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Microsoft: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Windows 10 (neowin.net)
In a blog post, Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10. A report on Neowin adds: Microsoft also says that many hardware manufacturers do not provide drivers for Windows 7 any longer, and many developers and companies refrain from releasing programs on the outdated operating system. Markus Nitschke, Head of Windows at Microsoft Germany, had the following to say about Windows 7: "Today, it [Windows 7] does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments. As early as in Windows XP, we saw that companies should take early steps to avoid future risks or costs. With Windows 10, we offer our customers the highest level of security and functionality at the cutting edge.
1) Use Windows 7 and maybe get infected with malware.
or
2) Use Windows 10 and definitely have malware built right in.
...Windows 7 does not meet the needs of NSA, and Microsoft's marketing department, and whoever else they're selling all of your Windows 10 "telemetry" to.
They just don't like being spied upon...
Windows 10 DOES have more security for me than windows 7.
An OS that you never load is truly the most secure.
(I'm staing on win 7 and hoping that all my games get ported to linux)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
"We still REALLY want to get you on Win 10. Our tricks and coercions did not work very well so anything we can do to scare you over is a good thing".
I suspect there is some truth to what they say, but the reality is that Windows 10 has had many unstable updates. Companies can turn these off or defer them, but the home user has no recourse. And for mission critical applications, Windows 10 has shown to be not reliable as you never know when an update that you can't eliminate might break your system.
Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10.
I assume that they mean all the time and effort people put into preventing Win10 from installing by hook or by crook.
Time to offend someone
Of course Microsoft is going to criticise their own old versions of Windows and recommend people to upgrade to the latest. Why is this even news? ...).
Also, their incredible insistence in people upgrading to 10 makes it clear they learnt with Windows XP that people don't rush to upgrade to a new OS if they're happy with what they have. Also that they had a plan to make a lot of money off Win 10 even if people upgraded for free (increased used of MS' services (bing, hotmail, their cloud service), data gathering, people buying from the Windows Store
And pretty obvious that "Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses" actually means "we'll make less money if you don't upgrade".
Maybe if you gave people what they want people would willingly update to your latest OS instead of rejecting it even when given away for free.
Make a Windows 7 with the internals of 10 and I'll upgrade.
Or does it still open 400+ connections to pull multi-gigabyte files every time, taking up all available bandwidth, and shutting down everything else on the network?
Windows 10 is literally not usable without an update server to let you control this, since they have apparently removed all controls for who much bandwidth it uses to pull updates. And it makes your entire network unusable, as well.
In other news, my insurance salesman says I need more insurance.
You mean I can't type out a Word document, read my email or visit a web site using Windows 7 because it's so insecure?
Well now, whose fault is that?
It is actually quite simple. From a technical perspective, Windows 10 *IS* more secure than Windows 7 in one very major regard. Edge (Win10 bundled browser) is far superior in both functionality and security compared to Internet Explorer (Win7 bundled browser)
BUT NOBODY FUCKING USES EITHER BROWSER, SO IT IS A MOOT POINT!
So yes, TECHNICALLY speaking, Windows 10 is "more secure", but nobody is using the insecure parts of Windows 7. Simple as that.
Disagree that it's more secure than Windows 7. Windows 7 has more of its bugs ironed out, and the bugs that ARE there are usually included in Win 10 as well! Microsoft may have designed more security FEATURES into Windows 10, but it takes years of track record to refine those. Windows 10 is much less mature. And then there's the much greater telemetry going back to Microsoft, so that is negative security.
Microsoft believes that our PCs belong to them. They need to lose more market share.
The Windows app store is not something that we all want. It should be an optional add-on for all versions of Windows.
Some of us also like Aero. Windows 8 removed Aero simply because mobile devices could not run it well in Windows RT. We are asked to give up Aero solely because of Microsoft's mobile platform that failed in the market and was essentially discontinued.
Microsoft, we refuse.
When Windows updates routinely override existing settings and break existing setups, they fit my definition of malware. Windows 10 qualifies fully and I wish I had never applied the update on one machine last summer. I know several people who applied the update and only one of them is happy with it (as of a few months ago, it is not topic number one).
