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Computerworld's copy of Windows 10 Pro preview -- installed in a virtual machine from a disk image, not upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1 -- will run indefinitely as long as it doesn't desert the Insider preview program.
Everything's free of charge as long -- as users remain on the Insider branch forever
Microsoft ...took another shot at clarifying its Windows 10 upgrade policy, telling Windows Insider participants that they had to remain in the preview program if they had not upgraded from an eligible PC but wanted to continue running the OS free of charge.
....
"Let me start by restating very clearly that Windows 10, whether you get it on 7/29 or whether you got it in a preview form through the Windows Insider Program, is intended to be installed on [a] Genuine Windows device," said Gabriel Aul, engineering general manager for Microsoft's operating system group, in a revised blog. "Genuine" is Microsoft lingo for a legitimate Windows license that has been activated with a product key.
Aul also admitted that his Friday announcement -- an Insider preview program housekeeping status update -- "created some unintended confusion."
No kidding.
On Friday, Aul said all testers would get the stable code on July 29, the day Microsoft plans to release the new OS, then later used Twitter to expand on the topic: Bottom line, Insiders would get the final build even if they didn't install the preview on a Windows 7 or 8.1 PC eligible for the one-year free upgrade.
That seemed to leave open a loophole through which people with Vista- or Windows XP-powered PCs, users who wanted to equip a virtual machine (VM) with Windows 10, or even those running an older-but-pirated copy of Windows, could score a freebie.
However, amendments made Saturday to Aul's blog threw everything into doubt by striking references to "activation" and reminding everyone that "only people running Genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1" could upgrade to Windows 10 via the free offer. The changes signaled a retreat from the position of the day before.
Aul weighed in again on Sunday, tweeting assurances that as long as testers continued to run a pre-release build linked to their Microsoft Account -- no matter how it was installed -- Windows 10 would remain activated, and thus considered legit.
Yesterday, he confirmed as much, even as he stressed that Windows 10 "is intended" to be installed on a device running a legitimately licensed edition, a curious juxtaposition.
"This is pre-release software and is activated with a pre-release key," Aul said Monday of the Insider previews. "Each individual build will expire after a time, but you'll continue to receive new builds, so by the time an older pre-release build expires you'll have received a new one."
In plain English: Anyone can install Windows 10 on a device or within a VM -- ignoring the prerequisite of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 -- by using one of the beta's disk images (in .iso format) and run the preview indefinitely and free of charge as long as they remain on the Insider branch.
However, opt out of Insider -- as users can -- and that copy of Windows 10 will expire, and thus drop into some kind of degraded state. (At the very least Microsoft marks "non-genuine" copies with a watermark; there may be other ramifications, but the company's not yet spelled them out.)
"If you decide to opt-out of the program and upgrade to the 7/29 build, you will be subject to exactly the same terms and conditions that govern the offer that was extended to all Genuine Windows 7 and 8.1 customers," said Aul, referring to the limited-time free upgrade. "This is not a path to attain a license for Windows XP or Windows Vista systems. If your system upgraded from a Genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 license, it will remain activated, but if not, you will be required to roll back to your previous OS version or acquire a new Windows 10 license. If you do not roll back or acquire a new license the build will eventually expire."
Again, in plain English: Abandon Insider and the "free" Windows 10 isn't free any longer, unless the test device was upgraded from an eligible Windows 7/8.1 PC, in which case the free upgrade offer applies.
Clear?
Computerworld interpreted Aul's tweet of Sunday in that exact way, but because of Microsoft's confused messaging, that reading wasn't guaranteed to be correct. Now it is.
The loophole will continue to exist, assuming one can stomach the feature and change churn of Insider in perpetuity. But why? Microsoft can obviously detect machines equipped with Windows 10 and activated with one of the pre-release product keys. Also obvious is that Microsoft knows which systems were upgraded to the Windows 10 beta from an eligible Windows 7 or 8.1 OS. Why doesn't it just shut off the preview spigot to those who did not upgrade to Windows 10 within the limits of the free offer?
The simplest explanation is that Microsoft wanted to keep as many users as feasible on the Insider branch. Come July 29, it's likely that a large number of those now running the beta will opt out for the stable build, deserting the fast-changing, bleeding-edge previews.
