One Year Later: Windows 10 Now Runs On Over 21% of All Desktops (winbeta.org)

An anonymous reader writes: On June 29, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 350 million devices -- 50 million more devices than the previous milestone announced by Microsoft on May 5. While the company is expected to update the number of devices running the latest OS when it releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2nd, NetMarketShare has decided to conduct some research on its own. According to its report, Windows 10 currently runs on a 21.13% desktop OS share. Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to dominate the market with a 47.01% share, with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 representing less than 10% of the PC market, and Windows XP representing 10.34%. While the market share of Windows 10 is all but certain to rise, it likely won't rise as fast as it did between May and June or June and July for example, as Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft has even backtracked on its original statement that Windows 10 will hit one billion devices by mid-2018, saying last month that Windows 10 likely won't in fact make that deadline.

Comments

99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

run it unwillingly.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

And MS untruthfully counts people who rolled back to their previous version of Windows among the Spyware 10 botnet.

Re:99% of those

[wonkey_monkey]

Jesus. Get a sense of humour.

Re:99% of those

[Memnos]

I do. For a lot of money.

Re:99% of those

[geekmux]

run it unwillingly.

Makes sense. 99% of people don't have a damn clue that OS alternatives exist outside of the not-so-affordable Apple ecosystem.

Re:99% of those

[arglebargle_xiv]

In the meantime, the Russian Business Network has announced that CryptoLocker now runs on 29% of all desktops, eclipsing Windows 10's market share by several percentage points. Ivan Granatomyot, RBN spokesman, said that they had taken a leaf from Microsoft's Windows 10 deployment tactics to increase their market share to the current level, and hoped for further growth in the future.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

A *lot* of people, young and old alike, still think Windows === computer. And many don't really even know what the word 'operating system' means.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

But most know what "getting work done" means, and installing Linux is simply not it. You're just wasting time trying to make an OS work when it should work out of the box (and say what you will but I have yet to meet the windows installation that does not) and the user community's reaction to the newcomer's legitimate question is more often than not unhelpful when not simply disdainful. FYI: people who are not nerds do not care about computers. We care about getting things done, and computers are just a means to an end. Simple as that. Your religion wars on software and operating system would be funny if they were not pathetic. People choose windows or MacOS because they work. Simple as that. We do not have hours or days to spend making linux or whatever do what we are interested in doing right now. We don't care about operating systems and the meaning of the word. We're not interested in learning the language of the socially inept. We have lives to live, unlike you.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

What year did this happen? Was it a magical year when Windows stopped requiring drivers and Linux was too hard, or are you just bad with computers? Be honest.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like conjecture, do you have any evidence that AC does not have a sense of humour?

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing humorous about relentlessly using the same jokes over and over again. Some of us happen to like Windows and know that we're among the 95%-ers.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

wasnt he talking to Jesus?

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

As a first time user of linux Mint I had it installed, patched and up and running in 20 minutes On the first attempt. Everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite. Compare that to a typical Windows install.

Re: 99% of those

[geekmux]

As a first time user of linux Mint I had it installed, patched and up and running in 20 minutes On the first attempt. Everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite. Compare that to a typical Windows install.

Thank you. I'm glad someone brought forth an example of Linux in the year 2016, as opposed to the argument the parent was attempting to make here by bringing up some flavor of 1995 Linux.

Re: 99% of those

[NotInHere]

There are still flavours of linux out there that match AC's description. Things like Arch linux or gentoo. They are for people who want to have maintaining their PCs as a hobby. I personally don't despite being a nerd, so I prefer to go with kubuntu instead.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

95%? That sounds like conjecture, do you have any evidence to back this up?

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Always funny when people need to tell the world that they are ignorant, incompetent and full of prejudices.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Windows runs Linux, I'm sure the market share will skyrocket to 95.0001%

Re:99% of those

[Dr. Evil]

It's down to 85% now... and falling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers

Only 95% in gaming. 85% general desktop/laptop. 50% in development. 44% web clients.. 32% in servers...1% of tablets.. 0% of supercomputers

I think this will go into non-linear marketshare loss very soon.

Re:99% of those

[bondsbw]

NetMarketShare is an independent site. In fact, its methodology shows lower percentages of Windows 10 usage than other sites such as StatCounter (which currently shows Windows 10 global market share at 24.2%).

Also these are global stats, but regional uptake information can be interesting. Europe and North America show slightly higher rates of adoption than the average, and Oceania shows a much more usage (Windows 10 has surpassed Windows 7). To balance, Asia and South America show somewhat lower adoption rates, and Africa has much lower usage.

Re:99% of those

[jittles]

Jesus. Get a sense of humour.

Wait wait wait. Jesus is posting as an AC? And he has no sense of humor? That sounds like conjecture. Do you have any evidence to back this up?

Re:99% of those

[RavenLrD20k]

Tool for the job, man.

You use Linux and you don't even know it. No, it's not powering your desktop, but UNIX/Linux is powering a very large portion of the internet. And if you bank on the internet, or manage insurance policies over the net, or take part in online investing, you're likely using IBM system/390 or z/OS mainframes to handle your transactions. I'm a professional .NET coder, which means at work I have to use various Microsoft provided tools for my job. At home, I only run a Windows machine for 2 reasons:

• 1) To be able to remote into my system at work using the VPN when I'm on-call.
• 2) For PC Gaming.

The rest of the time I'm using Linux, because it's what I know better and can do more work with it in less time.

People don't choose Windows or Mac because they're operating systems that work. People choose Windows or Mac because it's what they know, and the Devil you know is always better than the Angel you don't. If you were able to put the time and effort into learning the depths of administering a UNIX or UNIX-like OS you'd be able to tell quite quickly just how broken Windows really is, and similarly just how confining OS X can be. Again, I'm not saying you need to do this, because until you can get deep under the hood with a good concept of what you're doing, you're always going to be more productive with what you have worked with more since you know generally what you can expect out of it(again, the Devil you know vs. the Angel you don't).

You deride Linux for not "getting work done" when it's really just you don't want to spend the time to install it and use it (which is kinda sad considering that several mainline distributions are as difficult to install as clicking on a checkbox indicating your keyboard layout, selecting your time zone, and selecting from a list which productivity and development applications you want, and then clicking the install button and letting it go for 20 minutes with the final result being in a system that just works for your system; I've had to do a lot more than that on any Windows system I've installed). You're actually rather lucky that you have such "easy" operating systems to work with now to "get work done." When I first had a job where I worked with computers in order to "get work done" I had to write out JCL scripts to send to a Mainframe operator who manually scheduled my job to run, which amounted to taking a comma space delimited text file created by a data entry program and running an SQL insert statement against the entries to put them into the database (at that time I didn't know or care what DB system the office used). If I had started that job a year earlier (1995 instead of 1996) I would have been punching up that same JCL by hand on cards. Each card having one line of code that was at max 80 characters long. Compared to that, compiling and installing Linux from scratch was an absolute breeze. Granted most of the cards could be re-used as it was only 6 separate lines of the JCL that had to be changed for each job, but I'd hate to be the guy doing that punching. They used a single square hole punch for that purpose since that was cheaper and saved more space than paying for the punch machine that was basically a type writer that took up half of your average bathroom. After working there, compiling a complete Linux install from scratch was an absolute breeze.

Now get off my lawn and STFU about shit you don't know and refuse to understand, hipster shit-tard. (If you "have a life", WTF are you doing here?)

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed linux mint on my home PC and have spent 2 days (not entire days but maybe a few hours each day) troubleshooting various things to try to equal the responsiveness/performance/quality of my windows 7 pc. The main ones were: 1) Firefox behaved so fucking slowly it was like I was browsing back in the 90's and 2) Audio quality was absolute shit. These were not hard to fix but, FFS, why should I have to browse forums and change a bunch of settings to make things behave normally. It doesn't directly put me off that I had to do this but your average person can't or won't trouble shoot. Even if it takes 2x as long to set everything up - if it works WITHOUT THINKING then that is a win for most people.

I have used linux before but not as a home PC. To say that linux is equal to windows in terms of working right of the box - well that is false. For all Windows other faults, I have never had very basic usability issues with windows. There are some every nice things about linux but unfortunately they are clouded by other issues that have been handled by windows for years.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with Linux Mint was not as great. I installed it this weekend and have no reason to not want to love it - I chose to install it as a windows replacement myself. That said - it did not work well right after install. I had several performance and sound problems that made linux inferior to basically any windows PC i have ever used. They were "easily" fixed but required research online. No one wants to mess with a munch of obscure settings to make their PC run smooth.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a shill, do you have any evidence to prove you're not?

Re: 99% of those

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

As a first time user of linux Mint I had it installed, patched and up and running in 20 minutes On the first attempt. Everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite. Compare that to a typical Windows install.

Same here. My first install of Mint was on a laptop. I fired up the installer and had it up and running in no time, and the best part was that everything worked right off the bat.

Since then I've put it on a variety of other laptops and desktops and so far I've not had a single problem. Linux Mint seems to be the way to go.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had issues with firefox being dog slow in linux as well, which actually has required me to install chromium if I want to browse the web. Chromium seems to have a nasty habit of locking up my user session though and I have gotten used to drooping to the terminal and running kill -u to kill my user session so I can log back in.

How did you fix firefox?

Re: 99% of those

[I'm New Around Here]

He's an AC douche that rants endlessly on Slashdot against nerds, while claiming he's a professional with a real job and everything.

Re: 99% of those

[I'm New Around Here]

Have you ever installed a plain Windows version on a newly built system? If so, did it need drivers for several features? Sounds like you are comparing a vanilla Linux installation to a fully integrated Windows installation on a Dell or HP system, where the drivers are of course already there.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a professional

Professional douche.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story bro. I'm sure you thought you had a point in there somewhere.

Re:99% of those

[amicusNYCL]

I wouldn't say it "runs", Bob! Now every morning I get to do a hard reboot on my work laptop which refuses to come out of sleep/hibernate.

Re: 99% of those

[geekmux]

...To say that linux is equal to windows in terms of working right of the box - well that is false. For all Windows other faults, I have never had very basic usability issues with windows. There are some every nice things about linux but unfortunately they are clouded by other issues that have been handled by windows for years.

Linux could easily work "right out of the box" IF Linux also had dozens of hardware vendors constantly working to create perfect system images and driver packs.

To demonstrate this, build your own generic PC and then try and install Windows on it. Your experience will likely be worse than what you've described as an "not hard to fix" here. Good luck when you find those basic usability drivers still missing.

Re: 99% of those

[WinstonWolfIT]

Open Office lol, try running with that with a real sales team. I use a free suite personally, but I have no choice but to use Office 365 for work, as do 99% of the market.

Re: 99% of those

[I'm New Around Here]

Again, claiming you and yours have the monopoly on "LIFE", yet here you are trolling nerds on a nerd site. You are way more pathetic than we nerds are.

Re: 99% of those

[mt2mb4me]

You come to a site labeled "News for nerds" then bash nerds. You sir are a prick.

Re: 99% of those

[mt2mb4me]

Umm, My mom says she will always be my friend in real life. She says people who say mean things about us are just projecting because they have a small penis.

Re: 99% of those

[orgelspieler]

It is well documented that Jesus had a sense of humor. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!" What a gas!!

