Gartner's Windows 11 adoption advice: Explore but don't rush Analyst firm Gartner has advised its customers what to do about Windows 11: get familiar with it and plan for eventual adoption, but don't rush to implement. In advice titled "Positioning Windows 11 and Preparing to Deploy", Gartner research vice president Stephen Kleynhans assesses the new OS as offering an "overdue facelift …
The task is a lot more complicated the more remote workers you have, especially the more you have that never visit your offices.
I don't see anyone wanting to even begin thinking about this as early as next year. I think next year will be dedicated to seeing how work life changes once things (I hope!) finally return to normal next year. How many people will return to the office? How many will remain permanent remote workers? Until you know that, it is impossible to begin planning for anything related to Windows 11.
So I think 2023 is the earliest we begin to see pilots, and 2024 is the earliest to begin the migration. Which is why I keep saying there's almost 100% chance Microsoft is forced to cave on their 2025 date for ending standard support for Windows 10. No way are big corporate customers going to accept paying for "extended support" because Microsoft surprised them with a new OS release (which provides basically no benefit to an enterprise over Windows 10) during a pandemic!
I'm still on Win7Pro64 & waiting to see if Win10 ever becomes fit for purpose. So far I've yet to hear a single story about an MS update that did *not* break something. It refuses to let me install my screen reader, so I refuse to "upgrade". If Win11 is even half as unstable as Win10 has been, I'll not be upgrading to it either. At what point will MS snap out of their delusional haze, pull their collected heads out of their singular arse, & wake up to the reality that a never ending subscription to a never ending series of forced "improvements" is the absolute *worst* path forward they can take? Sure it's profitable in the short term, but eventually all those corporations are going to conclude that it costs them too much money to remain tied to the MS behemoth. If you've just spent a couple hundred million to upgrade everything to Win10 & now MS is telling you that your hardware will need replacing in less than five years, how many of them will give MS TheFinger? Do you *really* want to do it all over again before the hardware is nearing the point where it needs to be refreshed for technical reasons rather than because MS says you have to? And for everyone *not* a corporation able to woo MS with the prospect of a fat sack of cash, we're "stuck" either sticking to an OS that just works (Win7), shits all over us (Win10), or thinks that putting a different shade of lipstick on the pig makes us want to rush out & spend yet more money to replace kit that still works fine, just is "too old" as far as MS is concerned. Fuck that. My Intel NUC with a 4th gen I3 @ 1.8GHz, 16Gb RAM, & a 256Gb SSD is still fast enough for my needs, so why should I be forced to upgrade to something that has yet to prove it is as fit for purpose as what I'm already running?
Absolutely correct. It's irrelevant what 'improvements' are made in the OS, if the front-end UI is an unusable, unintuitive mess with all commonly used functionality that has been present for the past 20 years either hidden or removed completely, then it is not fit for purpose.
I also notice MS are saying this 'upgrade' is to enable better security. Well if they'd have built it sensibly in the first place instead of pushing out the dogs dinner they did in NT and building on top of that things would probably be a lot better now.
It seriously is no surprise that more home users are moving over to the various flavours of Linux as in most cases there's no major impediment and the hardware specs required don't really matter a jot.
If you've just spent a couple hundred million updating everything to run Windows 10 and the hardware won't run Windows 11 then you've been ripped off by your hardware vendor.
So let's say you did it 4 years ago (because hardware from 3 years ago can run Windows 11), and Windows 10 is supported until 2025, that means your hardware will be 8 years old by the time you're "forced" to upgrade.
Not the longest refresh cycle I've seen, but it's up there!
Hold up. You are suggesting that when I upgraded I bought the fastest and the best not what was more than up to the job. My processor is from 2012 (release date) and is more than fast enough for whatever I throw at it. My personal upgrade cycle is when it's twice as fast/powerful and I've been doing that since 386. I'm not going to change that now because MS want me to shell money out I don't need to.
Not suggesting that at all. Every generation of processors goes from Celeron to blazingly fast, so even though an i7 from 2012 (what I happen to be typing this on) is the same speed as an i3 from 2020 they've got different features. Like you I have no intention of replacing mine while it's still fast enough, but I'm not being "forced" to upgrade before 2025, by which point the performance (not to mention reduction in power consumption) will probably make it worth my while to upgrade.
