Windows 10 Is Doing A Great Job Persuading People To Switch To A Different Operating System

[timeshifter]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinm...to-a-different-operating-system/#4f8a356f557b

 

[Metanis]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinm...to-a-different-operating-system/#4f8a356f557b

I can remember a time when there was serious competition to Microsoft's offerings. It would be good if that competition existed again for a few years until the herd reinforced conformity.

 

[brandonkick]

I can remember a time when there was serious competition to Microsoft's offerings. It would be good if that competition existed again for a few years until the herd reinforced conformity.

That must have been a long time ago......

Microsoft has held the lions share of the market for as long as I can remember. It's too interwoven into the flow of things to be dethroned any time soon. If we didn't have M$ office for OS X I think the Apple's market share would be even lower. Too many businesses and educational institutions use and require things like the M$ Office suite to seriously consider another operating system as anything other than a nice little experiment for those who like technology or those who wear the tin foil hat and hate Microsoft.

Facts are facts, no one is eating into the "market share" for Windows any time soon. Progress has been made, but really.... Windows remains the prominent OS.


Articles like these with there fear mongering. I've run Windows 10 on my workstation for over two years now. I've never had an update "wreck" anything for me. I can hardly remember a single "failed" update on this machine. I also oversee a fleet of about 20 machines at a part time job I have and none of those (that run Win 10) have ever had an update related issue either. For what it' worth, my personal workstation is critical in that if it goes down it can cost me time at work. That is very costly to me, even a few hours is pretty damaging to my bottom line. I wouldn't run Win 10 if it were a disaster (even though I do keep a ThinkPad T520 with a docking station as backup). Do things go wrong? Sure. It happens. Plan for it appropriately, and the risk is minimized.

I wonder how many of these "nightmare" scenarios involve a 7 to 10 year old machine never intended to run Windows 10 that got upgraded to windows 10 off an old and bloated install of Win 7. Machines that saw numbers hardware config changes in the same OS, old drivers left hanging around, just a "mess" of a setup vs say a Dell business class Optiplex that came with Windows 10 out of the gate?

 

[Sky-Knight]

The only machines I've had break on update are on feature updates, and when 3rd party AV is installed. No issues since going Defender only.

MS really does need to chill out though, this semi-annual feature march is stupid, annual at most please. Then take the teams doing the features and stuff them into security patch Q/A. Until then everything they say about "quality" is just lip service. They have a reputation problem, and deservedly so.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I can remember a time when there was serious competition to Microsoft's offerings. It would be good if that competition existed again for a few years until the herd reinforced conformity.

Microsoft never had serious competition in the OS market. DR-DOS and OS/2 were minuscule compared to DOS/Windows. Linux has never been a true contender on the desktop. In the server world Novell had its day and blew it and Linux does have a market.

 

[nlinecomputers]

The only machines I've had break on update are on feature updates, and when 3rd party AV is installed. No issues since going Defender only.

MS really does need to chill out though, this semi-annual feature march is stupid, annual at most please. Then take the teams doing the features and stuff them into security patch Q/A. Until then everything they say about "quality" is just lip service. They have a reputation problem, and deservedly so.

I've had a machine or two bork a driver update but I was able to boot to safe mode and walk it back. Always video drivers.

 

[Porthos]

Articles like these with there fear mongering.

I saw Forbes in the link and did not bother to click.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I saw Forbes in the link and did not bother to click.

same. I respect Forbes for most things except Windows coverage which is downright tabloid style. It is quite sad.

 

[timeshifter]

I saw Forbes in the link and did not bother to click.

I posted it because it was a Forbes link. As IT pros we can debate this all we want, but I wanted to show the article and discuss it because it's something that business users (and consumers) might be exposed to.

The writer does highlight the negatives quite a bit, but I don't think anything he points out is untrue. Also makes you wonder if he's a shill for Google and Chrome OS.

IMHO Windows is a complicated mess with tons of baggage, flaws and inconsistencies. Everyone tolerates it because they need it. But that need is declining as phones, tablets and the cloud become more and more popular.

Articles like these with there fear mongering. I've run Windows 10 on my workstation for over two years now. I've never had an update "wreck" anything for me. I can hardly remember a single "failed" update on this machine. I also oversee a fleet of about 20 machines at a part time job I have and none of those (that run Win 10) have ever had an update related issue either.

I have never personally had an update screw up any of my Windows machines in recent memory. I've had plenty of clients who have. I'm a one man business and I had five to seven calls on one of the semi-annual Windows 10 feature updates that broke printing.

Microsoft has held the lions share of the market for as long as I can remember. It's too interwoven into the flow of things to be dethroned any time soon.

Maybe not dethroned, but it is declining. Was 91% in January 2013 and now sits at 74% in January 2019

Global market share held by operating systems for desktop PCs, from January 2013 to January 2019

 

[timeshifter]

I've never had an update "wreck" anything for me.

Ironically there is this:

 

[Markverhyden]

The reality is there has never been anyone but Wintel.

I remember when Apple had almost 30% market share for desktops in businesses, late 80's early 90's or so. But their policies guaranteed that no one would spend the time, effort, and money to do dev work in their ecosystem. Especially since things were much less restrictive in the Wintel world. Of course the "no one gets fired for buying IBM" didn't help.