Microsoft seem to think we bought our PCs so we could run Windows Update and glory in its magnificence. No, I bought mine to perform certain functions and installing Windows 10 has broken more than it alleviated. It is not the security features which annoy me, even the telemetry is a lesser irritant. What really annoys me is when an update leaves something utterly broken, and the knowledge that the next update is going to repeat the experience.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
They weren't late, they were one of the first, but got caught with the NSAKey debacle.
After that they had to regain trust (of those paying attention).
If you disable the "recommended updates" you don't appear to get any of the "old" telemetry - but it may all be back in the rollups and we would never know.
The old telemetry updates could be removed with the following:
wusa /uninstall /kb:Patch# /quiet /norestart
The patches to remove are: 3065988, 3083325,3083324, 2976978, 3075853, 3065987, 3050265, 3050267, 3075851, 2902907, 3068708, 3022345, 2952664, 2990214, 3035583, 971033, 3021917, 3044374, 3046480, 3075249, 3080149.
Many small businesses buy VL SKUs in small or even single quantities. AFAIK there is no lower quantity limit to VL SKUs, you just have to buy them through a MS Gold or higher partner, of which there are quite a few.
I used to work for a small 3 person (including me) company. We were a Gold level partner. At least at the time, the bar was set at having 2 MS certified technicians and 1 MS certified sales person along with some revenue requirement. So the bar was not high at all.
We would regularly buy single quantity VL products for our customers. Actually, that is all we would buy. We only sold retail products out of the store front.
That said, the Enterprise version of the OS is about 60% more expensive than the Pro version.
To prove my point, here is a link to CDW for a single upgrade license to Windows 10 Enterprise (so, yes, in this case you would need to first buy a Pro version of Windows 7 or 10 first): https://www.cdw.com/shop/produ...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
When counting the cost are they counting in all the breakage that windows updates have caused for win 10?
That is a huge number for most people.
I co-own a small IT services company and one part of the business is basic IT support. In that we have just over 500 customer computers under management and during 2016 the on average 147 windows 10 computers have had an average of 3.4 problem tickets each. The on average 304 windows 7 computers have had an average 0.8 problem tickets each. That is a factor of more than 4!! (The numbers do not contain planned maintenance, new software installation/version upgrade, hardware installation or similar events, just the "something is broken fix it!" classified things.)
With Windows 10, we offer our customers the highest level of massive data harvesting.
All proprietary software should be suspected of being malware. Microsoft Windows before version 10 was known to not behave in the user's interest and certainly not in the user's control (as per the definition of proprietary software). Microsoft tried pushing a Windows 10 "upgrade" on users by force, for example. Other "features" in Windows 10 (such as ignoring a user's privacy settings and doing what is in Microsoft's interest) were simply more along this line. Microsoft's aggressive sales tactics pointed to in this /. story are another example. In time there will be an announcement that Windows 7 will no longer receive updates and the hard sell for Windows 10 (or some other Windows variant) will continue. The question for all Windows users is how much more treatment like this they'd like to receive. It's never been easier to switch to a fully free software OS and run nothing but free software on top of that.
Digital Citizen
many developers and companies refrain from releasing programs on the outdated operating system
That's some very nice weasel wording they have there. I'm sure it's so many that they can't even count. Talk about FUD.
Meanwhile, back here in reality, the project I'm on has been around since Windows 3.1. We only just incremented the minimum supported OS from XP to 7 about 1.5 years ago, and that was only after a significant amount of coaxing on our part to get the client to allow it. But to go beyond 7? As if. We're certainly not coaxing them to bump it up to 8, 8.1, or 10, especially so since none of us use anything above 7 for our own development work (we can, since we have licenses for it, but none of us actually do). The developers are using 7, the clients are using 7, and the clients' clients are using 7. Not a chance we're dropping support anytime soon.
In fact, only one piece of software I use or have looked into (1Password) has dropped support for Windows 7...except that it hasn't. They're concurrently supporting two versions of their app on Windows: their old one that still works just fine and is still getting updates, and their complete rewrite for Windows 10 that's been in beta for quite awhile. It has some shiny new features, but not enough to get me to jump to 10. If that's the only example I can think of, Microsoft will be hard-pressed to convince me to update by using this tactic.
(EDIT: Right as I was about to click submit, I fact-checked myself and discovered that the 1Password devs have back-ported their beta to Windows 7 in the last few months. Now I don't have any examples of apps that have dropped support! Time for Microsoft to take a new tack.)
