Windows 11 Growth Slows As Millions Stick With Windows 10 (theregister.com) 116
Despite Windows 10 losing free support, Statcounter shows Windows 11 holding only a modest lead of 53.7% market share compared to Windows 10's 42.7%. Analysts say the slow transition reflects both hardware limitations and a lack of must-have Windows 11 features compelling organizations to refresh their fleets. The Register reports: The Register spoke to Lansweeper principal technical evangelist Esben Dochy, who noted that consumers were more likely to have devices that couldn't be upgraded or follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule when it comes to change. He also pointed out consumers in the EU get Microsoft Extended Security Updates (ESU) for free.
For businesses, though, it's different. Dochy told us: "The primary blocker is slow change management processes. These can be slow due to bad planning, lack of resources, difficulty in execution (in highly distributed organizations) etc. "The ESU are used to be secure while those change management processes take place, but organizations will have to pay to get those ESU making it more expensive for unprepared or inefficient organizations." [...]
The challenge facing Windows 11 is that, other than the end of free support for many versions, there is no must-have feature to make enterprises break a hardware refresh cycle, particularly in a difficult economic environment. Microsoft has not released official statistics on Windows 11 adoption. However, hardware vendors have noted the sluggish pace of transition. Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke commented during an analyst call: "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 with the previous generation."
For businesses, though, it's different. Dochy told us: "The primary blocker is slow change management processes. These can be slow due to bad planning, lack of resources, difficulty in execution (in highly distributed organizations) etc. "The ESU are used to be secure while those change management processes take place, but organizations will have to pay to get those ESU making it more expensive for unprepared or inefficient organizations." [...]
The challenge facing Windows 11 is that, other than the end of free support for many versions, there is no must-have feature to make enterprises break a hardware refresh cycle, particularly in a difficult economic environment. Microsoft has not released official statistics on Windows 11 adoption. However, hardware vendors have noted the sluggish pace of transition. Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke commented during an analyst call: "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 with the previous generation."
Missed one crucial point/reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Analysts say the slow transition reflects both hardware limitations and a lack of must-have Windows 11 features compelling organizations to refresh their fleets.
Also users (both regular and corporate) are quite literally exhausted of getting fucked in the ass by Micro$haft repeatedly with buggy updates and forced unwanted features (not to mention the slew of privacy raping "telemetry" and other "features"), so there's that.
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a lack of must-have Windows 11 features
to instead say:
a lack of want-to-have Windows 11 features.
The Windows 10 start menu was controversial when it was first presented, but became for many a great feature.
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And plenty of oh-hell-naw features.
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to instead say:
a lack of want-to-have Windows 11 features.
Or, perhaps more accurately:
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Working hardware is working.
Although I am expecting a phone call from my octogenarian mother in the next few months saying Microsoft expect her to upgrade to a new laptop.
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She also switched to Thunderbird and Libre Office pretty quickly.
She's encountered one problem. Her house had a brownout and CUPS borked her printer driver. All that was required to fix was to stop the CUPS service, delete the driver and then print something through CUPS.
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The Windows 10 start menu was controversial when it was first presented, but became for many a great feature.
I stopped using the start menu entirely.
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Yep. I would rephrase the phrase FTA:
a lack of must-have Windows 11 features
to instead say:
a lack of want-to-have Windows 11 features.
I was going to reword it to say that people are sticking with Windows 10 because of its must-have lack of Windows 11 features.
I think that Windows 11 adoption might still be a bit slow even if it ran on the older hardware that people already have. When it comes to operating systems, I think folks are getting tired of playing Where's Waldo and Whac-a-Mole.
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Also users (both regular and corporate) are quite literally exhausted of getting fucked in the ass by Micro$haft repeatedly ...
Still better that what you'd get from MacroSoft ... :-)
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[Big Hero 6 enters the conversation]
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Still better that what you'd get from MacroSoft ... :-)
I bought a 128KB card for my Apple II+ clone from MacroSoft, it was fine though it did cost $100 (the going price) and they were selling it out of their garage in Vancouver, BC.