Linux? That's simple. No one owns it. So there is no one to call when there's a problem.

 

[timeshifter]

I'd take those figures with a very large pinch of salt. The problem is in the other/unknown category, which no serious statistician would ever lump together. If you look at November '18 you'll see a 15% share for other/unknown which magically drops to 8.5% by the next month; so 6.5% of the market has changed OS in a single month? I don't think so.

If you remove the unknown/other category then there's very little month-by-month change, leaving the poor publisher with no news and no headline.

Nothing to see here. Move along, please.

So someone just made the whole thing up to sell their services?

Windows market share is unchanged in six years?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Pretty much... resurgence in PC gaming, plus a growing business sector puts PC sales pretty much in the same place it's been for a very long time. The patterns are very stable. Home use waning? Probably, ignorant people will be ignorant. PCs are for creators, not consumers.

 

[brandonkick]

Ironically there is this:

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying it's not that big of a deal. It's not like there are millions upon millions of machines out there that get wrecked every other odd round of windows updates. You have to expect it's going to happen really. M$ can't test the endless amounts of hardware configurations out there, and no one should expect otherwise. The only real player who controls both the hardware and software is Apple and I doubt seriously I'll ever see them dethrone M$ in my life time.

I just get a little riled up at these types of articles. There is no mass exodus away from Windows 10. There is no new alternative that people flock too like the salmon of Capistrano.

Home users going to tablets? Tablets are for people who want to check an email or two and be entertained. It's just so much "nicer" to do anything beyond that on a computer. Cruzing eBay? Much rather do that on my desktop with two big screens. Writing a lengthy email? Much rather do that on my desktop with two big screens. Looking up parts for my vehicles, lawn equipment and so on? Much rather do that on my desktop with two big screens. The experience is just a lot better. I type a lot faster, I can make small hard to see things much bigger and easier to see.... things happen a lot faster.

Tablets are what they are. Cell phones are what they are. Convent. Portable. Not a replacement. Something I'd give little Sally or Johnny so they don't tie up my computer watching fornite videos... so I can watch lawn mower repair videos

 

[brandonkick]

I think these articles are nothing more than "juicy gossip" if you will.

Not that there isn't some element of truth, but they are told in such a way that they KNOW it will get attention. They don't write about how much better Win10 has gotten. No one would talk about that at the water cooler.... BUT surly everyone will want to mention how they read that Windows 10 is causing corporations to crumble with it's terrible update system, blue screens, crashes... pure madness. Then one guy pipes up about his uncles brother who used to have a laptop with windows 10, blue screened, died, and then two weeks later is daughter was knocked up... terrible stuff.

People want a topic that will draw attention. Hating on the new version of windows has been the cool thing to do since at least the Windows 2000 days. You weren't cool if you didn't hate on the new version. Sticking to the old version because a brothers cousins friend works for the government and the new version is TOTALLY not secure. Way too buggy man, stick with 95. That's what ima do.

Like I said. Way too many essential pieces of software are supported on windows only. That alone makes it nearly impossible for someone else to move in. I know, I know... emulation. Wine. Sure. Who's going to go to their boss and suggest a setup in which emulation is required to run software that they could likely run in a supported environment cheaper..... and whats going to happen when the **** hits the fan and the company providing the software tells you tough nuggets on the support call because your not running windows.

I was a windows hater too. It was the cool thing to do. I wanted to fit in the rest of the non conforming OS kids. We won't update and YOU CAN'T MAKE US! Then I realized how silly it was. And believe me, I know M$ has made some big mistakes, and still do. Vista was a train wreck. The windows 7 update process is sadly broken. The security in Windows 98 was kinda funny at best. But common Forbes, find some other water cooler topic to draw hits. Windows 10 isn't so bad.

 

[brandonkick]

Ironically there is this:

LOL I just took the time to read that topic. It's titled a bit misleading.

 

[timeshifter]

I just get a little riled up at these types of articles. There is no mass exodus away from Windows 10. There is no new alternative that people flock too like the salmon of Capistrano.

The writer doesn't claim that there's a mass exodus. True that there is no new alternative desktop operating system that people are flocking to. I was surprised by how small of a share Chrome OS had. But not everyone needs an alternative desktop OS when they've got iOS and Android in the mix too with more native applications running there plus cloud based systems that run on anything.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I had an amusing update glitch just yesterday, Some how the X axis of my mouse was barely registering while the Y axis was ridiculously sensitive so imagine moving the mouse from left to right across a huge mount pad and having the cursor move an inch along the X axis and up and down across the whole screen over and over like a bouncing ball. Once I got into the logitech dpi settings it just fixed itself but it was an amusing glitch that started right after the system had started back up again after it rebooted for updates.

Edit: no it wasnt a hair in the laser hole xD

 

[Sky-Knight]

That's a calibration problem with a device, not an update glitch. The mouse calibrates when you hit the DPI settings or on reboot. Your mouse is probably going bad.

 

[nlinecomputers]

The reality is there has never been anyone but Wintel.

Even that is starting to change. Qualcomm is pushing into the desktop, laptop and tablet market and Intel is failing to overcome chip density barriers.