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^^^
Was your mom a philosopher? I swear my mom was quoting your mom when she told me the same thing.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

A professional that uses Photoshop. So you do monkey work that we are going to automate away in the next 10 years.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the AC and yes - I have built / configured all of my windows & Linux PCs including my last Linux workstations about 8 years ago (that actually worked better than my Linux PC today). Windows requires drivers but those are easy to install and generally come with your hardware or can be found by vising the hardware manufacturer's website.

The Linux issues were above and beyond drivers. These were settings of applications or system parameters that caused issues with choppy page scrolling in Firefox and horrible sound quality. The eventual solutions are not typical / easy and really should not be required to be done manually and still result in performance less than windows 7. It seems like every app requires tons of adjustments to make it operate with adequate performance.

Maybe you don't notice it if you use Linux all day? I use windows enough to know performance is better on the same exact hardware. Maybe I am an idiot? Who cares - I have built 10+ PC's, including more than one Linux machine and never had any problems with windows - but I have problems with Linux. That is a problem for Linux. Blame it on me, blame it on anything. I don't care. The result is that I am less than impressed with Linux as a PC compared to the narrative here.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I build my own PCs all the time. My new Linux PC is a PC I built for windows and works just fine as a windows machine. So I don't need good luck. I literally was turning my custom built windows PC to a Linux machine. But keep spinning that false narrative. Believe me I wanted Linux to work better and I am currently still *trying* to get it to perform as well as windows. If the interface remains laggy I will have to go back to windows. I can't subject myself to such an important product if it is inferior just to fight Microsoft.

Re: 99% of those

[geekmux]

I am the AC and yes - I have built / configured all of my windows & Linux PCs including my last Linux workstations about 8 years ago (that actually worked better than my Linux PC today). Windows requires drivers but those are easy to install and generally come with your hardware or can be found by vising the hardware manufacturer's website.

The Linux issues were above and beyond drivers. These were settings of applications or system parameters that caused issues with choppy page scrolling in Firefox and horrible sound quality. The eventual solutions are not typical / easy and really should not be required to be done manually and still result in performance less than windows 7. It seems like every app requires tons of adjustments to make it operate with adequate performance.

Maybe you don't notice it if you use Linux all day? I use windows enough to know performance is better on the same exact hardware. Maybe I am an idiot? Who cares - I have built 10+ PC's, including more than one Linux machine and never had any problems with windows - but I have problems with Linux. That is a problem for Linux. Blame it on me, blame it on anything. I don't care. The result is that I am less than impressed with Linux as a PC compared to the narrative here.

When speaking about the general ease of software and drivers working under Windows, it's important to understand the main reason Linux doesn't work as well as Windows "out of the box" is due to the fact that there are NOT currently a dozen or more hardware vendors all constantly at work at perfecting system images and driver packs for Linux. They are subsidized to do this work for Windows instead, for the express purpose of Microsoft being the OEM OS vendor of choice when the hardware ships.

Also, you refer to this as a "problem for Linux" as if the term Linux refers to a single OS or single vendor, which is hardly the case, and further demonstrates the complexities involved in fixing this overall problem.

None of this may change your perception of what you've found running Windows vs. Linux, but it sure as hell helps explain why this disparity exists today.

Re: 99% of those

[vux984]

I am not a linux expert to the same level that I am with windows, but I'm no newbie either. I have 2 debian servers in my home office running things like owncloud, and so forth. I've setup and managed centos and debian, and ubuntu servers in production environments, virtualized, and on bare metal. I am comfortable with linux, and I like it.

But I've got a bunch of Acer Aspire X1900 and similar units that I tried installing Mint; and still haven't been able to get Mint to even install. I tried a couple weekends ago... don't recall the errors offhand. I thought i might just have a bad system, but it wouldn't go onto any of them.

I also had to chase down some firmware files for the ethernet during the installer, which was pretty unintuitive, and would have been WAY over the head of most 'first time users'.

And then, like I said, the install still failed to complete.

I'll try again when i've got some more free time.

everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite.

It must be nice that your needs are THAT vanilla.

Compare that to a typical Windows install.

In order to prove what? My average windows install goes smoother than my average Linux one. There are horror stories for both, but on average, windows goes in easier in my experience.

I suppose Wndows lacks open/libreoffice out of the box... but so what? That isn't terribly useful to me anyway, because I work with other people who use excel.. and not just simple excel... macros, VBA, OLAP etc.

Could that workflow be recreated in open office? Most of it yes... although linking quickbooks to libreoffice won't work (quickbooks uses Excel automation to generate its excel exports so it HAS to have excel to export a spreadsheet).

Of course, that's moot on linux since quickbooks on linux doesn't really fly either.

But I wasn't trying to replace my main desktop computer, I knew that Linux wasn't going to meet my needs for that. I was just fooling around with Mint to see how it would go as an HTPC... Kodi, Netflix, etc...

Re: 99% of those

[fisted]

Come on. Windows even offers you to search the internet for a driver for your unrecognized NIC. How hard can it be?

Re: 99% of those

[TangoMargarine]

Windows also offers to helpfully "search the Internet for a solution to the problem" whenever an application crashes. Don't think I've ever seen that actually be useful before.

In summary, computers suck.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting great-great-...-grandparent:

A *lot* of people, young and old alike, still think Windows === computer.

Re:99% of those

[Darinbob]

Do you have humorous evidence that the AC is not humorous?

Re: 99% of those

[TangoMargarine]

Yes, thank you, Captain Redundant.

Re: 99% of those

[dwywit]

I build generic PCs for customers, maybe 1 or 2 a month. They all come in parts, and I put them together, and I install Windows 7 Pro - yes, it's still available in OEM packaging. It gets me to a usable desktop, then I put in the manufacturer's driver CD, and it installs all the chipset drivers, audio drivers + software, video drivers + software, NIC drivers + software, optional software such as Acrobat (but I decline the McAfee/Norton trial, and install Avira instead). Then I deliver the computer to the customer, and I get paid. I can't recall a time when it didn't just work. I had a PSU that was DOA, but that doesn't count.

On the other hand, I like try out all sorts of GNU/Linux distros, mostly as guests in VirtualBox, to see how well they work, whether I like the look and feel, etc.

Mint - worked, but I don't like Cinnamon
Ubuntu Studio on bare metal - at least three of the included Audio packages wouldn't even start (Hydrogen and two others)
Debian/KDE - nice, no showstoppers, quite stable
Debian minimal (text mode, no X) - fast for processing video using ffmpeg
Fedora Design Suite - crashed during install, didn't bother taking it further
Gentoo from source - because I was bored. Fun, though, and a good way to learn about some fundamentals
TinyCore on a USB stick - excellent for recovering data from drives with corrupted Windows boot sector

In short, I've never had a Win 7 installation that wasn't usable within 1 hour of starting. Sometimes GNU/Linux "just works", and sometimes it doesn't. Don't really care, I'll keep selling Win 7 as long as I can legally get it. Maybe Debian with a Win 7 theme will be a good replacement.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

They got it from the book Raising Retards for Dummies.

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

But using the command line makes me feel intelligent!

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you think what is important to you is all of the universe. You are a prick.

21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Less one as of last night... :)
Someone's W7 became W10 against their will, and they asked me to install a Penguin instead.
More and more of these as the days roll on.
My bet is Satan Nutella only counts up, not down. Hopefully when they look again only 2.1% are fool enough to still be running Spyware 10.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

So someones flat-head screw bit became a fillips-head screw bit and immediately the owner said "The answer is switching everything to torx-screw bit!" ... yeah, that's likely! ... not to mention logical.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

And loads of people got one of those "secure" screws that are impossible to unscrew locking those people out of their systems. (failed upgrades)

Some people noticed that the things they could previously contained in the box did not fit any more, and some things seemed to fit but constantly broke after putting it in the box.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool me twice?

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool me Condoleezza Rice? I mean thrice!

I mean fuck, the Internet is sutch tubes. Wow.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... can't get fooled again?

Re:21% less 1

[Gamasta]

I know what you mean. These days I'm struggling to reinstall Windows 7 due to all sorts of quirks. What's frustrating is that installing Linux is a breeze on these machines and Windows without a DVD is a royal pain. The W10 installer is probably better, but there's no way I'm going the "computer as a service" route. So once new W7-installations are required, I'm slowly changing them to Linux. Maybe we'll see a bump in W10 market share by 2020 (when W7 support runs out), but most likely not from me.

Re:21% less 1

[arglebargle_xiv]

I mean fuck, the Internet is sutch tubes.

Such tubes. Much Internet.

Re:21% less 1

[gsslay]

"Oh no! I've been upgraded to Windows 10 when I wanted to stay on Windows 7. I'm confused how to use my computer now and maybe some of my software won't work! I know, the solution to my dilemma is to request a switch to a totally different OS that has even less in common with the Windows 7 I wanted to remain on, and most of my software is certain to not work."

Yeah. That totally happened.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone's W7 became W10 against their will, and they asked me to install a Penguin instead.

I can't administrate Windows 10 anymore. I have to install Linux on people's computers now.

This isn't like Mac, where things are named differently, or put in different places. At least there you still get a dialog box, or set of drop downs or radio buttons or whatever and can still fiddle with things. Even on Mac, the computer has settings, things are somewhere and you can figure out what to do eventually.

Windows 10 is becoming unconfigurable. There are now two control panels. The usual control panel, which increasingly has a lot of stuff taken out, and a Metro/charm based "Settings" panel which works like the worst, most uninteractive mobile app interface you have ever encountered. I went into Windows Update (moved entirely to what I will call "Charm") to try and turn off various updates. In effect, there was nothing to click on. Hyperlinked text did nothing, there were not radio buttons, dropdown lists, checkboxes, nothing. There was bullet pointed text that did....nothing. Most other charm settings were the same. I had never felt so frustrated with a computer since I ditched my Tablet.

I googled online for help with my problem and after the 8th dubious Q&A website with poorly formatted helpdesk checklists instructions, nearly always involving reboots, some unbelieveably obscure KB3839272618192 update, usually for another the version of Windows, and nearly always answered by someone with an Indian avatar for some reason. Nothing worked. I could not find out how to get things to work. Not even registry keys could be changed since I didn't have super-duper-permission and could not figure out how to get them in any reasonable way.

After 3 hours, I came to the conclusion that after 25 years of Windows experience, from DOS and 2.0, to 3.11, to Win 95, 98se, NT and 2000, XP, and 7, .... I can't use Windows anymore. Not Windows 8/10 anyway. All my experience and knowledge is basically useless for this new Operating system. It's as if MS was taken over by some dubious Portland startup with grand plans for an operating system and no idea who Windows users actually are, or what Windows is used for.

I can't do this anymore, so I'm not going to. I've moved several computer novices to linux in the last few years and they did just fine with a browser and email client, and the ability to play movies etc. There's the odd hiccup of course, but for Gods' sake a lot of the people can't even use Windows anymore. Windows. They can't use it; I can't fix it; we're done with it. I suspect this is happening in slow motion all over.

I predict MSFT will be in deep trouble in three years time, when the scale of this slow motion train wreck becomes too big to ignore.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experience is mine exactly. I've been using windows since Windows/386 and DOS 3.0.

Re:21% less 1

[Mashiki]

Why are you using a DVD? Slap it on a flash drive and go on your way. Nearly every motherboard out there supports boot from flash, and on top of that you can download the Win7 ISO directly from MS with the service packs pre-installed and are unlikely to have the driver issues that the base OS would have.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

You summed up why Windows 8 is such a disaster a;ready and of course it only got worse with 10.