You forgot "Microsoft can access your machine and pull anything they want from it at any point in time without your knowledge and/or consent".
You also have zero control of updates. Unless you have a WSUS server, your machine WILL get updates on the schedule Microsoft forces upon you, and if those updates happen to hose your system, then too bad so sad.
I have a small pilot of Windows 10 machines at our company, and the last Anniv. update hosed *all* of them. Some were able to get up and running again by reverting to the previous version. One couldn't even revert, requiring us to re-image the machine.
The problem is that Microsoft wants all the control of your computer, but none of the responsibility. Maybe that's all well and good for home users, since the average home user wouldn't know what to do anyway, but for professional users and administrators who (for whatever reason) don't have the benefit of WSUS, that is *absolutely* unacceptable.
It depends. Software is technology, too. From that end, Windows 10 actually has some pretty awesome features.
A while back, I installed Gitlab on a server with 1GB RAM. That server immediately went 700MB into swap and... proceeded to behave as if nothing had happened. 40MB of reclaimable memory, but no problem. That was a Linux server with 1GB of zram allowed to use up to 50% of memory, compressing its load to less than 1/3 its original size--about 700MB open RAM, and 300MB housing 700MB of compressed RAM swapped out. The compression algorithm is about as fast as a worst-case cache miss, and programs tend to do more computation than that on a given block of RAM: it didn't add any significant performance overhead (like, less than 1%). This will balloon out of control when you get to a tight enough RAM-to-swap ratio, of course.
Windows 10 has an internal caching system that's quite similar and implemented extremely well. Because of this, Windows 10 can allocate around 24-32GB of RAM in a 16GB system and not care. It won't touch disk, at all, and it won't appear to slow down. With the right precaching algorithms, access to this kind of compressed area takes only twice as much time as access to raw RAM--that is, the same situations where CPU prefetch kicks in, the OS can decompress a few swap pages into a hot area of RAM before they're needed if there's any CPU downtime at all (there almost always is, even under heavy load from high-intensity gaming or server applications).
That's not just powerful technology; it's a response to fear of swap areas destroying SSDs. You don't need to write swap to disk ever, and you still get the benefit of taking long-unused data out of RAM and idling it on a slower medium. In this case, you trade 500MB of idle RAM out for 160MB of idle RAM, giving you an extra 340MB for stuff that actually matters. A good deal of RAM is never touched again, or is in a working set less-frequently-used than block cache, so it's actually faster to swap in some cases where you could actually reclaim usable RAM.
A lot of scheduler and memory management changes went into Windows 10, and they're actually great features--some of which I'd wanted on Linux for years and just barely got a couple years ago. If Microsoft gets a new BFS-type scheduler in before CK's goes mainline, it'll actually be a stronger server and desktop OS than Linux--that hasn't happened yet, and MS continues to trail in that respect, but they're quickly catching up on all kinds of failures and rough edges that have historically put them far beyond modern Linux distributions. Windows 10 doesn't even need a reboot when you power off an HDMI display (8.1 loses the ability to play sound through HDMI).
So Windows 10 makes better use of RAM, avoids wearing out SSDs, can handle HDMI displays properly, and has some scheduling and memory management improvements that more-optimally leverage modern processors and high-speed disks. It's not yet on-par with the latest in Linux technology--but neither is Linux mainline kernel or any Linux distribution to date; and nothing's caught up to DragonflyBSD in a few key areas. Still, it's better able to leverage modern machines than any prior OS.
I'll be excited to see BFS and BFQ in Linux mainline, and similarly-excited if we start getting Dragonfly-esque features like process freezing and, thus, the ability to just store a software session and reload the underlying system on a new kernel. If Windows can catch up, good for them.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Perhaps people don't freak out because you are wrong?
I can't comment on systems using apt, but for yum: my CentOS installations use either a local repository or they connect to a mirror. No "central server".
Also, I don't think that they query the yum server for every package installed on the system: instead, they download a single file that lists all the available packages in that particular repository, then they download only the necessary packages.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The simple problem is that telemetry has been overstated and overblown.
No, the simple problem is that the telemetry is mandatory. Microsoft could have provided a way to turn it all off, but did not. How much or little about me that is exposed by the telemetry is beside the point.
