Analyst's Prediction: Microsoft Windows 10 To Be On 410 Million PCs Within 18 Months

Bidness ^ | 05/19/2015 | Larry Darrel

[NorthMountain]

Not adopting X until I have drivers for all the devices I’m currently using on Windows 7. Buying new equipment is a non-starter.

All my devices purchased for Win7 are working under Windows TP. The last of my device drive issues went away in January.

[RansomOttawa]

Microsoft Corporation’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows 10, is possibly the last version of Windows the company will ever make.

I keep seeing this claim in multiple articles. What do they think MS is going to replace Windows with? I assume they're not getting out of the OS market entirely.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yup. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had customers order PCs with OEM licenses only to blow them away during image deployment with volume licenses(Enterprise). Almost every business nowadays uses KMS or Active Directory Activation anyways.

It is actually harder to buy a desktop—even when making bulk purchases—without an OS than with whatever the OEM gives you. When you reimage those, all the bloat-ware the OEMs put on is gone, too, so you have a cleaner machine.

[mlo]

"I keep seeing this claim in multiple articles. What do they think MS is going to replace Windows with? I assume they're not getting out of the OS market entirely."

Microsoft intends to publish continual updates, distributing changes when they are ready instead of bundling them up in version bulk upgrades.

[tacticalogic]

I think the author may be a little off the mark saying most businesses still running W7 won’t upgrade until 2017. The free upgrade offer in the first year also extends to Windows 7, and I think there will be a lot of companies taking advantage of that.

[alancarp]

Oh, so you have new equipment. :)

[Alas Babylon!]

I was at Microsoft Ignite two weeks ago in Chicago.

Windows as a Service was discussed at length.

Here’s a link to a session I attended on the subject: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK2322

I think there’ll still be deployment scenarios requiring an ISO, though—or at least an install.wim. Bare metal installs, new equipment, wipe and loading malware-infected boxes, security reasons to get rid of previous users’ data, etc.

I’m told the ISO—including the continuous updates sideloaded into it, will be available to volume license customers, through the Windows as a Service for Business website, whenever that gets started.

[RansomOttawa]

Microsoft intends to publish continual updates, distributing changes when they are ready instead of bundling them up in version bulk upgrades.

Perpetual rolling releases? Makes sense, kinda.