Keizer: Win10 version 1809 rollout fiasco may hinder Enterprise migrations from Win7

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In the once burned, twice shy department (or should I say 100th time burned, 101 times shy?) Gregg Keizer has an interesting analysis of the Win10 180
[See the full post at: Keizer: Win10 version 1809 rollout fiasco may hinder Enterprise migrations from Win7]

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abbodi86, Elly, Mr. Natural

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We still have a lot of windows 7 machines. I advised our I.S. Director about end of support next January so he can figure out what he wants to do.

Just yesterday I pushed 1809 to my work pc via WSUS and now pushing to a couple others in I.S. to see how things go. I’ve installed it on both home machines and no issues with the install at work. So it looks like the data loss issues has been resolved.

A few of us will run 1809 for a while and will still hold off pushing this to users because we found some 3rd party software compatibility issues when I upgraded everyone to 1803. Plus I noticed the upgrade to 1809 takes a long time, longer than any other version update so far. I’m not subjecting everyone to version upgrades any more than needed because of the impact to users.

I don’t believe we will keep using windows 7 when support ends. We spend a lot on numerous products to insure company security. Sticking with an OS that is no longer supported creates a hole in security and compromises all the other efforts we make to stay secure.

Microsoft can release all the versions they want, but I’ve decided we will only do a version upgrade once a year.

Red Ruffnsore

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Great Lake Bunyip

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If you are an enterprise and volume licensing customer you can purchase extended Windows 7 support until 2023. So it all depends on Your mission critical software and if that software is only certified for Windows 7. And how much will that mssion critical software cost to be certified for windows 10 with its 6 month update cycle that may fruther complicate any mission critical software certification process. I’ll bet that there will be many that will gladly pay for the extended windows 7 support until 2023 when faced with the costs of certifying any mission critical software for that constantly moving target Windows 10!

I’d stay with windows 7 and try and maybe wait for Microsoft to be forced to release a longer term windows 10 build that’s more stable.  Microsoft really needs to stop with this rolling release cadence for Windows 10 enterprise customers and freeze any new features and work on stability in the OS.

 

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doriel

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Surely LTSB/LTSC is the way to go if you have mission-critical software?

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We just finished getting 1709 out to all our machines (yes it took this long), and we have to now immediately start looking/planning for 1809.  I don’t WANT to go to 1809, but we only have until April 2020 for 1709 support, it would be madness to go with 1803 at his point and waiting for 1903 would too tight.  Because of the many pre-requisites and complications we’ve had with the upgrades in our environment these twice yearly (once yearly for us) major updates are onerous and a huge burden on my team, not to mention the various help-desks and users.

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Great Lake Bunyip

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actually woody, you may want to ask Gregg Keizer to read the following MS support lifecycle articles:

“Products Reaching End of Support for 2019”
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4316957/products-reaching-end-of-support-for-2019
according to that MS article “Windows 10, version 1803 Home & Pro” support ends on November 12, 2019 [NOT including Enterprise and Education editions]

“Products Reaching End of Support for 2020”
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4470235/products-reaching-end-of-support-for-2020
AND according to THAT MS article “Windows 10, version 1803 Enterprise, Education” support ends on November 10, 2020. BUT also mentioned in that article “Windows 10, version 1809 Home, Pro” support ends on April 14, 2020 (like WHAT?)

confusing, isn’t it?

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Great Lake Bunyip, woody

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VERY confusing.

It’s like you need a scorecard to keep track of the scorecards….

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EP wrote:

actually woody, you may want to ask Gregg Keizer to read the following MS support lifecycle articles:

Why? What did he get wrong?

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Reading between the lines, it’s like an MS marketing campaign for ‘adoption rates’.
Imagine how good the graphs and stats will look in months to come..

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Out of box mind tripping here but…Could a 3rd party keep Windows 7 alive with their own security updates? Seems like there’d be a huge market if it could be pulled off. I guess it’d depend on the source code being available – doubt it.

I installed all the recent W7 updates and am having a problem since involving something with my gpu. It won’t turn the monitors back on after sleep mode. Not sure if related. I only got a message saying the Display Port had an issue. So i’m having to reboot every morning.

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Woody wrote:

I wonder if/when Microsoft will jump off this insane 6-month upgrade cycle.

Indeed. Perhaps Microsoft has picked up the motto that Facebook left on the sidewalk a while ago.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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The 6-month upgrade cycle by itself is no issue, but Microsoft no being able to deliver a stable and hassle-free upgrade experience is.

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Karlston

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How does it hinder adoption? Enterprise is probably using a Windows 10 version where they can delay upgrades for some time. Seems to me if enterprise hates the thought of Windows 10 its more about old software compatibility then the flaky upgrades which they can avoid.

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_Reassigned Account wrote:

How does it hinder adoption?

If you were an IT Director with thousands of Windows 7 workers, which version of Windows 10 would you upgrade them to and when?

_Reassigned Account wrote:

Enterprise is probably using a Windows 10 version where they can delay upgrades for some time.

