Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues Windows 11 24H2 is set to hit more users as the Microsoft operating system enters a "new stage of availability." Microsoft tweaked the status page for Windows 11 24H2 on its release health dashboard to announce the news. The new stage is not a pause to let Redmond deal with the known issues it has identified. Instead, it …
So Redmond has lowered its requirements in the face of its dismal performance in order to shovel its shitware to more poor, unsuspecting users.
How unsurprising.
There is nothing in Windows 11 that requires new hardware. Anything running 1 0 can run 1 1, aside from Borkzilla's stupid shenanigans.
Redmond still hasn't understood that the days where it could push everyone to upgrade are gone. Today's entry-level hardware is capable of running Windows and Office - not quickly, for sure, but those who buy entry-level hardware don't do it for speed.
Somebody at Redmond should create a nice Excel chart with the speed at which each new version of Windows has been adopted since XP. Then someone should bang some heads together to get the Board to think about what they've been doing wrong all these years.
Oh, who am I kidding. The Board ? At Redmond ? Think ?
Never gonna happen.
Actually, if you discard Microsoft's hard work to make sure CAPEX and OPEX are never evaluated at the same time you will find that Macs are actually the cheaper option.
They're only expensive if you only look at the hardware costs, but as soon as you touch software and security you will find that its usability saves so much staff time (aka OPEX) that they're the cheapest thing going by some distance. There's a reason IBM switched wholesale, and quite a lot of private banks do too.
That said, switching costs money too. Finding people who have Unix/MacOS skills is hard, and you'll need those for any transition. That's why Microsoft is so fond of entanglement and non-Open Standards: it's a barrier to change. Lock-in, thy name is Microsoft, and has been for literally decades. Plus the politics, of course.
Yeah, it's been one of those weeks.
You run a permanent "let's talk about phishing" human risk facility, and when it pretends people may need to talk to HR they go and complain to their union and you have to tone it down because exposing people to actual reality is "bad".
So, a subsequent phish leading to a zero day was *way* too successful. Not in a breach, we have enough in play to pick that up almost immediately through heuristics, but the hassle and reporting afterwards makes not being able to say "I told you so" for political reasons seriously annoying.
Beer. I need more beer.
"If IT were doing its job, phishing emails would be headed off at the pass. My own company's IT department is the only source if phishing emails I ever receive."
That should read: "If manglement lets IT do its job..."
After the last merger, our standards continue to sink, because these cool Excel Sheets (tm) with macros won't work when I block macros or everything unscannable or with broken file formats.
I've had the pleasure of using an employer supplied Macbook Air M3 since October, other than new features to turn off, it's been awesome. I'm writing this on a Late 2012 Mac mini, which was free. A lot of people pay the apple tax, just not me*.
I did buy my wife and son new M1s back in January of 2022, she needed hers for business, he needed his for school. I can be patient and wait for the best deal...
"Redmond still hasn't understood that the days where it could push everyone to upgrade are gone."
It's you who doesn't understand.
If they let you upgrade they don't get any money from you so they're not going to give you a freebie.
You don't like that? You can buy extended support.
You don't like that either? You can buy new hardware with a new W11 licence.
You don't like that either? You're worth nothing to them and they don't care what you think. They really, really don't.
They can't force you to upgrade, true. But you can't force them to give you a freebie.
It's about the money. It's as simple as that.
>> If they let you upgrade they don't get any money from you so they're not going to give you a freebie.
This is not a realistic view, since Windows is not a significant source of revenue for Microsoft. (If, indeed, it runs any profit at all.)
Microsoft's only conceivable reasons for staying in the Windows business are strategic. Its most likely goals are 1) retaining total control of the desktop, to bolster its stranglehold on money-makers like Office365, and at least maintain a place at the table on back-end and cloud stuff; and 2) driving hardware sales so as to stay in good with PC makers, ensuring they don't start pushing more systems with other OSes pre-installed - which would, in turn, work against goal number 1.
Admittedly, this strategy is not as apparent as it might be, given Microsoft's abysmal execution. The company is clearly out of ideas - building in 'features' like AI and TPM-based security, which nobody wants, while adding no significant QOL or productivity-enhancing features at all.
Remember back in the early 2000s, when 'ROI' was a term often applied - by Microsoft! - to big OS decisions? And 'power users' actually looked forward to each new release of Windows? Nowadays, the only 'benefits' of a new release are an absence of negatives - as in "support will expire on your current OS, third-party applications will stop working, and your next PC build won't run it at all (for some contrived reason)."
I suspect there's also a substantial revenue stream called intercept and personal data acquisition, helped by people helpfully now storing all their IP on Microsoft-controlled services (the whole Cloud thing). The amount of metrics that leave Windows gears is substantial, and if you even want to know what Microsoft is recording just ask an admin. They'll be able to show you what you did today, step by step.
I don't know who they're selling it too, but I suspect its US government.
So, that's my paranoia budget for the weke gone but to be fair, it IS Friday. :)
>"This is not a realistic view, since Windows is not a significant source of revenue for Microsoft. (If, indeed, it runs any profit at all.)"
