Windows 10?

[Rick Danger]

While one study is of course not conclusive, I have seen alot of traffic on the Patch Management mailing list. While companies are running Windows 10 pilots, implementation issues have them shy about committing to rollouts. The fact that updates to Windows 10, e.g., the Anniversary Update seem to break things that worked fine after the initial Win10 upgrade is hardly aiding this. Perhaps this is why a few weeks ago Microsoft started making a "back door" pitch to corporate execs trying to sell them on Windows 10 to spark demand and push their IT shops into mass deployments. That probably went over with IT professionals like a guy trying to sell warm beer on a Summer day in August

Also, Windows 10 doesn't seem to play well with tools available under Microsoft Server 2008 and 2012. Many shops may be waiting until they get through some kind of pilot of Server 2016 before they move to a larger effort with Windows 10.

Again, much of Microsoft's pitch to the corporate world was the dream of a unified OS environment running on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones with common apps. But Microsoft doesn't have a low priced tablet product, unlike available Android products or even the smaller Apple iPads. And their failure with Windows 10 Phone blew a major hole in their "Universal Windows Platform" strategy. I doubt if companies are sitting around waiting to see if Microsoft can refloat their smartphone ship after years of stumbling around with single-digit marketshare.

A final point. The Windows 10 interface has more in common with Windows 8 than with Windows 7. Of course the bulk of Windows devices are Windows 7, as Windows 8 had a very poor adoption rate (hummm, sounds familiar, doesn't it?). While corporations usually "go cheap" on user training, the learning curve jumping from Windows 7 to the latest flavor of the ghastly "Metro" UI is likely another contributing factor to lackluster numbers for Windows 10.

First, Redmond takes heaps of criticism and resistance from "Joe Average" Windows users. Now corporate IT seems to be wary, if not outright hesitant to jump into any large Windows 10 effort. Clearly, Microsoft needs to be doing better, on ALL fronts.


TechRepublic Software

99% of business machines have not upgraded to Windows 10, according to study
According to a new study released by Softchoice, less than 1% of business machines have upgraded to Windows 10, opting instead for Windows 7.

By Conner Forrest
August 23, 2016, 7:09 AM PST

Windows 10 has been one of the more controversial OS releases of recent memory, bringing privacy concerns, bugs that disable certain hardware, and other nasty surprises. And the enterprise, it seems, is avoiding it altogether.

According to a recent study by IT services firm Softchoice, less than 1% of Windows machines were actually running Windows 10. That means that, one year after the release of the latest Microsoft OS, more than 99% of machines haven't yet made the switch.

The study was performed as part of a TechCheck analysis by Softchoice, which looked at more than 402,814 Windows devices operating among 169 organizations. So, what were these firms choosing instead of Windows 10? Overwhelmingly, they were running Windows 7.

"It appears businesses are hesitant to take advantage of the various Windows 10 upgrades and, at least for now, are satisfied with Windows 7," Softchoice's David Brisbois wrote in a press release. "Historically, OS upgrades have been viewed as major time and resource-consuming undertakings, and this may be influencing the decision today to hold off on Windows 10."

The Softchoice looked at these Windows machines in both US and Canadian firms from January 1, 2016 through May 31, 2016. At the time, only 2,999 devices were running Windows 10, which accounted for a grand total of 0.75% of the whole.

In terms of business break down, 42 of the 169 businesses (25%) had no trace of Windows 10 in their environment. Additionally, 73 of the 169 (43%) had fewer than 10 devices running Windows 10 present in their environment.

In contrast, 91% of the machines were operating with Windows 7, which marked an 18% increase over the same period of time in 2015. The next largest group were the Windows XP holdouts, which counted for 5% of the devices. Devices running Windows 8 were at 4%, which is double from the 2% measured the year prior.

"It seems businesses don't see an urgent need to move operating systems, so long as their cloud-based applications are still running fine on Windows 7," Softchoice's Microsoft director Craig McQueen wrote in a press release. "In addition to the security benefits, I think once organizations grasp the user benefits—such as touch and Cortana—we will start to see a boost in adoption."

Although, some of those features may not be enough to sway some users. Cortana, for example, has proven very difficult to get rid of, and other updates have led to frozen machines. The most recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update actually broke some third-party webcams, without a workaround or fix until September. That's bad news for a business that relies heavily on video conferencing.