Supporting that was Aul's original Friday post, where he labeled one section "Stay with us as a Windows Insider," and urged users to remain with the preview. "We hope that we'll continue to provide you great reasons to remain a Windows Insider," Aul said.
Insider is key to Microsoft's one-step-at-a-time testing of feature, functionality, UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) updates.
Once Microsoft completes an update internally, it will be seeded to Insiders, and Insiders only, who will run it for at least a month. At the end of that month, Microsoft will decide if the update is suitably stable -- and that bugs uncovered by participants have been patched -- for the much larger number of consumers tapped into the "Current Branch" distribution track.
Current Branch users will then install and run the update, again for about a month, again uncovering flaws or problems, before Microsoft greenlights said update for the "Current Branch for Business," the track for Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise, and the cadence Microsoft wants most corporate PCs to adopt.
Both Insider and Current Branch will thus play the role of lab rat for Current Branch for Business users, testing updates before they're released to Microsoft's most important customers: enterprises.
Without a suitable number of Insiders, that plan is in trouble, and bugs that should have been caught will instead worm their way onto hundreds of millions of consumer PCs, creating a PR and fix-it-fast nightmare. Or worse, corporate machines get a buggy update, or more accurately, a buggier update than Microsoft intended, a risk enterprise-dependent Redmond simply can't afford.
By giving customers, no matter how they came to Windows 10, a way to continue running the Insider branch -- and giving those ineligible for the free upgrade the motivation to get on Insider -- Microsoft ensures that the pool of testers remains large enough to serve its purpose.
This story, "Microsoft takes yet another shot at defining 'free' for Windows 10 testers" was originally published by Computerworld.
Want a free TV? Buy a Windows 10 PC from Dell. Like other computer vendors, Dell is waging a desperate struggle to stop customers from defecting to smartphones, phablets, and tablets. Dell was so eager to ride the Windows 10 upgrade wave, it even offered customers free shipping and a guarantee that their new PCs would arrive on July 29 -- launch day for the new operating system.
There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned salesmanship, even if the TV giveaway reminds me of the toasters offered to new customers by failing banks years ago. But the arrival of the new Windows 10 has left many owners of older PCs out in the cold and has laid bare the differing priorities of Microsoft and the hard-pressed PC makers.
Microsoft doesn't care if you buy a new PC
Microsoft, desperate to attract developers to its tarnished platform, is doing everything it can to push Windows 10 onto as many PCs as possible. It's even forgoing significant amounts of revenue by offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade for at least a year, a clever business move that has pleased enterprise IT.
PC makers, of course, are always much less interested in having their customers upgrade their existing systems than in selling new ones. That's not new, but with Windows 10, the contradiction between the needs of the vendors and Microsoft has never been sharper.
Microsoft damaged the PC makers by producing the deservedly unpopular Windows 8, and there was plenty of public grumbling by PC executives about it. Now Microsoft is telling people who have those unloved systems they don't need new ones. That will only perpetuate the PC makers' pain.
Something had to give, and in this case, it's the needs of the owners of older PCs.
The "supported" list -- and beyond
Whenever a new Windows operating system debuts, driver and BIOS issues emerge. It's tough on businesses, and it's tough on consumers who may suddenly find that they can no longer print, connect to the network, or use an expensive graphics card.
I've checked in with the major PC makers and found that some of them have Web pages listing what they call "supported systems" that will run Windows 10. Those pages are not so easy to find, but they exist at Lenovo, Dell, Acer, and Toshiba. HPand Asus provide system lookup pages for checking out individual PCs.
What does "supported" mean? In most cases it means that the PC maker has updated drivers or has tested the system, including the BIOS, and has determined it can run Windows 10. That's straightforward.
Less clear, though, is what to do if a PC is not on the list. In some cases, the system will run Windows 10, although the manufacturer has not written drivers or tested it. In other cases, it won't run Windows 10 at all.
Microsoft has provided its own tool to test for Windows 10 compatibility. The Get Windows 10 app was pushed onto many PCs before Windows 10's release during routine updates. If you fire up the app and select the Check Your PC option, the app will scan your system for potential Windows 10 compatibility problems.
