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Most Firefox Users Still Running Windows 7 (softpedia.com)
Microsoft is pushing hard for Windows 10 to become the operating system of choice for everyone across the world, but this isn't happening just yet, as Windows 7 keeps dominating the desktop market. From a report on Softpedia: The Firefox Hardware Report published recently by Mozilla shows that Windows 7 is the number one browser for users running the company's browser, with a share of 44.86 percent, followed by Windows 10 with 25.67 percent. Seeing Windows 7 dominating the desktop OS charts is not surprising, but on the other hand, it's living proof that Microsoft will really have a hard time moving users to Windows 10 before 2020 when it reaches end of support. Microsoft's Windows 10, however, already improved substantially since its launch in 2015, mostly thanks to the free upgrade offer targeting Windows 7 and 8.1 users, but this still isn't enough to become the number one choice for PC users.
Microsoft's Windows 10, however, already improved substantially since its launch in 2015, mostly thanks to the free upgrade offer targeting Windows 7 and 8.1 users, but this still isn't enough to become the number one choice for PC users.
Quality isn't really a problem for Windows 10 as to why people are not upgrading Windows 7. While some drivers will eventually be updated for Windows 10, some of the "features" like telemetry are the problem. That and how MS forced updates on people involving trickery.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It is far and away better than it was a year and a half ago, but Win 10 still has a ways to go before it is ready for the "it just has to work all the time" workloads of many with demanding workloads. It is stable, but they need to really finish the transition from old to new completely, and add proper GPO management around new features like the Windows Settings app that is replacing control panel a little more with each feature update. Give it another 6 months or so and it will be there I think.
10 sometimes
Do you complain about people using the wheel that has been around for thousands of years too?
You're under the assumption that the latest SHINY is worth upgrading to.
I neither want nor need MS spyware.
One of my desktops is a Phenom triple-core I built in 2009. It's kinda underpowered for newer Windows versions so I still have XP (service pack 3) running on it.
It runs like a champ by the way, still quite snappy. I used to run Google Chrome on it, but some time last year it started spamming me with "Upgrade your windows, Chrome no longer blah blah" message so I uninstalled Chrome and put Firefox on it. Runs great, happy with the setup.
That's kind of stupid. Windows 8 and 10 offer "almost" no useful features over Windows 7 and have a much less power-user friendly GUI. Every GUI dialog takes twice as long to display, and twice as many clicks to accomplish.
The ONLY feature of Windows 8/10 that I've noticed I'm missing? Desktop Duplication API which allows fast, user-mode, desktop capture. Why isn't it in Windows 7? Because Microsoft arbitrarily decided to remove it from that version of DirectX/DXGI for Windows 7.
Great folks.
And some psychopath backported it to Windows 7.
https://github.com/rgcjonas/dd...
And I work in IT and software development, supporting hundreds of Microsoft desktops and servers from XP (and Win server 2003, ugh.) to Windows 10 and use them all regularly. So I'm talking from a position of experience, and not willful blindness.
He also assumes that our printers, etc., will have drivers available and we won't need to spend $1000 for the privilage of junking them.
And ... that all our documents and data files will still be there after an "upgrade". Mine certainly weren't when I tried it. Luckily for me the rollback to Win7 worked or I'd have lost everything.
(yes, I had a backup, I'm not that stupid)
No sig today...
...shows that Windows 7 is the number one browser
Sure thing, Manesh.
Just because I am running your software, does not mean you own my computer. You do not seem to understand this concept.
When 7 gets a critical hole that can't be secured without updating, I'll be moving to whatever *nix os seems like the best option.
The only reason I didn't switch when I assembled my current rig was due to a driver issue, which has probably been patched by now anyway.
I run Firefox on Win7 at work and home. Use Android for the mobile though.
https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/#goto-os-and-architecture
"The data for this report comes from Firefox’s built-in Telemetry data system. Firefox automatically collects information about desktop hardware and operating system configurations and sends this to Mozilla roughly daily, unless users disable this collection."
Wonderful.
This link is to a badly written Softpedia article, which has the link to the actual Mozilla report.
Why couldn 't Slashdot link to the original report? It's very informative.
The Softpedia article adds no information, and sounds like the writer is a non-native English speaker.
Windows 10: Do not want
Have gnu, will travel.
call me when this statement is actually true
"Microsoft's Windows 10, however, already improved substantially since its launch in 2015"
and even when 10 does "improve" it has a hell of a long way to go before it is in the same league as windows 7.
hell, even my windows vista machine, stable since it was purchased before vista's retail availability, is *better*, more *reliable*, and an *improvement* over 10. it hasn't needed a reinstall, "refresh", or had any update or other issues in ten years. it has been the best, most solid system i've ever had.
I do not want to let go of the glorious present in which my still-adequate hardware works, and updates only happen when I allow them to happen.
Considering most laptops have a 3 year life span because people buy the cheapest one on the market IE HP/Compaq. They'll be forced to buy a Win10 laptop anyway. Either use it or move to Linux.
Just because your corporate greed needs you to junk stuff to force people to pay you on a continuing subscription basis, doesn't mean we see any point in "upgrading".
Most of our machines are Linux btw. They don't show up in your metrics, because we don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for each machine, but only thousands, and they do about 100 times more actual work.
Enjoy failure.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
On my desktop box I use Win 7 and FF, and they work just fine for me; I see no compelling reason to upgrade or change.