Still, there are a host of new features and tools that could make it easier to get work done. If you're still on the fence about upgrading to Windows 10, TechRepublic's Nick Heath has compiled five reasons for and against making the move. Check them out here:

Five reasons to upgrade to Windows 10 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...to-windows-10/
Five reasons not to upgrade to Windows 10 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...to-windows-10/

The 3 big takeaways for TechRepublic readers

1. A recent study by Softchoice has shown that less than 1% of enterprise organizations have upgraded their Windows devices to Windows 10, even a full year after the OS was released.
2. Most business were still running Windows 7, according to the study, as Windows 8 also saw poor adoption rates after its release.
3. A plethora of concerns over privacy and functionality, combined with the effort it takes to upgrade a whole organization, likely led to the low adoption numbers for Windows 10.

[Rick Danger]

I read this "Bits" article from the New York Times Tuesday morning, concerning the new Android operating system, code named "Nougat".

I post it to compare and contrast against Microsoft's Windows 10 rollout strategy. Especially when it comes to issues like incorporating user feedback, ease of learning, and the ability of the user to customize the product to their preferences.

GRANTED, implementing a new smartphone OS is much simpler than a computer OS. But that also underscores the weakness in Microsoft's strategy. They seem to be trying to implement Windows 10 like it's a smartphone OS. By doing so, they ignore the obvious fact that a computing environment is much more complex and varied than that of a smartphone. This may explain why Redmond cannot seem to "bed down" Windows 10.

As always, make your own conclusions and comments...............


Technology

Daily Report: A New Android for a New Tech World

Bits
By QUENTIN HARDY
AUG. 23, 2016

With little notice, Google just told us a lot about our world.

On Monday, the company announced the general availability of its newest Android smartphone operating system. Looking at how it got here and what is inside the new OS reveals much about how different tech works now, when compared with just a few years ago.

Google first talked about the new OS, called Nougat, last March, and gave people the opportunity to download an early version of the software. Google appears to have used that feedback heavily in the final version.

Not so long ago, a new computer OS was a huge deal, developed in secret and released with a marketing thunderclap. That was when personal computers were the rule, or PC-type thinking dominated phone marketing. Now speed, feedback and continuous upgrades are the rule.

Nougat will appear as an update on a handful of Nexus phones over the next few weeks, and later on a new phone. It is said to have 250 new features, but is unlikely to require a lot of new learning, unlike new versions of Windows on a PC.

People don’t have time for that now; if things aren’t more intuitive, they are discarded.

Personalization is also a big feature of these mass-market devices, so the phone can do things like provide polyglots with search results in multiple languages, ways to reconfigure Quick Settings controls or 1,500 different emoji for nonverbal communication.

Besides feedback and customization, speed is another design principle that has become paramount. Apps can run side by side, notifications can open apps directly and previously used apps can be easily reopened.

If saving seconds sounds like a big deal, it is: Google long ago discovered that even a 200-millisecond delay can make a search seem too slow. That impatience is now a consumer norm.

So much for the present state of tech design. Nougat also has a couple of indications about what’s next, in the form of augmented reality and virtual reality functions. A lot of that will be dormant for now, until new games, and hardware like headphones and game controllers, become available.

It’s O.K. if you start getting impatient for that stuff. After all, by the time you read this, Nougat will have been out for an entire day or more.


© 2016 The New York Times Company

[Ernesto75]

Contrary to the announcements by Microsoft which try to present the actual company as being benevolent towards its (willing or not) customers in fact it is akin to a propaganda-like series of campains.

I recently discovered that database programming is not forgotten by Satya Nadella.

If you have non-Microsoft databases installed on your machine you found the parameter sets regularly disrupted and you have to reset them.
This was not so under Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

It looks like you reverted to Vista.

[buttsie]

By Woody Leonhard, InfoWorld | Aug 29, 2016

Task Manager
Resource Monitor
Process Explorer
Autoruns
Event Viewer
Regedit
GPEdit
Component Services
File History
Disk Management

Those are my 10 favorite go-to troubleshooting programs, but there are many more you could add to your Windows 10 bucket list. I talked about several of them in the slideshow "Top 25 free apps for Windows 10." In particular:

Wushowhide lets you hide Win10 updates and upgrades until you’re good and ready to install them. The big trick: You have to wait until Windows Update says the upgrade/update is ready before you can hide it. Detailed instructions are here.

Secunia Personal Software Inspector (free for personal use) scans your computer and tells you if there are awaiting patches.

HWiNFO tells you every imaginable detail about every nook and cranny of your PC.

