At a time when Windows 7’s user share should be falling, and Windows 10 on the rise, Net Applications’ data for April shows the opposite. Gregg Keizer
[See the full post at: April: Windows 10 share down, Windows 7 up]
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April: Windows 10 share down, Windows 7 up
- This topic has 82 replies, 26 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago.
AuthorViewing 21 reply threadsAuthor-
It’s so funny to hear people blame the statistics. Oh, it must be NMS’s fault. Keizer is funny. Perhaps it’s because the majority of PC users have rejected Windows 10 in favor of continued use of Windows 7? Nah, it has to be the statistics. Keizer comes off as being out of touch. No wonder I never read those things.
I bet Keizer wouldn’t be questioning NMS’s statistics if it showed what he would rather see instead of what reality is. If he feels the stats are unreliable, then why does he follow them and why would he be inclined to believe the stats if they showed what he predicted they would show?
Windows 10 is a commercial failure and guys like Keizer still can’t come to grips with it. It failed and continues to fail, but even I’m a little surprised that Windows 7 usage is going back up like this. Pretty d***ing really.
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Windows 10 is a commercial failure
One can only hope! There’s still the problem of Win7 support ending in 21 months, though…
And where are people getting new copies of Win7? I would love to score one for the laptop I foolishly sacrificed to Win10, you know, to give it a fair shot.
Win7 Home Premium Grp B > rolled back to Dec 2017 > burned system image > now Grp W
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You can get new, retail copies online. Newegg still sells them, Amazon, Ebay.. they’re still out there.
Also, I don’t think the EOL of Windows 7 is going to scare a whole lot of people. We’ll see, though. My Windows 7 machine has been prematurely “EOL” for a year now. No issues.
Had XP EOL for almost three years with the same results and less security measures. So, yeah. I’m way beyond the point of being afraid of EOL. -
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The computers with newer CPUs may not do auto updates. On the Intel side, beginning with Kaby Lake (6th Generation) Microsoft put restrictions on those computers so that they wouldn’t be able to receive automatic updates. There is a similar situation with AMD CPUs. (I’m not sure if you could install the updates manually or not; but automatic won’t work for most of these computers.)
There is a hack out there which unblocks auto updates for computers with these newer CPUs; I’ve never needed the hack, so I don’t have any experience with it.
I purchased a Haswell (4th Generation) computer with Windows 7 preinstalled so that I wouldn’t get bitten by this “bug”. (I couldn’t find a Broadwell – 5th Generation – so I went with Haswell.)
Jim
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server1 user thanked author for this post.
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Is there any chance at all of Microsoft at some point acknowledging just how badly they screwed up nearly everything about Windows 10?
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There are too many problems with Windows 10. This is the main reason that Windows 7 shares are going up. Avoid Windows 10 at all cost is the main recommendation.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you. Yet I think that it will take an act by Congress to force Microsoft to continue to support Windows 7 beyond Microsoft’s announced end of support date. Hmm…sounds like it is time to create an online petition.
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You can add my name.
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Our IT deployed 50,000 windows 10 computers but after issues after issues. They are being downgraded to Windows 7. Plus the IT mentioned there is a major remote exploit for Windows 10 that has force them to downgrade and stop deploying Windows 10. MS has know about the exploit for 1.5 years and have not fix it yet.
You can add me to that list as well.
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Windows 10 (two computers at the office) has been nothing but problems. I forbade Windows 10 at the office, yet the new IT guy who replaced me bought two new computers with Windows 10 on them. Those two users (at a law office) hate Windows 10 six ways from Sunday, due to crashes and due to other issues.
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Nice if those percentages were true. I am somewhat skeptical.
Please, hear my doubts: how on Earth can anybody claim to have the percentages correct to tenths of one percent with over one billion Windows users in all manner of countries, all over the world, with very different political and economic situations, some with excellent, others with quite poor internet connections and communication systems? What sources of enough money to pay for the human and material resources required, plus what powerful analytical methodology makes that possible? What are the error margins of the results in plus/minus percentage points? Is all this explained somewhere, preferably in a reputable peer reviewed publication? Is, per chance, an unacknowledged Fields medalist working secretly for this trade magazine?
It is entirely possible the numbers are completely right. May I be forgiven for doubting that they are actually so? Or that, if they are so, it is by sheer luck?
Might an explanation of why these percentages can be taken seriously, be in order?