I use Linux Mint and FF on my laptop and also see no reason to change anything there.
Not all of us want to spend our lives upgrading stuff or chasing the release or gadget or whatever. Some of us just want to find something that works and use it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I couldn't have stated it better than you have here. Windows 10 offers little to no feature, function, or benefit that would motivate Windows 7 users to switch. The only thing I can think of is arguably a better interface for touch screen users. Windows 10 is crippling from an efficiency-of-use perspective. Want to update your system? Try hitting the start button in Windows 10 and type "Windows Update". The search results are ridiculous and there are literally 100s (perhaps 1000s?) of examples of clunky experiences just like this one. Getting Windows 10 to behave properly in an enterprise environment is also a nightmare. We spent weeks tinkering with Group Policies in an effort to make Windows 10 stop spying on the agency, and to stop terrorizing our end-users with frivolous prompts squirting out of every orifice in the user interface.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
you spy on people and get caught - strike one
you trick people to an os they dont want - strike two
you try and force people to a spying os and get caught - strike 3
the 4th strike is that wndows 7 can do all a user needs , we dont need win10
we dont want subscription operating sytems that spy on us and make me pay for the spying....
see hilary clinton emails for how nice corporations are
Microsoft removed the cheesy Aero interface for one reason only: mobile devices could not run it efficiently.
As Microsoft's mobile strategy has utterly failed, Windows 8 and 10 users are forced into a mobile-friendly UI for no purpose whatsoever.
The market objects.
I bet you are not using the same thousand year old donkey cart.
Some places are "late adopters" for security reasons.
My workplace has been standardized on Win7 and FF for some years. (PC's have IE on them, but encourage people to not touch it because it is Bad and Wrong.)
The security folks have spent quite some time developing a Win10 image that's reasonably secure, and just this month started offering to re-image people's systems with it on an opt-in basis. I'm sure eventually it will become mandatory, but it'll be slow.
7 is now as old as XP was 7 went gold. Same story then. In 2020 there may be yet another XP-like 'scramble'. And again, same story to unfold: old machines keep running what they came with. Damn! the! torpedos!
The most people complaining about "almost no useful features in w10" do not know anything about windows 10.
They better not upgrade to the newest CPUs that will require Windows 10 (or Linux).
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-the-10-biggest-controversies-and-surprises-in-2016/
just think, in 85 more releases they will be back up to windows 95, i will wait for windows 95 to be released before i buy another windows OS
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
My biggest surprise is that only 77% have Flash installed. That either means users don't need Flash any more on the desktop or Mozilla has a bigger mobile usage than I think... Either way I think it's good.
https://metrics.mozilla.com/fi...
MS Spyware, Google Analytics, Alexa, and a billion other pieces of tracking out there. Face it, unless you're running everything through a VPN, through TOR, run NoScript, run an adblocker or two, never use any web features that require Javascript, and never reuse usernames then you're being tracked by some entity somewhere. And even TOR isn't a guarantee these days. You don't have privacy on the internet. You never will have privacy on the internet UNLESS you're willing to give up quite a bit of functionality. And honestly, you shouldn't really expect it. The internet isn't some bastion of freedom. It's a series of highly commercial entities who are providing stuff for you in exchange for their being able to market to you OR sell your information to someone else. It's not even about what's fair and equitable - this is simply about capitalism in its finest, unhindered state. You, the end-user, aren't usually the customer - rather you're the resource. You're going to be harvested regardless of your wishes or desires. Meanwhile you stay on an insecure OS and you make it possible for your machine to become a zombie and interrupt MY experience. Don't like it? Well set aside those Libertarian ideas that \. loves so much, boys, only regulation will fix this kind of crap.
Windows 7 is the number one browser for users running the company's browser
Cool, I didn't know you could run windows 7 as a browser, within another browser, how do I enable that?
People running Firefox are users who are more aware than standard users. They have gone out and downloaded a non-standard (for not tech people) browser and are using it. It makes sense that they are more likely aware of their OS, and what they would want or not want; as well as able to avoid the forced Windows 10 upgrade many techies were forced into.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
... and I thought Vista sucked pretty hard.
You took your machine to a computer store for idiots to mess with and you didn't make a backup first? Pot, meet kettle.
I wish I still had Vista.
No you don't. Trust me on this one.
No sig today...
The reason that people are NOT upgrading to Windows 10 especially from Windows 7 are many. It is a multifaceted whole.
All this while still taking an Intel i7-6700 processor and making it perform at the same overall user experience level that Windows 2000 provided on a Pentium II processor.
Don't get me wrong. There are many nice features and advantages to Windows 10. I'm particularly impressed with its seemingly low RAM usage. But I shouldn't have to put an NVMe SSD into an i7-6700 to get the same performance I got years ago.
So after running Vista (wtf1), when you finally decided it's time to an "upgrade", you hand your computer to the idiots at "the computer store" (wtf2) to have them install W10 (wtf3) for you, because what, is it difficult? You didn't back up your files (wtf4) beforehands, or at all in the last 20 years, i suppose.
I know /. is mainstream theses days, but WTF are you doing here?
Not all of us want to spend our lives upgrading stuff or chasing the release or gadget or whatever. Some of us just want to find something that works and use it.
