5 months later, 37.7% of Windows 10 PCs are running the May 2020 Update... Wait, people are still on 1809? While Microsoft celebrates Halloween with scary data deletion stories of Windows past, May's Windows 10 has swiped the popularity prize from its predecessor. A chew through the market share of its precursors has left the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (aka 2004) top dog, with a 37.7 per cent share of PCs, compared to 32.4 per cent …
My Windows 10 is pretty vanilla and still running the 2004 version so I don't think this is surprising. Microsoft seems to have some additional heuristics for machines so that not all updates are installed on all machines at once. Quite often there's "Dave, you're not ready for the update yet" message.
None of this is helped by the weird name and numbering scheme: 2004 is 04/20 so April 2020 and 1909 September 2019, I think. If the tried and tested major.minor.patch system is good enough for our fruity overlords at Apple, why isn't it good enough for Microsoft?
I'm just waiting for the conspiracy theory nuts to look at the patch name, then draw a very thin line to the naming conventions of flu strains, then draw another very thin line to Bill Gates, and dribble some bat-shit insane sproutings on a blog somewhere, to be picked up by QAnon.
I wonder if Microsoft went and actually asked the general users of Windows 10 (Not fanbois) whether they wanted these 6 monthly updates how many would be happy to stay on the version they are on and just receive security updates and not have to deal with these feature updates. I bet its upwards of 80 to 90% of people.
I have never really found anything new in theses updates that I couldn't have managed without.
None of my home PCs have been deemed worthy by Microsoft to receive that 2004 version- not even a rejection message. Nothing.
And while I'm not at all missing it I am curious about why this might be- or more precisely, how it occurs. Why some got the update, some get a hold message and some, such as myself are just "ghosted".
I'd like to upgrade but the 2004 update isn't available because it's incompatible with the Conexant audio driver on my 2016 ThinkPad!
1903, which I use, goes EOL in December I believe. Perhaps that'll give me the necessary motivation to switch to Linux....
"Perhaps that'll give me the necessary motivation to switch to Linux...."
There's no better time than the present. However, if you're saying that the state of a Windows update in 2020 (current year argument) is the reason to switch to Linux you might not want to bother. If all the garbage they shoveled out prior to their more recent and (arguably) usable products and services hadn't changed your mind by now you're probably immune to whatever situation or inconvenience they can toss at you.
This is a valid question. What do we do when Microsoft high priests decide to stop offering upgrades and then EOL the only version of W10 that could be run.
I have a 6 years old Dell Latitude E6530 which runs just fine and, according to my estimate will keep doing so for at least 5 or 6 more years but only Windows 7 is available for it. I don't see why this machine should be dumped in a landfil when it is still perfectly usable.
2009 toshiba laptop here.... had vista on it until I got hold of it... wont even look at win 10
Runs the latest linux mint happily enough to be a usable machine for basic surfing/shopping/e.mailing and playing halflife 2
Wonder if I could change the HDD for a SDD to make it quicker as thats the only thing slowing it...
PS I hate the forced e.waste because companies bloat the software up then EoL it .. and make the new version unable to run on older machines..
My 2008 Dell portable is currently running Windows 10 2004 without an issue. With only 3 GB of ram it might not be the fastest toy, but it runs and updates, though not yet to the current offering. It shares that fate with my 2019 Dell desktop, that has also been left in the MS winter, though with nothing worth having that offer is not very appealing, perhaps more pointless than desirable.
Yet two of my devices that aren't offered 2004 (prev) are also Dells. A reasonably recent laptop and an older big box. Plenty of space. Plenty of RAM. Laptop has a new SSD. Tower has three HDDs . Each has a C: partition far bigger than it needs to be.
Only this week I moved to the latest from 1709, because it was stable, and I'm not a fan of change, and more importantly I trust windows updates as much as a fart while sick.
And immediately regretted it. Messed up so many things, a lot of things no longer work, and am looking at doing a full system wipe and redo at the weekend.
I don't think I've ever done a big windows update without it going titsup in some way that made it not worth the effort.
I don't believe it's the version I strongly believe it's the update combined with the ecosystem I run. It's just too many moving parts and too many interconnected thingybobs to then do an upgrade on a moving train ya know ?
I'll wipe and install the newest version. Then next year I'll wipe and do it again. It's about 2-3h out of my day once a year so when worked out like that it's not that big of a thing.
Plus the feeling of a fresh system with zero bloat can't really be beaten.
Been running Linux mint now for quite a while. Initial flaky start appears to have been a duff SSD.
It's taken a while, but it can do everything I need that a windows machine can do, including label printing and updating the Garmin GPS.
Been dabbling for ages and finally took the plunge when I acquired a machine with a windows 8 licence, not going to happen.
I have a Surface pro 5 LTE and it has failed to upgrade to Windows 10 May 2020 Update (aka 2004).....it just keeps failing.
The way I am looking at it, is that at least the thing is working and I get the security updates.
If Microsoft are failing to get their own hardware to update, it does not fill you with confidence!!!
Migrating everyone to new releases takes time. Realistically, for many organisations, they would only have the capability to do this once a year. I know where I work, we don't have time to dedicate to testing a new release every 6 months.
Its why when I look at our stats, most of our clients are on 1803 or 1903. We've only just started rolling out 2004 - but rolling it out to all the old machines will take time, as we prefer to do fresh installs rather than upgrades too.
>Realistically, for many organisations, they would only have the capability to do this once a year.
Realistically, many organisations just don't see the point in wasting monies on the constant new release churn. MS seemed to have a better understanding of business needs back in the W2K/XP/2K3 days, until it tried to force the W7 refresh and things haven't been the same since...
The software I work with (medical devices) uses .NET and because MS seem to change the .NET version with every release (or every other release) of Win10 we simply cannot keep up with the testing. So, we have quite a lot of customers still using 1709 and 1803 because they are on a 3 to 5 year upgrade cycle of our software and the version they currently have will not work with .NET 4.8. Some are still running Win7. We have given up on the spring releases of Win10 and focus on the autumn/fall releases but even then it takes months to test a new version of our software with that version of Win10 due to the fact that our software connects to so many other systems. Win10 has become a royal PITA because of the constant updates. At least with Win7 we could block the .NET updates.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