God that must have been well over 40 years back.
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Windows 10 has all of that as well.
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Windows 11 contains dozens of pointless changes. Changing things just for the sake of making them different, with no regard for the fact that 99% of the changes make things worse.
You can fix a lot of Windows 11's problems with registry changes and third party programs, but you shouldn't have to. This is what happens when a company has too much money
Re:Missed one crucial point/reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Having set up two Windows 11 PCs in the last couple of months it's amazing how much work it takes to get a usable OS after installing it.
And who decided that moving the start menu to the middle by default was a good idea?
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Centre-menu? Constantly tweaking with the UI is part of the enshi^H^H en-tablet-ification.
A follower of trends, the design team at Microsoft will follow - paranoid that people really liked the BYOD vibe they were getting from COVID lockdown and that an iPad or a Chromebook (boosted by Aluminium Android hybrid) can replace a traditional PC.
Re:Missed one crucial point/reason (Score:4, Informative)
Having set up two Windows 11 PCs in the last couple of months it's amazing how much work it takes to get a usable OS after installing it.
The Windows 10 Decrapifier Script [spiceworks.com], combined with most of the tweaks available in WinUtil [github.com] should reduce your workload pretty effectively.
Sad it needs to happen...but I hope it helps streamline things for you.
Re: Missed one crucial point/reason (Score:2)
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Correction. Users are quite literally exhausted being shoved AI up their arse at every part of their life, and against their will.
Well yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeating somewhat a recent post. I bought a pretty powerful gaming desktop 8 or 10 years ago. Now it still runs all of the games I play (short of like Starfield but it will run Cyberpunk 2077 fairly well). Until the computer is not fast enough I don't need a new one and if someone hacks my machine, a bunch of computer games is not a great loss. What value is Win 11? Not the price of replacing the hardware in this desktop to me.
Re: Well yeah.... (Score:4, Funny)
Surely the value is that with Windows 11 it's much easier for Microsoft to push ads and gather information on how you use your computer. Why wouldn't you want that? I don't understand
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Surely the value is that with Windows 11 it's much easier for Microsoft to push ads and gather information on how you use your computer. Why wouldn't you want that? I don't understand
There are no ads on my Windows 11 install, never seen one in the four years I've been running it but then again I'm not in the USA where your government allows corporations to fuck you in the ass without even needing to give you a reach around. As for gathering information on how you use your computer telematics are a good thing too, not all bad. Without telematics you end up with godawful UIs like GIMP and the farce that is two sets of keyboard shortcuts to do the same thing in Linux depending on if you're
Re: Well yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should anyone have to go and create a security policy, especially on a "professional" OS to prevent ads? Especially when a future update will almost certainly re-enable them.
Users shouldn't have to baby sit their OS like this. And if you tell the OS not to do something, you shouldn't have to worry about future updates overriding what you've already told it.
MS treats their power users like idiots, and is driving them away with it.
Re: Well yeah.... (Score:2)
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I bought a pretty powerful gaming desktop 8 or 10 years ago. Now it still runs all of the games I play ...
I have a Dell XPS 420, that a friend gave me years ago, that is currently running Windows 10 just fine. Don't know when he got it, but the system came out in 2007. I'm sure it would run Linux (Mint) very well too, though I'll be switching to a system I built already running Mint 22.2 (ASRock Z77 Extreme3, Intel i7-3770, 32GB RAM). Neither system meets the (arbitrary) HW requirements for Windows 11, if I even wanted to use it. I also have several other very old Intel-based systems that run Linux fine as
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When my 5 year old system I built specifically to play Cyberpunk 2077 could no longer be updated to Win11, I switched it over to Linux.
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Yeah, with my old gaming PC I stuck to Windows 7 for years since it was pretty much only used for gaming and not browsing pron sites. But then Steam decided they wouldn't run on Windows 7 any more so I had to buy a new one.
