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Windows 10 Now on 600 Million Active Devices (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the nothing-like-anything dept.

Windows 10 has found its way onto 600 million active devices, says CEO Satya Nadella. From a report: CEO Satya Nadella referenced the new number for the first time moments ago at the company's annual shareholders meeting. The number is up from the 500 million devices touted by Microsoft earlier this year, but it's still well short of the company's original goal of 1 billion Windows 10 devices within two to three years of its 2015 release.

16 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Good leadership at the helm... by rwven · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It can't be understated how good of a job MS has done with Win10 and the company's direction as a whole in the past few years. Placing Nadella at the helm, and getting rid of Balmer has been a real boon to the company. I know this probably makes me sound like a MS shill, but having spent multiple years in the Linux desktop scene, macOS, and windows, the current windows OS is by far the best OS I've ever used.

    While the target of 1B devices might be a little bit of a pipe dream, they still have another year to hit their goal, and if they don't, it's not like it's even remotely a failure.

    I still can't deny that Ubuntu 17.10 is very tempting though...

    1. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by rwven · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, it's not embarrassing. They make a better desktop OS than Apple or any Linux desktop at the moment. I don't even view that as an "opinion." Having spent loads of time in all of them, it's just the current state of affairs.

      Maybe if Apple gets their collective heads out of their rears, or if a Linux distro finally decides what it wants to be, that might change.

    2. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As far as price/utility, Ubuntu 17 is pretty good. It's free. It doesn't send my personal data outside my machine by default. It doesn't try to nudge me to use Microsoft's (or anyone else's) servers for storage of personal info.

      And it comes with a decent (OK, not great) office suite, graphic edition, media software, etc, etc built in. What's really missing is an Outlook equivalent, but with web-based email solutions, this is less relevant. (Strictly for email, I connect Thunderbird to the uni Exchange servers.)

    3. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      Not everyone who tolerates Windows 10 is a corporate shill. For one thing, for anyone who has suffered through Windows 8.X, Windows 10 seems comparatively like the sound of angels, the taste of an expertly made macchiato and the feeling of deep carpeting beneath your feet. That's not shilling, that's just a tremendous feeling of relief.

      Moreover, there's still some of us who's essential apps still run on Windows, and won't run well under Wine, at least not yet, and running individual apps in Virtualbox (a) is clumsy, and (b) doesn't actually achieve the goal of getting rid of Windows.

      So praising M$ for Windows 10, which is actually solid and reliable and not too obnoxious to use like XP used to be, can be said by someone who doesn't have SJ branded on their forehead. Really.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by rwven · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sounds like you're quoting a bunch of ignorant drivel from the Vista days...

      - It's extremely fast. It cold boots for me in 5 seconds after posting is complete. I'd also like to see your competing system run graphics intensive tasks using the latest and greatest graphics hardware and even have a chance of competing. "Slow" is about the stupidest and most ignorant claim about Windows 10 that I've ever heard.
      - Installing software is a nightmare? I guess clicking an icon and clicking "Next" is too complex for some people... Definitely SO much harder than mounting a virtual drive on your machine, extracting an app from it, dragging that app to an arbitrary folder (or running an installer), and then unmounting the drive.
      - "I can't move an app after I install it!" is a fake complaint and probably identifies you as an angry mac user. You never move an app after you install it anyway, and don't lie and pretend you do. They sit right in the Applications folder the way they always have. That's not an issue.
      - Are you really complaining that there's a welcome screen after major OS updates that says "Hi!"? Apple plays a frigging theme video after their major OS updates, and Linux often just indiscriminately breaks or uninstalls half the crap you had installed.
      - The "List of installed apps" is only confusing if you're a toddler. It's an alphabetized list of your installed apps. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you very well may be beyond help. Compare that with a mac, and you end up with garbage files spewed all over your Library that you know nothing about, and are effectively there forever, even if you decide to get rid of the application itself. Even most linux distros do a better job of keeping track of the mess they makes.
      - Windows was free for me, five times over, and whether or not something is "cool" is irrelevant to how good it is at its job. Skateboards are cool. They also suck as cross country vehicles.

    5. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 2

      Not everyone who tolerates Windows 10 is a corporate shill. For one thing, for anyone who has suffered through Windows 8.X, Windows 10 seems comparatively like the sound of angels, the taste of an expertly made macchiato and the feeling of deep carpeting beneath your feet.

      The parts that sucked about Windows 8.x:
      -Non-coherent control panel menus that are half "Metro" style, half Standard Desktop style (fixable with Classic shell, though it shouldn't be required)
      -Full screen start menu with annoying smart tiles, and no tree view of the start menu. Search and completely flat only.

      Windows 10:
      -Same identity crisis control panels
      -Mini version of the same smart tile start menu, with no tree view

      Addition of:
      -Forced updates with automatic restart.
      -Forced upgrades that are somewhere between a service pack and a whole new version, that can break shit.
      -Telemetry.

