Microsoft's internal rollout of Windows 11 took five weeks, a massive 190,000 devices...

[Humza]

In a nutshell: As Microsoft continued the staged release of Windows 11 to the public, the company's Digital Employee Experience team set to work on upgrading its own fleet of PCs. The rollout, which was completed recently, was hailed as the fastest and one of the smoothest in the company's history. However, even Microsoft had to leave a few PCs behind on Windows 10 due to hardware requirements of its latest OS.

Microsoft's Lukas Velush shared some useful insights from the company's journey of upgrading its entire PC fleet to Windows 11. During the planning phase of its deployment process, Microsoft's Update Compliance and Endpoint Manager analytics determined that a total of 190,000 PCs qualified for the upgrade.

"A percentage of our devices were not upgraded,'' said Microsoft, noting that they will remain on Windows 10 until employees receive a Windows 11 PC at their next device refresh. Adoption of the latter OS has been tricky for Windows users around the world because of strict hardware requirements, and it's interesting to see Microsoft become a victim of its own doing.

Of the qualifying devices, Redmond touted a 99 percent success rate with this upgrade, attributing it to far fewer app compatibility challenges this time around and having delivery processes and tools that had already been greatly improved during the rollout of Windows 10.

Microsoft's upgrade roadmap also gave eager employees early access to Windows 11

In its efforts to reach and prepare employees for the impending upgrade, Microsoft says it used several channels such as Yammer, FAQs, email, digital signage, Teams, and Sharepoint to communicate the new look and features of Windows 11 in order to drive employee interest and excitement.

Following testing to ensure that Windows 11 met the company's stringent security requirements, Microsoft used Windows Update for Business (WUfB) to deploy and automate the upgrade process. Employees were given a flexible schedule to upgrade, with the WUfB service managing exclusions and opt-outs, as well as rollback to Windows 10 if needed.

Microsoft called its Windows 11 upgrade a "strong success story," noting that it saw no increase in support tickets and that its broad adoption of Windows 11 made for the fastest deployment in the company's history.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/94349-microsoft-completes-internal-rollout-windows-11-five-weeks.html

 

[brucek]

Of course it went smoothly. Compared to every Windows major version upgrade before it, this one is the most restrictive about which devices it will support, while offering the least significant changes.

They ought to be comparing it to previous service pack updates, at the most.

 

[Uncle Al]

It's still a farce .... building a piece of software that restricts users based on their computers shows severe short sighted approach. They could easily make these "requirements" switchable. Just another attempt of MicroSludge to force people to do what they want rather than cater to the buying public .....

 

[Dimitriid]

"A percentage of our devices were not upgraded,'' said Microsoft, noting that they will remain on Windows 10 until employees receive a Windows 11 PC at their next device refresh.

So let me get this straight: Not even Microsoft is willing to fully upgrade their own systems? If the very people developing and advocating for the OS can't be bothered to upgrade and apparently this is absolutely fine for employees to just wait for their next "device refresh" then why should we ever upgrade?

 

[NintPlayBox]

Of course it went smoothly. Compared to every Windows major version upgrade before it, this one is the most restrictive about which devices it will support, while offering the least significant changes.

They ought to be comparing it to previous service pack updates, at the most.

What??? You don't see significant changes on Windows 11?.... for starters this is the first time in Microsoft's history people have to resort on the Windows built-in Search option to find most of Windows functionalities as they have been rebuilt and renamed from the ground up. If anything this is the most MacOS - like version of windows we ever got.

 

[NintPlayBox]

I love Windows 11 it's certainly the best Windows operating system...it's incredibly fast.

Two generations in a row Microsoft have been able to deliver solid performance and reliability with Windows 10 and Windows 11.

 

[brucek]

I see the cosmetic, user-app level changes - but I think that under the hood this is still pretty much the same kernel and fundamentally the same core OS as we had in Windows 10, with maybe some changes to which optional components are on by default.

To be fair I don't claim to know what's in the source code, that's just my impression (one which is supported by the results in this article.)

 

[Achaios]

I love Windows 11 it's certainly the best Windows operating system...it's incredibly fast.

Two generations in a row Microsoft have been able to deliver solid performance and reliability with Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Οn behalf of M$, we will credit your account with $0.60 as a token of appreciation of your tweet and we will enroll you into our "employee of the year" internal sweepstake.

 

[NintPlayBox]

So let me get this straight: Not even Microsoft is willing to fully upgrade their own systems? If the very people developing and advocating for the OS can't be bothered to upgrade and apparently this is absolutely fine for employees to just wait for their next "device refresh" then why should we ever upgrade?

No different than Apple with their MacOS...not every employee and consumer gets their upgrade as their systems might not be good enough to handle the necessary changes.

