Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall Dell has predicted PC sales will be flat next year, despite the potential of the AI PC and the slow replacement of Windows 10. “We have not completed the Windows 11 transition,” COO Jeffrey Clarke said during Dell’s Q3 earnings call on Tuesday. “In fact, if you were to look at it relative to the previous OS end of support, we …
And what exactly is that potential for the consumer ?
We already have the abomination that is Cortana - which users are apparently switching off in droves.
Our browsers are already doing their utmost to try and guess what URL we are typing and fill in automatically.
What is pseudo-AI going to bring the user ? A super Clippy that will write our emails automagically ?
Big deal. Why would the consumer pay for new hardware when what he's got already does the job fine ?
the potential of the AI PC and the slow replacement of Windows 10
Agreed. PC's equipped with extra 'AI' chips that provide minimal benefit purely to support tons of vibe coded shit that no-one asked for which has been rammed into an OS that is not fit for purpose and that no-one wants because it's unusable. That's not a good enough reason to renew your hardware.
As it stands, an AI PC is a solution looking for a problem. It will remain that way until a genuinely useful program/feature comes along that can actually utilise the NPU.
If there's no killer feature that can utilise the NPU and provide real-world benefit? What's the point in shelling out for an AI PC? At the moment, the only thing they've got is "future proofing"...
"As it stands, an AI PC is a solution looking for a problem. It will remain that way until a genuinely useful program/feature comes along that can actually utilise the NPU."
If I run asitop on my Mac, I see the NPUs fire into action if I do subject or sky selection in Lightroom or Photoshop, so they will be used for various things in the background.
"If there's no killer feature that can utilise the NPU and provide real-world benefit? What's the point in shelling out for an AI PC? At the moment, the only thing they've got is "future proofing"..."
Caveat: I have no idea if the same can be said for a PC. For example, running Ollama locally makes zero use of the NPU on the beefy corporate Lenovo that was recently handed to me. Co-Pilot doesn't seem to do anything locally.
My existing HP laptop is now 4 years old and although I'm planning to retire at the end of 2026, I' seriously considering buying a new non-AI laptop as there are some very good deals.
I have no foreseeable use for AI unless it can go out on site for me, do a site survey, identify any issues on site and then write my report. Oh, and have a coffee and a chat with the customer - something that often leads to additional work.
As noted elsewhere, AI is a solution looking for a problem.
M$ is desperately looking for a killer app that will be indispensable to everyone in order to boost software (preferably subscription software) sales and that will require a shiny new PC to run it.
AI isn't that app and is simply burning up power to tell someone what plants to have in their dining room [Samsung phones, I'm pointing at you].
I can't think of anything more important than deciding whether to have a spider plant or a peace lily in my dining room. [/sarcasm off]
"Oh, and have a coffee and a chat with the customer - something that often leads to additional work."
As we scour the earth to 'drive out costs' and 'double down on lean processes' and 'leverage AI(*)' as much as possible, this is the dimension that tends to get squeezed out. I bet there was no data capture process for recording your conversations and estimating their impact. Humans are basically chimpanzees with a software upgrade. The MBA types tend to forget this.
Icon: good luck with the retirement.
(*) AI has a long and tortuous history from the perceptron onwards. The acronym these days refers to LLM technology, producing plausible prose from sampling the interwebs. Other versions are available.
"The marketing campaign for the Edsel is a case study in hype backfiring. Ford spent millions on a teaser campaign that promised to revolutionize the car industry. However, when the Edsel was finally revealed, it failed to live up to the inflated expectations. The aggressive marketing raised anticipation to a level that the product couldn't match, leading to disappointment and disinterest among consumers"
I use Windows 7 on everything, and I have all the AI functionality I could possibly need immediately at hand.
I could conceivably boot up my Windows XP machine from 2001 and get all the AI I need on there as well.
AI is a server-side feature, not dependent on client hardware.
Well, good for you. Like me, you're not the target group.
I'd say that Microsoft's campaign, which it seems to me as much about installing all the hooks for its commercial services and advertising on users' machines, has fallen well below expectations. Businesses are more or less forced to comply because of the costs of potential risks of not doing so, most consumers will take what's on the market and have thus been moving to Windows over the last few years. Microsoft does maintain a synthetic list of systems that it no longer "considers" suitable for Windows 11, but on which you can easily install it. Manufacturers hoped the list would encourage businesses to replace inventory wholesale, but they haven't and Microsoft doesn't care either. As long as you're running a full-fat MS365 plus CoPilot, they no longer care what the hardware is.
