Dell Says Windows 11 Transition is Far Slower Than Windows 10 Shift as PC Sales Stall (theregister.com) 56
Dell has predicted PC sales will be flat next year, despite the potential of the AI PC and the slow replacement of Windows 10. From a report: "We have not completed the Windows 11 transition," COO Jeffrey Clarke said during Dell's Q3 earnings call on Tuesday. "In fact, if you were to look at it relative to the previous OS end of support, we are 10-12 points behind at that point with Windows 11 than we were the previous generation." Clarke said that means 500 million PCs can't run Windows 11, while the same number didn't need an upgrade to handle Microsoft's latest desktop OS. The COO therefore predicted the PC market will "flourish," but then defined the word as meaning "roughly flat" sales despite Dell chalking up mid-to high single digits PC sales growth over the last year.
planned obselecence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:planned obselecence (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also: I refuse to buy any computer that is labelled as having support for AI.
I don't need it, and I don't want it.
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I refuse to buy any computer that is labelled as having support for AI.
I don't need it, and I don't want it.
+1
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Bad news. Basically every x64 computer sold in last decade or so is fully capable of doing inference. The main problem is going to be speed, which in turn is mainly about "can model doing inference be fit into RAM?"
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That's not the issue; it's not about running local models or AI generally. It's about MS about jamming Co-pilot into every nook and cranny of the OS.
Imagine if Clippy broke out of Office 97 and started rampaging around your computer telling you to lick 9V batteries to boost your vitamin B12 and that $false = $true is a really elegant bugfix.
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Every computer made in last ten years or so has full inference capability. The "AI support" on the sticker is just marketing.
Just hold out for Win12 (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like with all these stories about Windows 11 if you just replace the '11' with '8" and you basically have the same story from that era with the same pitfalls of MS trying to force their big idea and consumer rejection.
Re:Just hold out for Win12 (Score:5, Insightful)
8 was salvageable with just a few UI tweaks though (and 8.1 was perfectly serviceable). 11 has no redeeming qualities or actual improvements over 10; at least that the average PC user is even going to find useful or desirable.
The thing MS is failing to realize that if you are the 800 pound gorilla, you can only throw your weight around so much before alternatives become increasingly attractive.
Re:Just hold out for Win12 (Score:4, Interesting)
At this point I'd say there are just as many tweaks and modifiers for 11 today, it has been out awhile. If you want 11 to pretty much act like 10 you can do that if you've got that same level of Windows know how. StartAllBack, Winaero Tweaker, Rectify11, O+O Shutup. For as long as Windows has been around there has been large communities who make it do what they want.
That said people are flocking to alternatives but more and more that alternative is Apple.
Re:Just hold out for Win12 (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, the fact is that 7 was supported through Windows 8's whole run so it was easy to skip to 10.
Even if 11 has no major new features worth caring about it isn't such a dumpster fire of a GUI vs 8. It's functional.
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Problem is that it does have some features I care very much not to have.
Not surprising to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising to me... (Score:5, Informative)
Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities resulted in an initial 40% loss in I/O performance when the mitigations were put into place, and there were a bunch of additional vulnerabilities that had to be mitigated in the operating system. Those mitigations could cause other problems down the line, so it makes sense that Microsoft didn't want to deal with those for Windows 11. By cutting those older CPUs from the supported list, that made it a lot less of a headache when it comes to the code.
So sure, you can put Windows 11 on those older machines, but should they be supported? If Microsoft adds something that doesn't work on older chips, people will complain a lot more about THAT than anything else.
So, setup.exe /product server
Upgrade to Windows 11, it's at your own risk. 25H2 I believe, does require a GPT partition scheme with EFI bootloader, which may not work on older machines. People really don't understand the idea of, "not supported", and as a result, that also means, don't make it easy for the non-technical people to do it, because THEY will be the first ones to demand support because the installer worked on their old computer. Oh, you need 16GB of RAM to run it well because the memory overhead is higher, well, more complaints by people who are still running Windows 10 with only 4GB of RAM.