Expanded here - links to various previous articles

http://www.infoworld.com/article/311...indows-10.html

feedback comments which nearly always add something
https://www.askwoody.com/2016/top-10...or-windows-10/

[buttsie]

Apparently there are updates including fixes for botched patches that dont come via windows update but come by something called the Update catalog which curently is only accessible with IE

Go figure

Credit: Thinkstock

Microsoft says it'll fix the Update Catalog's dependency on ActiveX someday,
but you can bypass IE right now if you know the trick

Many patches don't go through the usual Windows Update channels. As I explained earlier today, even the patch that fixes Microsoft's botched security update KB 3177725 is only available in the Windows Update Catalog.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/311...y-browser.html

How to check the Microsoft Update Catalog with Chrome or Firefox

feedback comments
https://www.askwoody.com/2016/how-to...me-or-firefox/

[Ernesto75]

Here is what was said by Microsoft teams on August 23 2016:


PowerShell DSC and implicit remoting broken in KB3176934

August 23, 2016 by PowerShell Team
On August 23, Windows update KB3176934 released for Windows Client. Due to a missing .MOF file in the build package, the update breaks DSC. All DSC operations will result in an “Invalid Property” error.
In addition, due to a missing binary in the build package the update breaks PowerShell implicit remoting. Implicit remoting is a PowerShell feature where PowerShell commands work on a remote session instead of locally. Specifically, importing a remote session no longer works:

$remoteSession = New-PSSession -Cn TargetComputer
Import-PSSession -Session $remoteSession

Import-PSSession : Could not load type ‘System.Management.Automation.SecuritySupport’ from assembly
‘System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’.
To prevent these issues take the following actions:

1. If you are using DSC from or on any Windows client, take the following steps:
   Uninstall the update if already installed. From elevated PowerShell prompt type

   wusa /uninstall /kb:3176934
   

2. If using WSUS, do not approve the update. Otherwise, Use Group Policy to set the ‘Configure Automatic Updates’ to ‘2 – Notify for download and notify for install’ as described in this Microsoft Support article.

A fix for this issue will be included in the next Windows update which is due out 8/30/2016.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause.
Regards,
The PowerShell Team


The Windows 10 saga goes on.

[Ernesto75]

I can't resist the temptation to paraphrase a well-known movie :

Is there a real programmer at Microsoft's ?

[Ernesto75]

Microsoft is not very lucky (and so are Windows 10 users).

After having webcams that are blinded and having PowerShell destructed by Windows 10 Anniversary Update now it is the use of a Kindle reader that gets a BSoD (Blus Screen of Death).

Small history of this artefact which is a Microsoft trademark:
The BSoD has been existing since Windows 1 but it is Steve Ballmer who was one of the main authors of the text in it. He remade the text for lessening the stress under which Windows users are when seeing it.



A giant BSoD in Thailand

Here is the text of a BSoD



It seems Microsoft is aware of the three problems.
But they must find a programmer who is able to solve these small problems and it seems this is no small task for Microsoft.

Perhaps if they asked Apple or Google?

[buttsie]

Win7 and 8.1 to get cumulative updates – you no longer control your Win7 or 8.1 machine
Posted on August 15th, 2016

Hard to believe, but starting in October, we won’t have the luxury of vetting patches before they’re dumped.

https://www.askwoody.com/2016/win7-a...ative-updates/

Using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut given the collateral damage will be everyone will now be a guinea pig

Bottom line now would seem to be keep your software on a PC thats offline
regardless of what version of windows your using




The fallacy of fragmented patching in Win7 and 8.1

Blame Microsoft -- not users -- for fragmented patching in Windows 7 and 8.1

Users for the most part have only been trying to protect themselves from 'Get Windows 10' nagware and Microsoft snooping

Too many in the PC industry have been repeating Microsoft's claim about fragmented Windows 7 and 8.1 patching, and how we must now move to cumulative updates in order to bring stability to the patching process.

Bah.

https://www.askwoody.com/2016/the-fa...-win7-and-8-1/


Just a reminder

MS-DEFCON 3:

Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent.
Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems.

Posted on August 9th, 2016
https://www.askwoody.com/2016/patch-...tches-are-out/

[Misrule]

For those of you considering dumping MS and moving to Linux, the learning curve is steeper than you might expect. If you are steeped in MS, there are lots of things you take for granted e.g. where/how to find files, drive names, etc., that are different on Linux.
I am working to install Mint 18 as a dual boot with Windows and am having to spend a lot of time at it. Just so you know