But what about the economy? The entire economy is built on planned obsolesce. The moment you started being happy with good enough, the entire economy went down the toilet.
Right. "Free upgrade offer".
I'll have to remember that phrase next time I want to forcibly coerce someone to do something that they don't want.
There's a lot that I like in Windows 10 but there's SO MUCH MORE ASININE FUCKERY that you can't get rid of that just makes it teeth-gratingly irritating to use
Case in point: There's this insidious piece of trash called the Windows Game Bar, fine, cool... cool... how do I rid myself of this unwanted plague? Oh well, simply LOG IN to the Microsoft XBox app and disable it ...but what if you don't have an account? Then make one and log in and then disable it. Riiiiiight
OKAY well lookie here there are some powershell commands you can run to uninstall it, great works, until I plug in my XBox controller or let Windows update run and well ... fuck it's back
OKAY well here's some registry hacking you can do that gets rid of it, nope, keeps coming back.
Just like Cortana - just like a lot of other garbage I don't need nor want.
"So don't run Windows 10" you say... well... you're right. This is how you push a long time Windows fanboy off the cliff you fuckwits. I'm sick of this garbage. I'm sick of not having even the level of control I had with lame duck 8.x (and that's saying something)
Microsoft doesn't understand its consumer-level customers at a fundamental level and that is going to cost them in the long run
...People scared of spyware are not going to run windows 10 or use chrome.
s/scared/aware/g
There isn't a 'fear' factor involved here, just f.tons of do not want...
vista did suck windows 7 was and still is good. windows 10 is the windows 7 of windows 8.
windows 10 is good as far as windows goes.
Demand Microsoft either update 7, adding any new device support such as USB-C it may be lacking, etc., even if that means putting another $79 box on store shelves labeled "Microsoft Windows 7.1" or "MS Windows 7, Long Term Support Edition," and let it be updated for security purposes and to support new devices like I said, with a legally enforceable commitment to support it through something like 2035, offering full refunds to anyone who buys it if they don't, and putting the money to fund that into a trust or escrow account with, for example, the US Department of Justice which they only get to have if they COMPLY, with that and every other court-ordered measure they have EVER been slapped with for anticompetitive behavior.
Should they fail to do this, as Microsoft deliberately and intentionally makes using Windows 7 THAT PEOPLE PAID FOR THE RIGHT TO USE, either directly or indirectly, they should respond not only by NOT knuckling under to Microsofts demands for more money for their buggy, non-securable, defective-by-design, doomed to require upgrading again, BY DESIGN by Microsoft crappy software of crap, and instead UPGRADE to GNU/Linux, and send screenshots or photos of their computers during the upgrade process, and of people throwing their Microsoft discs and manuals IN THE GARBAGE, accompanied by messages like, "This is a what I think of your insistence that I pay you AGAIN for the same thing I already fucking paid you for, over and over again."
"You have no legal right to cripple my computer, nor legal claim on MY MONEY; in short, you assholes go fuck yourselves with a broken whiskey bottle dipped in shit."
Or something like that. Get creative. Learn to use a real, grown-up operating system, not a junky toy like the trash Microsoft sells and tells you it's gold. It's not. It's gold-painted garbage that will rot and stink up your house and anything it touches.
GNU/Linux is built from the ground up to FREE YOU and let you do what you want with your computer; Microsoft Windows is kludged together from old parts never intended to work at all, let alone together, to make you a SLAVE to Microsoft and make you pay them an illegal TAX to use your own computer that you PAID FOR; they tried, (and for a long time were succeeding at,) making it impossible for you to get a computer that DIDN'T have their useless "operating system" on it, and which is and always has been a vector for computer virus, worm, Trojan and other malware infection and dissemination.
GNU/Linux is the future because it is maintained and developed by people whose motivation is that they want to use it and make it the best it can be.
Microsoft will ONLY continue to support and develop Windows as long as they think there's enough money in it for them to make it worth their time; as more and more people switch to REAL operating systems, the pool of people still trapped in the cycle of paying Microsoft over and over again for the same thing grows smaller, and as a result, each individual will bear a larger and larger, ever-growing proportion of the financial burden of maintaining an OS that by design will ALWAYS need maintenance, for that is the underpinning of Microsoft's theft ... er... business model.
Don't be a Microsoft sucker for even one more day. Start using the superior GNU/Linux operating system OF YOUR CHOICE TODAY, and choose FREEDOM over SLAVERY.
this
if my currnet Windows XP notebook bites the dust, I'm going Mac or whatever. Windows spyware version will never be installed.
" Try hitting the start button in Windows 10 and type "Windows Update"
I've just done so. The first result is "Check for System Updates", the second "Windows Update Settings". Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Microsoft is pushing hard for Windows 10 to become the operating system of choice for everyone across the world
I wanna continue to run Linux.
Just saying it like it are.
People who like old tech are going to stick on an old OS too. People scared of upgrade or change will stay on it.
I think you have to clarify what you`re saying. I have the newest possible Debian distro, with the newest possible Firefox release. Scared of change, moi? Come on. Windows users are the proverbial change scared.
People scared of spyware are not going to run windows 10 or use chrome.
I wouldn`t say `scared`, but *concerned*. But, yeah, I never gonna run Windows or Chrome.
Any chance you could publish those policies to github or googledocs?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
to "convince" the hold-outs.