Re:Not surprising to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those mitigations could cause other problems down the line, so it makes sense that Microsoft didn't want to deal with those for Windows 11.
IOW: "We've only got $3.5T in capital to work with, so this is just too hard for us to figure out. You'll have to switch to an OS made by unpaid volunteers."
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The reality is that Microsoft can no longer create and engineer software. They can 'maintain' what they have with some additions and subtractions, but all actual creativity and engineering is lost in a maze of management.
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Working on the older machines and supporting it on those older machines are two very different things. If Microsoft put a "use at your own risk, this system is not supported" on the screen, there are too many stupid people who would install it, then the moment they have a problem, they would be going to Microsoft to get help. Linux being almost completely without paid support makes "use at your own risk" a given, but I've seen too many people who just assume that anyone offering help must be "paid suppo
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A lot of people seem to not realize that windows 11 does in fact officially support all that older hardware. Fully.
The gating isn't hardware support. It's the license. To get officially supported version (that contains all the same driver packages, APIs, and layers), you need to get win11 IOT.
Good luck getting an official license for that instead of going the genocide burial route.
It is working ! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what they are talking about, the Linux market share did reach 3% and continuing to rise... and is set to break new record of adoption by the end of the year. Clearly they are doing something that is working great. Thank you Microsoft :D
I made the switch last year, and I couldn't go back to window anytime soon, everything work just fine with some compatibility layer or something, even Steam work fine. I just keep ignoring all these anxiety aggravating people who keep preaching the end of the world at the end of windows 10 support, and I've been sleeping better since then, the world haven't stop turning.
In fact, with the money I saved, I made a donation to the Mozilla fondation for Thunderbird.
Seriously, just ignore *them*. You'll thanks me later.
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What are you talking about Jerry?
Linux switchover (Score:1)
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I have a question. In the past I've always avoided AMD video cards because of the driver issues I always read about. Over the past year however I have been reading that AMD Linux drivers are so much better than nVidia's drivers. I'm looking to upgrade my video card, and since I use Linux now, would it be wise for me to try an AMD video card this time around? Are the drivers really that much better?
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Yes, AMD drivers are more stable and more likely to "just work" out of the box than Nvidia drivers.
Re: Linux switchover (Score:2)
nVidias Linux driver's are crap. Constant breakage and problems with sleeping. X with Nvidia and kde is basically a total loss at this point. AMD drivers "just work" for all this. No breakage for half the kernel updates, abandonment to a million old sub branches for different hardware. Hi AMD for Linux, yeah.
Cheap Trick (Score:3)
Re:Cheap Trick (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most insidious OS prompts I had ever seen. A dialog box with two choices. Update Now or Schedule for Later.
At the bottom of the window in tiny print was some blue text that said "Don't Update" and closing the window or clicking that tiny non-underlined hyperlink would not take any action except wait to pop up again.
Windows 10 ESUs work just fine (Score:4, Informative)
In the EU, you can just click "enroll" and boom, Windows 10 is supported yet another year with security updates, and no need to worry about AI getting in the way (that much). AFAIK elsewhere you need to enable the stupid cloud backups, but with some tricks you can avoid that too.
I'm still running Win 10 Education, I got the license from my university via Dreamspark back when it was a thing, and now I enrolled also for ESUs for that. I should be covered until 2028.
(Migrated to Linux on most of my PCs, but using Windows for gaming. After 2028 I guess I'll migrate to Steam Deck).
They're in the strip-mine phase of the company (Score:3)
Microsoft has been at the saturation point in most of their markets for many, many years. The only way forward is to strip mine the company until there's nothing left. They will likely follow the same playbook as IBM and sell off products to their "trusted partner" in India.
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MS still has their other businesses to rely upon. The C-Suite is up to their assholes in Office, their cloud crap is still still there, and now business is getting all hot and bothered by AI and MS is right there promising it....whatever business wants AI to be, MS says AI is.