Or am I beating this horse to death quite unreasonably? Please, do tell.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
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In a sense it doesn’t matter how they do the calculations or how reliable the original base figures were, it’s more a case of ensuring that they follow the same method each time as all they’re really doing is pointing to the trend.
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IMHO I see a positive here on AskWoody and within the article statistics
Is W10 is actually having a negative effect on itself?
End users are willing to educate themselves and others, in order to keep what they like whether W7 or W8.1
The rebellion is gaining ground.
Windows - commercial by definition and now function...4 users thanked author for this post.
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Na.. the revenge will be the forthcoming patch Tuesday.
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For me, it would take dropping the twice-a-year updates, giving me full (Win 8.1 style) update control, an OFF button for telemetry (that stays put once I set it), and some kind of assurance that they’ve figured out that I am in charge of my PC, not them, and that it exists to serve my interests, and theirs don’t matter at all on hardware they do not own.
Until they accept that my PC is really and truly my PC, and that the purpose of the OS running on it is to serve my needs (as defined by myself) alone, it’s not going to work for me.
They can improve the UI all they want (and I encourage them to do so; the “zebra” UI never should have made it out of beta, let alone being in full release for six years), play with whatever features and bells and whistles they want, but the fundamental problem remains: WaaS.
WaaS needs to go if Windows is to have a future. Everything about it that is a change from the old model is a change for the worse, and WaaS itself is IMO the biggest reason Windows 10 stinks so badly.
I know that when you’re a “cloud” guy like Satya Nadella, everything out there must look like a nail for your “cloud-hammer,” but not every single thing has to be a cloud service. Cloud services run on the OS, but they are not themselves the OS.
I think it’s possible Satya Nadella is too hidebound by his own “cloud first” ideology to recognize that WaaS is terrible. If that’s the case, he’ll see Windows ground into the dirt before he admits that making it into a cloud service was a bad idea.
I’m still not convinced that doing exactly that isn’t the goal of all of this… to me, WaaS looks like a perfect (though massively cynical) exit strategy from the general-purpose OS market if the goal is to liquidate (turn into cash) their OS monopoly. Squeeze it for all it’s worth now; Windows-related revenues will be up, share prices will be up, people will continue to sing the praises of the “new” Microsoft and its visionary new leader, and everything will just seem grand, even though the product that built MS will be slowly dying because of all of this.
Vendor lock-in and inertia will guarantee that MS will have monetized victims for years to come, but even they will eventually look elsewhere when they realize the pain train never ends. When they do, Windows will be worthless, having been gradually sold off in monetized slices over the course of years. The process will be complete, and Microsoft can have its wish of being a cloud services company without “legacy” products like Windows holding it back.
Either way, Windows is in serious trouble if things continue as they have been… and with people continuously mistaking revenue and stock prices for value, it’s not likely to change until it is far, far too late. It’s why I am moving to Linux; not because I am some “software should always be free” ideologue, but because it’s the next best choice when Windows is no longer an option. I think the moment of recognizing that Windows is no longer a viable option is coming for us all– the only question is when we have the epiphany, and how much we are monetized before that moment.
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For me, it would take dropping the twice-a-year updates
That is OK, if you can block/defer them (and stay on one version for 1,5 years). I personally don’t mind. Don’t think it’s a good idea, but well, can live with it.
giving me full (Win 8.1 style) update control
It might be just me, but I NEVER had any problems with Windows updates, starting from Win XP Service Packs. So sure, I’d say control would be better, but again, not a deal-braker for me.
an OFF button for telemetry (that stays put once I set it)
I have an Android phone (Google knows much more about me than MS, or my wife know
) and use my desktop primarily as a game console – so can live with that.play with whatever features and bells and whistles they want
That is what I actually don’t like. I’m afraid at some point they will cut out the feature I do like, just as they did with FM radio in Windows 10 Mobile (Anniversary Update it was, I think) and now they’re planning to do with Paint and Windows Media Player. In W8.1 I know that WMP will be there as long as I use it. In W10 – no one knows. Same goes for driver compatibility. What happens when at some point my X-Fi stops working?
WaaS looks like a perfect (though massively cynical) exit strategy from the general-purpose OS market if the goal is to liquidate (turn into cash) their OS monopoly.
