google Inc, IBM, AT&T, Princeton U, Prudential Insurance, etc, run Linux, not Windows Ent. …
https://www.indeed.com/q-Linux-System-Administrator-jobs.html

“When there’s a will, there’s a way.”

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Elly

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It is possible, but I believe largely unlikely in most cases due to required or proprietary software for which no Linux alternative exists.

As a single simple example, just today I was reading on this site about Adobe and fillable PDFs. For many businesses and government, especially public facing segments, the use of fillable PFD forms is routine. It is the common, routine things that can be the hardest to migrate from.

I too, as a Linux Mint and Ubuntu user would like to see a wider Linux world. I just wonder if that world might not be as interesting when it becomes a primary target of malware and hackers that currently ignore its small market share.

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As long as Microsoft is unable to move Window 10 from prototype to production-ready, it’s just a wishful thinking at Microsoft..  Just got December 12, 2017—KB4054517 (OS Build 16299.125) and Feature update to Windows 10, version 1709 showing up in Windows Update on the Windows 10 Pro 1709 boxes… The problem is, the former was installed back in December and the latter back in October… On the other hand, I’m still waiting to get the January/February CUs… It’s just ridiculous that the Microsoft kindergarten cannot deliver… But yeah, the Microsoft CEO loves Linux…

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Satya loves Linux? That would like Microsoft & Nokia just plain wretched disaster & doom. He’s been expletive journey “finding the soul” of Microsoft these few years… Foolishness I say.

I’ll say it again, Linus Torvalds and other very interested parties should take further care to avoid any intrusive Microsoft efforts. Can somebody tell us how to leave secure boot enabled and use a Wi-Fi adapter with the Linux kernel? (Thanks Microsoft!)

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While it’s generally accepted that Windows 10 simply doesn’t appeal to a great many users who are therefore sticking currently with Windows 7 or 8.1, it should also be noted that their willingness to continue doing so beyond January 2020 (and its corresponding date for 8.1) will be greatly enhanced by the growing trend for the monthly Windows Updates to be seen to provide a greater threat to their computers than the malware the Updates are supposed to be protecting against, so that the loss of support for Windows 7 in January 2020 may not prove to be anything like the deterrent that it would once have been, including when XP lost support but still continued to be used by a significant number of users.

Microsoft should therefore be worried by the forecast that over one-third of Windows laptop and desktop PCs will still be avoiding Windows 10 in January 2020, but they seem to be unconcerned and there’s no evidence of them doing anything to improve on the situation from their point of view.

All of that assumes that the forecast is right of course, and that there is a continued gradual but escalating switch to Windows 10. However, that is by no means certain and with all the different versions that are being released (on short life cycles), the major problems commonly experienced with them, and the fact that Windows 10 has more security flaws detailed each month than its predecessors, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if a lot of business and home users continued to avoid it altogether, especially if more businesses choose to restrict their system activities to within the company’s intranet perimeter in order to enhance their system security without the need for major OS upgrading.

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AJNorth, Elly, Cybertooth

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Having been in corporate IT for many years, I know the inertia that pervades. Progress to different technologies can seem glacial for 2 reasons: It costs money to change to new technology, & it costs time to train people to use it.

Elly wrote:

The Enterprise version allows for more granular control of W10 than Home or Pro users have… and there is a slight drop in overall useage, despite more businesses converting. That leaves fewer personal PCs with Home or Pro on them… with an increase in Mac and Linux OS.

The problem for Microsoft is understanding why so many people out and out avoided W10 in the first place… fix those things, and they’d have a lot higher adoption rates.

A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have thought of turning down a free Windows OS…

Businesses & enterprises usually follow the rule “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If they can see something’s going to break, the ones that plan ahead fix it with time to spare. The rest wait for it to break, then either scramble to fix it, or limp along with broken systems. Why do you think 5% are still running on Win XP, when they had plenty of time to move to Win Vista or Win 7? Here’s a pie chart of user share for various versions of Windows from page 2 of Keizer’s article:

Vista has migrated to Win 7, but there’s that stubborn 5% of XP. Granted, this includes consumers & enterprises. As an adopter of Win 8 (available on new PC’s in late Oct. 2012; I bought my laptop in mid-Feb. 2013), then dutifully upgraded to Win 8.1, anonymous is half-right. Win 8 was a Jekyll & Hyde piece of c*** (props to Woody for tagging it as Jekyll & Hyde in Windows 8 All-in-One for Dummies). Win 8.1 gave more control back to Dr. Jekyll; it’s not perfect, but it’s no longer c***. The 8% of Win 8 is original 8 & 8.1 combined. According to Wikipedia, Gartner told enterprises to skip Win 8.1 & upgrade to Win 10 as Win 7 approaches end-of-life. Click the Wiki reference link & you get a Computerworld article Keizer wrote in June 2015. IMO, Gartner (Group) sabotaged Win 8.1 in the enterprise.

Yeah, with less than 23 months to go, how’s that upgrade plan working out? The smart enterprises have either already moved to Win 10 or will start now. As Elly said, enterprises have more control over Win 10 than consumers & small businesses do. Still, as we know, Windows 10 is still prone to breaking. This doesn’t even consider S Mode (Windows 10 S?). As I said in the beginning, major businesses are very slow to change. The smart but wary ones have either migrated to Windows 10 or will start soon. The rest will continue to drag their heels until 2020 & maybe beyond. IMHO, Elly’s right; if MS fixes & stabilizes Win 10 soon, the main migration begins for consumers, small businesses & enterprises. Confidence in Microsoft returns; else consumers & small businesses migrate to Chrome OS, macOS & Linux. If they haven’t already done so. As Elly also said, a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have thought of turning down a free Windows upgrade. But a lot of us have.

Bought a refurbished Windows 10 64-bit, currently updated to 22H2. Have broke the AC adapter cord going to the 8.1 machine, but before that, coaxed it into charging. Need to buy new adapter if wish to continue using it.
Wild Bill Rides Again...

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AlexEiffel, AJNorth, Elly

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I’m dual booting Linux Mint and Win 7, on the basis that Mint will be my main world facing OS and Win7 for some old apps, cannot face Win 10 and the update cycle that imposes.

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Microfix, Bill C., AJNorth, Ascaris, johnf, Elly, Cybertooth

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I’m taking a similar position.  I’ve been maintaining/auditioning several Linux distros in VMs, some for over a year.  That’s not running second class, that’s the way I mostly run Windows as well.  No currently running on bare metal, but expect to eventually.  Linux Mint is one the two top contenders to become my primary replacement for Windows 7 when 7 hits EOL.  The other is Fedora.  Both seem stable, and well maintained.  Mint runs on an older very stable kernel, while Fedora is cutting edge (just bumped kernel to 4.15.6).

I tried a duel-boot with Linux years ago, and the problem was I rarely wanted to shutdown Windows in order to run Linux.  Currently, with 8 cores and 32 GB ram in each of my twin towers, VMs have worked out great.  If I want to run Linux, I don’t have to disturb the running Windows VMs.

I am not nearly as proficient with Linux as I am with Windows.  I’ve had some exposure to Unix and Linux since the 1980’s, but mostly at a superficial level, not much admin experience until my current endeavors.  But I need to get fully up to speed by 2020.

– Bakharkan –

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Please stay on topic.
The topic is “Windows 10 shows sign of enterprise upgrading,” not migration to Linux

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I agree the article isn’t directly about migration to Linux, but it isn’t just about enterprise either, despite the title which might be considered a tad misleading – so that the topic is actually quite a broad one. It reads to me as the standard monthly user data regarding the percentage of different OS users, and in the course of reporting the small increase in Windows 10 users it states what is clearly no more than an assumption that “the rebounding of Windows 10’s growth can safely be assigned to business machines migrating to the newer OS”, although Keiser also states that “it’s unclear what percentage of enterprise PCs contribute to Net Applications’ data”. He’s probably right, but his speculation isn’t based on any substantiation.

Lest there be any doubt, I am not for a moment questioning your moderation, PK,  which was spot on, rather I’m suggesting that the topic is a pretty broad one that extends well beyond just enterprise upgrading. As such, while it would be wrong to go off at a tangent on one aspect of it, discussion of the article is bound to cover a broad range of issues.

 

 

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From an enterprise perspective Windows 10 is pretty much the only game in town.  There is no incentive to migrate from Win 7 to Win 8.1 for any number of reasons.