And i want the ability to remove any and all programs not needed for the operation of the OS. cortona,their online storage service,the ribbon interface the start menu, ads, the ability to change the UI as i so wish and many other reasons i will never get win 10. when my PC dies i will go Linux and not happily. I dont like linux either for as many reason as i hate win 10. its My hardware its my electricity, MY internet they don't pay one dime for but are using very mush so on win 10.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I quickly browsed 100 tickets for win 10 in the software category and 43 had a windows update noted as cause or probable cause for the problem. It is of course fully unscientific, but if it is the same for the full range of tickets then that is almost 1.5 problems on average with windows update/computer/year.
(all titles below are approximate translations to English)
Several mentions of things like:
"Computer goes into loop on start after it had restarted itself for windows update" at least 4 of these
"Program X stops working" with a further comment that it had happened after windows update or version update. at least 5 of these with 2 being local file database corruption in some older program.
"Windows update never ends" At at least 3 of these
"Program X no longer works after new windows release" at least 3 of these.
"Printer settings lost after windows 10 version upgrade" at least 6 of these. All of these in the fall update.
(I say at least as I started counting when I noticed the same type of issue reoccur and it was a fairly quick scan so might have missed some of the same)
and the most fun one: :)
"Windows 10 constantly restarts the computer for updates every 10 minutes even if you tell it not to"
Obvious, but possibly naive. Small businesses in first world economies typically make more money, employ more people, and basically do and contribute more as a group than large businesses. And as the saying goes, every successful large business was once a successful small business. Also, small IT businesses, independent professionals, and "prosumer" geeks are disproportionately influential when it comes to IT decisions. Playing to the huge enterprise customers at the expense of the little guys may be a successful strategy for the short term, but in the longer term, neglecting the little guys will surely come back to haunt them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Dear Microsoft,
STFU.
Thank You.
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, seriously. What do you expect MS to say. "Windows 7 is more private so stick with that?". Right. Recently MS released an update that have the option of "send less of your data". but no option to turn it off completely. And it's VERY difficult to turn automatic updates off (you have to basically hack it to bring that to a stop but telling it your network is metered. Would you trust anyone who puts in such lack of user controls and extraction of metadata from every file the OS sees? Those who want to lower cost in maintenance in setting up traps to stop leaking data and stopping auto updates from adding even more stuff you don't want, go to Linix (Mint Linux is the easiest). It's an easy choice world. Ms pushing people so they can collect more data for themselves (and the NSA) is creepy. We all need to say a simple word to MS: "No".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Really, Microsoft? You're preaching about IT security when you have completely taken some Windows 10 security decisions *OUT* of the hands of IT departments? We can no longer disable the Windows App Store in Windows 10 Pro, thanks to you. But if we still want that feature we have to update our licenses from Pro to Enterprise.....because SECURITY. Right? It's not about money, right?
Go fuck yourselves.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
It can be turned back down to near the old level simply by setting it to "Basic."
The old telemetry system was opt-in. The new one isn't even opt-out. Setting it to "Basic" only reduces the amount of data being sent, it does not stop it.
Microsoft: "Windows 7? why are you still running that pile."
Users: "Well, you said it was the fastest and most secure operating system ever. Besides Windows 10 doesn't really offer any new functionality and I don't really like the UI."
Microsoft: "No no that was old Microsoft. He was a dick. You need to scrap that gnarled bag of bolts and install Windows 10. Its the fastest and most secure operating system ever!"
I'll give you that multi monitor features are vastly improved (win10 on presentation laptops is a must), however win7 is still speedier, more responsive and less crash prone than windows 10 on the same hardware. I dont care how much more efficiently my memory is managed when i have to restart every other day, and have unblockable cumulative updates auto install and auto break certain things every 6 months.
That my ssd wears down in 50 years instead of 30... well its nice, but its not worth the costs that are associated with windows 10. For me those are the broken system of updates, the initial abuse of windows update to trick win7 users into upgrading, the increased frequency of clearly not quality controlled updates and the major stability problems and bugs that every new update introduces.
Then there are the simple daily annoyances. Things like how i cant reconnect a vpn connection without rebooting the computer, or how using REPLACE instead of UPDATE with GPO network drive mappings has a habit of breaking them in certain situations in win10. These are known issues since release, that still havent been fixed.