In addition all the guys that I moved to Linux are very happy their older printers and scanners still work. Out of the box.

Re:21% less 1

[hairyfeet]

You'd frankly be better off downloading the pirate version or making your own slipstreamed disc because my experience with their "downloads"? They don't fucking work.

A Dell OEM Win 7 HP key? They say its fucking Korean, HP OEM key? Apparently it only qualifies for a key from where their tech support comes from, India. Oooookay, so I break out a pair of retail keys, one from the family pack, one from a bog standard HP upgrade, both retail boxes sitting on my shelf and used only by members of my family....drumroll.....it doesn't know WTF those are.

Compare this to downloading the pirate version...pick version, hit download...done. Hand it to MSFT, yet again they show why the pirate version is better than the legit thanks to stupid fucking hoops that make no God damned sense because we are simply talking about an ISO that doesn't even come with the fucking key slipstreamed...sigh.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Time has come to make decision are you with me or are you against me?

Fallen angel

Lucifer

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Even ignoring the dubious likelihood of the story, the idea that anyone who refers to "satan nutella" and "spyware 10" actually interacts with anyone who would want there help installing linux was a clear sign it was imagined up.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

If they just used it for generic tasks like email and browsing then why is it so unbelievable?

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

.... and..... in the meantime, your beloved Linux reached the astounding market penetration of.... a bit over 2%, after all these years. PS. I have tried Linux twice, on two pretty standard hardware configs. Two abject failures. I do not have the time or the will to spend entire afternoons digging through config files and asking questions on some more-or-less obscure forum only to be able to see the "logon" screen. Apparently my run-of-the-mill videocard was not supported without serious fiddling with the config files. Also, I was seeing a completely blank screen - nothing at all. How could I fix that if the videocard was not recognized at all ? I have booted back in Windows and I have deleted the Linux install. Linux is not yet ready. That's too bad - I really wanted to give it a try.

Re:21% less 1

[The Grim Reefer]

So someones flat-head screw bit became a fillips-head screw bit and immediately the owner said "The answer is switching everything to torx-screw bit!" ... yeah, that's likely! ... not to mention logical.

Hell yeah it is. Torx screws don't strip nearly as easily as Phillips. Besides, I don't want screws that morph into other types. I have several sets of flat, phillips, allen, and torx drivers, but only one set of security torx, tri-wing, snake-eye, and pin-head drivers. I sure don't have any "fillips-head[sic]" drivers.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused how to use my computer now and maybe some of my software won't work! I

They don't "use" a computer. The majority of people use a few applications and that is their computer as far as they are concerned.

There is no killer game that requires Windows 10 to run so Microsoft screwed up the move to Windows 10.

As long as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook look correct in the browser and all their attachments play in VLC a very large amount of today's computer users won't know the difference if they are running Mac, Linux or Windows.

A steam account with a couple dozen indie games and Linux - just about any distro with a graphical desktop, VLC and Firefox - is more than enough today for casual users.

It's not like most people intentionally run cmd.exe for the DOS command line experience.

Re:21% less 1

[rock_climbing_guy]

If I may ask, what are you using to watch movies? I haven't watched movies on Linux for a while, and I keep getting the impression that mainstream services aren't compatible because DRM OMG teh piratzz

Re:21% less 1

[I'm New Around Here]

I have several sets of flat, phillips, allen, and torx drivers, but only one set of security torx, tri-wing, snake-eye, and pin-head drivers.

Only one? I have two sets. Because the first set I needed a few years ago didn't have a small enough secure torx bit for another project I got assigned to. I forget at the moment if I needed a 5 or 7 secure torx, but the set only went to the size above what I needed. So I spent a week looking at other sets to find one with the smaller size. And I've never even had to use the triwing, pin head, spanners, etc. from either set.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal opinion, MS-DOS 3.3 was the best version for memory footprint vs capability. Later versions (except buggy 4) were more capable, but bloated.

Re:21% less 1

[WinstonWolfIT]

To put it gently, you sound completely incompetent.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome for Netflix
smplayer for unencrypted local/network content
vlc for anything that won't play on anything else

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

mpv, vlc. As for the rest, if they don't want me as their customer unless I sell my soul to Microsoft, they can go fuck themselves. I have much better things to do than jumping through hoops to access what in the end is just some generic mashup of things I've already watched hundreds of times.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a professional techie. I maintain, upgrade, fix computers for extended friends and relations because I'm the only person they know who has historically been able to do even the most basic operations.

I'm not able to fix their computers anymore. I used to get along just fine, but I'm encountering more and more WTF situations every time I have to deal with a Windows installation.

Maybe my problem is I need to take a six week course to get a cert as a trained technician, or buy a 400 page "How to Windows 10: 2016 edition" and read it cover to cover. But at that point is the fault mine, or Microsoft's?

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

You can disable the windows update service and so on, then enable it and use this to update when you want
https://gallery.technet.micros...

Re:21% less 1

[orgelspieler]

Satan Nutella

Worst. Hazelnut spread. EVAR!!!!

Re:21% less 1

[orgelspieler]

I have a Surface (don't ask, seemed like a good idea at the time). I wish it were as easy as settings in two places. I was trying to make it where I didn't have to enter my password every damn time. There were two different setting locations, neither of them worked. Went into the belly of the beast and fiddled with some of the user profile crap. Didn't work. Found a registry setting that should have fixed it. Didn't work. So even though you have all the settings saying not to check the password, it still checks the password. I finally found a totally different screen that allows you to use a 4-digit PIN. I guess that's no worse than my iPad, but the fact that it took me three days to figure out is INSANE!!

Re:21% less 1

[antdude]

I am surprised they didn't ask you to downgrade their Windows. I knows others did. :/

Re:21% less 1

[phorm]

Netflix works fine. You just need to install Google Chrome (not Chromium, but actual Chrome as downloaded from Google).

On older distros there was some library you needed too but I've forgotten which it is as it's included on the newer ones.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix for one works, on Chrome. Not sure about Firefox.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't believe you. Even if your card is not supported it would have installed a generic driver to atleast let you get to the command line. From there you could have made the correct changes. But boot to a black screen and nothing happening? I call bullshit. Maybe it did boot to a black screen, but that black screen had text on it and it was called a terminal. Obviously you have never been in a terminal session before or you would have known what to do.

Tldr: you are lying.

Re:21% less 1

[The Grim Reefer]

Yeah, just the one. But I didn't want to end up in the situation you did and bought some insane set of drivers that had just about every size and type you could ever want. I didn't mention the 4 and 6 fluted drivers or the pentalobe, 5 and 7 node, clutch, etc. and so on. I'm pretty sure I've used them all at one point or another over the years. Granted several have only been needed once, but I didn't want to be running all over town looking for one that I didn't have. Especially if I discovered it at 1:00 in the morning.

Re:21% less 1

[TemporalBeing]

If I may ask, what are you using to watch movies? I haven't watched movies on Linux for a while, and I keep getting the impression that mainstream services aren't compatible because DRM OMG teh piratzz

I run Netflix under Chrome on Linux regularly. DVD playback typically works great as well. And if you're using Android, well - you're already running Linux, and apps there work just fine.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop lumping Windows 8 in with the disaster that is 10.

Windows 8 was a user interface disaster. Windows 10 is an attempt to get past that, but introducing many other issues of "loss of control" such as you've encountered. But in between the two lies Windows 8.1.

And as is traditional for Every Other Version of Windows - it's an order of magnitude better than either 8 or 10.

Yes, it's got "Charms" bullshit. But you can configure it. As well as editing the Registry. If you can see past the touchscreen interface and learn to work around the "start menu" thing, it's a beautiful system - much more secure and significantly faster than 7, and still allows you to control your own telemetry and update settings.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Linus stole his pixels.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, for all the things you could criticize Win10 about... it was the 2 control panels that threw you off?!

Let me sort this out for you. There's Control Panel Classic. And there's Control Panel New. And that's pretty much that.

Not sure how you got into your funk, so maybe turning to Linux will be an improvement.

Re:21% less 1

[toddestan]

VLC runs just fine on Linux, as well as several popular bittorrent clients.

Re:21% less 1

[Mashiki]

They don't fucking work.

They work just fine if you know what you're doing.

A Dell OEM Win 7 HP key? They say its fucking Korean, HP OEM key? Apparently it only qualifies for a key from where their tech support comes from, India.

FYI: That's actually a installer violation and you should be contacting MS about it, since they'll likely take it up with both manufactures. They're not allowed to do that since they're upstream installers.

So in the end, you're whining because you bought pre-built PC's, that use keys that they're not supposed to(builder problem), and blaming MS because you can't figure out how to put lego together.

Re:21% less 1

[Gamasta]

Because bootable USB doesn't work for me. The motherboard from one PC recognizes USB as a hard drive, so you have to set USB to be first in the boot sequence. But W7 doesn't allow you to install on anything but the first device in boot sequence. And no: installing W7 from SSD didn't work for me either. So DVD is a must on that hardware, it seems.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why would I lie ? It really was a blank screen ! I don't know, maybe the loading of the installed driver was hanging, I have no idea. My screen was a beautiful black emptiness. Sorry.

Re:21% less 1

[thegarbz]

I have a Surface and don't feel the need to retroactively justify it.

Anyway I had your problem so I looked into the most obvious solution. Settings > accounts > sign-in options > set require sign-in to never.

Your welcome.

If this doesn't work then stop "administering" your windows install since you're breaking things.

Re:21% less 1

[rock_climbing_guy]

Interesting... I had the impression years ago the Netflix was rigged up to require some DRM that only ran on Windows. I think it was in SilverLight. I never thought to even look at it again.

Re:21% less 1

[orgelspieler]

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried; it does not affect signing in from sleep. I used the default installation settings, so anything that is "broken" was done by Microsoft. BTW, it's not just me having this problem. Forum. Basically the only way to fix it is to use a local account, not the default integrated-with-everything-Microsoft account. Forgot the official name. But that breaks all of the stuff I got the Surface for, so not worth the trouble. The PIN thing works fine, and it's probably a good habit to be in anyway.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting... I had the impression years ago the Netflix was rigged up to require some DRM that only ran on Windows. I think it was in SilverLight. I never thought to even look at it again.

Netflix abandoned Silverlight for HTML5 a long time ago; they still have DRM but it's through a plugin that is available for Chrome on numerous platforms.

Theoretically you should be able to use Chromium, but whenever I've tried the plugin (Widevine) crashes; though it is installable in Chromium.

Firefox and others won't work on Linux; can't speak to Mac OS X, more probably work there.

Re:21% less 1

[Mashiki]

Useful tip:

Start the install off the USB stick. When it says "we're rebooting your PC" go back into the bios menu, then change the boot loading order to HDD first, USB-HDD second, windows still continue the installation off the HDD and grab the rest of the files off the flash drive.

Re:21% less 1

[thegarbz]

it does not affect signing in from sleep.

It does for me. The only time I need to sign in is from hibernate or from cold start. This setting also works on my dad's desktop like that. Sleep / Suspend no longer ask for a pasword, but still needed you to swipe the screen because apparently my desktop is a phone now.

Re: 21% less 1

[gsslay]

Obviously you have never been in a terminal session before or you would have known what to do.

...And this is why Linux will never be a success on the desktop.