What happens if Microsoft says your PC is OK to upgrade, but that system isn't on the vendor's supported list? Here, for example, is what an Acer spokeswoman told me:
We will release any required BIOS updates and/or drivers for any systems on the approved list. If a product is not on the approved list, a customer may still be able to install Windows 10, but we will not release new BIOS/drivers for Windows 10, cannot guarantee it will work, etc.
That's pretty much what I heard from the other companies, too.
Welcome to patch city
The worst case is when Microsoft's compatibility app gives the thumbs-up -- and the system won't run properly once the update has been performed. If the system was on the vendor's Windows 10 approved list, that vendor should provide support. If not (particularly if it's an old, out-of-warranty system) the chances of getting vendor support are slim.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is already whipping out patches on an operating system that has only been live for a couple of weeks. Microsoft has released the second "cumulative update" -- meaning a major set of patches -- for Windows 10 in only three days.
Overall, Windows 10 is a huge improvement over Windows 8, but the reluctance of PC makers to support many potentially viable PCs smacks of planned obsolescence. That won't do much to build loyalty at a time when the PC makers should be showering the thinning ranks of their customers with love.
San Francisco journalist Bill Snyder writes frequently about business and technology. He writes the Tech's Bottom Line blog for InfoWorld, and his work appears regularly in CIO.com and the publications of Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
Lower licensing revenue from consumers will be offset by increases in search, games and apps, company's CFO says
Microsoft executives last week further fleshed out the firm's "Windows as a service" strategy, an effort to shift money-making from the traditional practice of licensing the OS to one more reliant on revenue from search, games and apps.
"When we talk about why we're upgrading the Windows 10 install base, why is that upgrade free?" Amy Hood, chief financial officer asked during a meeting with Wall Street analysts. "Why is it important to get to a modern environment? And why, when you look at the Windows interface this morning, did you see search built into the experience? You saw gaming built into the experience. You saw a unified store. These are all new monetization opportunities once a PC is sold."
Hood then showed the analysts a chart that displayed revenues from the sale of Windows licenses for consumer devices -- Microsoft dubs these "non-Pro" licenses to separate them from licenses from more advanced versions that are sold for business PCs -- to illustrate the declining income.
Windows 8.1 is the non-Pro edition of that operating system, while Windows 8.1 Pro is the business version.
"You can see when PC consumer shipments got weak, we adjusted our approach. We adjusted our approach in terms of SKU [stock-keeping unit] strategy, making sub 9-in. devices free," said Hood. "We added new pricing strategy for opening price point devices. And we had programs to drive genuine Windows attach in high-piracy markets."
Hood was referring to the multiple moves Microsoft has made over the last year to fuel device sales, including a free license to any device with a screen under 9-in. -- smartphones and smaller tablets -- and the subsidy to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) via Windows 8.1 with Bing. That move made the license free or very inexpensive to makers of larger cut-rate systems, like entry-level notebooks.
"It clearly had an impact on our revenue per license, but also had an important impact in driving unit growth," Hood said.
Microsoft
Revenue per consumer Windows license took a dive last year after Microsoft began giving away licenses to smartphone makers and subsidizing OEMs that built and sold cheap notebooks.
Microsoft's strategy is to go low on consumer Windows licenses, hoping that that will boost device sales, which will in turn add to the pool of potential customers for advertising, services and apps. In other words, what Microsoft gives up in selling each Windows license it figures to make up in volume elsewhere.
CEO Satya Nadella has referred to the customer revenue potential as "lifetime value" in the past -- and did so again last week during the same meeting with Wall Street -- hinting at Microsoft's strategy to make more on the back end of the PC acquisition process. The more customers, the more money those customers will bring in as they view ads, pay for services, play games and buy apps.
Hood outlined how other revenue streams were almost balancing the decline in consumer Windows licenses, using another chart that showed increasing advertising income from the Bing search engine and a much smaller contribution from PC games. Over the last two years, Hood claimed, Windows' CAGR (compound annual growth rate) was -16%; when Bing and games were added in the CAGR climbed to -1%.
Her point? Bing advertising, which has increased as a percentage of the accounting whole, and to a lesser extent games, have largely made up for the declining revenue of Windows licenses.
Microsoft
Microsoft made the point that increased search revenue was a core part of its 'Windows as a service' strategy, its plan to make up for declining licensing income with money made in other ways from consumers.
