Microsoft finally reaches goal of one billion devices running Windows 10

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: Microsoft on Monday crossed a significant milestone as there are now more than one billion active Windows 10 devices in the wild. It took a bit longer than originally anticipated but eh, better late than never, right?

Windows 10 got off to a solid start following its July 2015 launch. By October, more than 110 million devices were running Windows 10 and it seemed as though the company’s ambitious goal of hitting one billion installations within three years of launch was plausible.

On the one year anniversary of Windows 10, however, Microsoft conceded that it wouldn’t hit its goal on time. The company largely blamed its mobile phone business for having to rein in its forecast.

Much of Microsoft’s early success with Windows 10 can be credited to the free upgrade path it provided for some users. Predictably, installations slowed once the Redmond-based company formally did away with the program although as of January, there was still a way to upgrade for free if you were willing to play loose with licensing agreements.

In the end, Microsoft ultimately missed its original projection by roughly 20 months.

In related news, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate VP of modern life and the search & devices group at Microsoft, said the Windows Insider program now has over 17.8 million participants. This open software testing program arrived in late 2014 as a way for developers, testers and general techies to help Microsoft test pre-release software.

Masthead credit: Computer room by Thannaree Deepul. Windows 10 DVD by Nor Gal.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/84410-microsoft-finally-reaches-goal-one-billion-devices-running.html

 

[ShagnWagn]

"one billion devices running Windows 10"

I think we need to be a bit more specific here. I've been reading their goal was "one billion installs", but now it says "running"? So is it really a billion running concurrently? Or one billion installs? I would say it is installs because I am highly doubtful it is one billion -running- Win10 at the same time. If so, I am wondering how they are getting accurate numbers? Perhaps from the forced telemetry? How do they count the ones offline or the droves of people who (think?) they disabled it, if so?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

So simple: just stop supporting everything else - especially windows 7 and give them no choice but Windows 10.

In my personal experience, Windows 10 has been the absolute best Windows Experience I've ever had. I've had Win 95, 98, SE, XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and Vista and Windows 10 has been my favorite.

But that also could be because my hardware is very strong.

Windows 10 should always be used on an SSD with at least 16GB of RAM and a Core i5 at the minimum.

 

[Teko03]

"one billion devices running Windows 10"

I think we need to be a bit more specific here. I've been reading their goal was "one billion installs", but now it says "running"? So is it really a billion running concurrently? Or one billion installs? I would say it is installs because I am highly doubtful it is one billion -running- Win10 at the same time. If so, I am wondering how they are getting accurate numbers? Perhaps from the forced telemetry? How do they count the ones offline or the droves of people who (think?) they disabled it, if so?

There's no way to account for offline systems. I work in a lab environment that hundreds of systems running Windows 10 offline & doesn't require on-line or phone activation. But the ones they're accounting for is via telemetry/on-line activations. No one know exactly if there referring to installs or actively used devices.

So simple: just stop supporting everything else - especially windows 7 and give them no choice but Windows 10.

You have a choice...your choice is to run a unpatched operating system. Of course every Windows OS has a 10 year extended support period...so Windows 7 going EOL isn't any kind of shock or shady practice.

 

[Nobina]

So simple: just stop supporting everything else - especially windows 7 and give them no choice but Windows 10.

but that is exactly what they've done and why they even have this "milestone". If otherwise Windows 7 would probably still have the largest share.

I guess quality doesn't mean anything to Microsoft.

 

[VitalyT]

In the meantime, Linux hard-core users are in denial that Windows even exists. Laugh all you want, but I have to work with those ignorant bastards.

 

[veLa]

In the meantime, Linux hard-core users are in denial that Windows even exists. Laugh all you want, but I have to work with those ignorant bastards.

Yeah, and if you see what they argue about, like whether it should be called Linux or GNU/Linux, and you have to say the "slash", you'll understand why it never caught on for the average user base.

I do appreciate Linux in the server space and ethical hacking arena. The stuff you can pull off with Kali is pretty cool.

 

[Yynxs]

"...In related news, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate VP of modern life and the search & devices group at Microsoft, said the Windows Insider program now has over 17.8 million participants. This open software testing program arrived in late 2014 as a way for developers, testers and general techies to help Microsoft test pre-release software..."

