Posted on 10/19/2015 9:58:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As the months pass and Windows 10 spends more time on the market, patterns are starting to emerge, and the initial huge growth has suddenly leveled off.
At the end of August, Microsoft claimed that Windows 10 was on 75 million devices. At this week's Surface event, Microsoft Windows chief Terry Myerson said that the Windows 10 is now on over 110 million devices.
Windows 10 was ready for download on July 29, so in its first month out of the gate, it claimed 75 million devices. Five weeks later, it was up by 35 million. That would indicate quite a slowdown, and new metrics back this up.
New usage figures released by the firm NetApplications showed a slowdown in September. In its first month of availability, Windows 10 went from 0.39% (beta testers, likely) to 5.21% share. But for September, the second full month of availability, Windows 10 only grew to 6.63% total.
NetMarketShare takes a global view and covers both consumer and corporate use. It measures global use by identifying the OS used by people visiting websites around the globe. So its measurements are OSes in use, and not necessarily deployed.
Once again, I point to the consumer-oriented Steam analytics, which measures gamer PCs, for a contrasting point of view. Steam is the iTunes-like gaming sales marketplace run by Valve Software and has pretty much become the de facto PC game sales platform. There, you see a huge growth for Windows 10. Its September survey puts Windows 10 at 24% of total users, second only to Windows 7 64-bit at 37.5%.
So, what's going on? Possibly a few things:
1. Corporate and international isn't jumping – The Steam numbers show home users and gamers in the U.S. are jumping onto the Windows 10 bandwagon fast. NetApplications, with its global reach of home and business users, show a tiny percentage, which likely means that businesses and countries outside the U.S. aren't so quick to upgrade.
2. Poor PC sales – In the U.S., PC sales are up a tiny bit, just 1.3% year-over-year. Lenovo led the way with a whopping 22% y-o-y rise. Worldwide, PC sales just plain stink. They were down 7.7%, with Acer leading the way, down 20% y-o-y. With Windows 10 for sale on July 29, that's two months of sales, August and September, for the new OS, and it doesn't look like it spurred buying.
3. Spyware controversy – As people dug into Windows they found it did a disturbing amount of spying on its users, and the anger grew fairly loud over time. Myerson tried to address this, but it was a middling response that didn't address the bulk of the issues.
4. Stability problems – Over time people began to complain about stability issues. The installation alone proved a challenge. Device drivers were missing or broken. I personally had constant problems with my sound card, although that's Creative Labs' fault, not Microsoft.
5. No perceived value – This began drifting out into the blogosphere as well. With many of its installation and setup problems, people began to ask what they get for upgrading, and some may have decided their Windows 7 system isn't broke and they aren't going to fix it.
It's likely a mix of everything. Stability issues will be fixed and hopefully the intrusiveness will be addressed in full. The 24% for Steam users tells me a lot of people here in the U.S. aren't worried about it. I can't recall any version of Windows reaching 24% share in three months.
Microsoft forces 10 on Windows 7 & 8 users to get their numbers up. They want everyone being spied on.
#5 My boot time on my laptop that has Windows 10 on it is about 15 seconds to the login screen. I have a 7200rpm hard drive in it. I am not putting Windows 10 on my desktop pc as I hate the Sword of Damocles of Privacy hanging overhead.
Check. Hell, they don't upgrade anything the YEAR it comes out. Sometimes it's 3-4 years before they take it up.
> 2. Poor PC sales // Dont need a new PC to run it. I’m using laptops that are over 4 years old.
Check. I'm sure that's why they're playing around with the "Buy a new W10 machine and send in your old one for cash back" incentives.
> 3. Spyware controversy // There is no “spyware” just low-level tech ignoramus... Every little thing MS clearly spells out they collect when installing can be turned off at any time.
Agreed that's it's not, strictly speaking, "spyware". It's some technical telemetry, and it's a lot of data that people are not used to their operating system gathering and transmitting to Redmond or anywhere else.
Microsoft made a huge tactical error IMO by not being loud and upfront EARLY ON about the fact that they were going to do this in the consumer production editions as well as the Insider pre-release editions. And another error by making the default "Send Everything" and forcing users to grovel around and figure out how to shut it off. These days most users are leery of anything that grabs their data and sends it elsewhere, and for damn good reason. Microsoft was arrogant and stupid, when they could have been proactive and forthright.
It's too late now to recover that lost opportunity, unfortunately. So Windows 10 will be stuck with the stench of the "spyware" label forever, even though, as you point out, the warning was already in the fine print.
> 4. Stability problems // Cant say I’ve had any on my end...
I've had ZERO problems so far, but I'm running Win10 in VMs, under Xen on CentOS Linux, and under VMware on OS X. VMs are more forgiving. I'm not planning to put it on metal until I have to replace my Win7 laptop someday, probably with a Surface Book.
> 5. No perceived value // But will then bitch and moan that MS stops supporting (insert over decade-old version of Windows here)...
This is a tough one. So far what I've gotten from Win10 is a learning experience about where they hid stuff. It's not significantly faster for the tasks I do, I don't like the plain, flat look of the UI, and the customization options are severely limited. But I expect that as time goes on it will become possible to customize it better.
I don't find it compelling, and I'm not inclined to upgrade my Win7 machines, but I find it quite usable and I won't much mind buying native Win10 machines in a few years when it comes time to get new ones. In the meantime, the VMs are fine for getting used to it.
Perhaps in the next year or two I may discover something that Win10 does that Win7 doesn't do. But so far everything that Win10 does, that I care about, Win7 does at least as well.
They dont upgrade anything the minute it comes out.
Typically for Windows upgrades there is a workstation OS release followed by a server release. Many of the new features in the workstation OS rely on a server-side component. The server-side components usually appear first in the new server release, and then may be back-ported to older releases.
Right now, were in that window between the workstation release and the server release. Nobody has a compelling reason to upgrade because a lot of the potential benefits can't be realized or even tested until they get the server bits to go with it.
I hated it!
I use Firefox.
I installed Win 10 a week or so ago. My computer has slowed considerably. Not sure if there’s a connection or coincidence.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.