Anybody who knows Windows at all knows you have to periodically reinstall the operating system, and you really don't want to skip the security updates.
As best I can tell, it is now impossible to reinstall 32 bit Windows updates, because the first time you run it, the master list of all updates exceeds the maximum possible memory for 32 bit operating systems. It might still be possible to - slowly - get through it with automatic updates every night for a week, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Meanwhile, I just reinstalled 64 bit Windows on a box here at work. The first round of updates took three days to process the list, before I could even begin to actually install any updates.
So treasure your Win 7 installs, and take good care of them. If you bork it up, odds are, you won't be able to reinstall.
If you don't want spyware and you are using any version of windows, you are a damn fool. You ASSume any version is anywhere near "safe".
... said a random anonymous coward while providing zero examples.
Great post, would read again.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
And what idiot entrusts a computer store with sensitive data? What idiot cannot be bothered to upgrade by themselves.
And just to re-iterate the store's attitude for you:
FUCK OFF YOU CUN..........
6. People who like to customize their browser's UI.
7. People who like to use neat features such as vertical tabs.
8. People who like it when all addons are free and none of them require the user to pay to unlock full features (TabOutliner being an example).
9. People who use session managers that work properly on that browser, while the best equivalent on Chrome (SessionBuddy) is worthless because Chrome lacks tab lazy loading, and each session load risks freezing the system.
10. People who prefer a browser that doesn't nag them or troll them any time they use certain addons that make Google butthurt because they improve some of Google's services.
11. People who want a browser that will allow them to unlock or enable certain functionality if they can afford, or have a way around, security trade-off. Case in point: Opening online videos and streams via external application (any installed player of choice).
12. People who don't mind a slower browser if it will give them freedom of choice and functionality.
I could keep going.
Firefox could get a niche by providing long term support for older operating systems by allowing legacy users to get the modren web experience.
...except for being MS's ad engine
Windows 8, sure. It had a terrible GUI for a desktop. (Fantastic for a tablet, though. Better than anything else I've used, including Win10.)
Windows 10, however, is not that. Its GUI is basically a different theme slapped onto Windows 7's familiar old interface. It's the same old thing, but with many very noticeable improvements to various behind-the-scenes pieces.
And anything involving DXGI in Windows 7 was basically incomplete to start with. DXGI was barely ready in time for Vista, so Win7's version was the first marginally-usable one. WIn8's version added some breaking changes. Win10's has made DXGI truly replace GDI, so they can safely deprecate that old-ass Win16-era library once and for all. As always, never use it until it hits the third (or even fourth, a.k.a. the 3-point-1th) release. I do feel sorry for the poor soul who spent his time on that backport to Win7, though. That's time he'll never get back.
For me, personally, the most onerous change was one that broke how IMFTopologyNodes being used as tee-nodes respond to media events, which causes a multi-output video topology to only display on the first output of the tee-node. That broke (or was changed, if it's intentional) in Win8 and has not yet been fixed (or reverted). But it's OK. I've worked around it now. It's so much easier to just make UWA's in .Net than to futz around with COM in C++, and MS has gone to a hell of a lot of effort to make the performance roughly equivalent. (Thank the x-bone for that, I guess.)
TL;DR: Just because you're all pissy about Windows 10 doesn't mean that everyone is.
I don't quite understand your questions. What does WTF mean?
Microsoft's Windows 10, however, already improved substantially since its launch in 2015..
'Improved' for the user, or have they just 'improved' their spyware/adware/malware/surveillance/privacy-invasion software? I'll never use it willingly until it's 100% free of all the above. I'd rather use some flavor of Linux, even if that means I lose access to some software and some functionality. Fascism is a real thing, and even a corporation can be Fascist in how they conduct themselves; this does not however mean that we end-users must put up with corporate Fascism.
Yep. I don't need a desktop operating system that serves ads to me. It's bad enough that I get ads served by the default applications that were preloaded on my smartphone, I don't need my computer now doing the same thing.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I bet you are not using the same thousand year old donkey cart.
I'm using Donkey Cart 987.4 and it works fine. It may have been a mistake to add nitrous as we gain no extra velocity and the donkey weaves around a bit... but he seems happy so I give him a whiff every once in a while. I have found load balancing to be important, but other than that no complaints.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
My migration from Mac to Windows happened because Apple depricated all of my SCSI, ADB and serial peripherals at the same time and if I had to buy all new stuff, it wasn't going to be for a clear plastic Mac.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When they remove the majority of the telemetry and allow Windows Updates to function as they do in Win7 and previous, I'll gladly switch to Win10. Until then, they can fuck right off.
They are also still running Firefox.
It works after Windows 10 has spent hours/days indexing the start menu items. However, it does not work correctly on a fresh install of Windows 10 which has booted up for the first time. You know... the most likely time you would want to manually check for updates.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Agreed. We all know vendor peripheral support for new MS OS offerings is always a shotty endeavor from the outset. And only comes to stability 3-5 driver releases down the line. How many peripherals out there, still functioning just fine, work on the onset in WIndows 10? How many need new drivers developed, and installed? And to go through MS 'gold certification' or whatever it is to be an 'authorized secure driver'.
There's a reason why many people I know, who use Windows and no other OS, will leave Microsoft before switching to Windows 10. Forced UI learning, for the sake of itself, is not reason enough when what you have works just fine for what you do.