Probably so. I would believe it staying with W8.1 would have more sense if people were moving from W7 to W8.1. That would give us 3 more years. But I can imagine that in 2020 hardware manufacturers will simply say: OK, W7 is out, W8.1 is too small – use W10 or die. AMD already didn’t issue W8.1 drivers for Ryzen, although they did for W7.
It’s why I am moving to Linux; not because I am some “software should always be free” ideologue, but because it’s the next best choice when Windows is no longer an option.
I do keep fingers crossed for Linux to succeed. But it still gives me headaches:
a. I wanted to play DVD on Ubuntu. OK, does not work out-of-the-box. So does W8.1 & W10. But there – you just download VLC and it works. In Ubuntu, on top of that you have to install some codecs.
b. I need Silverlight. Linux does not support it.
c. I like MS Office :).
d. Don’t like the GUI too much. Maybe just Windows habits, but still…
e. too few native games in Linux.
If Windows fails considerably – then it’s Android or Linux + game console :). PS, not Xbox :D.
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Those are all perfectly valid reasons for wanting to remain with Windows. Truth be told, I want to remain with Windows too, or at least part of me does. If there was a Windows like XP or 7 that MS actually liked, that would be an easy choice for me… but even though Windows 8.1 has five years of extended support left, I don’t really trust them to offer that support in good faith, with their real best effort in keeping it patched and making sure those patches don’t induce new difficulties that weren’t there before.
I don’t think MS will attack 8.1 users with these kinds of poisoned “security updates” as much as they have Win 7 users, since 8.1 users are such a small group that we barely appear on the radar, but that (as you note) is a problem in itself, like how AMD chose not to release 8.1 drivers with the RX5xx cards. They do, however, have Linux drivers, and Linux has a much smaller market share than 8.1.
To me, the lack of control in 10 is a serious deal-breaker. Not just over the updates, but that’s one of the areas where it is most bothersome.
d. Don’t like the GUI too much. Maybe just Windows habits, but still…
Which GUI, though?
Linux doesn’t have just one GUI. The name “Linux” really just refers to the kernel. Each distro is in many ways its own OS, though they can all run the same applications (more or less). Linux et al. has lots of GUIs, and each one of them is more configurable by design than what Microsoft gives us (though addons like Classic Shell fix a lot of that). There’s Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE, and probably a few more I can’t remember at present.
Cinnamon in particular is quite comfortable for Windows users, which is why it is my choice on most of my Linux machines (I say “most” because I am currently evaluating Kubuntu 18.04 (Ubuntu + KDE) on one machine, but my primary computers all use Mint with Cinnamon).
e. too few native games in Linux.
There are a lot less than Windows, but if you haven’t looked into it, there may be a lot more than you think. I’m not a serious gamer by any means, but someone I know really wanted to play Portal 2 (old as it is, but still a good one) coop with me, so I swallowed my objection to Steam and opened an account.
Portal 2 is an older game, but what do you know, it’s available on Linux. I played the entire single player game on Linux, then went back and did Portal also (I got a 2 for 1 deal for 2 dollars more than just Portal 2). We did end up doing all of the co-op levels and a bunch of community-sourced levels, with me on Linux and the other on Windows. Flawless, not a single issue with it being Linux.
So now I have the Steam account, and I was bored the other day, so I decided to take a gander at the Linux offerings. As a mostly non-gamer, I don’t really know what any of the current hot titles are, so I don’t have any burning need to play any of them. I just go on Steam or GOG or what have you and ignore the ones that don’t have Linux versions. There’s plenty of them that do, and I found one that seemed interesting and was on sale, so I gave it a shot… and it worked great on Linux.
I’m sure that won’t work for a lot of gamers, particularly if they specifically want to play (x) and it’s not on Linux, but for me, I just ignore all the ones that aren’t going to work and pick from those that do. For me, it’s good to be out of the loop; keeps me from getting interested in things that don’t work on Linux.
I could, of course, still play on Win 8.1, but I’m trying to do as much as I can in Linux and avoid booting Windows so that I don’t get lazy and put off learning what I need to know to be even somewhat as proficient as I am with Windows until 2020 or 2023 (with the understanding that most learning comes from discovering something I need to fix in the course of using the PC). A lot of Linux still bewilders me, but understanding computing in general makes the learning curve a lot easier to handle than it otherwise would, certainly.
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I’m still not convinced that doing exactly that isn’t the goal of all of this… to me, WaaS looks like a perfect (though massively cynical) exit strategy from the general-purpose OS market if the goal is to liquidate (turn into cash) their OS monopoly.