Linux doesn't work on your video card? You just need to allow it to boot to a terminal session (you do know how to use a command line, don't you?), fire up your copy of vi (you do know how to use vi, don't you?) and modify these configuration files (you do know where the configuration files are, don't you?) Don't know what to modify it to? Post on this random forum and, if you're in luck, user eLi86Hxor will explain it within 72 hours in terms that way over-estimates your level of Linux drivers knowledge. Be sure to copy the answer exactly, because this configuration file is very fussy about white space characters (you do know what white space characters are, don't you?) Then you need to re-compile the driver, of course. But you definitely know how to do that, don't you?

Easy, huh? Can't see why an average end-user would have a problem with any of this.

And if it still doesn't work, go back to the forum where a number of users will be happy to explain to you that the problem is with you, not Linux.

Re:21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The saddest part of that story is that Debian and all its bastard children are literally the worst Linux distros available.

And Windows is worse than that.

Re: 21% less 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to use the command prompt in Windows 10 a few weeks ago.

There was no other way to shut down all the unneeded crap.

I haven't had to use a command prompt in Linux in at least 12 years. Yes, I use it because it is faster than any GUI in existence and like Windows, has functionality available that is not in any GUI.

I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Microsoft would just close up their shop and have other more trusted people make a popular operating system.

I am using Win 7, but I am not really happy with it.

It sort of feels like I don't own my own computer, and I don't like that. And to me anything Win 10 seems like the storefront for a police state.

Re:I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

It sort of feels like I don't own my own computer, and I don't like that.

I have the same feeling with every apple product I own.

Re:I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same feeling on any device or service I use.

Corporations want us to be consumers and slaves, nothing else. Much like the world of Max Headroom.

Re:I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Microsoft would just close up their shop and have other more trusted people make a popular operating system.

I am using Win 7, but I am not really happy with it.

It sort of feels like I don't own my own computer, and I don't like that. And to me anything Win 10 seems like the storefront for a police state.

Well if you run something made by Microsoft, Apple, Google, Blackberry etc you don't own your computer.

If you actually want to own what you paid for then you have to run Linux or BSD.

Lol, captcha = Autocrat...

Re:I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same feeling on any woman I date.

I find that number.....

[dwywit]

......difficult to believe.

As long as Toshiba wants to supply laptops with 7 Pro pre-installed, I'll keep selling 'em.

Re:I find that number.....

[Anonymous Coward]

if i recall correctly, october is when microsoft will quit allowing factory downgrade options from major oems like toshiba, hp, dell, lenovo. the customer, or even you as a var, can still do it yourself as permitted by the oem/dsp eula, but the systems will have to ship from the manufacturer with win 10 pro installed. i know at dell it's already slim-pickings for downgrades to 8.1 or 7 pro.

Re:I find that number.....

[Anonymous Coward]

how are they managing that, MS no longer license win 7 Pro! I guess being a Toshiba they could well be stock from many years ago as you would have to be mentally unstable to buy one of their device nowadays..

Re:I find that number.....

[Gadget_Guy]

how are they managing that, MS no longer license win 7 Pro!

That is wrong. It is even mentioned in the f..ing article that Windows 7 Pro is available to OEMs until October 31, 2016.

Re: I find that number.....

[Anonymous Coward]

A win 8 or win 10 license can be downgraded.

Re:I find that number.....

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm wondering whether this will actually happen. Every business supplier we work with still assumes 7 by default for work machines, and that makes sense because almost everyone I know in business still wants 7. If MS try to strong-arm the likes of Dell and HP into not selling what their customers actually want, I don't know who's going to win, but sign me up for a ring-side seat.

How do you know an OS sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't even give it away!

Re:How do you know an OS sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't even give it away!

I heard someone talking about this number as if it was awesome. Sure, 20% is a decent chunk of the pie and is large in absolute numbers, but for something which has been pushed so hard for a year that many people have accidentally installed it, and for an OS which was literally being given away for about a year, 20% doesn't seem all that huge. I'm sure a large number of remaining Win7 machines are from businesses who won't upgrade because of feature changes, staff training or because "it ain't broke so don't fix it", but then I guess that's why MS have been moving into subscription Office suites etc..

Re: How do you know an OS sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. Just look at Linux's tiny market share of desktop operating systems after over two decades of being given away for free. For all the complaining about Windows 10, Linux must suck far, far, far more.

Re:How do you know an OS sucks?

[Imrik]

Another reason that businesses are sticking with what works, software that isn't forward compatible.

Re: How do you know an OS sucks?

[sonamchauhan]

Desktop OS, yes.
Computing device OS, no.

Re:How do you know an OS sucks?

[Barefoot Monkey]

Very true. I was just checking old market share stats (via archive.org) and it turns out that ~20% is what Windows 7 reached after 12 months too. Bear in mind that, while they pushed hard for both Windows Vista and 8 adoption, Microsoft was far more relaxed about leaving people to get Windows 7 in their own sweet time (in fact, adoption remained steady for years) and even backported the improvements down to Vista, so Vista users had little impetus to upgrade at all

So despite having some genuine improvements, being free, having a deadline to encourage rapid adoption, and being pushed so hard it was extremely difficult to avoid, Windows 10 usage is no better after a year than Windows 7 got from just early adopters willing to pay money. In context, 21 market share for Windows 10 after a year is quite dreadful.

And while the first year of sales for Windows 7 was just the tip of the iceburg, with the free period and forced upgrades over Windows 10 adoption is likely to drop off steeply. Of course it will still gain ground, but that will in all likelihood be driven almost entirely by new PC purchases.

Re:How do you know an OS sucks?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And while the first year of sales for Windows 7 was just the tip of the iceburg, with the free period and forced upgrades over Windows 10 adoption is likely to drop off steeply. Of course it will still gain ground, but that will in all likelihood be driven almost entirely by new PC purchases.

The Steam survey offers some interesting data. This is for gamers, who we might reasonably assume have more powerful and newer systems and are more willing to upgrade than the average home user. Look at the DirectX chart and see how rapidly Win10 gained market share for about the first six months after its launch, and how little it has moved since then. Those figures only distinguish Win10 from pre-Win10 for DX12 cards, so it's certainly possible that there are conflating factors (they show Win10 having nearly half the market overall now) but if the early rush and then a drop off like that are at all representative of the wider market then MS could have a real problem here.

Re: How do you know an OS sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you there are more Linux/BSD installs in the world then there are Windows installs. For all devices categories combined.

Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a little known 32-bit release of it that's supported by Microsoft through to 2019.

It's called Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. It's basically an updated version of Windows XP (I guess you could call it SP4?). It still receives security patches weekly via Windows Update. It doesn't require activation and it's not too hard to find on the internet. It comes as a DVD ISO with an updated installer that lets you partition the disks through the GUI and load additional storage drivers graphically (rather than via the text mode setup phase). A full installation is just over 900mb.

I'm running it on my aging T60p, and it works great. It's extremely small and very fast.

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=11196

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[swd99999999]

Does any web browser work?

Re: Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the full version, just the evaluation disk. You need a binary patch for that image if you want it to activate with a permanent license key.

The actual full version (TPB has it) is 3.32Gb, with the SHA1 hash 0e9e37f9268bbb7181e0a1ae561c178382cc3014.

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[hairyfeet]

Kmeleon runs on XP and there is a version of PaleMoon compiled for Intel Atom netbooks running XP that should run just as well on vanilla XP.

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[arglebargle_xiv]

It's called Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.

I would like to add that, contrary to frequent rumors, the "POS" in there doesn't actually stand for Piece of Shit. It actually means... uhh... well I'm sure it's not meant to be Piece of Shit.

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[stardaemon]

It's called Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.

I would like to add that, contrary to frequent rumors, the "POS" in there doesn't actually stand for Piece of Shit. It actually means... uhh... well I'm sure it's not meant to be Piece of Shit.

Point of Sale, maybe?;)

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[mrchaotica]

Have you ever found a Point of Sale system that didn't also meet the other definition?

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Cro Magnon]

I've heard that Windows had the Point Of Sales market locked up, but in retrospect, that might not have been "Point Of Sale".

Re: Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a 64 bit version? I have >2 gigs of RAM, though XP uses so little that 2 is plenty, it would be nice to access more.

Re: Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[ChoGGi]

There is, but I wouldn't use it. Turns out bolting half an OS onto XP makes for a buggy hunk of shit. Bad 3d performance as well (if that matters to you).

Re:Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

The newest firefox version works just fine on XP.

With all its resources, MS can't get their shitty newer versions of IE and Edge to run on its own OS.

Re: Meh. Still rocking Windows XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sad that MS couldn't figure out how to use over 4 GB of RAM on 32 bit OS's but Linux did it for free.

32 bit Linux Kernels can address up to 32 GB of memory.

Comparative Analysis

[ytene]

I suppose that Microsoft released these figures to continue their message that adoption of Windows 10 devices goes according to plan. But if we do an "equivalent comparison", what does the story look like?

So for example, what percentage of iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) remain on older OS releases after a new edition is published?

Instinct [as opposed to quotable fact] suggests that the adoption of W10 is actually underwhelming.

And the biggest issue is most definitely the complete lack of trust that most reluctant upgraders have with Microsoft themselves. I guess owners of PCs like to think of their PC as something that works for them, as opposed to it being a device which turns them into a product by stealth.

Re:Comparative Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

comparing apples to rockmelons there a little aren't we. So far it is outpacing Win 7 which by all accounts is incredible. The only problem of course is the way they have achieved those numbers by having a free upgrade and of course the dodgy upgrade dialogs.

Re:Comparative Analysis

[stoborrobots]

Hell, compare it to the adoption of XP or 7 after they were released....

Re:Comparative Analysis

[CanadianMacFan]

Comparing Windows 10 to iOS for adoption rates isn't a fair comparison since one is aimed for desktops and the other for phones and tablets. A better comparison would be against Mac OS X which would be Apples desktop OS. The latest version, El Capitan, had a 44.8% adoption rate after 4 months according to this article. http://www.computerworld.com/a...

Re:Comparative Analysis

[Ayanami_R]

I wouldn't consider this a fair comparison, El Cap is an incremental update, W10 is a full on release. Yes, I consider them different.

Re: Comparative Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Every version since 95 was incremental and then every version since vista has been incremental. Now from here on every version will be an increment of 8.

Re:Comparative Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't consider this a fair comparison, El Cap is an incremental update, W10 is a full on release. Yes, I consider them different.

Upgrading to El Capitan (an incremental upgrade) is like going from a red apple to a slightly redder apple. Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10 is like upgrading from an Apple to Kale, it looks good as a garnish but almost nobody wants to eat it! There is almost no reason not to take the OSX El Capitan update for Macs, so the adoption rate of only 40-ish percent is abysmal.

P.S. I have both Mac and Windows PCs. If the Linux graphics drivers were better, and more games used OpenGL/Vulkan or DirectX was on Linux I would use that full time. As it is now, I do dev work on Linux and only use Windows for gaming.

article category image

[Anonymous Coward]

could you not use the Bill Gates / Borg image for this for old times sake?

Correlates With Stat Counter

[nateman1352]

The data over at Stat Counter seems to agree:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-201506-201606

Looks like MacOS and Linux share has remained roughly flat over the last year. Win8.1 use has declined 48.5% and Win7 by 23.1%. Hence Win10's adoption has been at the expense of Win8.1 and to a lesser extent Win7. Overall it seems Microsoft's free upgrade has largely been successful at retaining existing Windows users, but it hasn't won any converts from Apple, and it hasn't slowed down Android at all. They stopped the bleeding, but its not exactly the "threshold" that would return Windows to growth that Microsoft's upper management claimed it would be.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Data-entry only users are using Android or Linux. Engineering users are using OSX more and more. That leaves Management and data analysis users for Microsoft which really, lets be honest here. Those users are shrinking in count and have been for some time.