It's likely if MS didn't shoe-horn Windows 10 upgrade down peoples throat like that did, they wouldn't see the backlash they are. I know at least for myself, I loathe such behavior at extremes and put it on par with the corporate behaviors we've seen with Sony, Apple, etc.... MS hasn't gotten my money in a long time. A VERY long time. And the won't be getting it any time in the near future either. Possibly ever.
Windows 10 won't be popular until it stops restarting without asking users.
"[We'll be] really getting inside your head and making it an unpleasant place to be" -- Trent Reznor
Win10 is not even on my radar. As long as it is loaded with malware and forced updates feature set is irrelevant.
Yes, the internet is everything you describe it as being. However, consumers have the right to opt out of that kind of invasion being done at the OS level of their own computer (particularly if they pay for a license instead of accepting one of MS's first year "beta-ware" freebies). Granted, they'd be better off doing so by not using Windows at all.
i'll second this by saying the following:
I wont change my OS (from Win7 to X) for the same reason I wont change my Wifi Thermostat, my TV, my Phone, or even my refrigerator... a PC is like an appliance now, the improvements that can be made to them can only go so far, and we seem to have reached a tipping point. a Win7 PC can run pretty much anything an average IT person would require. People are starting to finally realise they don't need to have the latest and greatest, because its all marketing...
MS should completely stop designing OS's and start working on AI integration or something similar for PC's ... when my OS is smart enough to start my car on cold mornings and tell me I need a new box of fruit-loops ... then maybe, just maybe i'll upgrade.
> the idiots at the computer store erased [...] 20 years worth of files...
I feel your pain! I lent my car to a friend with the only copies of 20 years of precious family photos in the back and he lost them. Haha just kidding, I wouldn't do something so careless, and if I did I wouldn't blame my friend I would blame myself.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
There will always be people running old computers that should NOT run a new OS. Many, if not most of you don't remember when low end computers had 128MB or 256MB of RAM when Windows XP was first released. Needless to say, Windows XP was painfully slow for those who decided to pay to upgrade their computers to XP back in 2001-2002. When faced with "too little RAM" as the reason for the performance issues with XP, you had people who either stuck with Windows 98 or ME, or they upgraded their computers, either replacing them, or adding RAM.
Windows 10 feels a bit sluggish with less than 4GB of RAM, and that, or problems with a lack of drivers, will be good reasons to hold people back. Many didn't care for Windows 8 for a number of reasons, and some people don't realize that Windows 10 fixed many design issues introduced with Windows 8.
And then, of course, you have those who don't like Windows 10 for various issues, paranoid about security and what may be shared, and waiting to see if there will be fixes for the complaints they personally may have. There were also the initial problems that have scared people off, where they tried to upgrade to Windows 10 and something happened to break Windows for them in a way that wouldn't let them recover on their own.
And what idiot entrusts a computer store with sensitive data?
Garry Glitter
> You don't have privacy on the internet.
YOU don't have privacy on the internet. People who want it, do. More importantly, the fact that privacy on the internet is harder to come by than it should be, does not in ANY way give justification to Windows 10, which makes you not have privacy on your DESKTOP.
> Well set aside those Libertarian ideas that \. loves so much, boys, only regulation will fix this kind of crap.
Install Linux, problem solved :/
> The only thing I can think of is arguably a better interface for touch screen users.
I don't want a non-touchscreen device to have an OS that was designed with ANY consideration for touchscreen users. All that does is hurt the usability on the device I'm using it on. The touchscreen device should have an OS, or at least a UI, that is entirely designed around them. A hybrid approach sucks for everyone.
It's 2016. Why is anyone still running *any* version of Windows outside of some backward, locked-down corporate environment? I know there are little gamer kiddies that are desperate for compatibility with their proprietary software, but outside of that, I honestly don't understand. I don't know anyone who uses Windows myself. The people I know who refuse to use some variant of Linux (including Chrome OS and Android, of course), all use Mac OS. I can only assume this is *still* due to Microsoft's unethical, monopolistic business practises that multiple lawsuits have still failed to put an end to. How much longer are we expected to put up with this?
Do you complain about people using the wheel that has been around for thousands of years too?
What wheel have you been using that has been around for thousands of years? Wheels have vastly improved over time.
You're under the assumption that the latest SHINY is worth upgrading to.
Firefox has lagged and become worse over time, switching to Chrome (or even Palemoon) is worth it. Indeed keeping your software up to date is important, this is a continual problem for the Android community for example with the constant stream of security vulnerabilities left unpatched for the vast majority of users, dismissing that as unimportant is just ignorant.
I neither want nor need MS spyware.
Then you wouldnt be running Windows at all, we have been hearing for decades (particularly from groups like the FSF) that Windows has secret backdoors to spy on users (now of course even with the NT and 2000 source code leaks these were still unproven) so were they lying? Now of course you can turn off things like typing/voice/handwriting feedback (just like you can on macOS) but that's unlikely to placate the conspiracy theorists.
Seriously I constantly see people here saying about how MS (and Google) are "selling your data" which of course is completely and utterly false so why be so ignorant? What's the agenda?
Where's the Files?
"The entire economy is built on planned obsolesce."
The greatest economic expansion in US history started with this little ditty:
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without
Oh, and Buy Bonds!