I suspect that Windows will be turned into an Azure-based subscription OS.
It will be the easiest way of getting around users complaining about MS constantly hijacking their hardware.
-lehnerus2000
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Windows 8 81 and 10 where not true desktop operating systems the GUI sucks, lack of full control over updates the apps and cortana ect are a waste of time too, and then there is the invasion of privacy issues, Win 7 is a desktop operating system and doesn’t come with the bloat for mobile devices or snooping that cannot be disabled, and the end user has control , most of us use a Personal computer microsoft seems to have an issue with this
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In defence of W8.1; The GUI can be adapted using classicshell, update control using the group B method of patchng and ‘snooping’ as you call it, aka telemetry, this can be reduced quite effectively to produce a stable OS.
Windows - commercial by definition and now function...
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I think the moment of recognizing that Windows is no longer a viable option is coming for us all– the only question is when we have the epiphany, and how much we are monetized before that moment.
The problem is that for many users Windows is (and will continue to be) the only viable option – whether they are business users with no realistic prospect of switching an entire network to a different OS, or domestic users with gaming or other requirements that are only met by Windows.
For many users, therefore, it’s not a case of “which OS is best for me?” but “which Windows version is best for me?”. The significance of the monthly statistics is clearly that for very many users the answer continues not to be Windows 10. Ultimately, the only practical choice those users may have will be between a poorly supported Windows 7 (I think it will continue to get some security updates as XP does now, just not all) and a fully supported Windows 10. People will have to make their own minds up, but given the strength of feeling about Windows 10, the past evidence with XP, and the higher starting point for Windows 7 compared to XP, it’s by no means certain that people will be deterred by the reduction in support for Windows 7 – especially if it comes at a time when Microsoft’s support including for Windows 10 continues to be as buggy and misguided as it is now.
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The problem is that for many users Windows is (and will continue to be) the only viable option – whether they are business users with no realistic prospect of switching an entire network to a different OS, or domestic users with gaming or other requirements that are only met by Windows.
For a while, sure. My point is that I believe Windows as we know it is on borrowed time… we will all be driven off of it intentionally by Microsoft eventually, so that MS can be done with the general-purpose OS market completely and be strictly a cloud business. If Windows even exists at that point, I predict that it will be just a thin-client front-end for their cloud services, not a real OS in and of itself. After they got done trashing the Windows name, though, I would not doubt it if they called it something else.
Nadella is a cloud guy, and Windows is doubtless one of those “legacy” products of the type that he considers antiquated. It has high and relatively fixed development costs, and those costs don’t scale downward if revenues continue to drop. Windows is a complex beast, and it won’t cost half as much to develop if they only have half as many customers, and the sales of Windows PCs has been in decline for years, and Windows revenue along with it. I am willing to bet that MS has a specific estimated date where the lines cross on the graph and Windows turns into a net money sink for MS, and that means it’s time to either make it permanently profitable or get out.
So which is it?
It’s clear that Windows no longer figures in any big way in Microsoft’s plans. It doesn’t even get its own department anymore, and it’s hardly even mentioned in their presentations about all of the wonderful things they’re doing. It has to be evident that Microsoft’s incredible aggression towards Windows users and its desire to monetize them in any way possible is not conducive toward the long-term health of Windows… they’ve got plenty of lock-in, so people will tolerate the abuse for quite a while (years), but the history of monopolies has been that they do not last long once the full power of that monopoly has been weaponized against its customers. (How’s IE doing, Microsoft? Didn’t you once have 95% market share in the browser market?)
Windows has been a monopoly for a while, but they’ve always had significant competition with their own products. When Vista flopped, MS did not use its monopoly power to force people to adopt it anyway… they fixed what people hated about it and released the enormously popular Windows 7. Windows XP, though Microsoft’s own product, was the chief competitor for Vista and for 7, and that’s why 7 had to be as good as it was. Microsoft had a tall order in developing a worthy successor to XP, but they did it. XP itself was a worthy and superior successor to 98, which itself was a worthy successor to 95, which in turn was a worthy successor to 3.1. Windows has long been its own biggest competitor.