"What this chart does is take the revenue from those key franchises and adds them together to show that the mix of our consumer monetization has already pivoted, and has the opportunity to pivot and grow further," said Hood while describing the chart.
Hood did not include revenue from the Windows app store -- perhaps because it would have been minuscule at this point -- but Microsoft clearly expects it to be significant after the debut of Windows 10's new unified market, which will include traditional desktop applications as well as apps for mobile devices.
Hood's illustration was in part an accounting magic show -- moving revenue from one place to another for demonstration purposes -- but it also showed Microsoft's thinking about its consumer Windows revenue plans in the most detail so far. In particular, it revealed why Microsoft has embedded Bing and the Cortana assistant so deeply into Windows 10.
"Windows as a service" has at times been interpreted as a strategy that would ultimately make the operating system a subscription of some sort; Hood said nothing about that last week, instead pointing to add-on revenue as the plan.
But at another point in the meeting, Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operations officer, made a comment that hinted a subscription was, if not in the immediate future, something the company may covet. "With Windows as a service, you can only dream about what the capability might be over the long term there as we develop that and it matures," Turner said, talking about the shift from a focus on licenses to one on "annuity conversion."
This story, "Microsoft fleshes out 'Windows as a service' strategy" was originally published by Computerworld.
Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been, but it has too many rough edges to attract Windows 7 users. Continuous upgrades could change that as early as this fall
Windows 10 is much more usable than Wndows 8 or 8.1 and proudly offers a bundle of new features, including improved security, a new browser, and the voice-activated intelligent assistant Cortana. You might even call Windows 10 the most revolutionary version of Windows ever, mainly because it will be continually upgraded as part of Microsoft's "Windows as a service" effort.
But the question is not whether Windows 10 is a good upgrade for Windows 8 users -- obviously, it is. The real question is whether Windows 10 deserves to supplant Windows 7. Despite substantial new functionality in Windows 10, Windows 7 users should wait until the upgrade train brings more improvements.
Many of the new features of Windows 10 do not seem ready for prime time, including the greatly modified Start menu with live tiles, the new Edge browser, Cortana, and the Continuum method of switching between mouse and touchscreen control. They all work well enough, yet they all lack key capabilities. The lesser tile-based Windows apps vary in quality from good (Mail, Calendar) to passable (Photos, Phone Companion) to barely breathing placeholders (People, Groove Music, Movies & TV).
The new Windows 10 Start with live tiles is a major departure from previous versions.
It seems obvious that Microsoft rushed the consumer version of Windows 10 out the door in time for back-to-school season. But the “real” Windows 10 (at least the “next final” version) won’t appear until October or thereabouts, in the form of Threshold 2. Think of TH2 as an accelerated Service Pack 1, ready for the enterprise.
Meanwhile, myriad questions remain unanswered. We know that Microsoft will force updates on Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro users who aren’t connected to update servers. That posture has already created problems, with anNvidia driver hatched before its time and a patch that caused repeated Explorer restarts -- both in the past week. Those of us familiar with Microsoft’s Windows patching travails will face the future with some trepidation: How long until Microsoft force-feeds a bad patch, and how will Microsoft recover from it?
These caveats aside, there’s no doubt Windows 10 holds a spark of greatness and should please those who were disenfranchised by Windows 8’s hamfisted changes. It’s the beginning of a new Windows, with all the good and bad that entails. Let’s take a look at the details.
Ease of use
For those of us who rely on a mouse and keyboard, Windows 10’s ease of use rates right up there with Windows 7 and is light-years ahead of Windows 8/8.1. For the touch crowd, with a few exceptions noted below, Windows 10 works as well as Windows 8.1, which may be (properly) construed as damning with faint praise. There’s a learning curve with touch, along with disappointing limitations, no matter which version of Windows you currently use.
Windows 10 boots faster, works faster, and seems much more robust than either Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1. I haven’t had any problems with drivers or programs that run on Windows 8/8.1, although all of those old Metro apps are destined for the bit bucket. Clearly, the new Windows Universal apps hold great promise, but they aren’t there yet.
Windows 10’s signature new feature, of course, is the Start menu. The new Start menu combines a severely stripped-down version of the Windows 7 Start menu with a mouse-friendly field of Windows 8-like tiles.
