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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.
They just don't like being spied upon...
"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.
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.
In other news, my insurance salesman says I need more insurance.
Right, but IE is still embedded in WIN10 - installed alongside Edge.
So you get all the problems of IE, along with a new potential vector of Edge.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Quite. I read this:
Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses.
and my immediate thought -- as someone who runs a few small IT businesses and is typing this on a Windows 7 PC -- was... well, it would be impolite to write my actual immediate thought at the time, so let's paraphrase it as "No, it doesn't".
With Windows 10, we offer our customers the highest level of security and functionality at the cutting edge.
The thing about cutting edges is that if you're not careful, you get hurt. And I have little interest in helping Microsoft's security at the expense of my own businesses.
Oh, and just for completeness while we're debunking every single statement in TFS, we bought a final round of PC gear just in time to still get Windows 7 preinstalled, and so far the total number of devices or software products we wanted to use that haven't been compatible with it has been 0, and the number of malware infections we've had to deal with has also been 0. Literally the only thing we've had to do with drivers that was even slightly awkward was slipstreaming USB3 drivers in when installing because PCs tend to have all USB3 ports these days, in contrast to the numerous reports of driver compatibility problems with Windows 10. We're far more concerned about the potential security, reliability and confidentiality risks fundamentally built into Windows 10 than we are about any threats Windows 10 is supposedly better equipped to defend against than Windows 7.
Ironically, the single most annoying and time-consuming thing in setting up those new PCs was applying the latest Windows security patches, because Microsoft have made such a dog's dinner of Windows Update in recent times that you basically have to use one of the alternative channels instead of the built-in one. And they want us to move to a new OS that relies on their update infrastructure and gives even less control over when it runs or what it does? Don't make me laugh.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.