Now, after the flop of Windows 8, Windows users are seeing the full power of a monopolist for the first time. From the beginning of GWX, it was clear that MS was not going to take “no” for an answer for Windows 10. It’s not hard to tell that this product was never designed to meet the needs of the customer… it was designed from the ground up to meet Microsoft’s needs. That normally won’t attract many buyers, but it was also clear from the very start that we were not going to be given much choice. The hard sell started before 10 even came out, with GWX adware asking people to reserve their copies of 10 so that it could place the entire installer on their PC, ready for when the moment arrived (although reportedly a lot of people who never showed any interest in 10 also ended up involuntarily downloading the whole installer, sometimes exceeding their data limits). The “free” upgrade itself served its purpose of creating artificial momentum and giving Microsoft the opportunity to talk about the incredibly fast uptake of 10, which was necessary to foster the sense of inevitability.
Windows 10 and WaaS are terrible, and the support given to their older products has become terrible as well. They’re not competing with their older products anymore… they’re destroying them so that they’re even more unviable than Windows 10. They realized they don’t have to compete with their older products if they poison the well and just run out the clock. We won’t be seeing an extension of the support period for Windows 7 the way we did with XP, even if the Windows 7 market share is higher at that point than the Windows XP share would have been at its original cut-off date. This is the new Microsoft, after all. Kinder and gentler, but only to people using other platforms. To its own users, it’s never been more brutal.
This won’t last forever. Years, for sure, but not forever. After people accept that it won’t ever get any better than the continuous disaster that it has been for the last three years (my prediction is that the pain train will be ratcheted up… it will get worse), non-Windows solutions will begin to look a lot more viable. What those may be is anyone’s guess.
This is merely my prediction, of course. I don’t know the future, but I do know that what MS is doing doesn’t seem like the actions of a company that wants to be in the Windows business.
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@ OscarCP
Win 7/8.1 is not supported by M$ on new computers or new silicons/processors, ie from 7th-gen Intel and AMD processors onward, eg Kabylake, Ryzen, etc. This was enforced by M$ through processor-blocking updates, eg namely KB4012218 and KB4012219 = the April 2017 Patch Rollups.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/new-processors-are-now-blocked-from-receiving-updates-on-old-windows/2 users thanked author for this post.
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This topic always morphs into an OS love/hate discussion (I deliberately did not say rant).
Worldwide Market Share has very little to do with preference for one OS over another. Enterprise, Industry and Government are the bulk of the OS usage statistics – these users do not get to choose what OS they get to use. It is decided for them.
The needle on the gauge is going to go up and down between W7 and W10 because the last two years of extended support is ‘the’ migration period for large enterprise/govt. In year one (2018) of the migration year the needle moves back and forth and may even stall at times. In the final year (2019) it will swing totally in one direction or the other.
It is unfortunate that we do not see Market Share broken down by Pro vs Home vs Enterprise. The Home and Pro (user managed systems) is the market that represents individual choice. There is also no financial penalty (service agreement cost) associated with the choice.
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It’s difficult to see it as anything but a commercial failure at this stage given that most users haven’t paid anything to use it yet. Plus it’s a safe bet that Microsoft were budgeting on a much bigger take-up by now.
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Based on the fact that it’s nearly three years old and is still losing ground to Windows 7 which still accounts for nearly 50% of all Windows installations despite it being nine years old. Based on the fact that this is the case despite it being given away for free and even having it forced on people using deceptive, malware-style tactics.
It is a commercial failure unless you’re trying to say it has met even half of the requirements to be a commercial success in the eyes of Microsoft? It’s being sold on all new Windows PC’s and still losing ground to Windows 7? That sure sounds like a failure. Not as big a failure as ME, Vista or W8, but a failure nonetheless. It has consistently fallen short of expectations since it arrived on the scene and now, it seems to be going backwards.
One person in this thread said that their IT deployed 50k Windows 10 computers and rolled every single one of them back due to problems with W10 and a gaping security hole that MS hasn’t fixed in 18 months. I have personally heard from more than a few people of the same experiences with Windows 10 and rolling back to Windows 7 due to endless issues.
The performance of Windows 10 since the beginning and the tactics used to try to force people onto 10 reflects this. More people seem to be abandoning it than adopting it or else the numbers would look a lot different almost three years after it’s release and free distribution; a LOT different.
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Here’s a depressing counter, though: you just mentioned that Win 10 is nearly three years old. I wonder how many enterprises/organizations/government departments lease their computers on a three year cycle? I know we just finished upgrading public internet computers at the library system I work for, as we lease that way, and so they went from Win 7 to Win 10.
