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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.

5 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...

  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 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.

  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!