Windows 10 has been available to the public for six months this week. By the numbers, it's been a hit, with 200 million active users as of the first of the year. Here's Ed Bott's midterm report card.
Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public six months ago this week
The first major feature update arrived in mid-November, almost exactly four months after the initial release. That November update, dubbed version 1511, included some hugely important features for Microsoft's enterprise customers, including greater control over updates and virtual TPM support in Hyper-V virtual machines.
The idea of delivering big feature updates two or three times a year is unprecedented in the history of Windows, which historically has saved those features for "big bang" releases every three years or so.
During the past six months, Microsoft has been delivering cumulative updates every month. That's another major shift in the way Windows 10 works compared to its predecessors.
There's a tendency among casual observers and tech reporters to focus on the consumer experience. That's only natural, of course, because most modern tech reporters are themselves consumers, and they have little or no experience with the challenges that IT pros face in securing and managing computing resources in a business setting.
Yes, the consumer experience is important, but the business story is arguably even more so, and so far it's been mostly ignored in the mainstream press.
As of the beginning of 2016, Microsoft claimed that more than 200 million devices were actively running Windows 10 worldwide, with about 10 percent of that number in enterprise and education.
With that context, it's time to give Windows 10 a mid-year status report. What's working? What's not? And what's next?
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