Wise? No, it was a bad idea.
Now your are stuck with a yearly ritual of searchin all over the "Interwbes" on who to install the yearly Win11 2xH2 mega update, as those are not automatic for Non-supported machines. and each 2xH2 is supported only for 24 months.
Some years (like 22H2, 23H2 and 24H2) those are a full fat re-install, some years, like 25H2, just download a tool from microsoft and turn on a lot of disabled features that came de-activated as patches.
But the point is, you have to actively search for the "year-du-joure" method, and manualy do it.
You had the FREE ESU to take you to 2026, and beyond that:
-Massgrave (not recomended) could tidy you up to 2028
- If your machine is old, Windows Server 2019 with desktop experience could help you all the way to early 2030 for approx U$D 35
- If your machine is of a more recent vintage, Windows Server 2021 with desktop experience could help you all the way to early 2033 for approx U$D 35
So, plenty of better options than "Rufus + Win11 on unsupported machine" from a security patches support point of view.
Upgrading to the latest annual feature update) is really not difficult for anyone with reasonable computer skills - download and mount the ISO and start the installer with:
setup /product server
It will then install the latest W11 version (it doesn't matter whehter the machine is running W10 or an earlier W11 release - it will upgrade whatever).
As for clean installs, this generally just works provided the computer has at least a TPM 1.2 and Secure Boot (doesn't matter what CPU). Anything which doesn't have a TPM at all or doesn't support Secure Boot might require Rufus. Or you could just install W10 and use the above method to upgrade it to W11.
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"Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift, yet PC sales have stalled"
Irrespective of the sales issue, Windows 10 is the new Windows 7 and people would prefer to stick with that rather than the new, and wholly unnecessary, Windows 11 bling. It doesn't help either that it was Microsoft that actually promised that Windows 10 would be the last ever Windows with a rolling programme of improvements.
Since according to Uncle Mikey and his buddy Jeff all-knowing, all-seeing AI will reduce or eliminate the need for people to do tech support, engineering, design, or pretty much anything other than Sales. Keep on laying off those experienced employees in favor of cheap new grads or better yet, bots. Let's see how that goes.
They've already done this transition. Call any of these companies now and you get to talk to AI which asks your ridiculous questions which don't apply to your situation, and blocks you from speaking to a human. You go around in circles until you give up.
They consider this a success. What sad times we live in.
"Since according to Uncle Mikey and his buddy Jeff all-knowing, all-seeing AI will reduce or eliminate the need for people to do tech support, engineering, design, or pretty much anything other than Sales"
I fully agree, and we saw how well that crude cost cutting policy worked out with last month's huge Amazon AWS outage.
I'm wondering when car companies stop pushing for subscriptions and just script a random mileage milestone for the car to immediately right turn into a wall at a good speed so you have to buy a new one.
That you survive is irrelevant, they needs they cut bro.
That is a concerning statement. A company in an established market should be able to survive and profit in a flat market, okay “investors” filled with all the AI hype and ever increasing profits might not be happy, but the underlying business should be viable.
Yes, I think we have reached a point in the western industrial countries where anyone who wants a PC/laptop has got one, so it is a replacement market.
So I think new growth is probably China and India and perhaps parts of Africa? And.... tariffs encouraging import substitution in China and to a lesser extent India.
Am I wrong? Corrections welcome, post evidence so I can learn.
Funny that, outside of businesses 90% of people don't give a shit about their kit as long as it works.
The remaining 10% don't want the new kit as they can see that it's a shit filled money grab.
There is probably a 0.1% in there that are very excited influencer and content-creator types since it'll help them generate even more of the slop that the rest of us are sick of seeing. but they've already bought it I guess.
Earlier this year, when Adobe decided my desktop GPU was junk, and MS decided its CPU was no good for W11, I looked into speccing a new machine. Horrible mongrel mobos, with varying numbers of slots running at different speeds, CPU/socket dead-ends and overpriced and under available GPUs soon put paid to that idea. I went with a refurb and saved a couple of grand. The "old" desktop is starting a new life (with RAM and CPUs doubled) with Linux as a file and media server...
I did try using AI to help with the system design, but it made absolutely horrendous compatibility errors.
Windows 12 will come fitted with Copilot+, Recall, and as many other pointless AI features as it can get away with in order for you to be forced into yet another upgrade because the laptop you bought last week to keep Windows 11 happy will be obsolete due to this new AI fad that will probably go the way of most fads
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