Windows 10 business refresh will revive PC shipments The pandemic fueled buying frenzy in the PC industry looks to be well and truly over with analysts at IDC forecasting a double digit decline in shipments this year, and growth hopes for next pinned on a Windows 10 enterprise refresh. Unit sales soared in 2020 and 2021 as government imposed lockdowns forced a change in the way …
I'd spin that as "Businesses that updated equipment at the beginning of the had little incentive to purchase new machines before windows 11 launched, and now that is it has they can confidently purchase new windows 10 machines as needed, as it is clear that there is no compelling reason to move the fleet to windows 11 until closer to the 2025 end of support for windows 10."
So yeah, now that the cloud of uncertainty has cleared, there will at least be a trickle of sales as new users and accidents claim two year old pandemic hardware, and managers feel pressure from the great resignation to upgrade employees from the "whatever wasn't on 6 week backorder" trade show special to a decently specced machine.
Looks like IDC are putting the cart before the horse.
I expect businesses to upgrade because the current systems have reached end of lease etc. and so, given W10 goes EOL in 2025, will also decide whether to deploy W10 or jump to W11.
The only question is whether given the current massive increases in costs (eg. Energy), businesses will delay and extend leasing agreements.
Given a 2015 business desktop runs W10 comfortably fast for many office users, a 3-4 year refresh will be driven more by finance/leasing considerations than IT need, unless you are determined to install W11…
The COST of a businesss (in this ecconomic downturn) upgraing thir systems to WIN 11 is very slim.
Did an anylsis of this for a automotive company 8 systems and the cost of....
1) New Hardware 8 computers and associated pheriphals
2) Cost of software
a) WIN 11 PRO
b) Cost of Accounting upgrade
c) Cost of Office 2021 PRO
d) cost of upgrading Automative scan tools and applcations
e) Cost if install and set up
f) Cost of transfer of Data and application sttings
So you see it is NOT just the O/S its all the asociated its all the other time consuming tasks.
So we are creating computers using lots of different materials and then we eventually have to throw them all away when a new operating system is released, how is this going to work for humanity over the next few thousand years? Where's all the material trash going?
Originally we started just picking up rocks and chipping them to make an axe, then throwing them away when we figured out how to put the little bits on the end of a branch to make a spear ... these days we're digging up tons of materials, using heat and chemicals to start to make new CPU's ... overall heating the planet a little more when the data gets larger and travels faster with a new computer needing more power before we upgrade and throw it away, needing more work and heat to build the new one.
Personally I believe there is another few years life in Windows 10 before organisations look to upgrade. The last few years I've seen organisations buying SSD drives and more RAM, and upgrading their desktops for faster performance. Some replaced desktops with laptops thanks to the pandemic. They'll want to get more years out of that investment first, before buying new kit, I believe.
With the impact of cost of living having the potential to drive businesses to the wall (the overall trend of business opening/closing is still downward) and advertiser spending slowing to the degree that the likes of Meta are squeaking a little... I think the sales over the next twelve months will be worse than the figures quoted by another 50% on top of what they've already forecast. Unless governments step in to save the day; for which there's still time.
Making companies purchase new hardware just to run the latest software is no longer ethical. Withdrawing support to further pressure companies to do this is also out of order. It creates unnecessary landfill just to line the coffers of $soft and Intel.
Apart from one machine, we have migrated away from Windows to Linux. Except for two apps we have managed to live without it and they now run in VirtualBox under Linux. However, even those apps are now saying that they will run on Win 10 & 11 only.
When will this end?
We use Linux on the server side, MacOS on the desktops because their refresh cycle seems to run pretty parallel with our needs and they have at least made a start on more substantial recycling than just shredding the kit. I hope they manage to expand this to laptops.
The key advantage we have with MacOS is that we can have good desktop apps with UI stability over time - it's the one of the many reasons we avoid Microsoft software altogether. It's also easier to secure and integrate with Linux.
Apart from all the reason already mentioned why constant upgrading is not good for humanity or the planet, does anyone consider what a typical work PC is used for these days?
Many things run in the cloud nowadays, needing only a web browser, which can run on pretty much any PC. It doesn't have to be Windows 11, or Windows 10 or windows anything. A mac or Linux or even an android will be just as good. I think there will come a time (within a decade) when the work that most people do will only require a browser on a very thin client. Yes, "power users" may need something more, but a browser running on any OS will give a nice window into the cloud for 90%+ of business users. It needs a few brave IT depts to stick their neck out and try to make that break from windows and its constant upgrades and new hardware.
It will almost be a return to the greenscreens already discussed here today, or the fabled "network computer" of the late 90's.
True, although there might be more to take into account there. If that environmental aspect is considered, you should also factor in that on the other side of that wire there is a massive data centre to make that stuff in the browser happen, on average gobbling up enough power to keep a couple of small cities happy for a year. I know humanity has the tendency to not look further than the fence of their own garden, but their behaviour and impact does stretch a bit further than that fence. For example, in pre-internet days, we watched whatever was on the Beeb. It was a passive experience with a certain energy consumption. Now we got the streaming services, that let everybody, everywhere see what they want, when they want it. To accommodate that, we require huge amounts of energy. Any time, all the time, any where. And much more than we ever did before in those "just the Beeb" days. So yes, if you watch e.g. yesterday evenings news during your morning commute on your phone, your (really?) Facebook feed or Twitter, your action looks pretty innocent. But if you think about the whole infrastructure and energy consumption behind that, the tally might look shockingly different. And then look around you and see how many are fiddling with their phone...
So yes, sure, the browser platform might be a solution on the user side. But if we are doing this for the trees, we might find that SaaS and cloud and stuff is just a human way to make more money, as always, without little consideration for that environment we started this comment with.
The other day we had "VMware customers optimistically wait for Broadcom’s impact" (https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/vmware_broadcom_voxpop/)
In this sentence "optimistically" means "with trepidation but hope it won't be too bad". We are optimistic that the cheque is in the post = we don't have much hope but it will be nice if it is there.
Now we have "Or so says a hopeful IDC after releasing latest forecast of doom" as a sub heading.
Is this "hopeful" in the religious sense. We live in hope of the second coming of Jesus (it's been a long wait).
Or is this "hopeful" meaning "we have no expectation of".
If MS didn't keep making Windows worse we could still have Windows 7 (which was the last reasonable version of Windows). Instead we have had ever worse bloated heaps of crap which only runs slower and needs more resources to do it.
Windows 11 has more than three years worth of work to unbork it enough to be an upgrade. That deadline will be pushed.
However, we can expect a couple of aggressive blitzes where M$ tries to hard sell the os in the channel, overrides our wishes and installs a "bypass your sysadmins restrictions and test drive windows 11 today!" button that will hitchhike in on top of a 9.8 severity bug fix. And probably require a per user account manual registry hack to suppress that has to be done after every windows update, and thrice each blood moon.
You know, their usual tricks.
Making W10 a useless POS/leaving it to fester and rot while enhancing W11.
They'll get makers to stop allowing W10 to be installed on new kit without some devlish hacking.
If you have been around IT kit for long enough, you will have seen this before.
"The day is not done unless Notes won't run."
> Making W10 a useless POS
I’ve noticed an increased frequency of W10 updates (non-enterprise licence/install) that do something to the user profile and so on first login (after update) the user is forced to go through the @no I don’t want an MS account just let me login to my existing domain user account.
Also on those system that can take W11, getting new nags to upgrade now; whilst those that can’t getting similar nags that you really need to buy a new system…
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