Microsoft finally understood new versions of Windows deserve only newer hardware.

 

[NintPlayBox]

It's still a farce .... building a piece of software that restricts users based on their computers shows severe short sighted approach. They could easily make these "requirements" switchable. Just another attempt of MicroSludge to force people to do what they want rather than cater to the buying public .....

Don't hate on Microsoft because you have older hardware.
Time to upgrade my friend.

 

[Burty117]

I see the cosmetic, user-app level changes - but I think that under the hood this is still pretty much the same kernel and fundamentally the same core OS as we had in Windows 10, with maybe some changes to which optional components are on by default.

To be fair I don't claim to know what's in the source code, that's just my impression (one which is supported by the results in this article.)

As far as I was aware, under-the-hood it is actually substantially different, It's why it works much better with newer CPU's that have efficiency cores in, as the scheduler works with Intel's "Thread Director" to move running threads around. Something I'm not aware Windows 10 can do, the threads just run on the core it was designated.

Something yet to be proven but is supposedly quite different is Windows 11 Storage setup. DirectStorage will apparently work better with Windows 11 than Windows 10. This area though I'm not too clued up on.

Plus more security is switched on by default like VBS and requires things like TPM 2.0 and certain virtualisation support from the CPU.

I've been using Windows 11 on my work laptop since it was in beta and kept Windows 10 at home on my desktop. I think maybe one or two more major updates and I might be willing to move to 11.

 

[Dimitriid]

No different than Apple with their MacOS...not every employee and consumer gets their upgrade as their systems might not be good enough to handle the necessary changes.

Microsoft finally understood new versions of Windows deserve only newer hardware.

Actually it is very different:

1) Apple is not an OS maker, it's a Hardware vendor. They also dedicate energy to coming up with their own OS but is mostly there to restrict the user not to enable functionality, that's dictated by the user experience and hardware first: Apple will never include a feature like supporting face recognition or fingerprint readers in their OS before they start selling hardware with those features (Even if technically there was nothing stopping the hardware side from functioning in their x86 days for example) so it's extremely clear that they want user experience first, hardware second and software last and mostly utilitarian in service of the previous 2 pillars.

2) Apple also doesn't really targets the enterprise market at all. There's a sparse few executives or developers here and there than might show up to a meeting with a macbook sure, but they aren't creating computer orders for offices by the thousands in the way the big 3 companies, Lenovo, HP and Dell, are deploying those on the regular basis.

This second point might not seem important but I would argue it dictates most of what the OS looks like in service of enterprise customers and yes for a company having to renew 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 machines that are perfectly good is not gonna be an easy pill to swallow even if they have the money they gotta be thinking they'll wait until the end of life of either the hardware or Windows 10.

Which you know...It's exactly what Microsoft is doing here as well.

 

[NintPlayBox]

Actually it is very different:

1) Apple is not an OS maker, it's a Hardware vendor. They also dedicate energy to coming up with their own OS but is mostly there to restrict the user not to enable functionality, that's dictated by the user experience and hardware first: Apple will never include a feature like supporting face recognition or fingerprint readers in their OS before they start selling hardware with those features (Even if technically there was nothing stopping the hardware side from functioning in their x86 days for example) so it's extremely clear that they want user experience first, hardware second and software last and mostly utilitarian in service of the previous 2 pillars.

2) Apple also doesn't really targets the enterprise market at all. There's a sparse few executives or developers here and there than might show up to a meeting with a macbook sure, but they aren't creating computer orders for offices by the thousands in the way the big 3 companies, Lenovo, HP and Dell, are deploying those on the regular basis.

This second point might not seem important but I would argue it dictates most of what the OS looks like in service of enterprise customers and yes for a company having to renew 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 machines that are perfectly good is not gonna be an easy pill to swallow even if they have the money they gotta be thinking they'll wait until the end of life of either the hardware or Windows 10.

Which you know...It's exactly what Microsoft is doing here as w

Actually it is very different:

1) Apple is not an OS maker, it's a Hardware vendor. They also dedicate energy to coming up with their own OS but is mostly there to restrict the user not to enable functionality, that's dictated by the user experience and hardware first: Apple will never include a feature like supporting face recognition or fingerprint readers in their OS before they start selling hardware with those features (Even if technically there was nothing stopping the hardware side from functioning in their x86 days for example) so it's extremely clear that they want user experience first, hardware second and software last and mostly utilitarian in service of the previous 2 pillars.

2) Apple also doesn't really targets the enterprise market at all. There's a sparse few executives or developers here and there than might show up to a meeting with a macbook sure, but they aren't creating computer orders for offices by the thousands in the way the big 3 companies, Lenovo, HP and Dell, are deploying those on the regular basis.