Which wasn't such a bad deal as it would probably cost 50% more to build today. But with the downside that it has Windows 11.
Microsoft is on the decline (Score:1)
Sure, their income statements might show something that looks like growth, but that's mostly just a temporary illusion created by subscription shenanigans. Their true pinnacle of achievement was just before the development cycle of Windows 8 started. That's when they stopped caring about the tech the users use, and started focusing on the tech they can use to monetize things that shouldn't be monetized.
Big Tech today forgets that the PC revolution happened because everyone got tired of paying a monthly bill
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Indeed. And it is not only Windows. Office is slowly getting worse and wastes more and more user time. Azure got hacked several times and has crass vulnerabilities only explainable by extreme incompetence.
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And then we have victims with Stockholm-Syndrome that are deep in denial and mod everybody down that states the truth...
windows 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing i see it is an advertising platform and a data/content source to train their AI on. They already stole everything in the azure and git hub now they want the rest.
It's crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: It's crazy (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't pay, you just don't get the updates.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en... [microsoft.com]
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New hardware. You don't think Microsofthas financial ties to system manufacturers?
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This is the difference between a government that cares about consumer rights, and a government who gleefully applies the lube for corporations to fuck you with.
You get lube? Luxury! [youtube.com] :-)
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"Crapitalism"
Sharecrop culture (Score:3)
Most of the south actively suppresses labor and wages with the direct goal of being "good for business" - e.g., cheap labor with no recourse or way out.
Now we also have people like Musk and Theil all but openly demanding an end to any political power for anyone but them.
There's a reason guillotine T-shirts are selling well, and there is a certain segment of society that should take it a lot more seriously t
Microsoft's has a Windows 11 problem! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft's has a Windows 11 problem! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd imagine that Microsoft will "fix" this issue soon enough, by insuring that all future versions of Office and probably every new game or application gets published on the Microsoft Store requires Windows 11 as a minimum requirement.
Then they'll just EOL the older versions of Office and wait for their customers to be forced into upgrading. Probably add some new AI bloatware features into the Office document formats as well, just to insure that the older versions can't open them properly.
Re:Microsoft's has a Windows 11 problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine that Microsoft will "fix" this issue soon enough, by insuring that all future versions of Office and probably every new game or application gets published on the Microsoft Store requires Windows 11 as a minimum requirement.
That's what LibreOffice is for.
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Break compatibility with file formats and you are inviting libre office or others to replace whatever new crap MS is slinging.
Hope they break compatibility for many things. Including other software that is used by many people.
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Dunno man, I run a low resource Debian on my personal devices.
No problems ever upgrading to the newer stable.
Eventually XFCE will get a Wayland backend and firefox-esr may take advantage of newer Vulkan accelerations but I don't need the bling flavour of the month from an AI chatbot enhanced desktop.
Old man yells at cloud, I know right...
No surprise, Win11 is a regression (Score:5, Insightful)
Same hardware, same software on three systems that ran win10 before. No problems with Win10. Now I observe system, driver, gui and application crashes that never happened before. I get notification tones that I cannot identify or turn off. Things are harder to find. Log-in screen pictures vanish. Some things got slower. And other crap.
Win11 is a pretty seriously worse product than Win10. Fortunately, all my critical systems are Linux, but Microsoft is obviously going downhill.
Re:No surprise, Win11 is a regression (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 10: Boots, fan stays quiet, battery lasts 10 hours idle/document work/browsing.
Windows 11: Boots, fan never shuts up, battery lasts 4 hours idle (even going full e-reader mode idle, nothing loaded but the desktop), fan screams the whole time.
Linux: Fan almost never even starts up, battery lasts 15 hours browsing/doing stuff, 20 hours e-reader mode.
Windows has too much overhead, background junk, and spyware.
Re:No surprise, Win11 is a regression (Score:4, Interesting)
I second that. My corporate laptop's fan started screaming ever since it moved from windows 10 to windows 11. Don't know about battery usage, since I always keep it hooked to the power outlet.