Nearly two decades of Depression and War taught Americans to save, and coupled with a few Socialist policies, like FHA insured loans and the GI Bill, when it came time to spend again... Americans had the money! They could afford College educations, and a new house out in the new suburbs. And Saving continued until the Mid-Sixties at over 10% of income, when it started to decline again, and actually went negative during the recent Recession... something not seen since 1933.
I've nearly always been a Saver; I paid off a Car loan in 1984, and that was my last consumer loan. Hell, in 1986, I tore up my sole credit card, and have been paying cash ever since, and if I went over my monthly allowance, which I tied to the UC, where I worked, annual COLA numbers, I put off purchases.
So when I took Early Retirement, I not only could afford it, but I actually went on a bit of a spending spree. If my calculations work out right, I'll be out of ready spending money... at the age of 118.
Did I make sacrifices? Hell yes. I haven't eaten in a Restaurant in many years; I'm actually a pretty good cook. My clothing is utterly practical, and only bought on Sale. My most recent toy... was a Microscope, a pretty good one on sale, that replaced the one I got when I was 11. (My Parents, Depression Babies, didn't believe much in Toys; my Presents were nearly always practical, like Books.) I nearly always buy used when I can. The last Movie that I saw in a theater was "The Return Of the King". I don't socialize much these days; I find myself excellent company. My last "Vacation" was in 1994.
By many standards, I am just not part of the "Consumer Culture".
Oh, that Car loan that I paid off in 1984? I still have the Car. According to recent Auction numbers... it's now worth three quarters of a million dollars... I even buy Ferraris used.
may it bathe in the blood of his many enemies forever!!!
And ... that all our documents and data files will still be there after an "upgrade". Mine certainly weren't when I tried it. Luckily for me the rollback to Win7 worked or I'd have lost everything.
I'm a little confused here. How did a rollback give you back your files, when you'd just said that they weren't there after the upgrade?
I don't need a desktop operating system that serves ads to me.
It's all well and good to hate Microsoft for whatever reason but when the solution to this is so simple and obvious do you really need to pretend it's beyond your abilities? Unpin the tiles from the start menu and uncheck the box in start menu options to "Show suggestions in start menu" to turn off that one line of text.
I've got Windows 10 on one of my machines and that's what I did to solve that issue, you're welcome.
at least you can turn it off
and they will kill htemselves when and if they disallow turning it off and they know it
OTOH, many of the driver issues could be avoided by avoiding certain peripheral manufacturers. Not all, certainly, but a lot. Specific case: printers. Don't buy HP (inkjet drivers only available for the Windows version at the time you buy it, possibly +1). Canon, Epson do that for some cheap consumer models, too. Brother, OTOH, seems to support more or less forever - wife has a 15-year-old multifunction (non-PS, non-PCL) laser originally bought for use with XP that has current drivers for 10. And it works fine. Of course, if you have a laser using PCL or Postscript then you have driver support for as long as the hardware lasts - but those are usually only in higher-priced business models.
TL;DR: Just because you're all pissy about Windows 10 doesn't mean that everyone is.
And if you're that pissy about it then go use something else. Most actual users won't even know the difference because their programs all look and work the same as they did in previous versions anyway. The ones who are really complaining are the lowly Windows admins that keep Windows entrenched in corporate organizations. They bitch and whine about it but lack the ability to convince managers to make any meaningful change and they themselves for whatever reason aren't willing to change and join their better-paid Linux admin brethren.
"Almost" only works with horseshoes and atom bombs. I didn't notice the desktops difference because I don't use it. The mobile-user-friendly interface happened in 8, not 10 (and worked great in my 8.1 phone - the only reasonable use case for it). The real differences I see with 10 (after using in anger it for about 6 months and in testing for about a year), compared to 7, are:
* takes more disk space and RAM.
* even if you block the advertising (it's mostly possible, but only with 3rd-party help) it still burns up your network talking to MS - the telemetry can't be managed as well as in earlier versions.
* updates can't reasonably be controlled outside of Enterprise contract versions; since you can't control what comes (just one big package), deferring updates is futile. You would have to totally block them, which requires something outside the computer itself. And even with that, the time needed to manage Win10 is well beyond what I spent with 7 (which just worked: turn on the computer, do some work, shut it down) - constant fiddling is needed rather than just a hobby.
* Realtek audio is frequently broken by interrupt latency; this happened in 7, too, when SP1 came out, but was fixed there; appeared to be fixed in 10, too, in 1511, but it's back in 1607.
* the fast startup trick introduced in 8.1 works quite well now, which is probably related to:
* power management actually works like it should, without crashing the computer on waking from sleep like it did in 7.
* a Start Menu is back, though IMO 1607 broke it by having the all-apps list visible all the time; liked it better in RTM and 1511 where it was hidden until you wanted it.
Let's see, I make that 3 major downsides, 1-2 so-so, and 1-2 1/2 minor improvements. Is my count at least proportional to others'?
>Still
As if that's a bad thing, or some newsworthy and shameful observation? You're damn right we're 'still' on Win 7. The better OS, get over it.
Well, not so much that the newest motherboards "require Windows 10", it's more like Win 10 is 'forbidden' to load onto yesterday's motherboards. That was manually & artificially introduced by MS to 'guide' us forward.
You see, WIN 10 can operate on yesterday's CPUs just fine, it's only recently that it has been 'organized' not to. Y'know organized meaning a "racket" type situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)
_
Why?