This second point might not seem important but I would argue it dictates most of what the OS looks like in service of enterprise customers and yes for a company having to renew 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 machines that are perfectly good is not gonna be an easy pill to swallow even if they have the money they gotta be thinking they'll wait until the end of life of either the hardware or Windows 10.

Which you know...It's exactly what Microsoft is doing here as well.

Ok let's breakdown what you said up there.

- "Apple is not an OS maker"
99% of the world don't care if Apple makes their OS or not .. people only see the RESTRICTIONS when they try to upgrade and they can't because Applet dictating it.

- "Apple will never include a feature like supporting face recognition or fingerprint readers in their OS before they start selling hardware"
That's what makes Apple so dangerous they only provide functionality that they know they can only take advantage of in their own platforms, RESTRICTING use of other widely adopted technologies and features by the masses.

- "Apple also doesn't really targets the enterprise market at all."
Apple DOES target the enterprise world but their RESTRICTIVE views for the enterprise world is giving themselves that constant poison pill that most don't want to swallow.

Have you noticed how many times I had to refer to Apple as RESTRICTIVE, because Apple is simply an entity that they love getting their way with their own technologies....so the minute Microsoft with Windows 11 you panicked.

 

[Dimitriid]

Ok let's breakdown what you said up there.

- "Apple is not an OS maker"
99% of the world don't care if Apple makes their OS or not .. people only see the RESTRICTIONS when they try to upgrade and they can't because Applet dictating it.

- "Apple will never include a feature like supporting face recognition or fingerprint readers in their OS before they start selling hardware"
That's what makes Apple so dangerous they only provide functionality that they know they can only take advantage of in their own platforms, RESTRICTING use of other widely adopted technologies and features by the masses.

- "Apple also doesn't really targets the enterprise market at all."
Apple DOES target the enterprise world but their RESTRICTIVE views for the enterprise world is giving themselves that constant poison pill that most don't want to swallow.

Have you noticed how many times I had to refer to Apple as RESTRICTIVE, because Apple is simply an entity that they love getting their way with their own technologies....so the minute Microsoft with Windows 11 you panicked.

I'm honestly not really sure what you're getting at: you seem to agree that Apple is far more restrictive and Microsoft wants to follow suit but you think this is a somehow ok or even positive development?

If you want a restrictive, appliance-like computing device you can still buy Apple. Yet none has explained why Apple didn't take away any significant market share on the PC market with their M1 since on paper, they're just better in every single respect: At launch they were faster than any other available consumer CPU, way more "refined" in their "just works" mentality for end users (which I'm told is always desirable) and even an order of magnitude ahead in some very desirable areas like battery life.

Yet sales numbers consistently show it's mostly just Apple fans that even care about M1 products they haven't clawed back any market share from x86. Can you explain that?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Don't hate on Microsoft because you have older hardware.
Time to upgrade my friend.

Can you please explain what a 9th gen Celestine can do that a 7th gen i7 cannot, that would justify an upgrade? Or why only some 7th gen intel chips are viable despite being the same uarch?

Here’s a better idea: take throwaway culture and pitch it.

No different than Apple with their MacOS...not every employee and consumer gets their upgrade as their systems might not be good enough to handle the necessary changes.

Microsoft finally understood new versions of Windows deserve only newer hardware.

Apple doing something shady and underhanded does not justify Microsoft doing the same thing.

there is no reason anything running 10 cannot run 11. You can easily install 11 on unsupported platforms (for now) and it runs fine. These strict “requirements” are entirely astroturf by MS.

 

[Dd663]

I see the cosmetic, user-app level changes - but I think that under the hood this is still pretty much the same kernel and fundamentally the same core OS as we had in Windows 10, with maybe some changes to which optional components are on by default.

To be fair I don't claim to know what's in the source code, that's just my impression (one which is supported by the results in this article.)

This has always been the case. Under the hood, Windows 10 was largely the same operating system as Windows 8.1, which was largely the same OS as 7, and so on. They certainly haven't, that I'm aware of, ever abandoned their Windows codebase to start over from scratch.

Note: I'm not trying to say that this is a bad thing. If it isn't broken, it doesn't need to be fixed. And one of the strong points of Windows is long-term compatibility.

As far as I was aware, under-the-hood it is actually substantially different,

I don't think this is the case. Yes, there's bound to be differences, but it's essentially the same OS with a fresh coat of paint.

As far as Windows 11 goes, I either like or don't mind most of the changes, but the inability to disable combining in the taskbar really irks me. I hope they eventually reintroduce that option.

 

[wiyosaya]

Of course M$ is going to put a positive spin on this. I wonder just what

noting that they will remain on Windows 10 until employees receive a Windows 11 PC at their next device refresh.

means.

My bet is that it will not be anytime soon.