When you start thinking about how to secure infrastructure without a lot of overhead, Microsoft starts to become a more and more costly discussion.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[drinkypoo]

They stopped the bleeding, but its not exactly the "threshold" that would return Windows to growth that Microsoft's upper management claimed it would be.

They haven't stopped the bleeding. The bleeding has intensified, and it will reach a state of crisis when Windows 7 goes EOL. This number of converts is an abject failure when you're giving away the product. Sad thing is, I've finally used Windows 10 for a few seconds and I think I'd really enjoy it if it weren't spyware.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Windows 10 configured as a desktop rather than a touch device is pretty nice. They've finally fixed most of the major issues from the past 20 years. The problem is, in the meantime Mac and Linux have caught up or exceeded it in some ways. When you throw in the spying, there's really not much reason to use Windows anymore.

I use 8.1 because it came on my laptop, which is my only system these days and I'm afraid of messing with it, but the next device I buy will just run Mint.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[aaarrrgggh]

Well, the same thing was said of Win2k and XP. More people should be using Linux, but it just doesn't happen. There is always that "one app" in industry that needs to be run locally and is business-critical.

For me, our accounting software is one gem, need to check on what the status is of a good Outlook alternative (although that is one hell of a fight), and if InDesign alternatives are viable for our needs today... but I know that the things we use AutoDesk products for are not viable on Linux or OS X.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[Anonymous Coward]

This number of converts is an abject failure when you're giving away the product.

I'm surprised at how rarely people mention this fact.

You simply cannot compare the Win10 adoption rate to any previous versions of Windows.

It makes no sense to compare the adoption rate of a $120 OS to a $0 OS -- especially when the $0 OS is delivered through an automatic update mechanism.

If Win10 was an improvement over Win7 or Win8, you would see huge numbers of home users cheerfully upgrading with the click of a mouse, and you would see IT departments busily preparing for a rollout as soon as practical.

If Win10 had been zero-cost and good, then it would certainly be the most popular Windows OS by far now, one year after GA.

People are resisting Win10 even harder than they resisted Win8. But there's one astonishing difference: Win10 was free for a year. That astonishing fact changes everything -- and it's surprising to me how few people seem to appreciate the magnitude of that change.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the same thing was said of Win2k and XP.

No, it wasn't. Not at all.

First of all, Win2K and WinXP were not free. Win10 was free for a year, and it had a significantly lower adoption rate than either WinXP or Win7 did. That's the big news story here.

Also, Win2K and XP did not face the kind of resistance to adoption that began with Win8 and continues with Win10. With Win2K and XP, it was generally acknowledged that upgrading was either a good thing to do, or something that would be ideal to do at some point in the future once certain issues got resolved (such as porting necessary apps or drivers becoming available).

You seem to be disagreeing with my premise. I said that you can't compare Win10's adoption rate to that of any other version of Windows. But you seem to think they can be compared, and then you proceeded to compare them. So I ask you: On what basis do you think you can fairly compare the adoption rate of a $0 OS (that's trivial to upgrade to) versus a $120 OS? How on earth is it possible for the $0 OS to have a slower adoption rate? How is that not an unprecedented outcome?

This has nothing to do with migrating to Linux, nor with the difficulty of eliminating a company's dependency on Windows-only apps. Those factors have always been in play since the early days of Windows -- and they are still big factors today. My point is an entirely different one: When a company releases an OS (Win8) that faces stiff resistance, and then "fixes" the disaster by releasing a free OS (Win10) that faces even stiffer resistance -- that's a shocking and absolutely unprecedented development in the industry, and it's certainly the biggest tech news story of the past 3 years.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[aaarrrgggh]

Same was said for EOL of those other versions was my point. There has been reasonably growing distrust of subsequent releases.

Without a paridigm change though, Microsoft will remain in the dominant position and people will be stuck doing as they dictate. It is stupid, but each time I have seen this happen over the years, MS perseveres.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[drinkypoo]

Without a paridigm change though,

Did you mean paradigm?

Microsoft will remain in the dominant position and people will be stuck doing as they dictate.

Microsoft created a paradigm shift when they shifted Windows' focus from being an operating system to being spyware.

Just a slight misunderstanding...

[hyades1]

"...Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8."

I think what the author meant to say was, "Windows 10 is no longer rammed down the throat any user too naive to treat anything coming from Microsoft as a malware attack."

Re:Just a slight misunderstanding...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not free any longer, but do you doubt they will still ram the offer to purchase it down everyone else's throats?

No longer "offered" as a free upgrade??

[blind biker]

By all accounts, Windows 10 has been forced upon unsuspecting and suspecting users alike, forcibly shoved down their throats no matter how vehemently against some may have been.

Spyware wins!

[Anonymous Coward]

What sucks is how so many people accepted Microsoft spying on everything they do. Most didn't even put up a fight and now we're all lumped with it. http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Corporate media shills told us to swallow and smile http://www.businessinsider.com... http://www.windowscentral.com/... Ed Bott his face covered in Microsoft semen told us it doesn't make you any less a man to be willingfully violated.

A year but still not ready?

[dbIII]

Wake me up when it's finished and usable instead of a total mess with two control panels and a requirement to search instead of navigate a menu.

Re: A year but still not ready?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to upgrade to beat the deadline, and that is exactly the problem I'm finding with control panels. Search works well, but I can't find anything from manual navigation.

Re:A year but still not ready?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't money in it, so won't happen. They'll focus on selling what makes them money - you are the product.

Captcha: stockade

Re:A year but still not ready?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they finally accept that using the same system for touch and desktop sucks donkey balls, and copy Apple with their OSX vs IOS split, they will need to have two control panels forever.

When on a phone or tablet, having to go into desktop mode is a sure way to convince the user to buy Android or IOS next time.

And when on a desktop, having to go into touch mode is a clear message to the user that "You should have stayed on Windows 7, sucker".

Re:A year but still not ready?

[thegarbz]

HEY!!!!!

You awake yet? Wtf are you doing in a control panel? I just use my computer and don't bother with all those things that slashdot seem to consider a daily issue on their PCs I can only assume to be because they either want to complain or have hosed their system to the point they actually need to spend any considerable time reconfiguring it.

Jesus what are you people doing with your OSes!

Re:A year but still not ready?

[dbIII]

Wtf are you doing in a control panel?

Changing things so the computers people use will work properly just like they did when they were using them on MS Windows7 and showing others how they can change things to make other people's computers work properly.

Unless you are only have one PC used for trivial uses a bunch of PCs with a Microsoft OS requires ridiculous amounts of care and feeding and are still a fragile thing that can be need to be told what to do again after events even as insignificant as the user powering off the machine too quickly.

It is said that there are no stupid questions, just people who cannot yet see what others consider blindingly obvious.

Understanding

[lapm]

Im not suprised... Took me a whole day to install it on one of my laptops. First obstacle was it newer started downloading it... After trying upgrade helper turns out i didint have 20 GB of space it required.... Why didint normal update tell me this was problem? Then there was incompatible HP security software... Manually unsinstall 7 sub components of it and then main security manager... Reboot system at every turn... When it finally starter installing it still took nearly 3 hours to complete... Im so glad im not running business, that would have been disaster to be down a day for damn upgrade... So i did finally take a plunge, not doing anything super secret with this one... But i definitely understand why people stay away from it. I have newer had to waste whole day to upgrade any Linux distribution to newer version. Fastest have been half an hour and reboot once.

What are "desktops"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do Microsoft mean all computing devices that are not tablets, smartphones or IoT devices?

We're back to lies, damn lies and statistics again as Microsoft try to pump up their failed Windows 10 push, that'll stall now the "free upgrade" window has passed.

In context, my "desktop" runs Win 7 and won't change until it dies. I've a laptop that I installed Win 10 over Win 8.1 on as an exercise, and an HP Stream 11 netbook that came with Win 10 pre-installed. The ex-Win 8.1 laptop will probably get Linux Mint next, but will still be counted as a Win 10 licence as far as Microsoft are concerned. The HP will eventually become irrelevant due to its own internal limitations as Microsoft automatically install more and more sludge onto it.

I can forsee the day when I don't run "Windows" on any computer I own.

There you go. Why does Microsoft insist on shooting itself in the feet?

North Korea: 100% popular support for Kim Jong Un

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought?

4/5ths

[ledow]

"4/5ths of people refused a free upgrade to what was traditionally a very expensive piece of software, despite us trying to forcibly install it on their machines for months on end and making it difficult for anyone other than a techy to refuse it".

Amazing how you can change how something reads by just flipping it.

Re:4/5ths

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just "people", either--these were existing users. Sweet.

Re:4/5ths

[Big Hairy Ian]

Yep they really have lost the plot. They need to ditch Cortana (I mean does anyone seriously use it), Stop gathering every peice of information about their users. And please just bring back the start menu properly. Or better still just roll over and let Linux take over.

Re:4/5ths

[jittles]

Yep they really have lost the plot. They need to ditch Cortana (I mean does anyone seriously use it), Stop gathering every peice of information about their users. And please just bring back the start menu properly. Or better still just roll over and let Linux take over.

They did bring the start menu back as far as I can tell - though it's not quite the same as it used to be.

Re:4/5ths

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the "start menu" doesn't work. Everything is locked in place, to force you to use the mini start screen they glued on the side of the start menu.

Re:4/5ths

[Big Hairy Ian]

They did bring the start menu back as far as I can tell - though it's not quite the same as it used to be.

Actually they just took the shite tiles and made them popup when you hist the start button but without taking up the whole screen. What we meant when we were screaming for them to bring back the Start Menu was the good old hierarchical Start Menu where every app had it's own sub menu with everything pertaining to the app within that sub menu. Instead now I have all the components of every piece of installed software all jumbled together in a great big mess.

MS idea of a user experience is getting progressively more "blind fold & bullet"

Re:4/5ths

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Yep they really have lost the plot. They need to ditch Cortana (I mean does anyone seriously use it)

Cortana is basically Microsoft Bob with a sex change and an NSA telemetry package.

Re:4/5ths

[Big Hairy Ian]

Mod parent up

Re:4/5ths

[jittles]

They did bring the start menu back as far as I can tell - though it's not quite the same as it used to be.

Actually they just took the shite tiles and made them popup when you hist the start button but without taking up the whole screen. What we meant when we were screaming for them to bring back the Start Menu was the good old hierarchical Start Menu where every app had it's own sub menu with everything pertaining to the app within that sub menu. Instead now I have all the components of every piece of installed software all jumbled together in a great big mess.

MS idea of a user experience is getting progressively more "blind fold & bullet"

Yeah but I see both when I hit the start menu - the "All Apps" and the tiles. Is that not what you see? I have the pro edition so perhaps it is different than Home. I've never used W10 Home.

Re:4/5ths

[Big Hairy Ian]

Think of All Apps as All Programs where the fuck are my sub menus and look at all those unistall programs I wonder which ones which

Re:4/5ths

[jittles]

Think of All Apps as All Programs where the fuck are my sub menus and look at all those unistall programs I wonder which ones which

That's got to be the software you're installing, then. Has it been updated recently? All of the software I've installed neatly put everything into its own folders. I don't see random uinstallers lying around in the U section of my apps or anywhere else. My guess is they changed something in the way the start menu creates the hierarchies and some older installers don't handle this properly? But just a guess.