MS needs to freeze new features, and fix a current release as completely as possible, before throwing more half baked features into the next release. The rapid release cycle is why working with windows 10 is a never ending treadmill of headaches.
At the very least, they desperately need an LTS branch focused on stability of core features above all.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Now on to some bashing, we'll start with force updates that everyone complains the most about. Sorry, but this is a necessary evil,
Sorry, but you have no right to force people to update. It's their choice. More importantly normalizing constant updates provides extremely perverse incentives to software vendors. It signals they can get away with crappy QA using customers as beta testers and endless streams of security vulnerabilities at no cost to them.
leaving them vulnerable and they just don't give a flying f. The only way to address this needless insecurity is to force updates.
Most consumer desktop users are behind a stealth mode firewall where their external exposure is mediated by the security of their browsers and other network connected software. From publically available web statistics majority of Windows users don't even run a Microsoft web browser.
The overwhelming majority events that cause people to get hacked have nothing to do with operating system bugs. Social engineering and associated lapses in judgment account for upwards of 90% of compromises.
Insecure computers connected to the internet AFFECT ALL OF US, and since that includes way too many non-technical (aka muggles) people, who refuse to update when asked to, we have to force you, to protect ALL OF US from YOUR insecure system.
The Internet had better be engineered to fend for itself. Requiring permission or license or certification affects ALL OF US far worse than any unpatched desktops. Look at what the brilliant 1337us3rs who run the Internet are doing. Nobody is taking fixing DNS amplification seriously. SMTP email continues to be deemed an acceptable form of communication and every website on the Internet is using adhoc user authentication forms driven by plaintext over HTTP encrypted or not. The basis of trust on the Internet is a series of redundant CA's several of which are run by "unfriendly" governments and most of which perform completely automatic signing based on completely INSECURE protocols. If all windows vulnerabilities were completely fixed tomorrow and everyone updated their computers **NOTHING** would change. I think it is rich in the extreme to start dictating anything to users.
Next: Spying. Telemetry. Malware. So much accusations. Has anyone actually taken apart the packets being sent to M$ to see what the hell is being sent? I didn't think so, I haven't seen any reporting on precisely what is being sent.
My characterization of Windows 10 as malware is informed simply by reading Microsoft's own documentation on the subject.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
At the enhanced level of reporting (which you can turn off) it also supposedly sends info on what applications you're using, and how long they're running. Again
List of software on device and uptime of applications are also sent for the lowest level (BASIC).
But I have a pretty good educated guess. Usage statistics, performance markers, errors that occur, those are the basic things that're sent home. Probably shoved into a giant database along with every other computer that reports back.
I don't care why they use the data. I don't care what they do with it. It's none of their business. I don't want them to have mine. If you don't agree you are welcomed to your view. It's irrelevant to me.
I highly doubt anyone can successfully take telemetry data out of this database and tie it back to some individual. So who cares?
I was most comforted to learn the NSA telephone database is just numbers not names and addresses.
Do you really think you're so important that someone actually cares what you're doing with your PC? Again, probably all s
...had the following to say about Windows 7: "Today, it [Windows 7] does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments [such as ours]. As early as in Windows XP, we saw that companies [such as Microsoft] should take early steps to avoid future risks or costs [such as our customers fleeing us in droves]. With Windows 10, we offer our customers [the real ones - Microsoft executives and shareholders] the highest level of security [an ongoing revenue stream] and functionality at the cutting edge.
Whoa right there cowboy. If the updates were - I don't know - tested and vetted, maybe the forced updates wouldn't be a problem. Since they aren't and they break countless machines, many of which are owned by the clueless "idiots" you reference, we have plenty of people with broken computers who have no idea how to fix these problems. When you wake up only to find all networking is now broken, or your printers are all missing, or your data partition is inaccessible, or you have a blue screen that won't resolve with rebooting, the forced updates are a deal breaker for the great unwashed masses, period.
For the people who have a clue, the telemetry is the deal breaker.
>> Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommending Windows 10
Windows 10 Does Not Meet the Privacy and Confidentiality
Recommending Linux.
aaaaaaa
Users: Windows 10 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Linux.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.