Because various gadgets' software often require Windows or a Mac to function. If they subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, they'll be on Windows or a Mac (gimp is NOT a Photoshop replacement, and there is no F/OSS photo processing/lightroom software as good and easy to use as Lightroom). If they're into 3D gaming (3D Vision) they'll be running Windows. If they're running $GameNotOnSteam, they'll be running on Windows rather than mess with Linux + Crossover Office and find it doesn't work out of the box.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
1. Games (I may not be a "gamer", but I like to play games once in a while)
2. Windows-only software. I use Multisim for drawing circuit diagrams. It does not work on Linux.
3. Hardware compatibility. Find me a clamshell UMPC with x86 CPU (so I can use Wine) that completely supports Linux. I have a Viliv N5 with 1GB RAM and Windows XP (too little RAM for newer Windows). I tried installing Linux on it, but I could not get it to be stable.
Fuck off shill.
Does this study say something about Firefox users, or does it say something about Windows users?
Maybe Firefox users are more likely to use Windows 7, but that doesn't mean that Chrome users are likewise inclined.
A person's browser choice says something about them.
- Edge - probably a person who doesn't know how to switch to a different browser, or doesn't know why one would want to.
- IE - probably a similar person, who is using an older computer.
- Firefox - probably more security-conscious than most
- Chrome - probably hooked into the Google ecosystem
Of course, this is not complete, and there are other reasons to pick a browser. But it seems like a leap to extrapolate a lack of Windows 10 adoption from the subset of users who use Firefox.
Or.... someone could write software that pretends to browse and operate like a real person when the real user does other things. One could enable the 'browse like a.... democratic or republican or anarchist, 99 yr old grandma, etc...' feature to make the analytics untrustworthy. Building and sharing false user web activity profiles between users would keep them guessing.
That's not quite right. You can run Windows 7 on Skylake and Kabylake just fine. What you don't get is support for any new features specific to those processors. You still gain in IPC and/or clock speed as per normal, and you can still run them just fine.
My migration from Mac to Windows happened because Apple depricated all of my SCSI, ADB and serial peripherals at the same time and if I had to buy all new stuff, it wasn't going to be for a clear plastic Mac.
LK
As long as you are happy, that's all you need.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Meanwhile you stay on an insecure OS and you make it possible for your machine to become a zombie and interrupt MY experience. Don't like it? Well set aside those Libertarian ideas that \. loves so much, boys, only regulation will fix this kind of crap.
Well, Einstein, you just made millions of people revert to Windows 95 in the hope that they can be owned, and absolutely ruin your experience.
Too much coffee today, or just a natural rager?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...notably excluding the one's they DON'T:
https://blogs.windows.com/wind...
Scroll down to "Known Issues."
Whatever happened to the concept of "testing" and "fixing" defects ("bugs") in code. Apparently, end-users are not as eager to be willing to be guinea pigs for untested code, not that they have to PAY for this kind of punishment.
Remember: If the product is claimed to be "Free," YOU are the product!
On my desktop box I use Win 7 and FF, and they work just fine for me; I see no compelling reason to upgrade or change.
I use Linux Mint and FF on my laptop and also see no reason to change anything there.
Not all of us want to spend our lives upgrading stuff or chasing the release or gadget or whatever. Some of us just want to find something that works and use it.
That's because we are actually doing things, and not just trying to get the operating system to work.
So odd to see these shills yapping about how awesome W10 is, and that no one should mind the telemetry because other stuff has it, when at base, Updates break your system. Then again, some as swipe said we're just supposed to avoid buying things that Windows 10 breaks.
The shills are getting rather psychotic these days.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It has been all down hill after Windows peaked at version 7. Until there is a Windows 7 version 2, I will not be running other Microsoft Operating Systems. The spyware filled crap that is post 7 will not be on my machines. I deliberately blocked the MS installs of Telemetry, and have other preventative measures in place to block Telemetry. Microsoft failed their customer base miserably.
You can run Windows 7 on Skylake and Kabylake just fine.
From what I read elsewhere, it's the next gen processors that will require Windows 10 or Linux.
Rebuttals are for real arguments. You're just a M$ mouthpiece and therefore everything you have to say is invalid before you even say it. Go hang out on ZDNet, n00b.
Scutbitch here, our K-12 SROs weren't able to view camera footage on their boxes if they upped to win10, because of some incompatibility that's way beyond my $12/hr to even be aware of.
The embedded video used an Intel architecture or something that broke on win10 (despite the prompts that would've said "it looks like your computer is compatible, off we go") . I spent a fair part of spring/summer chasing downgrades, scrubbing KB8018533 or whatever, scrubbing the 8~10GB already-downloaded install files hidden in root that caused upgrade lock-in, and making an Explain Like I'm Five guide for a department of "real techs".
So yeah, Intel. Can't be assed to dig up the work order.
I've got an MS Win7 tablet I use to run some camera software. It's far more simple and easier to use as a touch screen than MS Win10. The clutter and shifting shit means MS Win10 does not even win that category IMHO.
What percent of users do you think did what you did? I'm guessing less than 5%.
