Microsoft opens up about more Windows 10 preview features
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Hi there
XML and so is great also in theory so Portable apps could be the way forward -- but the problem with these is then licensing so that the software is only used on the machine(s) / device(s) it's licensed for.
I remember years ago when you had to plug in all sorts of "dongles" when running some software -- we don't ever want to go back to that mess again surely.
Portable apps are great in theory - especially for open source /; free applications - but they can present a NIGHTMARE scenario for I.T admins who want to keep reasonably locked down company workstations / laptops. There's not much protection against running unlicensed software unless you totally disallow any sort of external device to be used on your machine such as a USB drive - which really would inconvenience legitimate users.
Cheers
jimbo.
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Good Point
Portable apps are great in theory - especially for open source /; free applications - but they can present a NIGHTMARE scenario for I.T admins who want to keep reasonably locked down company workstations / laptops. There's not much protection against running unlicensed software unless you totally disallow any sort of external device to be used on your machine such as a USB drive - which really would inconvenience legitimate users.
That is a very good point. :)
You'd have to have some sort of master program list on the server (Active Directory?).
A client PC would have to request authorization to run executable files.
Some sort of Group Policy Rules that would only allow authorized code to run, might work.
Maybe both, plus an alert for the Admin, to warn them that unauthorized programs were on the network.
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You could just roll your own "portable" applications...
VMware is one of the ways to move apps between machines, it does require virtual software, but it works well. With the available hardware and the quality of the VMware software nowadays, there isn't much performance hit in running two OSs on machine.
My W7 and MacBook Pro have the same image for W8.1 and Office, Visio, etc. I haven't seen any issues with licensing on either of the platforms...
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The one thing we know the majority of Windows users didn't do was rush out to buy W8.
Nor did people "rush out" to buy Windows 7, Vista (obviously), XP, etc.. It takes years for people to get off their old versions. It's funny how quickly people forget that so many people hated XP when it first came out.. they called it the "Fisher Price" OS. They hated the new start menu. They hated that they had to buy more memory and hard disk, or buy a new computer... Eventually, XP became the new normal.
Remember, most people were upgrading from Windows 98 or ME. They typically had 64MB of memory, or 128. 1GB was almost unheard of, because many motherboards back in the day couldn't even use that much memory if you had it (it was god awful expensive in the 9x days).
Windows 7's uptake was better than average, but that was largely because so many people had skipped Vista.. and with 7 years between Major OS's, it was a sort of perfect storm. With security concerns, aging hardware needing replacement, and policies from Microsoft that sunset IE versions and other software on XP, it got people and companies to switch to 7.
The problem is, none of that existed for Windows 8. It had only been a couple of years since companies (and in some cases companies were still in the process of..) switched to 7. There are no sunset policies for 7, meaning all technology (other than WinRT) that works on 8 works on 7. There is no forced upgrade reasons, unlike XP.
So you really can't read "popularity" into why 7's numbers are so high and 8's numbers so low. If 7 had been allowed to exist without the forced upgrades, it very well might have had similar numbers a 8.
That said, there was a big jump in W8.1's market share (+4.3%) last month and a big drop in XP's share (-6.7%).
"Other" also gained a couple of percentage points.
It looks like MS has managed to outlast the XP holdouts.
Considering that last month, there was a weird anomaly of supposed XP going up.. I would say that there was some kind of flaw in the counting and this month just fixes it.. My guess is that it should have been a little less of drop.
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Weird
Nor did people "rush out" to buy Windows 7, Vista (obviously), XP, etc.. It takes years for people to get off their old versions. It's funny how quickly people forget that so many people hated XP when it first came out.. they called it the "Fisher Price" OS. They hated the new start menu. They hated that they had to buy more memory and hard disk, or buy a new computer... Eventually, XP became the new normal.
Excluding the latest figures, W7's market share increased at roughly the same rate as the W8 series since Oct 2012 (W7 total increase ~9%).
Drilling into the latest figures, Vista still has a market share of ~2.6%.
I do remember some complaints about XP.
I didn't actually start using it until 2004.
I think the first version I used was XP SP1.
That said, there was a big jump in W8.1's market share (+4.3%) last month and a big drop in XP's share (-6.7%).
"Other" also gained a couple of percentage points.
It looks like MS has managed to outlast the XP holdouts.