Re:4/5ths

[Anonymous Coward]

and by "flipping it" I'm assuming you mean "telling the truth about it"

History will record this the largest mass illusion

[Anonymous Coward]

A company that hasn't known how to make workable OSs since Windows XP somehow deludes millions into using their junk.

PT Barnum was so right.

Runs?

[John Allsup]

Using the word 'runs' makes me laugh: poetic license in extremis. I have 'upgraded' many of my machines to Windows 10. Let me tell you that it doesn't exactly run so much as crawls in agony until you put it out of its misery by either reinstalling Windows 7, or booting from a device with Ubuntu Studio on it. Then there is all that cortana crap which you can't fscking switch off. I mean, I'd much rather have a simple scriptable way to make menus. Really: I could make something more useful for me with bit of javascript and a host with a few API hooks. It would be quicker than waiting for cortana to wake from its slumber on an older laptop! If you just had a javascript environment with a couple of predefined objects (akin to the window and document objects in a web browser), you could do something perfectly functional, and hack in whatever clever logic you want. What you can't do with MS's bloated mess, however, is hack _out_ the logic and features you don't need.

I would say, as a caveat, that the Linux world still has far to go in making things as easy as they can be. The trouble is that we've inherited a philosophy of design from that of companies where building big opaque piles of incomprehensible and incompatible crap that just about worked happened to be excellent development models for software companies. Short, sweet, beautiful and elegant examples of software programming are rarer than diamonds, and some of those 'rarer than diamonds' are locked in vaults and jealously guarded by organisations whose only purpose on life is to make money.

Re:Runs?

[ByzantineAlex]

Odd, indeed, My computer (i7, 16GB of RAM, SSD Evo 850) which is fairly modern (but not a speed demon, either) runs perfectly (and super-fast) with W10. Are you sure you're not using a 486 ? :-)

Re:Runs?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my absolute total bugbear with Windows 10. I don't want Cortana, I don't want internet searches from the desktop and I DO NOT WANT telemetry or my WiFi passwords shared etc. etc. etc. I'm not a node in Microsofts network I'm a private business.

If I can't turn this shit off and uninstall the crap I don't want then it's not getting installed.

Re:Runs?

[Stormwatch]

If you think that's not a speed demon, you have more money than common sense. My first-gen i5 with 8GB is "fairly modern". Hell, even a Core 2 Duo with 4GB is a solid general use machine (except for new games).

Re:Runs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded my wife's laptop because she was having some performance problems and someone insisted it would be better, and they were 100% correct. She has an old i7, at least 6 years old, 4GB or RAM and 250GB SATA drive, and it runs awesome. I really can't believe how snappy it is now. a little under two hours from clicking start download and install to using it again, upgrade went flawless and she's off my back.

Re:Runs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Three digit ID makes shit up.

Re:Runs?

[WheezyJoe]

I don't want Cortana, I don't want internet searches from the desktop and I DO NOT WANT telemetry or my WiFi passwords shared etc. etc. etc. I'm not a node in Microsofts network I'm a private business.

If I can't turn this shit off and uninstall the crap I don't want then it's not getting installed.

You can. Shared WiFi passwords has been removed with the Anniversary update. The other stuff you want can be fixed with Winaero Tweaker, including shutting down Cortana (as opposed to simply hiding it). and Classic Shell makes live tiles go away. You can even restore the Windows 7 calculator from here if you hate the Metro version. These things do a pretty good job of reducing 10 down to the non-intrusive OS, shell and app platform that 7 was.

Re:Runs?

[thegarbz]

Windows 8 is faster and lighter on resources than 7 was.

You're "even" machine is my daily work horse and it runs just fine.

Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[sonamchauhan]

Windows 10 probably will be the last version of Windows, but not the way Microsoft imagines it.

By continuing to nag, snoop, spam and lock-down its users, Microsoft is transforming its core offering - its OS - into the opposite of what it should be: an agent of the owner that compels the computer to obey the owner's intent.

Its the age-old agency problem. An agent with a large amount of power (network effects in Microsoft's case) tends to abuse it to the detriment of the principal (Microsoft users). Its same problem when powerful executives persuade their company to reward them richly without commensurate effort. Left uncorrected, the situation worsens (customers quit in disgust, company implodes, etc).

Another company may eventually do to the Microsoft desktop what Apple and Android did to them in mobile. Or Microsoft may wisen up and curb their worst excesses (as they did in the XBox One phone-home fiasco). But it'd be a hard sell to the MS board and would take a lot of imagination on their part to act more directly in favor of consumers, versus short-term shareholder rewards.

Re:Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[drinkypoo]

Its the age-old agency problem. An agent with a large amount of power (network effects in Microsoft's case) tends to abuse it to the detriment of the principal (Microsoft users).

Microsoft was caught red-handed abusing its monopoly position in pretty much every way in which it was possible to do so. If they had been adequately punished, they wouldn't even be a company any more. Given conditions in DC, it's not much of a stretch to believe that Microsoft is only even really permitted to exist any more in order to deliver spyware to unsuspecting users. (This has long been part of its function, wittingly or no...)

Re:Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's strength comes from being able to force hardware vendors to make drivers compatible with the latest version of Windows. Some don't even have enough resources to support Windows let alone Linux or any other OS.

Re:Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[RandomSurfer314]

What's so weird about this is that Microsoft could so easily make it a good OS that people would choose over OSX and Linux any time. They only would have to sell it for an affordable price, say $30 for a home and $60 for a pro version, stop collecting data like madmen, stop trying to upload everything to their servers, stop this patently stupid mobile/desktop convergence, give users control back and add some cool features that do not make hardware slower like MacOS's 'features'. Windows is stable & fast desktop OS and it's easy to write applications for it. Nobody would have a reason to switch to OS X and Linux, if it weren't for Microsoft's own stupidity.

Re:Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[Anonymous Coward]

This is for all the morons spouting BS about MS OS's. People do not run OS's they run applications. PERIOD END OF STORY. If you want to play with your OS of choice nobody is stopping you. instead of wasting your life complaining about someone else's work go build something better. MS gained a monopoly position for 3 reasons. MS competitors sold their tech to MS and took the money and ran. MS supported development efforts that simplified writing and deploying applications in the MS ecosystem. And MS adopted a commodity based hardware approach that allowed multiple hardware vendors to build products for the MS ecosystem. Apple went with the proprietary model and almost went out of business before they released the i* series product lines. For all those complaining about MS spyware please tell the world what information MS is collecting on you when you use their OS. Details not speculation or guesses. Surely with all the accusations of spyware someone knows what information is being sent back to MS so they can invade you privacy.

Re:Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear. Well, people want full control over the machines they buy which Microsoft is denying them with Windows 10. It's as simple as that. And they do care about companies spying on them or displaying ads against their will, as the ridiculous Windows 10 adoption rates show. You can continue your borderline butt-hurt ramblings, but they certainly won't help MS, if that's what you are trying to achieve with your highly retarded AC posts.

Windows 10 is least popular OS that Microsoft has ever created, people don't even want it for free. Heck, I wouldn't even install it if MS would pay me for it. The solution for MS is very simple: Return to a viable, sustainable business strategy -- or face the consequences and die a slow, painful and agonizing death with dwindling desktop users and complete lack of interest in MS's phone and tablet crap.

Pre-installation

[houghi]

There are some people (most here) that will install an OS. They will have their reason for selecting the OS that is according to their needs. They will buy the hardware that supports that OS and those needs.

The rest will buy a PC and run whatever it runs. Microsoft and Apple know this. For a long time this was enough. People buy the PC and with it they get an OS. Times have changed. It is all about making money by renting out things. Instead of paying 1USD for something, they rather you pay 15 time 0.10$ because they make more money that way.

That means that things need to change. The OS needs to change. And that means pushing out the current OS as fast as possible.

Hardware also lasts longer. You can now easily do almost anything on a PC that is 5 years old. In the past you needed to upgrade every 2 years. So now they will concentrate on new machines and start killing off the service to the old ones.

TWENTY ONE PERCENT!!!

[rgbe]

Woot! Next they will be paying people for their operating system.

Not even half as much as Windows 7

[melting_clock]

Not even the tactics that MS used to push Windows 10 as an updates to earlier versions allowed them to beat Windows 7. Giving Windows 10 away was not enough to convince Windows 7 users to upgrade. This shows the OS is already a failure.

Many Windows users really did not like the user interface choices that MS made in Windows 8 and stuck with their preferred interface. Although Windows 10 rolled back some of those mistakes, it created many more to replace them and annoyed users by being sneaky about upgrades. MS has annoyed their customers with recent versions of Windows by no giving customers what they want or trying to turn customers into the product.

I am one of those that is sticking with Windows 7 and we never install the spyware/adware version of Windows that 10 has proven to be. I have already largely to moved to Linux so it will not be any great loss.

Re:Not even half as much as Windows 7

[fox171171]

Many Windows users really did not like the user interface choices that MS made in Windows 8 and stuck with their preferred interface.

They not only dropped the ball on Windows 8, they fell on it and burst it. Horrible interface out of the box. Who wants their desktop/laptop to be a tablet/phone? (The same people who want "convergence" in the bathroom? Toilet/sink all in one device!!)

The Win8 to 8.1rev1 fiasco also sucked. Had to revert to Win8 and then get Win8.1rev2 (or "Win8.1 Update" or something confusing like that). Fumble!

I'm pretty happy with Win8.1 now. I have tweaked away most of the annoying bits. Disabled the touchscreeen, boots to desktop, uses Classic Shell. Looks mostly like my XP machine did now (Which was setup to look like Win2k). But people shouldn't have to do all that. And the annoying charms still pop up at the edge from time to time. Control panel in columns but organized horizontally like sentences instead of vertically down the columns top to bottom is annoying too. (I think they may have done that in 7 too, not sure, never used it much.)

I'm sticking with 8.1. They can shove 10. (They pushed it to me twice without my permission.)

It will go up

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 isn't being sold anymore so people won't have a choice but to get Windows 10 when they upgrade/change their PCs.

Re:It will go up

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's not quite true. OEMs can still supply PCs with 7 preinstalled for a few more months.

20% is an insane failure

[Opportunist]

A new MS operating system "offering" a free upgrade from its predecessors, so every single user of a previous OS pretty much had to go out of their way to NOT get it, reaches 20% penetration (and I chose that word deliberately, for the way it tried to "convince" you to install it) after a year.

That is pretty much a declaration of bankruptcy.

The amount of "computer savvy" people isn't that high to warrant this number. It's not just "paranoid geeks" that saw the wiring under the board and didn't want to be infected. This number pretty much means that four out of five people using Win7 or Win8.1 fought tooth and nail to NOT upgrade.

And four out of five people aren't paranoid computer geeks. These are "normal" computer users. My hope is that this is the beginning of people getting a clue about their privacy being at stake.

Re:20% is an insane failure

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

To be fair, quite a lot of the other 79% will be professionals. You wouldn't expect most large organisations to migrate to a new OS within a year of its release, and in the specific case of Windows 10, the Enterprise and Education variants seem to be very different products to Home and Pro, so big business and government might move later without the same concerns that the little people like us have.

I totally agree that the 21% figure is awful given the heavyhanded approach Microsoft have taken to pushing 10 on existing users and the fact that it's now the default OS preinstalled on most off-the-shelf consumer PCs, but we shouldn't overstate the case. It's damning enough already...