Given NINETY-FIVE PERCENT ACCEPTANCE rate, MS will no doubt disable your ability to turn them off before too long.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
whatsoever with what 99% of users do...which is upgrade when their computer breaks
that is all
It doesn't matter what version you use, its stability is secondary to the other two most popular contenders.
why
simply to irritate arrogant jerks like you who think they have the right to tell other people what they like
how would you like it if I told you only jerks *still* eat potato chips (or whatever your fav junk is) ???
What percent of users do you think did what you did? I'm guessing less than 5%.
Well firstly your "guess" is completely unsubstantiated but wouldn't that be all the more reason to spread the solution? Unless of course you want it to be accepted to the point where it can't be turned off, if that's your agenda then by all means continue trying to suppress that knowledge.
Given NINETY-FIVE PERCENT ACCEPTANCE rate, MS will no doubt disable your ability to turn them off before too long.
But there isn't a 95% acceptance rate, that's something you just made up out of nothing. I'm telling you the solution to the problem and your response is to whine about your made up fantasy future where that solution might not exist. What's your solution then? Or are you just knuckling under.
Only one machine stands against the tide of Linux installs... my dear wife's. It is infested with Zuckerscheize but the Sony Viao keeps running Windows 7 and Firefox. But of late, she has been asking for me to migrate her to a Linux, any Linux, anything BUT not that fanboi turd world of Windows 10. Zuckerschwein will likely be ringfenced inside a dedicated VM to keep the rest clean.
Maek Amerika Grate Agen!
You are correct, 72.6 percent of all numbers on the internet are made up.
You missed the point though
MS can look at 5/10/15 percent of people to take the time to do something and 'claim' 95/90/85 percent LOVE IT the way it is just fine and proceed to use their own 'assumptions' to further goals the OP was saying didn't matter because he could turn it off currently.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
(same poster) ...and have an optional browser flag similar to anonymous browsing that says 'my analysis will reduce the quality of your results so don't analyze me because the well is poisoned'
If you don't watch the ads then you're stealing the...er...desktop!
WTF does What does WTF mean mean? Disregard this, I voted for Trump.
Vista wound up being fairly decent. It sure didn't start that way, and 7 was a very definite improvement, but I was reasonably happy with it shortly before moving to 7.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
MS can look at 5/10/15 percent of people to take the time to do something and 'claim' 95/90/85 percent LOVE IT
They can claim whatever they want to but really its effectiveness is measured in how many people actually click-through, even if you don't opt-out it's completely ineffective if you don't click on it. But all the more reason to take my advice and turn it off rather than pretending everything's hopeless and continuing your agenda to try and get people to leave it on.
to further goals the OP was saying didn't matter because he could turn it off currently.
It's one line of text in the start menu, which you can turn off and if your workflow is to launch programs through one of the other many means of doing so you wouldn't even see it anyway or failing that you could install a start menu replacement or failing that you could even install a different shell. There are so many solutions to this very minor issue (remember, it's one line of text) so why are you being such a defeatist about it?
Goodness, that was before the big jump to OS X happened!
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I feel like W10 has a better on screen keyboard then W10, but that might be about it. However, my W10 tablet no longer works at all (WinBook, won't boot except to the "Rescue"screen that won't allow me to boot to any rescue media even though it claims to be trying to do that...), so that really isn't a concern for me any longer. Shame, because I almost liked the little tablet (save for the abysmal battery life - with an Intel Atom in it I got at most two hours of life out of it, and it died after a day on standby, compared to my 2012 MBP with roughly 6 hours and my Precision M4500 with four hours (i7 and Quadro FX GPU - it's a power hog of a laptop, but it's powerful as can be iwth 16GB of RRAM and two SSD. My current work laptop (M4800) gets at least 4 hours of battery life as well, depending on what I am doing).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
No vacation for over 20 years. No eating out. No friends. You won't live to 118 so that savings is pointless. Didn't really think this one through did you? I doubt anyone envies you, even if you have retired early, your miserly life sounds like a Scrooge Lifetime movie warning people to enjoy their lives and not live for money. Yeesh. But congrats on your ferrari and microscope, I'm sure they're great reassurances.
Yes. It was about a year before OS X and about a year after they discontinued the Beige G3.
By the time OS X was released, I was already gone.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
But the funny thing is that Win7 is "shinier" than Win10. Do a web search for "Windows 10 ugly", for example. On another /. topic, I've said that if Windows was Indiana Jones, then Win7 would star Harrison Ford, and Win10 would star Lego actors.
Wait, Backslashdot likes libertarian ideas? I guess I'm on the wrong website then.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I've seen more weird bugs on Windows 10 than any version of Windows in a long time, and the "flat UI" look is stupid and ugly. Some pajama boy threw out all the major R&D and UI advances that Microsoft was at the forefront of in the 80s and 90s just so he could foist his minimalist aesthetic in a place where it does absolutely no good. I know I'm personifying what is surely many, many people, but the effect is the same... throwing out 30 years of hard-won UX knowhow to turn the desktop into someone's vanity art project.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The shills are getting rather psychotic these days.
They gotta do something now that Correct The Record has laid them all off.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Not only that, but Microsoft never bothered to back-port the telemetry crap back to Vista, so at least for a few more months you can have version of Windows where you can install the updates without worrying as much about what data your OS is sending back to the mothership.
On the other hand, a lot of vendors have dropped their Vista support and list Windows 7 as the minimum version. But my guess is just like 2000 was to XP, most anything that will run on 7 will run just fine on Vista even if it's not officially supported.