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yup, we're getting reports of this at work. fuck windows 11 with a rusty fucking spatula
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If you open up resource monitor you'll see that various processes are always reading and writing to the disk. It's never idle.
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What is E-Reader mode?
Upgrading to Linux (Score:5, Informative)
When I bought a Windows license years ago, it was to setup a Steam machine. After the Win 10 EOL, I tried installing Linux to see how it does with Steam nowadays. My thinking is I would play what I could on Linux, and swap to Win 10 as necessary to play other games, even if I don't have all the security updates.
So far, I haven't found a game that doesn't work on Linux.
Good luck with this strategy of security bricking old devices.
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I don't have the same luck. I have a RTX 3060 (NVidia) video card, it doesn't play well with Proton and Bazzite (AFAIK). Also, the games I play the most have anti-cheat software, which again doesn't run on Linux.
I had to accept privacy invasion and log on Windows 10 with a MS account and setup backup, which game me one more year of security updates. Let's see what happens until then, maybe these problems would be solved (go go Wine/Proton devs!) or maybe I dual-boot Win 10 just for gaming these Windows-only
Re: Upgrading to Linux (Score:2)
Anti-cheat definitely seems to be where most users have issue. Fortunately I don't play multiplayer games, so that doesn't really come up for me.
I'm lucky enough that a GTX 1080 still runs everything I throw at it. My TV is 1080p and I have yet to find a game that card can't handle. I've heard lots of people with higher resolutions or frame rates have issues, but exceedingly few games have any issue on a GTX1080 unless you go past 1080p. I haven't even had to go below max settings for anything yet.
Re: Upgrading to Linux (Score:2)
I thought the point of this article was that people are staying on Win 10, that tells me that MS isn't 'bricking' old devices...
Re: Upgrading to Linux (Score:2)
I used the phrase "security bricking" to mean it longer receives security updates and so becomes dangerous to use.
Ent IoT LTSC OMG LTD RGB G2G (Score:5, Informative)
i converted my remaining win 10 box to Enterprise IoT LTSC a couple weeks ago and so far it's been indistinguishable from the Win 10 Pro it was before. EoL is Jan 13, 2032 . it was surprisingly easy to do. search your web, you know it to be true
Re:Ent IoT LTSC OMG LTD RGB G2G (Score:5, Informative)
You're leaving out the best parts. No Edge, no Cortana, and no app store.
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Risk reward? (Score:4, Insightful)
As I understand it, I will be gang raped by AI... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Out of curiosity, what made you leave Ubuntu for Win10?
Re: As I understand it, I will be gang raped by AI (Score:2)
He said:
If I get forced off 10, its back to Ubuntu..
IF (he) gets forced...
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Yes, but going "back to Ubuntu" implies one was already on Ubuntu prior to ending up on win10.
Not quite accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that Windows 11 doesn't have and "must have" features, it's that Windows 11 has too many "must not have" features. I would have upgraded if I could actually turn the ads, telemetry, and forced updates* off permanently. I'm sure there's other non-optional features that I wouldn't want either.
* - Absent a zero-click exploit in the wild, I do not want to update anything until other suckers have tested it for at least a week or two. Most security updates are for people who click links in spam emails anyway.
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It's not that Windows 11 doesn't have and "must have" features
Name one.
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Apparently, you missed the point of the sentence. I was refuting the claim that the reason people weren't upgrading was because of a lack of new, good features, but that they weren't upgrading because of all the features it has that they do not want. I would have tolerated all the "meh" features if it didn't have the bad ones.
But, since you asked, there is one "must have" feature Windows 11 has - continued free security updates.
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Name one.
Copilot in notepad.
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Copilot in notepad.
You win teh funny. They really have fucked Notepad up bad.
God Damn! (Score:2)
Copilot in notepad.
God Damn!
Served him a massive jugfull of STFU with that mic drop comment.
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Do you for Microsoft?
MS forces you to spend time, money, and effort, on "upgrades" you don't want.