    6. Re:Good leadership at the helm... by jez9999 · · Score: 2

      It reboots uncontrollably.

      It spews telemetry out over the internet.

      Both are unacceptable.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  2. Had to give it away by Revek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When that didn't work they forced it on you.

    1. Re:Had to give it away by DickBreath · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Windows 10 is free.
      Not free as in freedom.
      Not primarily free as in beer.
      But mostly free as in herpes.

      How is this malware running on 600 million machines?

      Did the recently announced Microsoft Sets look like Windows will become another Chromebook?

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    2. Re:Had to give it away by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Informative

      Windows 10 is not free now, and in fact was never really free. It was a free upgrade only for already-paid-for versions of Windows, and that offer has long since expired. If you want to install it today on a new machine, it will cost you $120-$200. Buying a Windows license doesn't give you a perpetual lifetime license either. It only gives you a license for the lifetime of your machine.

      Microsoft probably realized that the vast majority of people buy a machine and never upgrade Windows. So, they just changed their business model to better fit this reality, and at the same time, made things easier on themselves by ensuring they're only supporting one OS version going forward.

      I'm always a bit surprised by the "Windows is free" mantra. Microsoft only eliminated paid updates, which I suspect wasn't a huge money-maker anyhow, and will likely be partially offset by reduced maintenance costs. With those numbers, assuming only half those are desktop PCs, and even with an average of once a decade machine replacement, Microsoft is still likely grossing several billion a year on new license fees alone..

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. And they still haven't gotten a clue by ilsaloving · · Score: 5, Informative

    And the most important thing to remember is that if people had the choice of installing Windows 7 on new machines, the Win10 numbers wouldn't even be THAT high.

    The only reason people are installing Windows 10 is because they have no choice. Not only is it not that particularly compelling, but there are so many downsides, that people are actively resisting using it.

    I know I won't allow it at our company until we've implemented a full deployment plan including blocking all of Microsoft telemetry IP addresses, and set up a WSUS server with a VERY conservative update schedule. Microsoft has fucked up SO many updates, SO regularly, that they cannot be trusted. This probably also means we'll be forced to subscribe to their Windows 10 Enterprise nonsense since they removed so much of the GPO functionality from Pro.

    1. Re:And they still haven't gotten a clue by Darkling-MHCN · · Score: 2

      So if you're that worried about telemetry, do you block Google analytics and Facebook?

      And have you done any research at all into how to disable Windows 10 telemetry, or what that telemetry is doing and whether it might actually be beneficial?

      To me you sound like you're letting your own personal biases get in the way of doing your job properly.

  4. 34 million of them are currently updating by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And 34 million of them are currently locked on a forced update in the middle of the workday. Thank you Jesu^b^b^bMicrosoft!

  5. MS always say this by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

    Even with Vista and 8 they claimed each had 'sold better than any previous Windows version'.

    Of course that will be the case given that

    1) PC shipments increase globally with time
    2) Most PC OEMs have a contract which says they must install an OS on each machine

    It's the reason Dell sold machines with FreeDos on them for a while. Their contract with MS stopped them selling machines with no OS.

    3) PC OEMs get a discount on Windows
    4) Most customers prefer Windows to any alternative OS.

    So something like Vista or 8 which was relatively unpopular sold better than something like XP, 7 or (arguably) 10 which was relatively well received. In fact you could argue that each release of Windows since 2000 has been controversial once it started coming on new machines by default. Still each one sold better than the last one.

    Still MS will continue to claim that everything is fine, regardless of whether an OS release is well received - 7 springs to mind after the disastrous Vista, or very badly received - 8 or Vista.

    It's what happens when monopolies take the fact that people have to accept what they're doing as a sign that people like what they're doing.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  6. windows 10 ... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is not a bad OS... but stop nudging me, Microsoft.

    I want a local account with locally-saved password, not one that's tied to a Microsoft account. Yes, it can be done, but the amount of nudging to get me to create a cloud account is infuriating. I don't want my settings in the cloud, and to give you power to change them. My computer is mine -- I don't want to be on a worldwide AD domain. Nor do I want WiFi passwords "cared and shared" with the world.

    I want UX updates when I request them, not when you think I should have them.

    I want one switch to turn off all telemetry. It's not that difficult to set a flag that all parts of your OS would respect.

    I don't want to be nudged into using cloud storage when I can be saving and backing up locally. Oh, and I want ad-free, unpaid Solitaire back already :)

    Windows 10 is a good, relatively-stable OS that's also a monetization platform -- it makes me feel like my device doesn't belong to me.

    1. Re:windows 10 ... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Informative

      Of course there are, but having to resort to them to do something that should exist out of the box is ridiculous.