Re:20% is an insane failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is are the corporations that are buying Windows 10 licenses but installing Windows 7 instead counted in the 21% figure?

If they are the numbers may not be that rosy. From my limited experience a number of our large customers have just moved from Windows XP to Windows 7 (may even still be in the process of moving).

Some laptops (bosses etc) will be Windows 10 (or even OS X) but most of their machines won't be Windows 10. If Dell etc don't understand why they'd just lose business to someone who does.

Re:20% is an insane failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they counting enterprise users in this? That seems like a useless metric for comparison that the GP made then.

Re:20% is an insane failure

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Dell were certainly still defaulting to Windows 7 in their online configuration tools for ordering business laptops as of last week.

Elsewhere in the recent discussions, there has been an interesting observation that OEMs are apparently only allowed to preinstall 7 for a few more months, and after that it looks like there will still be downgrade rights but you'll be on your own and get your machine with Win10 preinstalled whether you like it or not.

This could set up an interesting stand-off between the big business OEMs and Microsoft much sooner than the Win7 EOL date, possibly as soon as October this year.

Re:20% is an insane failure

[thegarbz]

Well really only a small portion of the users needed to go out of their way to prevent a windows upgrade. Corporate makes up a huge usebase. 20% is likely a lot of the consumer market, and to flip the thought it would be a huge failure for a corporation to make the jump so early.

80% Refuse To Use Win10 Even When It's Given Away

[Anonymous Coward]

80% refuse to use Windows 10 even when it is forcibly given away for free. That's the real story. Microsoft literally tried to force people to use the free upgrade to Windows 10 for a full year and 80% of the market avoided it.

• People don't see any need for Windows 10, they are satisfied and happy with what they have in Windows 7.
• People don't want Microsoft's vision of a desktop tablet. They've been signaling this to Microsoft since Windows 8.
• People don't want Microsoft's vision of an app store. That has worked well for Apple, but it hasn't worked as well monetarily for Google, and not at all for Microsoft.
• People don't want to pay rent to use "their" computer.
• People don't want their devices spying on them, even if they have tolerated it for phones and tablets.
• People don't want their computer operating system randomly changing under them with features coming and going without warning, interface elements being rearranged...
• Microsoft has failed to realize that despite their market dominance, people will not tolerate Microsoft dictating to them. The customer is taking back control.
• Microsoft will not be allowed to change the color scheme, raise the rent and lock in the users.

Nice try, bitches. Fuck you!

This message composed and posted from a Linux desktop PC.

Bigger Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Many folks on here will blast MS due to failure at convert more than 21% of the market to their Free OS. But they're missing the bigger picture.

MS is a company. In fact a publicly traded company. They have one duty and one duty only. To make as much profits for their shareholders as possible.
Revenues and EPS are the key metrics to judging Windows 10's success.

Unfortunately for most of the MS bashers on Slashdot, MS beat earnings estimations 2 of the last 3 quarters. Revenues are down this year from last year, however they're up from 2014. I don't feel like logging into my stock broker for more detailed history than this, but with just a quick glance at these numbers, MS is churning better than expected profit off their new "if you don't pay for it, you are the product" philosophy. It will be interesting to see what happens with these numbers as more users are forced onto the new platform due to new PC sales. I assume MS's revenues used to follow a long tail, with a lot of sales the first year of an OS release, then tapers off the remaining life of that OS. Windows 10 might actually change that to a flat revenues stream, or a small channel up, as they harvest and sell more user data to third parties.

If Win10 keeps these numbers where they are, then Windows 10 is a financial success. Thus we won't be seeing MS becoming less evil again anytime soon.

What percentage is Lunix at?

[Anonymous Coward]

quite a few people are using lunix mint

Re:What percentage is Lunix at?

[UnknownSoldier]

1.46% Linux compared to all OS's, or 1.7% Mint compared to Linux

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"all but certain to"

[Anonymous Coward]

is not the same as "certain to". Who are these clowns they pay to write these articles?

In other words

[Holi]

79% of PC owners were able to block Windows 10 from being shoved down their throats.

Re:In other words

[thegarbz]

The other 21% are consumers who aren't in control of their PCs and need to wait for their corporate overlords to trigger the update.

*yawn* Linux runs on over 1 billion devices

[UnknownSoldier]

Windows 10 has ~21% but I guess MS had to force upgrades to even get those numbers.

Nice to see Windows 7 holding steady at 42%

The funny thing is MS had a 20 years head start on mobile with WinCE and consumers STILL didn't want it. Apple and Google come along and they accomplish in less then 5 years (Android was released on Dec 6, 2010) what MS couldn't do in 20 years!! LOL

Microsoft still has a ways to go when 2 years ago Linux run on over 1 Billion Devices and 99.4% of the Top 500 supercomputers run Linux; hell even iOS had 800 million back then.

But keeping MS, because you're (slowly) becoming irrelevant.

Re:*yawn* Linux runs on over 1 billion devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? You can't run a business without AD and Exchange. Well, you could... but Lotus Notes isn't great, and other solutions don't really scale.

Re:*yawn* Linux runs on over 1 billion devices

[Locke2005]

But then Microsoft bought Nokia so it could take over the phone business... hey, how did that work out for them, anyway? (Intel also tried and failed to get into the mobile phone business). WIMP will soon be irrelevant, the newer generation has all been trained to use multitouch. Microsoft tried to build an operating system that supported both, and failed miserably at doing both well.

Re: *yawn* Linux runs on over 1 billion devices

[Anonymous Coward]

They switched us over to Chrome an Gmail. We still use AD though.

Visual Studio is heading the same way :-(

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Windows is stable & fast desktop OS and it's easy to write applications for it.

Though less than it used to be. Visual Studio is also full of online-connected junk these days. Why do I have to "sign in" to the free Community edition again? How many different privacy policies now apply having done so, and where does any of them say in black and white that Microsoft won't, for example, upload parts of my commercially sensitive source code to any of its online services along the way?

Say what you will about Ballmer, but Windows developers were treated with a lot more respect in his time.

Windows 10 numbers are overstated

[Junior Samples]

Like many others, I went through the motions of obtaining a free Windows 10 upgrade license by installing a Windows 7 factory recovery DVD to a clean hard drive and then upgrading to Windows 10. After the process was complete, I reinstalled the original Windows 7 running hard drive back into the PC. I repeated this process for 2 additional machines. I just wanted the free license in case I ever wanted to use Windows 10.

I kept a copy of Windows 10 running on one test machine to play with and see if I liked it. After 6 months of use, I haven't found any compelling reason to migrate to Windows 10, but I have the free licenses in case I change my mind. I figure that by the time support stops for Windows 7, something better than Windows 10 will be available.

I'm loving my Win10 experience

[fedos]

It's a big improvement over Win7. I don't understand the hate.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[LightNecromancer]

I agree, all this "I hate windows" and "I think Linux is better". Freedom of choice boys & girls. Yes, Windows used to be pretty bad in stability, security and user-friendlyness. But right now, I think it's very fast, stable and secure. Good enough for me, espcially since they provided it as a free update, and are continually adding new features for free. Microsoft is changing (true, it's about time!) for the better, imho.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[QuietLagoon]

I'm glad you like the Windows 10 experience.

.
For me, the extreme data harvesting of my family's data was a show-stopper.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[QuietLagoon]

... Microsoft is changing...

Yeah, they're changing. Windows Update is now a malware distribution service, downloading and running software that tries to trick users into installing software they don't want.

Can you ever trust Windows Update again after that fiasco?

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[LightNecromancer]

Clearly the opinion of some people about Microsoft isn't :)

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a few posts are "Linux is better". The rest are "Windows used to be pretty good, but right now, it feels like being forced to run IOS on a desktop computer".

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is changing (true, it's about time!) for the better, imho.

Sure, if you don't mind advertising and data collection inside your OS.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Billly Gates]

Change is scary.

Most of slashdot is made up of anti rabid MS users who think 1997 is still present who are now also in their 40s where they do not like change by then.

I saw the same articles on why XP BEST EVER!!!! when Windows 7 was out. Really?? XP was good? When? These same UIDs now say 7 is THE BEST EVER!!

When Windows 11 comes out you will see the same posters say WIndows 10 IS THE BEST EVER!

Notice the same response with SystemD. Init BEST EVER! SIgh. Most of these guys are older than 40 and do not want change. I read up on it and it seems all versions of unix outside of BSD already has switched to an event driven system that is more flexible.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[QuietLagoon]

My opinion about Microsoft is not necessarily the same as my opinion about Windows. From a recent comment of mine:

What about those, such as myself, who actually had liked Windows in the past, and upgraded multiple licenses with every release (except Vista and Windows 8), starting at Windows NT? . I've stated here in the past that I would be willing to continue to upgrade my Windows licenses, even paying for the privilege of doing so, if I could turn off the egregiously excessive data harvesting that Windows 10 performs. However now, that I've already moved one computer from Windows to Linux, I'll add one more condition for me to stay with Windows... I'm still willing to pay for the upgrade license, but in addition to being able to turn off the egregiously excessive data harvesting, I would also want my computer not to become just another screen that advertisers (including Microsoft) can use to show me advertisements.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind the change but when you are the product then thats not where I want to be.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's a big improvement over Win7 but it's still not polished.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

init vs. systemd is one of those things. Reality: sysvinit is best for servers while systemd is best for laptops. Now where does your desktop fall? Mine fell on the sysvinit side; somebody else's might fall on the systemd side.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I run linux at home and Windows at work. For the past couple months, I've had both a Windows 7 and a Windows 10 system.

Change is not always good. Recent trends in UI design, for instance, seem to have come about by throwing out the entire history of human interface design research because smartphones. And while these new interfaces may work fine on a smartphone (don't have one yet, couldn't say), they certainly don't work well for keyboard and mouse setups.

So, back to Windows 10. Hate the interface. Did what I could to make it look like Windows 7, not too bad. Tried to run an update. Worked okay till it hit the big fall update from last year (took quite a while for a fresh install to get that far, mind; lots of rebooting).

Well. Problem. Downloaded, said I needed to reboot to apply. Rebooted, it didn't apply, just says I need to reboot to apply. Nothing useful in any logs anywhere. Searched online. Lots of people have this problem, there's no known good solution. People suggest everything from removing the anti-virus (sensible enough, but didn't work) to removing the RAM (no idea why this should work, but it didn't anyway) to removing the NIC (not happening on a laptop). Could never get it to install. So, now there's a big new update and I expect the process to be just as smooth. (That was sarcasm.)

And this is on Enterprise edition, so I could actually disable some of the spyware. I work for a cyber security company, so I'm mildly annoyed they'd even work with something like this, but I doubt the security side had any say in the choice.

So, I have plenty of reason to dislike the change to Windows 10.

SystemD is another barrel of monkeys, but I'll sum up by pointing out that Pottering is a complete shit coder, and the less of his code running in my system the better. I'm investigating Devuan and BSD for now (hey, look, it's not change I'm frightened of, it's changes for the worse! Shock~)

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[phorm]

I don't understand what the big improvement is?
Tiles everywhere - now with more ads - and a general security/privacy nightmare put it on the bad-list of many. In the last week they've started locking out certain features that made it usable, and I'm just waiiiiting for that first run of Candy Crush or whatever app installs pushed down without user interaction/consent...