Maybe it's just me, but 17.4 million seems a large enough sample to test O/S changes on. Having everyone report in 24/7 is excessive.

As an aside, the stock W10Pro I installed on the wife's new AMD 16G system, umm..last October, is crashing hourly. The Start menu and Search do not work after power-on bootup, (literally doesn't activate) until you log off (I use Process Explorer to force it) and log back on. Then it works fine. Windows Media Player has just died and won't be killed off as a process nor play music nor even allow me to not allow it to run at startup. Firefox 73 stopped running and she went to Edge to have a browser and FF74 won't finish installing.

My wife does one thing with this PC, rip the commercial music CDs we buy in bulk from second hand stores and move the songs to her laptop and phone. I'm looking at either spending days sorting through the updates, WinStoreApps, and processes for the culprit or rebuilding the OS from scratch then reloading her commercial software, while putting up with the griping. If the MB and AMD CPU would support the USB, I would move her back to W7 and not hear a thing about problems for a few years. But hey, if W10 works for you, enjoy.

 

[TheLip95032]

What really amazed me was that there are that many people still running windows, it makes for good employment for tech people installing a patch to patch the last patch that crashed the system. I have windows 7 and windows XP installed on a virtual environment but only use them when I come across software that requires those environments (usually some auto software or old video software). Some people use to state that Linux was to "techie" for the average person, Ubuntu Desktop pretty much negates that. My 11 year old nephew installed it without any help or guidance from me.

 

[DaveBG]

I have contributed to this "statistic" myself. I have like 15+ VMWare instances of windows 10 , trying to make it work. I haven't succeeded yet. It appears that disabling the spyware brakes it... The host OS - windows 7 is working flawlessly though.

 

[yeeeeman]

Technically, I think Windows 10 is the best of them all. Capable and stable, pretty resilient to virus infection, unlike XP or 7. But the interface is a MESS. Windows XP and Windows 7 were quality products from an interface POV. Windows 10 is just an afterthought.

 

[Red999]

So simple: just stop supporting everything else - especially windows 7 and give them no choice but Windows 10.

In my personal experience, Windows 10 has been the absolute best Windows Experience I've ever had. I've had Win 95, 98, SE, XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and Vista and Windows 10 has been my favorite.

But that also could be because my hardware is very strong.

Windows 10 should always be used on an SSD with at least 16GB of RAM and a Core i5 at the minimum.

windows 10 doesn't such high spec because the windows itself only consumes 3 GB RAM.

it's problem is reliability. my laptop is i5 haswell with 16 GB RAM and all things updated, but always get problem of freezing when waking up from sleep.
I downgraded to windows 8.1 and no more such problem.

 

[Red999]

I have contributed to this "statistic" myself. I have like 15+ VMWare instances of windows 10 , trying to make it work. I haven't succeeded yet. It appears that disabling the spyware brakes it... The host OS - windows 7 is working flawlessly though.

windows can detect physical hardware or vm. it can be done simply with wmi command

 

[CharmsD]

So simple: just stop supporting everything else - especially windows 7 and give them no choice but Windows 10.

Heh, complete agreement here: "With 100% of the Fortune 500 now using Windows 10 devices"
I wish MS could push the older versions off the end of the earth.

In my personal experience, Windows 10 has been the absolute best Windows Experience I've ever had. I've had Win 95, 98, SE, XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and Vista and Windows 10 has been my favorite.

But that also could be because my hardware is very strong.

Windows 10 should always be used on an SSD with at least 16GB of RAM and a Core i5 at the minimum.

It's always the hardware, AMazon sells a ton of hot garbage for PC components, as does every online computer shopping site, they care not if it's suitable; "Windows 10 is the only operating system at the heart of over 80,000 models and configurations of different laptops and 2-in-1s from over 1,000 different manufacturers. But that’s not all. Windows 10 also powers Mixed Reality and HoloLens"

Linnuts dramaqueens (programming) will never accomplish that, fortunately there's ARM. If only the evangelizing for the desktop would stop. I like linux too but it's never going to replace Windows, it's not perfection but it's closer than a Win 3.1 looking linux distro.

 

[sac39507]

At least 1 billion people will curse at least once this year