Although, those computers needed to have MS Office on them as well. We did recently change system-wide our card catalog computers from Windows PCs to Chromebooks, since those only needed to be extremely locked down (to one site) web browsers.
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I am a retireee from an organization with a large IT system. I just had lunch with some former colleagues and was very surprized to hear that company phones were now Android or Apple, issued laptops were also Windows or Mac, and designated personnel could get iPads.
I do know when I retired six+ years ago, the IT department was advocating (with little managemnt traction for a multiple OS solution to broaden opportunity and options. It seems to be taking hold. Just remember MS Office is a multi-OS platform solution, so the traditional mantra for a Windows platform of having office productivity software compatibility is no longer there. What is surprizing is that it is happening.
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Re: our public internet computers, bear in mind those are for the general public to come in and use. MS Office on them is predominantly used by jobseekers writing resumes, followed by students and other miscellaneous use. Right now, between that and licensing, Windows makes sense. That said, who knows what will happen when the lease is up, as I am not a fortune teller.
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@geekdom
My embarrassingly obvious mistake …yes, no maybe about it!!A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. --John Augustus Shedd
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One can only hope! My bank, my dentist, my doctor, my hospital, and many other places are still using Win 7.
Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's1 user thanked author for this post.
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Maybe the explanation of how comes that people at the top at MS keep on trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by relentlessly pushing Win 10 and WaaS, and are apparently unaware of this quite striking fact, could be that Nadella actually uses a Mac?
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Never say never, stranger things have happened. The President of the Linux Foundation uses a Mac…
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Is it still possible to install a copy of Win 7 in a new PC and have it registered with MS, to be able to use it and receive whatever patches for it are released now, and also those occasional ones that might be released after EOL? If so, for how much longer?
For me, as of last November, yes. As far as I’m aware nothing has changed in that department, yet.
There are people on YouTube and various forums showing their Coffee lake builds with fully updated W7 installed. It involves hacking and modifying some of the drivers, but it is being done.
My personal gut feeling based on nothing but a hunch, is that when 2020 rolls around, Microsoft is going to take the gloves off and get down right vicious about getting people to upgrade to W10.
Possibly deactivating and bricking “out of support OS’s”, for your own good of course…
Leaning hard on software and hardware companies to NOT support anything but W10. Even if they have to outright buy said companies.
The sky is the limit…
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Oscar, do you think it’s a good idea to wait until the EOL of Windows 7 before you move to Linux?
It took me a few months to get comfortable with Linux; a few months more to get really comfortable.
I have made the switch to Linux Mint; however, there is the occasional task that I’m not able to do in Linux, and for those tasks I have installed Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (with Classic Shell), each in its own virtual machine. Therefore, Windows is just a click away if I ever need it.
If you install Linux as your host OS and Windows 7 or 8.1 in a vm, you will have made the switch; and you will still have the option at any time of bringing up Windows to do whatever tasks you need/want to do.
But if you wait till January 2020, you will be under great pressure because you will still be in the Linux learning period.
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server
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Windows 10 needs to be retired and bring Windows 7 back.
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Unlikely, because that would have to be followed by the equivalent of Nadella and Co. falling on their corporate swords, right after they retire Windows 10 and bring 7 back.
They have made Win 10 and WaaS-in-the-Cloud the one way to the future for MS, leaving behind their long-term Windows support contracts as an obsolete business model, and have staked the company’s resources and reputation on their bet that they are right.
They have been encouraging people, not too gently, to move to Win 10. Investors and shareholders and business users now running Win 10 will not be too happy about a switch back to Win 7, particularly if it is because MS recognizes they’ve sold them a sickly puppy. Chances are, they shall let it be known they are not happy. Big “Enterprise” users, in particular, with their MS support contracts in their lawyers’ hands.
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10 is the MS version of new Coke. If they are smart they should come out with another version for desk top users and call it Classic 7.
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I like the comparison. But predict the need to seek out and import the ‘Mexican’ Win7 to actually enjoy the flavor we so fondly remember.
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I think the moment of recognizing that Windows is no longer a viable option is coming for us all– the only question is when we have the epiphany, and how much we are monetized before that moment.
The problem is that for many users Windows is (and will continue to be) the only viable option – whether they are business users with no realistic prospect of switching an entire network to a different OS, or domestic users with gaming or other requirements that are only met by Windows.