If you’re coming from Windows 7, the left side of the Start menu will look vaguely familiar, but the Windows 10 version is much less malleable than the Windows 7 version. In Windows 10, you can’t create custom menu items, build cascading menus, or pin your own apps, files, or locations to the Start menu. You only get a fixed set of 10 apps that can be pinned to the bottom-left side of the menu, along with File Explorer and Settings, which can be removed.
If you’re coming from Windows 8/8.1 and using a mouse, the field of tiles should feel quite similar to the Metro Start screen, with the new ability to run the tiled apps in resizable windows on the desktop. Methods for grouping and manipulating the tiles are different in Windows 10, but cover much the same ground as those in Windows 8. In Windows 10, tiles are grouped rigidly in three- or four-wide groups. You can change the number of groups that are visible by widening or narrowing the Start menu. That’s considerably more restrictive than Windows 8/8.1.
If you’re coming from Windows 8.1 with a mostly tablet mindset, the new Tablet mode in Windows 10 has much of the ease-of-use benefits of touch Windows 8.1, such as spread-out tiles and the Start options hidden under a hamburger icon, with a few minor annoyances. For example, you can’t turn off the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, no matter which app is running. You’re also stuck with the rigid organization of tiles into three- or four-wide groups.
Charms? Gone. Left-side task switching? Gone. Good riddance.
No, touch has not gone away: Behold the new tablet mode of Windows 10.
Other ease-of-use improvements abound. For example, Microsoft seems to have finally perfected in-place upgrades. Cortana is starting to become a viable “assistant,” and if you’re willing to let Microsoft look at your activities, the potential for Cortana help extends into every interaction you have with Windows.
One widely touted ease-of-use benefit of Windows 10 -- the ability to run nearly identical Universal applications on phones, tablets, PCs, Xbox, and all Windows 10-branded devices -- remains elusive. Whether Microsoft will be able to deliver a WinRT API that works on all those devices, and whether app developers will take advantage of the API, is still very much up in the air -- particularly given Microsoft’s recent retrenchment on Windows Phone.
Windows 7 upgraders can take advantage of many Windows 8-era ease-of-use improvements: a better Task Manager, more functional File Explorer (though it still doesn’t support tabs), Storage Spaces to manage all of your drives in a group, File History, built-in antivirus, and the considerable plumbing improvements in Windows 8.
Features
Even as Windows 10 rolls out to the world at large, big new features are still evolving. Some of the features are due for updates in or around October, in the Threshold 2 timeframe. Whether Microsoft dribbles some of the improvements out in the interim -- as one might expect with “Windows as a service” -- remains to be seen.
Edge, Microsoft’s first modern browser and arguably its most advanced Windows Universal app program, looks poised to take on Firefox and Chrome head-to-head. It has a sleek new design, runs fast, and is closing in on its rivals in HTML5 support. Edge is infinitely (I say that in a clinical, measurable way) more secure than Internet Explorer because it doesn’t support any of the offal that Microsoft has been foisting on us for years -- no ActiveX, no Silverlight, no custom navigation bars, no Browser Helper Objects, no VBScript, no attachEvent. For those of you stuck with that technology, Internet Explorer 11 will also ship with Windows 10.
Edge has a simple switch to turn Adobe Flash Player on and off. It also serves as the Windows default PDF reader, which is a huge improvement. Slightly ahead of RTM, Edge loosened its grip on Bing; you are now free to choose Google as your default search engine. Edge still doesn’t have support for extensions or add-ons, similar to what you find in Google Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft promises that Edge will get extension support, but we have no idea when it will come.
The much-anticipated Cortana has its ups and downs. We’ve seen demos of Cortana sending messages and descriptions of Cortana firing off short emails. I can get it to compose an email, but not send it; your mileage may vary. With the version shipping now, we don’t get much more than a note-taking, reminder-generating app with easy weather reports and a search front end -- you still have to click in Bing to get results. But the potential is there to make voice input the equal of other input methods. Many logistical hurdles await, including problems with sound pollution in offices. Think of a dozen Scottys picking up the mouse and saying, “Hello, computer.”
Some features are frozen in limbo. Windows Settings still hasn’t subsumed everything from Control Panel, so we have an awkward situation where numerous tasks -- for example, maintaining user accounts -- are split between two entirely different apps. Task view/multiple desktops is nice and useful -- as it has been since the days of Windows XP -- but you still can’t assign different backgrounds to different desktops, and moving among desktops is still clunky.