The solution? Spend more time, money and effort, to fix the crappy useless "upgrades."
Just stay with Win 10, or switch to Linux.
Lots of people are switching (Score:2)
I know quite a few people that have ditched M$ Windows entirely and have switched to Linux. I helped only one person switch, but everyone else did it on their own. The more I talk around I find people that have switched to Linux. These are all personal, not corporate machines.
Windows 11 Added Nothing for the User (Score:4, Interesting)
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I wish MS just with Win 2K and incrementally upgraded. Made it solidly 64-bit, increased the file system capacity, and so on. By now, it would be awesome.
Real reason (Score:1)
There's no directx 12 this time, and there are no new complex APIs.
So where microsoft easily forced a lot of people off 7 to 10 by breaking games and applications, no such thing is really possible with forcing people off 10 to 11.
Windows 10 Windows 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing in favour of Windows 10 adoption was how badly Windows 8 sucked. I mean, people were buying PC's with a license to downgrade to Windows 7. Windows 10 doesn't suck as badly as Windows 8, and arguably doesn't suck as badly as Windows 11 either.
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We truly live in interesting times, where people are starting to look back fondly upon Windows10. I knew that would happen eventually, but I didn't think it would be so soon.
How much of that "growth" ... (Score:2)
Re: How much of that "growth" ... (Score:2)
Win 11 is what, a four or five year-old product by now? Most corporations turnover their desktops/laptops every 3-4 years, this is only an issue for home users and small businesses that need to try and squeeze ten years out of their hardware...
Wrong Defense. (Score:2)
or follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule when it comes to change..
Uh, other than those who have actually gotten ESU support, what exactly do they mean by if it ain't broke?
Windows 10 support ended. From a security standpoint, it is broke.
Just gonna sit around and wait for the zero-day on Christmas morning to be reminded of the rule of Reality?
Re: Wrong Defense. (Score:2)
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You can also just pay the $30 for another year of support while mentally preparing to move to Linux
Too late (Score:2)
My family have all switched to Linux.
No (Score:2)
Re: No (Score:2)
Yet, oddly, millions and millions of people use Win 11 every business day to accomplish revenue-generating work without issue...
microsoft fucked up (Score:2)
1) Microsoft fucked up by assuming consumers and businesses would be fine with their operating system including ads and "news" about the kardashians, along with a - you cant remove it - Fox News feed. Fuck that.
2) Microsoft fucked up by offering support to some or maybe all windows 10 users. they should have stood firm and not offered any support for windows 10
3) could Microsoft redeem themselves by pulling back on the noisy telemetry requests? Not likely.
Will they even try? hahahaha no because they're led
Artificial hardware limitations. (Score:2)
Windows is digital dog sh!t (Score:2)
The last good Windows was 7, and at a stretch, maybe 10. Microsoft has finally jumped the shark and shown what a piece of crap its OS is and users are leaving (or staying put on version 10) in droves. I'm not sure Microsoft knows how to turn this decline around.
Well they made windows 10 Terminal (Score:1)
What Microsoft does should be a criminal offence (Score:2)
This company needlessly forces hundreds of millions of users to throw away and replace perfectly fine hardware, just to not miss security updates (because in all other aspects WIndows 11 is just worse and more invading user privacy and freedom than Windows 10).
The negative impact on the environment, resource use, electronic waste etc is enormous, damaging and completely unnecessary.
However asshole at Microsoft is responsible for this should really rot in jail for life, because this is really a crime against
Re: Woke Microsoft Games - A BAD sign of DEI quali (Score:2)
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Windows 10/WS2019 can't communicate using TLS 1.3
That's false. I'm currently on Windows 10, using Chrome to browse slashdot.org, which is using TLS 1.3.
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Software the come with their own implementation of course don't depend on the OS. Like every Java application.
Re: ...there is no must-have feature,,, (Score:2)
Your customer is running 22 year-old server OS? Really? Are they Running Windows 2000 on their Pentium II desktops?