So as Windows 10 share increases it isn’t indicative of anything other than this simple reality — unless an enterprise is willing to fully migrate to Linux (unlikely) for information workers there simply are no other choices besides Windows 10.

So changes in Windows 10 share don’t say a thing about whether or not those migrating enterprises actually find Windows 10 to be superior to Windows 7 or otherwise desirable.

When the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

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Elly

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The only real news on this subject would be if a significant number of enterprise(s) decide not to migrate to Windows 10 from Windows 7. Large corporations answered surveys in 2015-2016 saying that they will migrate to W10 in the 2018-2019 time frame. The starter’s gun was fired 62 days ago.

For the enterprise to migrate to W10, it really does not depend on what the employees want or not want. The enterprise is velcroed to Windows life cycles, associated hardware, service agreements and application compatibility. There have been some outliers, such as IBM’s decision to allow departments to choose a MAC if they wanted it. By October 2016, IBM had 90,000 MACs in use. They have 300,000 employees, so it will be interesting to know if thy go whole hog by 2020.

I think Mr Keizer should keep a close eye on ‘enterprise’ government W10 migrations. They are usually the laggards. I have not seen any surveys on their position. They represent a huge percentage of installed W7 systems world wide.

Lastly, the impact of meltdown and spectre on the migration to W10 …
– Intel is continuing to sell the flawed chip in its new processors and it looks as though that will continue through to 2020, however W7 is more susceptible to the vulnerability. The latter may end up being a compelling reason to migrate to W10, for the enterprise.

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WildBill

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I’m getting a new SSD. When I first planned to get one, I assumed I’d be installing Windows 10 on it. The main reason I stuck with Windows 7 was that Windows 10 did not seem to like the speed of my hard drive, making it 10 times slower and just slowing down everything, so I always thought I’d try Windows 10 again when I had a faster drive.

But having seen all the problems that keep happening, I have decided to simply reinstall Windows 7. (I considered cloning my drive, but decided I’d like to start fresh.) I can’t bring myself to use Windows 10 with how the updates work. And I had to wait years to have the money to afford the most basic SSD, so I don’t have the money to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

Furthermore, I’ve not heard of any killer apps that are Windows 10 only. There’s DirectX 12, but Vulkan seems to be an option on anything that uses that–plus my computer is too old for the latest games. Other than that, what is there? The only app I regretted losing when going back to Windows 7 was Fruit Ninja, but I have that on my Amazon Fire tablet now, so I don’t need it. And, no, I’m not going to be using Office 2019.

I just don’t see what is so good about Windows 10 to be worth the upgrade troubles. I still do not get why they released Windows 10 before getting the updates working well. Did they really fire the quality assurance team on that? Because those are vital to keep people happy with an OS that constantly updates.

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anonymous wrote:

The only real news on this subject would be if a significant number of enterprise(s) decide not to migrate to Windows 10 from Windows 7. Large corporations answered surveys in 2015-2016 saying that they will migrate to W10 in the 2018-2019 time frame. The starter’s gun was fired 62 days ago. For the enterprise to migrate to W10, it really does not depend on what the employees want or not want. The enterprise is velcroed to Windows life cycles, associated hardware, service agreements and application compatibility.

Not really. In 2015/16, large corporations may not have realised what moving to Windows 10 entailed, especially the insane update cycles. A lot of corporations, mine included, have put Windows 10 on hold until Windows 7 runs out of support. We only just refreshed our Windows 7 SOE with a new fleet of desktop hardware last year, and we’ll be using that hardware for another 5 years while we write down the value. A lot of corporations will be doing the same, moving to the Windows 10 update cycle introduces a complexity to the office IT environment that we simply can’t afford to support.

We have 3 Windows 10 laptops, and they are a nightmare to control, even with WSUS. A “Professional” laptop (especially in a govt agency) should not show icons for games and non-business rubbish like “Mixed Reality Demo” on it that IT cannot get rid of.

Until Microsoft comes up with a more manageable office environment, we’ll be fighting tooth and nail to keep Windows 7 beyond January 2020.

The fact that just this month Microsoft puts out an Office 2010 patch specific to an issue only encountered under Windows XP shows that they will need to continue to support Windows 7.

No matter where you go, there you are.

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AlexEiffel

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