"At what point will MS snap out of their delusional haze, pull their collected heads out of their singular arse, & wake up to the reality that a never ending subscription to a never ending series of forced "improvements" is the absolute *worst* path forward they can take?"
Probably when the money dries up.
Actually 10 is quite good, very stable. Funny how so many people have some antiquated piece of software, written by Noah that they refuse to update / upgrade and then blame MS when it doesn't work on an OS version six or so above its original target...
That's a proper user excuse that is.
Can't remember which shite old tool from the Win 3.x days that W2K b0rked, but I do remember the grief we got upgrading to it as a result.
The key point that Kleynhans made was that 11 is the thin end of the wedge that will become Windows as a service.
When 10 was being introduced, I commented here that it was a prelude to an 'As a service' model because MS had made remarks back then that indicated it was probably in their plans.
The fact that so many businesses are kumping on the AAS bandwagon makes it clear the model is to the benefit of the seller and not the customer.
It will become a standard model for a time until someone reintroduces what will be the 'novel' approach of customers actually owning what they have paid for.
> until someone reintroduces what will be the 'novel' approach of customers actually owning what they have paid for
Won't happen, because it would mean deliberately not making as much money as one could. It's as unprofessional as selling quality products. The board of directors won't have it.
The whole issue is about businesses losing their innocence: They realize they exist to make money, not to satisfy customers. "Take everything, give nothing back" is the rallying cry of a successful businesscritter (eye patch, peg leg and parrot are optional).
When the standard model is that everybody is operating on an 'as a service' basis, it iwll occur to some marketing bod that there is an opening to grab market share by offering something that is different and adding apparent value to customers.
It will never add significant value on a permanent basis anymore than any other market grabbing strategy does but if it offers a chance to a company og increasing markey share, they will sell the idea. Then, if successful others will do the same because business is led by marketing and who will do anything to get sales numbers up, then the beancounters find ways to maximise profit.
Anything that looks new and successful will have PHBs bleating and chasing after it, usually without fully thinking it through.
> The best way to make money it to satisfy your customers.
Do you seriously think Microsoft would make more money if it satisfied its customers?... How would that work?
Your phrase might be true for restaurants or hairdressers, but definitely not for global OS monopolies. Proof being that whatever Microsoft does to Windows, people still use it. They just complain a little, in private, that's all.
And MS knows it, that's why features progressively disappear, replaced by rounded corners and spaces to insert ads.
It's clearly what the utterly pointless TPM 2.0 chip requirement is for in Windows 11.
TPM is not for 'securing' the OS/Microsoft's code base (it never will, it's bug ridden spagetti-legacy code beyond repair), it's for exactly that, securing the OS to the hardware platforms from Dell/HP/Lenovo etc, going forward to create a rotating conveyor belt of obsolescence. The writing is on the wall. In other words, "Vendor lock-in (Microsoft/OEMs), sold as a security requirement".
Adding the TPM 2.0 requirement in Windows 11 is a massive 'power grab' / shift in the ownership of computers, taking away the right of consumers/SMBs to install the software they want to and continue using it past its sell by date, giving the final decision aka. "Say so" to Microsoft/Dell/HP/Lenovo etc.
I'd go as far to say, it's jointly been stipulated by Government / GCHQ, by shadowy figures that think (or were told) signed legacy MS code using TPM 2.0, will reduce the number of malware/ransomware attacks/software piracy, by some flashy MS marketing exec.
A big fat "It won't".
if there is one think that annoys we with Windows 11 (although has been very stable whilst I've been testing), is the change in right click behaviour.
Since windows 3.1 Cut/copy/paste was always in the same same position on the right click menu.
Now there is either an icon at the top or the bottom of the menu or you have to go into the more options menu.
This has slowed me down quite a bit (yes I know there are keyboard short cuts).
This. For me personally I don’t give a toss (if there’s a keyboard shortcut I use it, rodents slow me down), but I have hundreds of end users who always use the right click menu. Even worse, the “copy as path” option is now visible by default (on Win 10 it was shift-right click), which will confuse end users even more since they will only see “copy” before they stop reading. Whoever decided and/or approved to change that should be billed for all the millions of wasted hours worldwide that were the result of it. To start with, I only did a test install so far and that popped up pretty quickly.
The decisions made on the system tray : don’t bother with a bill for that guy/girl, just put him/her out of our misery. The good news : if you use DirectAccess, it still works. The bad news : you have to hunt around the abomination that is “settings” to see if you’re actually connected.
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