Some features have been yanked entirely. The Metro OneDrive app from Windows 8.1, which supported “smart files” that showed thumbnails of all files in File Explorer, whether they were synced or not, has been yanked in Windows 10 (seePaul Thurrott’s description). The old Windows 8.1 Metro Skype app was pulled. In Windows 10, there’s a link to install the old, underwhelming Windows desktop version of Skype, but no Universal app.
As for advertising, Microsoft showed off its Spotlight capability for running ads on the lock screen early in the beta testing process. It even touted Spotlight as a new advertising medium for big-budget companies. Microsoft also included a “Highlighted app” capability, at one point putting a Microsoft-selected app on the left side of the Start screen. A couple of months ago, the Universal Weather app sprouted a display ad. All of those have been quashed in the current version. Whether they’ll come sneaking back is anyone’s guess. Perhaps advertising will become the price of using Windows 10.
Many other new features aren’t yet fully functional. Continuum, which enables you to switch from touchscreen mode to mouse and back again, seems to be waiting for hardware improvements that will arrive with a new generation of devices.Windows Hello -- the face, finger, and retina log-on recognition feature -- similarly needs new hardware and drivers. Although fingerprint recognition reportedly works with some existing fingerprint scanners, face recognition requires a specific kind of camera typified at this point by Intel’s RealSense technology. It’s going to take a while before such cameras become commonplace.
Windows Media Center is gone. Windows 10 can’t play DVDs. Minor irritations for most, with VLC an obvious free choice.
The rest of the apps are going through massive last-minute changes. Windows 10Mail and Calendar are reasonably usable touch-enabled mail and calendar programs, but nowhere near Outlook.com or Google’s new Inbox. Peoplecompares quite favorably to DOS-era contact managers, but doesn’t set any new bars nowadays. The Photos app is a cobbled-together extension of the Windows 8.1 tile-based app, with some new smarts, but doesn’t come close to what’s widely available -- particularly when compared to Google Photos. The future of Music, renamed Groove, remains in doubt, and the app has a very convoluted method for managing playlists. It can’t even add metadata. Movies & TV follows in the same rut. The Bing apps -- News, Money, Sports -- have improved modestly from Windows 8.1 days. The old Food & Drink (formerly Food), Health & Fitness (formerly Fitness), and Travel apps have all been pulled.
On the flip side, Contact Support offers easy access to Microsoft support techs. If it’s still free and still readily accessible in two or three months, that will be an enormous boon to beleaguered Windows users. DirectX 12 promises to bring new levels of reality to gamers.
Windows 10 brings back the Windows 7 Backup and Restorefeatures, which were unceremoniously dropped from Windows 8/8.1. (Many people think Windows 7 had backup and restore nailed; Windows 8.1 eviscerated the features.) Windows 8-style Reset and Refresh are in Windows 10, too. You should check to make sure the Apple Time Machine-like File History feature is turned on (some people report it isn’t on by default): type file history in Cortana and follow the crumbs.
Finally, the Windows Store is getting better, but only gradually. Microsoft has madeseveral pronouncements about how the Windows Store is eliminating crapware, and the number of apps has decreased. Unfortunately, that isn’t the whole story: While researching my Windows 10 book, I found many Windows Store apps that were embarrassing. They’re still there today.
Developers have precious little incentive to build universal apps for the store. Peter Bright at Ars Technica put it succinctly: “If the only place that a Universal Windows App can easily reach is a Windows desktop user, developers may well be better off sticking to the ancient Win32 API (it's old and crufty, but much broader in scope than the Universal API), or even ditching the app entirely and building for the Web.”
Management
Microsoft has created a wondrous deployment and patching infrastructure for Windows 10. But forced patches for those who aren’t attached to servers stand out as a big sticking point. In the past week we’ve seen two dramatic examples of poorly constructed patches pushed down the automatic chute. Those went to beta testers, who should be accustomed to being treated like cannon fodder. We still don’t know what will happen when bad patches hit the teeming masses.
There’s an extensive discussion of deployment in theMicrosoft Virtual Academy. As mentioned before, in-place upgrades look very clean. In a similar vein, the nondestructive Repair works well in my tests. Deployment has been well thought out, but many enterprises will be stuck with very different deployment models for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.