Being able to defer the next version for up to a year doesn’t help when your current version reaches end-of-life, as not getting regular bug fixes and security patches is completely unacceptable to most businesses (especially those with industry compliance audits etc.).

_Reassigned Account wrote:

Seems to me if enterprise hates the thought of Windows 10 its more about old software compatibility then the flaky upgrades which they can avoid.

Microsoft have a Desktop App Assure program to help enterprises with that at no additional cost; “if an app works on a previous version of Windows and, when you update to the latest version of Windows 10, it stops working, we’ll fix it for free.“:
What is Desktop App Assure? (includes web apps and Office macros/plugins)
Microsoft expands Windows 7-to-Windows 10 app compatibility pledge

“So far, out of 41,000 applications within their estates, customers have come to us to evaluate 7,000 applications for potential compatibility concerns. However, when the Desktop App Assure team dug into it, they found that only 49 apps required assistance. … Another way to look at this is that only 0.1 percent of all the apps that customers who have worked with the Desktop App Assure team to evaluate have had a compatibility issue.”
2019 is the year to make the shift to a modern desktop

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AlexEiffel, abbodi86

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My take on this, re: a delay to W7-W10 migration …

Any delay in going from W7 to W10 that inconveniences any or all of the BIG preferred Enterprise clients will be managed by private agreements which none of us will ever hear about. I fully expect this issue will not invoke any of them having to pay for additional W7 support if they miss the migration deadline. They will get to migrate when they are ready. If this issue actually does impede the migrations, an expensive wine and dine with the executives will be scheduled. MS could also get creative by suspending support costs for W7 for a given period of time after eol if these pampered clients feel they deserve to be compensated.

MS will be producing patches for W7 systems way past Jan 2020 anyway – there will be companies and governments paying the piper after the drop dead date – MS has already costed this support.

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Does anyone think that 19H1 will be any better so that I can jump from 1803 to that one being as 1809 is such a [edited – did you read the rules?]?

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“A Rose by any other name…”

It seems to me that WIN 10 users have now the double-bombardment of new versions and patches that users of WIN 7 and 8 do not have. With Win 7, I have to tangle with the monthly patches (without the fine people on this site’s help, I’d be totally at sea) which is bad enough, but patches AND “Version Upgrades”?

“Win 10 will be the last version of Windows.”

Bananas.  MSFT just changed the names.

No, it won’t, and isn’t, as MSFT keeps pulling the rug out from everyone’s feet every time they issue a new “version”, and everyone has to handle the clashes and incompatibilities and other gear-jamming nonsense of patches AND “updates”.

I Imagine it must be like having Win XP, 7, 8, 8.1, etc thrown at you every 6 months.

“The last Windows” indeed!

“How long will it take to clean my suit?”

“Come back Thursday.”

“What?? That’s five days away! The sign says ‘Three Hour Cleaning’!”

“Oh, that’s just the name of the shop, luv!”

=============================

“A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet…or like 10 P.M. feet…”  (Apologies to The Bard)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Cybertooth

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It should have been called Windows 10 SP6 by now. Easier to understand for everyone. NT 4.0 would be proud 🙂

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It should have been called Windows 10 SP6 by now. Easier to understand for everyone.

Nope, understand your point but disagree with your conclusion.

Service pack updates were focused on consolidation and stability of the OS (vs. the new Windows release strategy of introducing largely unnecessary and unwanted “change for the sake of change” in a stream of way-too-frequent Windows “Feature Updates” because, well, it seems to be the only reason the MS marketing folks can come up with to try to justify WAAS (Windows-As-A-Stream_of_endless_updates?))…

So the current Windows release version certainly is NOT Windows 10 SP6. In reality the current Windows release version should probably be called Windows 16.

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Indeed, I think he has a valid point.

Wonder why MS made such a mistake in not adjusting the support cycles so that companies might be more encouraged to switch to Win 10.

I know, many people will claim: “It’s MS, what do you expect?” – but nevertheless, there seem to be a few professional working there… it’s an multi-billion intl company.

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The big reason why I’ve put off upgrading Windows 10 entirely is because of the ridiculously short periods of support. Even if I did wait several months after the release of a new version for the dust to settle, what’s the point? I’ll have to upgrade and repeat the absurd process again in six months. The main reason why I don’t want to upgrade is BECAUSE I don’t want to keep doing this again every six bleeding months!!! Since when was having a stable computer too much to ask for these days?

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These six-month cycles are ridiculous. Also, I thought, that (for example) build 1803 is based on 1709, plus some improvements, including security updates, etc. But if I look at this update table, I am confused even more. The newer build, the more patches? Shouldn’t this be the other way?

I’m on a highway to h*ll… 🙂 (bless AC DC)

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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It’s not the 6-month upgrade cycle that bugs me, it’s the 18-month obsolescence cycle.

Fine, give people a new “version” every six month, but don’t force everyone to totally reinstall every 18 months.

Our current workstation lifecycle is 5 years, we had our previous desktops for five years with Windows 7, and the ones we bought last year we similarly will use for five years. We have stable desktop images, and we don’t NEED to rebuild everything every 18 months. It works, stop breaking it!

 

No matter where you go, there you are.

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doriel

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