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Things may be settling down for a stable Windows 10, but how are things overall with Windows 11?

I ask as I’m on the verge of ordering a new desktop for home use (primarily gaming, plus browsing and emails), and have to decide which OS to have installed, 10 or 11 given that in this article Susan does not yet recommend the latest version of Windows for 11.

I never have a problem with these sorts of suggestions popping up provided one of the options is “Don’t ask me again”. That’s all it needs.

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NaNoNyMouse, arbrich

Thanks Will.

You’ll note from my previous comment that I specifically wasn’t asking about subscriber numbers, I was asking about the size of the survey sample, and not because I questioned the reliability of the results but in order to assess the meaningfulness of the conclusions  that can be drawn from those results.

I respectfully beg to differ over the primary importance of percentages over response numbers.  10 votes out of 20 responses represent the same percentage as 1,000 votes out of 2,000 responses, but the latter makes for an altogether more meaningful result. The size of the sample really matters in any survey or poll, not least when comparing one year’s results with another’s.

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rc primak, Fred

Thanks for the summary, Will.

One question occurs to me, and it is directly relevant to the issues of how significant the survey responses are and whether it should be repeated, as well as the significance of any comparison with the previous year’s survey. Please note in advance of putting the question that it does not relate to how many followers the site has, nor how many of them subscribe, the average size of the donation, nor the total revenue received – none of which is any of our business! Nonetheless, how reliable and worthwhile these surveys are does depend – as with any survey or poll – very much on the answer to the simple question:-

How many responses did you receive, and how does that compare to last year?

Even if you feel able only to give a broad range and generalised comparison, it would enable us to put the results into a meaningful context.

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rc primak, Cybertooth, SueW, wavy, Will Fastie, jkazan, Travasaurus, dvhirst865

Back in the day, I used to be instructed by a bank/building society to advise on new branch acquisitions, and they would phone me with the instructions and then send a typically 60+ page lease or other document for me to peruse and advise on. I always felt relaxed knowing that the document wouldn’t come in the post for a day or two so there was no cause to panic.

Then the company had a new-fangled fax machine installed, and as my office was the only one with a spare phone line in the corner it was put on a small table there. Nobody really used it and I ignored it until I received a new instruction from said bank/building society over the phone. Thinking I had the usual day or two to deal with other things I was aghast as I put the phone down to hear the fax machine click and whir into action, spewing 60 continuous pages (the paper came in a roll initially) across the floor. I remember thinking “This new technology is going to be dratted nuisance”! And it usually was.

Nowadays I sit at home in splendid retirement with two desktop computers only one of which is connected to a HP Deskjet 2542 printer.  It serves its purpose, and isn’t such a dratted nuisance as that early fax machine!

Good advice, Susan. Besides, if we didn’t fit new cables whenever changing things around, how would we maintain that big box of old cables we can never quite get round to sorting out and dumping?!

My thanks not just to Susan and the assorted writers for their sterling (and often motivating/inspiring) articles over the years, but also to the entrepreneurial ones who have got things started and/or kept them going all these years, as well as all the “backroom” staff/volunteers whose work has largely been behind the scenes. The dedication of all of them is greatly appreciated, not least by those lay home users like myself who learn and benefit so much from all their efforts to guide us through the computing minefields.

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opti1

Buy it from a company that builds it to order, rather than getting it off the shelf. If in the UK, I’d strongly recommend PC Specialist, but I’m sure there are equivalent companies in the US or elsewhere that others can recommend. That will enable you to specify Windows 10 rather than 11.

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Charlie

The article reads to me like a list of reasons to consider upgrading to Windows 11 in 2025 rather than now. There again, there’s no mention of the security support for Windows 10 likely to be offered by 0patch in 2025. In the meantime, the fact that Microsoft’s additional features will be targeted on Windows 11 is a very good reason in my view to stick to Windows 10.

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AlexEiffel

“Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent”

I guess I may have missed it, but what widespread attacks are home users with Windows 10 version 21H2 seeing?

It’s a bit earlier than usual in the monthly cycle to be running the updates, meaning that it could cause a problem next month when the 35 days pause expires earlier than usual.  I appreciate that no major issues have been tracked for such users this month, but what widespread attacks if any are we talking about for such users?

I’m wondering whether the split between business and home users, and Windows 8.1/10 and 11, not to mention different versions, are making a single DefCon rating problematic these days.

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Cybertooth

It’s not just cables with me, it’s all the old appliances they connected to as well. No matter how redundant, obsolete or broken they might be, I can rarely bring myself to throw them out. I think I learnt it from my late father. Even when sawing a small bit off a length of wood he would keep the off-cut, saying “You never know when that might come in handy, son”!

” This is where I REALLY wish all vendors were held to a standard of documentation and explanation.  “may have been actively exploited”  ”

What that wording tells me is that they have no evidence that it has been actively exploited, but that their lawyers have advised them to cover themselves just in case…

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Myst, Mele20

Opatch have announced that with MS stopping Extended Security Updates for Windows 7 in January 2023, they will be maintaining their security support for both Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 until January 2025 and possibly beyond subject to levels of demand at that time.

https://blog.0patch.com/

 

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Steve, Microfix, Alex5723, Cybertooth

Me too, based on the regular advice among those more expert than me (a lot more expert than me!) on my ISP’s forum.

Much the same with Facebook, where friendship invitations from people who are already your FB friends aren’t an indication that your friends’ accounts have been hacked, rather that they’ve been cloned –  which is altogether different and easily reported/resolved.

One of the most important health points when using computers is to take regular breaks, and when at the computer look away from time to time and blink the eyes several times on a distant object.