Considering that last month, there was a weird anomaly of supposed XP going up.. I would say that there was some kind of flaw in the counting and this month just fixes it.. My guess is that it should have been a little less of drop.
The chart I posted last month showed that W7 went up, XP was flat and the W8 series went down.
Nonetheless, the previous figures seemed strange to me too.
If the figures are to be believed, the W8 series actually lost market share last month.
I wonder if the boost in share is (directly) related to the increase in Surface Pro profits?
https://www.tenforums.com/windows-10-...-business.html
Last edited by lehnerus2000; 01 Nov 2014 at 20:22.
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Microsoft doesn't really compete against the likes Linux or Apple or any other operating system on computers.
For years Microsoft has had 90% or more of the market share and the other companies operating systems get to peck at the scraps.
Every operating system Microsoft makes competes against a older Microsoft operating system.
I know of no other company that it's number one competitor is it's self.
If you buy W-7, W-8 or the new W-10 the money goes in one bank account belonging to Microsoft.
The last time I checked Microsoft has around of 90% of the Office program market.
DailyTech - Office 2010 to Launch Today, Microsoft Owns 94 Percent of the Market
What Microsoft is looking for is a bigger share of the mobile market which is somewhere under 20% the last I looked.
Now if Microsoft can come with a operating system that can be shared across all platforms, BINGO they found the pile of gold they want.
Microsoft is still the big dog when it comes to the server market with Enterprise but they do have some competition.
Just think of it.
A operating system, office product and a App store across enterprise, small business, home users and all the various mobile devices. In my opinion that is exactly what Microsoft is trying to do.
We could wait for the Russians and or the Chinese to spend less time making infection to share with the world and make a new operating system the world will want.
I will wait for Microsoft to complete W-10 and hope they do a good enough job that I will want to run it along side my W-7 computers.
Remember folks that you don't have to get rid of W-7 to use W-10. You can have and use both in the U.S.A.
Those who live in the E.U. might want to check for new laws against having both operating system at the same time.
Just some rambling thoughts from
Layback Bear
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A operating system, office product and a App store across enterprise, small business, home users and all the various mobile devices. In my opinion that is exactly what Microsoft is trying to do.
That was the W8 plan; "One GUI to rule them all."
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Plan "A" didn't work so now they are coming out with plan "B". W-10
Plan "A" they tried to cram down are gullets.
Plan "B" they are working with their customers which hopefully will end up creating a great operating system we all can enjoy. Well most of us.
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Plan "A" didn't work so now they are coming out with plan "B". W-10
Plan "A" they tried to cram down are gullets.
Plan "B" they are working with their customers which hopefully will end up creating a great operating system we all can enjoy. Well most of us.
I think that's way too simplistic. Microsoft always knew Plan "A" wasn't going to be a runaway success. Just like they knew Vista was going to be problematic (although Vista ended up being much more problematic than they intended).
With Vista, they knew that the introduction of UAC would be a hard pill to swallow, but they intentionally made it even more annoying than they had to because they wanted to find the real pain points so that, in the next release they could ease them. This strategy backfired on them quite a bit in terms of publicity to the point that Vista became a pariah.
With Windows 8, they knew Metro was "version 1.0", and that it had a long way to go before it became mature. This was one reason they barely even tried to target Windows 8 at business (The had the enterprise version of course, but the entire Metro experience was very difficult to manage for business).
They have always known this was going to be a long, slow slog to bring WinRT (Metro) apps to feature parity with Win32 apps, and to eventually have them take over. This is all still part of Plan "A", though maybe it's "A1"
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Portable apps are great in theory - especially for open source /; free applications - but they can present a NIGHTMARE scenario for I.T admins who want to keep reasonably locked down company workstations / laptops. There's not much protection against running unlicensed software unless you totally disallow any sort of external device to be used on your machine such as a USB drive - which really would inconvenience legitimate users.
That is a very good point. :)
You'd have to have some sort of master program list on the server (Active Directory?).
A client PC would have to request authorization to run executable files.
Some sort of Group Policy Rules that would only allow authorized code to run, might work.
Maybe both, plus an alert for the Admin, to warn them that unauthorized programs were on the network.
App virtualization and SCCM both have the ability to control apps and licenses. This is nothing new and has been around for years. You don't give end users admin privileges and you restrict standard user rights.
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