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Don't confuse growth with finding new ways to trick customers into paying for an add-on subscription to a previously core feature.
AI Integration is not a benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, I *do* want an "AI PC", but not anything currently on the market. I want one that will understand books in HTML format and read them to me in a reasonably expressive tone. I'd also like it to be able to pause and then answer questions about what was going on earlier if I missed a point.
OTOH, I'd also want it to be strictly segregated from most of what I do.
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Well, I *do* want an "AI PC", but not anything currently on the market. I want one that will understand books in HTML format and read them to me in a reasonably expressive tone.
That part doesn't require AI at all. We're fairly close to it now, just need 3 small things I think.
1. We need it to be expressive by honoring punctuation. Example, make "!" a little more excited; make "?" go up in pitch at the end; and pause appropriately for "..." and "--".
2. We need something like tag attributes to help with voices, e.g. <span voice=1>"Are you sure, Jane?"</span> <span voice=2>"Yes Dick, I'm sure you need to run."</span>
And of course be able to define what voice 1
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No. It can't be properly expressive without understanding the story that it's reading. Punctuation is just not enough, it doesn't capture many different shades of meaning. E.g., an ironic statement should be read in a different tone than a factual statement, even with exactly the same punctuation. (That's one example out of MANY. Consider, e.g., the scene in "Alice in Wonderland" where she's talking about jumping off the top of the house.)
So... (Score:5, Funny)
Support deadlines are arbitrary (Score:4, Insightful)
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Linux and support...two very different things. There's Redhat Enterprise, what other supported version of Linux is out there? Just because volunteers may make things work doesn't mean there is true support for when things go wrong.
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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has 13 years LTS. SLES 16 released this month is planned to be supported through November 2038. https://www.suse.com/lifecycle... [suse.com]
Re:Support deadlines are arbitrary (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu just extended their LTS to 15 years. Microsoft could do it too if they wanted. When they realize no one wants ClippyPilot they will be forced to provide a traditional version of Windows again.
LTS kernels are supported for two years. The Linux Civil Infrastructure Group support (just barely) certain LTS kernels for 10 years... I am dying to see who will support the kernel of ubuntu for 15 years.
Or they will change the kernel at the end of the 10 years, which in turn means changes on the hardware and the upper layers of the software, while keeping the name of the distro the same, but you will end up doing an "upgrade that is not called an upgrade" and paying extra for the priviledge to call the upgrade the same fancy adjective-animal + version number as the old OS you had.
I run ... (Score:2)
unfair comparison from dell (Score:2)
As they are comparin end of support of Win7 to end of support from Win10. Thing is, when support for Win7 ended, there was no ESU for users, and what's more, there was no Free-ish ESU for users. Meanwhile, Win10 has a (Free-ish) ESU for users.
So, the real comparison is to compare adoption of Win10 when Win7 reached end of support to adoption of Win11 when Win10's Free-ish ESU runs out, that is to say: Nov 2026
Well, I'm Suprised (Score:2)
Everybody's saying that it's no surprise.
But, I'm very surprised to hear that there might be so many systems that are still not upgraded. We are already past the first patch cycle with no updates for Windows 10. If a major vulnerability is discovered with no patch and a weeks to months lead time for replacements and upgrades, the fallout will be catastrophic.
All the corporate networks that I'm familiar with have either refreshed, or are using ESUs as a stop gap for a few months. All that I'm familiar with a
MS should make a W worth having. (Score:1)
Microsoft said "Windows10 is the last version" (Score:2)
”Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.”
Jerry Nixon, Microsoft developer evangelist speaking at the company’s Ignite conference this week.
Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 ‘the last version of Windows’ [theverge.com] May 7th, 2015
Why Microsoft Announced Windows 10 Is 'The Last Version Of Windows' [forbes.com] May 8, 2015
Windows 10 will be 'the last version of Windows' [theguardian.com] from May 11, 2015