"in 2022 Microsoft revenue from Windows (both OEM and commercial) decreased as percentage from revenue. In the company's annual financial report, it is stated that Windows generated $24,76B in revenue in 2022 which is 12.48% from the total revenue."
[ https://techbehemoths.com/blog/how-microsoft-makes-billions ]
Whilst other revenue streams have been growing and thus reducing MS's overall dependence on Windows (and Office) revenues, I suggest they are still significant.
It’s not just co-pilot. I was battling the fucking Outlook infestation last weekend at my in-laws. Thought I finally killed it by stopping some services on the computer. Heard this evening that the “Try new outloook” icon has again replaced the default windows mail.
Going to visit them on Sunday, with a Linux Mint Bootable USB drive and solve the problem once and for all.
>> So if they don't like Linux Mint, get them another mail program. Anything not MS should work.
If only there were more and better options.
Thunderbird is improving again, after years of hiatus, but it's still not as powerful as Outlook 2007 (though vastly nicer to work with). I spend most of my time with it mentally identifying obvious features that it lacks and existing features that could easily work better. (But also humbly thanking the team that's working on this project, as it really is our last, best hope for email.)
The only email clients that might be even slightly superior to Thunderbird seem to be subscription-based, and SaaS is a bottomless orifice that no one should willingly enter.
Until recently, I'd used Evolution successfully for years on Mint and found it more usable than the alternatives. However, a few months back, most of my mail disappeared - not physically as it's all still on the IMAP server - but nearly all messages and folders disappeared from the UI. If I deleted all the local mail directories and settings and reinstalled, the mail would reappear - for all of half an hour before disappearing again. Couldn't get to the bottom of it. A number of posts online from people reporting similar experiences.
So I'm on Thunderbird now and have configured it more or less as I want it and my experience so far is it seems to be more robust: Evolution would also periodically fail to authenticate and require a background process to be killed to recover. Still haven't found a Linux (or Android) mail client I actually like, though!
> I don't understand why the modern UI is considered better than the old fashioned one.
Because newer = better. Has always been. It doesn't matter if it's actually working or not, the simple fact it is newer means it has to be better. Whole industries are living on that (clothing for instance).
What are the advantages of WIndows 11 24h2 exactly? Oh, you get a few tweaks to something irrelevant. But you also get… connections to older NAS drives broken, for example. This happened to one of my customers. And no, it wasn’t SMB1. I spent an hour trying to figure it out, gave up, uninstalled the 24H2 upgrade and told our RMM patch system to block the fucking thing.
Brilliant, Microsoft. These are not YOUR computers to tweak as you want because of your whims and fancies! These are not your small businesses to play with and force co-pilot, new outlook and “news and interests” on. They’re not your computers to break!!!
This can (and I hope will) all blow up in MS’s face, when people realise that there are alternatives, perhaps with a lot less “pushing” into profit-making. I for one am getting sick of their arrogance.
Interesting about NAS drives. I'm still on Win10, and it seems totally incapable of discovering one of my older D-Link NAS units. It doesn't surprise me to hear that Win11 retains backward compatibility with Win10 in this regard. (My current Linux Mint system has no such problem.)
Every time I go looking for a fix for one of these endless Windows bugs, I find long forum threads that simply peter out with no solution in sight. Other than the ones on Microsoft forums, of course - those always end with some MS employee arbitrarily declaring the issue to be "resolved."
"incapable of discovering one of my older D-Link NAS units"
Deprecated SMB version issue? I've seen that after a Linux upgrade There wasn't an option to upgrade the NAS (Buffalo rather than D-Link) but I could also access it over FTP (it runs entirely locally). Northern Powergrid have helped fix that problem permanently. After a power cut in the middle of running disk repair after an earlier power cut it's now unrecoverable.
It wasn't just older NAS it broke. I could not connect to my fully patched, up-to-date, still supported QNap NAS after the update. I even disabled every file share option except for the highest level SMB. Still nothing. I kept getting some NTLM authentication error. I changed every group policy entry related to NTLM -- still no go. I even used the IP address instead of the name (i.e. \\192.168.1.xxx\) -- still no go. I went back to 23H2 and everything worked.
And for those in the corner of the gallery doing creative things who would say just use a Mac; normally I’d agree, but latest MacOS has broken my SMB connection to my samba fileserver and I’m still waiting a fix. If you haven’t already upgraded, don’t yet until this howler gets fixed.
I recall the claim that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows. It would simply be updated as they went along.
Yes, I know MS deny they said this: It was one of their engineers at a press conference, but they didn't correct it and seemed to stand by it.
So I'm standing by it, too: Window 10 is the LAST version of Windows.
Took about four hours to download and install here. No BSOD, but a range of minor issues.
It uninstalled Startallback without asking (a 3rd party program to restore win10 style taskbars). RDP client settings all lost. Graphics drivers replaced with something that makes everything grind to a halt.
All network drives were disconnected and wouldn't reconnect without going into GPO and changing some settings (it forced SMB3 on, which many NAS and file servers don't support)
None of this was explained or optional during the upgrade, it just did it. Took several hours to get back functioning.
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