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Locke2005]

For those of us that were _used_ to using Win7, it's not that much of an improvement. One of the flaws in Microsoft's strategy is that if you're going to force business to retrain all there computer users every couple years because the user interface in the latest incarnation of Windows is so different from the previous version... then it's really a lot cheaper to switch to Linux and only have to retrain your users once! The other problem is the Microsoft, like Sun before it, is now struggling to find a business model that works for them, ignoring the fact that it would be better for stockholders to split the company so that the applications division could work on cross-platform applications instead of promoting Microsoft lock-in.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is into bestiality.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[TemporalBeing]

Clearly the opinion of some people about Microsoft isn't :)

Too much history and bad karma from Microsoft. Expect it to take at least as long as the history they made to correct the image they've built up.

Re:I'm loving my Win10 experience

[Dan667]

That is a bit revisionist and naive regarding age. Everyone loved windows xp because the previous release windows me was sooooo bad. People clinged to windows xp because windows vista was terrible. I remember more praise and upgrades to windows 7 than hate personally, because windows 7 worked better and had stuff people wanted. So now the issue is not change is scary or old people it is that windows 8 is crap and windows 10 is crap. I have yet to hear anything compelling to upgrade to windows 10 aside from a timid performance upgrade. And there is lots and lots to dislike moving from selling an operating system to selling an operating system service.

After all but forcing W10 on Windows users...

[QuietLagoon]

nearly 80% still have chosen not to run it.

.
Of those 21% cited, I have to wonder how many actually wanted the upgrade? Of those who fought Microsoft's malware in order not be foreably upgraded, I wonder what percentage are looking to a different OS besides Windows for their next OS upgrade?

So... this is what Microsoft considers to be good news nowadays?

One Size fits all

[tbuskey]

Microsoft decided one UI should work everywhere. WinCE was the Windows desktop put onto phones. Windows 7 was the pinnacle of Desktop UI for Microsoft. Windows 8 was a tablet release, as is Windows 10. No more desktop, they want to compete with the iPad and iPhone.

You know what? The tablet UI works well on a phone. It's great for casual web, email and games. Or really anything you run one at a time like the days of DOS. If you're switching apps or running multiple apps, like the typical office worker, it's not as good. The desktop UI is great there. For a software developer the tablet is going to be harder for most.

Even *Apple*, the one choice no upgrades everything sealed Steve Jobs knows best, offers 2 interfaces. macOS for desktops, iOS for handhelds.

Microsoft needs to stop thinking one size fits all or start offering their core Enterprise apps on other platforms. Outlook (not OWA!), Skype Business, Office and Sharepoint clients for Linux and macOS. Full AD client. If they don't, enterprises will migrate away from AD, Exchange, Sharepoint to something else with a UI that works for their users.

Re:One Size fits all

[thegarbz]

What is a tablet UI? Programme running on windows 10 look just like they always did. What is scaring you? The tiles in the menu? The non existent tablet or phone mode? The control panel you shouldn't ever need to open? All the other core UI elements are still in place.

Isn't that amazing... or is it?

[bobbied]

It's amazing what happens when you GIVE AWAY upgrades.... Shazam! Folks take you up on the offer and you get a larger market share for the thing you give away for free... Now if you make it an offer I cannot refuse, even if I wanted too....

Come to think of it, only 20% or so? Really? I would have expected that to be higher given the way they rolled out this "free" ("bet you can't stop us from installing") upgrade to windows 10..

Forcing users is criminal activity, in my opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example: "Lead Pipe Joe", a mentally-deranged criminal in a local neighborhood, says he has hit 21% of people in the neighborhood with his lead pipe.

Forcing a new operating system on unsuspecting users is CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, in my opinion.

Two other issues:

1) Forcing Windows 10 on Windows users indicates a lack of social ability. Top management at Microsoft does not have the ability to see that forcing users will create an even worse reputation for Microsoft.

2) Forcing Windows 10 on Windows users creates a conflict of interest: It makes money, lots of money, for technology support people, who then don't complain much.

Proof Win 10 Sucks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Win 10 sucks, and the proof is that people actually took the time to sit down and write utilities that you could use to prevent it from installing itself.

That's a pretty clear sign of unpopularity by any measure.

Name me another OS that has had a free utility written to prevent it from installing. I'll wait.......

Re: Proof Win 10 Sucks

[trigggl]

There are a lot of GNU/Linux users that appreciate that help for keeping systemd off.

How many are dead ending win Win7 and Win8?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many users have been so irritated by Microsoft's strong-arm tactics that they're waiting for Win7 and Win8 extended support to end before leaping off the bandwagon for OSX or Linux?

Re:How many are dead ending win Win7 and Win8?

[UnknownSoldier]

Why wait !?

I'm already running Win 7, Linux (Ubuntu), and OSX (10.10).

They all suck. :-)

MSVC debugger is definitely a more user-friendly then GDB, but for general programming, I use the same Vim config across all three OS's, which makes Windows tolerable for the rest of the time.

Re:How many are dead ending win Win7 and Win8?

[scorp1us]

Well, I've been using Mint Linux for years now. 17 is very good, 18 just came out. The only downside is the confusion of MATE or Cinnamon, a distinction that is lost on normal users.

I use OSX for work (surprisingly), I use Win 7 in passing, and Linux Mint 17 at home. Out of the three, Linux is the best, which I found to be surprising. I thought the panacea to Windows would have been OSX, but OSX consistently comes up short namely because it uses and inferior BSD kernel. This BSD kernel has trouble unmounting remote drives if the connection has dropped (and seemingly can't reestablish them), the multitasking is terrible. My Pandora will skip when I compile (and I'm on a magnetic disk, quad core i5, 8g). Finder only got "Rename" as a context menu option in El Capitan, the general interface paradigm of that menu at the top is broken. There is no "real" Inkscape for OSX. "Open with" is too damn slow.

Meanwhile on Windows, you don't own your computer anymore.

Linux suffers from the usual suspects: Top-end hardware is not very well supported, Adobe apps are noticeably missing. These are generally not a problem if you don't by state-of-the-art, and can find replacement apps, which isn't too hard to do these days.

As the ultimate test, I set my retired neighbor's laptop up with Mint 17. He knows nothing of computers apart from how to use the internet, which his kids taught him. I was fielding too many Windows questions from him, so I set him up with Mint and he loves it. Nothing changes. Meanwhile, I get a call about his Vista desktop every now and then. But the Mint laptop keeps on working. Not a single issue in 3 years. His GF (yeah, he has one after his wife passed many years ago) was able to connect the Mint laptop to her Wifi, with no questions to me about how.

This can't be possible

[WinstonWolfIT]

This is the year of the Linux desktop.

I smell bovine excrement

[mcgrew]

It may have been installed on that many computers, but I wonder how many were like me, tried it, said "My GOD but this OS sucks" and went back to W7, or how many PCs with W10 pre-installed now are running Linux or BSD?

Telemetry news?

[Anonymous Coward]

But for the spying, I'd use it.

Goes hand in hand with this survey result

[Anonymous Coward]

21 percent of the population suffers from IQs below 90

It's pretty bad when...

[Dcnjoe60]

It's pretty bad when there are approximately 150M new PCs sold (Gartner estimate) and you give free upgrades to existing Windows customers, that there are only 50M Windows 10 installations? Seems that the vast majority of those new PCs must have been sold with Windows 7 on them.

Does that include people who rolled back?

[Solandri]

From talking with friends and clients, about a quarter to third of people who took advantage of the free Win 10 upgrade decided to roll back to their previous OS.

Correction...

[Locke2005]

Not so much "runs" as "limps"...

In other news...

[Locke2005]

Internet Explorer is STILL the worlds most widely used browser used for installing better browsers!

Re:80% Refuse To Use Win10 Even When It's Given Aw

[Locke2005]

"Free" software is irrelevant when you have to spend about $2000 per seat to train your users to use the new software because it's not backwards compatible with what they are used to dealing with. Hence the still small adoption rate by business, most of which is still running fine on Win7... even companies like HP.

Every new version; Everything You Know Is Wrong

[knorthern knight]

> One of the flaws in Microsoft's strategy is that if you're going to force business
> to retrain all there computer users every couple years because the user
> interface in the latest incarnation of Windows is so different from the
> previous version... then it's really a lot cheaper to switch to Linux and
> only have to retrain your users once!

+10

Before I retired, it seemed that every few years, with every new version of Windows, you had to learn Windows all over again. Indeed, my employer had training sessions for the "new and improved" version. And don't get me started on how MS-Access ODBC queries against our Oracle database had to be painfully copy+pasted over to the new version each time MS Office was updated.

This is not about grumpy old farts resisting change. This is about employees trying to do their job, having the rug pulled out from under their feet every couple of years, and competent users being reduced to newbies. At home I use linux. I switched to ICEWM in early 2010, and I'm still using it. I use my computer to do stuff, not to explore "new and improved interfaces" every year or so.

And fer-cryin-out-loud, please stop pushing a stinking smartphone touch-based interface on desktops. One only has to look at how Firefox's market share has cratered since they forced the Atrocious^H^H^H^H^H Australis smartphone-oriented interface onto their desktop product. That's what drove me to Pale Moon.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee that 21% hasn't been corrected for those that 'upgraded' and chose to go back to their old version.

Every copy is TRACKED. This includes OEM sales.

[Anonymous Coward]

So anybody who bought a PC since it came out, plus the youngsters who don't know better than to install something just because you call it an "update" or an "upgrade".

As for the actual Internet though.. and corporations.. and space.. and underwater.. etc.. supercomputers.. all that..

It is a Linux world. Nobody would run Windows 10 on a supercomputer. It is full fucking spyware, distributed by Microsoft, for the US government.

Telemetry is not what it is. It is another lie. It stores everything including keystrokes. Remote desktop is always there. It calls Markmonitor all day and night if you don't block it. And it is all coordinated with Google, Facebook, and other corporations like Cloudflare, Oracle, and Cisco.

The US tax payers bought data centers for the spies for the specific purpose to do what Ed Snowden exposed. More than what he has exposed actually.

Marketshare just means yep, Microsoft finagled a bunch of deals to force OEM's into contracts selling PC's and devices with their software on it ONLY. It does NOT mean it is a better OS and in fact Windows is shit compared to linux.

Gentoo Linux

[trigggl]

I prefer to run all my PCs with an OS that is on a rolling upgrade.

Re: Gentoo Linux

[trigggl]

However, if I'm ever forced to install systemd I'm switching to a BSD.

Statistics exagerrated?

[donak]

I'm not really going to argue statistics, but I have Windows 10 installed on 3 different laptops ... and all of them dual-boot Xubuntu. So that's 3 less that they can really count on. Then again, dual-boot is not for everyone, even amongst my fellow LUG members.
One laptop (ultrabook) in particular has a dual core Celeron chip running at 1.1ghz, and only 2GB of RAM. I'm sure you can guess how well it runs Windows 10. Even when it had only Windows 8.1, it was a little slow. Running Xubuntu it behaves like a normal computer, boots in about 20 seconds, updates when they're available in a matter of seconds like any other of my laptops and performs quite well, even when running a couple of programs simultaneously.
I'm typing this on my main laptop, a Core i3 chip + 8GB laptop for which I had no recovery discs when it's HD died : I bought a 1TB spinning platter HD, and installed Xubuntu without a qualm. If I find myself buying a new PC with Windows 10 installed ... I might dual-boot ... or I might pull the HD out, stick another in and just run Linux!

Stockholm syndrome

[NewYork]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...