The patching infrastructure has undergone massive changes, with the new Current Branch, Current Branch for Business, and Long Term Servicing Branch defining how updates get deployed. Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet has a good overview. The admins I know are concerned about the way the CBB and LTSB servers, and the “old” WSUS, will interact. It’s a big unknown at this point.
On a micromanagement level, Windows 10 loses the Guest account, which may be of note to some. I’m more concerned about the general lack of changelogs and patching notifications. As best I can tell, none of the Windows Store apps from Microsoft have changelogs. It’s very hard to say, right now, which version of a particular Windows Store app is the most recent, and how it differs from the last version. Windows Update, as we’ve known it for decades, no longer exists, and with its departure Windows users won’t be able to tell which patches have been applied.
It appears that Windows 10 Home customers have no option to delay or block updates. Windows 10 Pro customers, on the other hand, may be attached to a Current Branch for Business server, and the admin there may be able to postpone patches for a finite (but still undefined) amount of time. I haven’t heard anything definitive about Windows 10 Pro customers who aren’t attached to a CBB server, but there’s no Settings page as yet that would implement the ability to block specific patches. It looks like Win10 Pro users who aren’t attached to a CBB server will get patches as they come hurtling out. That has some troubling consequences, which I’ll explore in a later post.
Security
Microsoft has been talking about security improvements in Windows 10 for almost a year.
From a user point of view, the single largest improvement is in multifactor security techniques tied to accounts where you simply log in once and do nearly anything. The single most important improvement is the system-level separation on a given device of corporate and personal data, using a new technology called Data Loss Prevention.
There’s built-in support for VPNs. Admins also get corporate lockdown capabilities, limiting apps that can be installed to those signed by specific vendors, along with Azure Active Directory integration. Enterprise apps from the Windows Store can be sideloaded -- and much more.
Windows 10 has its own native Mobile Device Management (MDM) with BYOD support, Enterprise Data Proection policies, and full wipe capabilities. The built-in MDM capabilities are integrated into Intune. They’re also promised to work well with third-party MDM packages. I haven’t seen anything extending MDM-like capabilities to the individual -- if you lose your laptop, there’s no FindMyPhone feature accessible from the Web, for example.
Compatibility
This is one area where Windows 10 shines. I’ve had few compatibility problems running any of the numerous betas and expect to see very few still around on July 29. Some drivers may not work properly, but the installer highlights those and tells you what (if anything) you can do about it. I fully expect that any application running on Windows 8/8.1 -- and, by implication, almost any app that runs on Windows 7 -- will do fine on Windows 10.
Conclusion
Windows 10 is a curious combination of enormous potential and disappointing current reality. With big advances in many areas, and fumbling starts in many others, it’s a mixed bag, particularly for anyone relying on the Microsoft-developed Universal apps. For example, if you need to run a Mail client on Windows 10, the Microsoft-supplied Universal Mail app works, but the Maps and Photos app will have you pulling your hair out.
Windows 10 does what it set out to do: Bring the Windows 7-style interface into the tiled universe. It is, in many ways, what Windows 8 should’ve been. It has all the advancements from Windows 8 -- security, stability, power saving, and on and on -- with much of the Windows 7 interface fully integrated. Windows 10 makes the old-fashioned desktop an integral part of the product, instead of an accidental tag-along, as it was in Windows 8 and, to a lesser degree, Windows 8.1.
At some point -- sooner rather than later -- I figure most Windows 8/8.1 users will want to upgrade to Windows 10, although there may be some touch-sensitive types who won’t like the new Tablet Mode.
For Windows 7 users, it may make more sense to hang tight for the foreseeable future -- or at least until Windows 10 Update 2 or 3 or 4 or 17 may be available. Sit back and watch the rollout unwind. It will take months for the major problems to surface and be corrected by Microsoft. It will take longer -- perhaps much longer -- for updates to make the promising new features attractive enough to warrant upgrading.
Eventually all Windows users will get Windows as a service. But there's no rush. Microsoft isn’t going to run out of bits. Wait.
Woody's next massive tome, "Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies," hits store shelves soon. Woody specializes in telling the truth about Windows in a way that won't put you to sleep.
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