For many users, therefore, it’s not a case of “which OS is best for me?” but “which Windows version is best for me?”. The significance of the monthly statistics is clearly that for very many users the answer continues not to be Windows 10. Ultimately, the only practical choice those users may have will be between a poorly supported Windows 7 (I think it will continue to get some security updates as XP does now, just not all) and a fully supported Windows 10. People will have to make their own minds up, but given the strength of feeling about Windows 10, the past evidence with XP, and the higher starting point for Windows 7 compared to XP, it’s by no means certain that people will be deterred by the reduction in support for Windows 7 – especially if it comes at a time when Microsoft’s support including for Windows 10 continues to be as buggy and misguided as it is now.
Actually, the face of the retail landscape for a new desktop PC, in the US at least, is you have a choice of Windows or Apple. Laptops have a bit more flexibility in that there are Chromebooks. Most folks determine a need and pick a price point to look at. IF you are a gamer, your options shrink dramatically. Yes, there are Linux games and the big breakthrough of Linux gaming is always just around the corner :), but as a fan of Linux, I do not foresee a mass market movement. In fact a mass market movement might actually kill what many like about Linux.
For the vast majority of individual PC sales, the main uses are web surfing, email and household finance, and gaming. Many gamers are outside of the PC as an appliance sector and are not afraid of getting under the hood of their OS or hardware. There are other individuals who use the capacity of their system, but as it is an essential tool, do not wish to tinker with what used to work, since downtime costs time and money. In cars, you generally did not hot rod the family sedan. For those who use the PC as an appliance (just want it to work) for email and web surfing, they have non-PC options like phones and tablets/iPads. Burn those folks with a buggy or rented OS and they will not move back until they have another need or move to another user group, in fact many moved to their mobile devices due to convenience and simplicity and leaving behind the chores and bothers of updating and shutdowns and reboots, etc.
Home building a PC is always an option. However it has only been in the past year that our local computer parts megastore has gotten some advisors who are knowledgeable about building a non-Windows machine. Besides home builders are a tiny subset of PC users.
I like to build PCs, as you can build for a long service life and upgradeability with careful component selection and have a non-bloated software selection. I have started a build for Linux to see how it does on new equipment and not refurbs and castoffs like my current Linux machines. For me, I could adapt to (but never like or ‘love’) the Win10 GUI. I will not include the data slurp issue here as many are not adverse to that aspect. But the concept of WaaS, the 2X OS releases per year, the adding and removing of features with no real plan or justification, especially with a rental software model, and minus the SERVICE (as in quality) part, leaves me stone cold.
Win10 is here to stay, no matter what we do. So that leaves flog on Win7 or 8.1, or add (or move to) Apple and Linux. Both are deficient compared to Windows for newly released games, especially if they are DX12. For older releases, there is less pain as some popular games have been ported to MacOS or will run on Steam on Linux. My Linux build is in progress, but an iMac is just so very tempting. I like the turnkey concept, LOVE the 5K monitor, but am leery of, apart from memory, minimal user serviceable parts due to the all in one format, and the need to rely on external drives for increased storage of personal data files. Fortunately the Apple sales advisor was also familiar with gaming on an iMac and said the reason many folks do not like it is they try to run too high a resolution on the monitor, and the all in one format has thermal limitations.
So I will flog on Win7Pro-64_SP1, possibly beyond EOL (hardware willing) but begin moving to alternatives. I do believe that unlike WinXP, Win7 non-enterprise uses may face a kill switch scenario at EOL (or at least a feature degradation, that will only be mitigated by $$$ that will prove prohibitive.
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I do not really like laptop keyboards. When I was issued a laptop by the office, I used it at home with a USB keyboard and mouse. If I were to go Apple on the desktop it would be an 27″ iMac. Tce new iMac Pro is nice, and very powerful, but I have a philosophical and psychological issue paying more for a computer than my first 4 cars.
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Hmmm, a “kill switch.” I can think of 2 ways this might be implemented, by a poison pill delivered through Windows update, or by a virus(!) of some sort propagated by MS over the ‘net. Since rolling back to Dec. 2017 I am in Group W; don’t think the first method would get me. I keep good images handy, so not worried about the second method. Either way, I wouldn’t put anything past MS at this point. Thanx to folks like MrJimPhelps for pointing me toward Linux for the future.
Removing my tinfoil hat now…..
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