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The world's personal computer factories could only shove just over 70 million machines out the door during 2015's third quarter, according to box-watchers IDC and Gartner. IDC says sales were down 10.8 per cent year on year, a worse outcome than the 9.2 per cent dip the firm previously predicted. Windows 10 is partly to blame, says Jay Chou, IDC's research manager for its Worldwide PC Tracker, because punters are happy to take Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade without buying a new PC. Over time, Chou reckons, “the improved PC experience across user segments should drive longer-term demand for new...

The fact is, the mobile purchasing decision for most consumers is now more about buying into, and sticking with, an ecosystem than it is about a particular device -- no matter how well crafted. And Microsoft’s ecosystem can’t yet compete with what’s on offer from Apple, with its iTunes store, Beats 1 streaming radio, Apple TV and other cloud services. Phones that run Google Android, meanwhile, boast more than a million apps and seamless integration with a host of services like Docs, YouTube and Gmail. Microsoft’s problem is that most users in the U.S. already are on Android, which holds...

Today is one of the biggest days of the year for Microsoft and to start out the event they rattled off some impressive numbers. The most impressive is 110 million installations of Windows 10. This lines up well with the reports we had already heard but this 110 million number is officially from Microsoft on the biggest stage. Here are some other impressive stats mentioned by Terry Myerson. * 1 billion visits to Windows 10 app store * Developer revenue has increased four times since Windows 10’s launch * 650 billion web pages viewed with Microsoft Edge * 1 billion...

Windows 10 looks to have won about seven per cent of the world's desktop operating system market. That's The Reg's back-of-the-spreadsheet calculation after running our eye over September’s data from Netmarketshare and StatCounter, the two services we regularly eyeball to see what's going down on the desktop. Remember that Windows 10 launched on July 29th. With that in mind we can see that August saw plenty of growth, but things slowed rather markedly in September. The losers are Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, as the graphs below show both have dipped markedly since Windows 10's debut. When we crunch the...

Windows 10 uptake is falling back to earth after an explosive first month.According to StatCounter, Windows 10 accounted for 7.64 percent of desktop Internet usage in September, compared to 5.38 percent the month prior. Rival metrics firm NetApplications pegs Windows 10 usage at 6.63 percent, compared to 5.21 percent in August. Three months of desktop operating system usage from StatCounter.Both firms still have Windows 10 in fourth place among Microsoft operating systems, trailing behind even Windows XP, a 14-year-old operating system that Microsoft stopped supporting in 2014. Windows 7 remains way out in front, with 51.52 percent usage according to...

Since it was released, Windows 10 has incited a privacy furor. Hundreds of commenters on sites such as Hacker News and Reddit have criticised default settings that send personal information to Microsoft and use bandwidth to upload data to other Windows 10 computers.Concerns have risen over the Wi-Fi password sharing feature, Microsoft's plans to keep people from running counterfeit software, the inability to opt out of security updates, weekly dossiers sent to parents on their kids' online activity, and the fact that Windows 10 by default shares a lot of your personal information - contacts, calendar details, text and touch...

When we released Raspberry Pi 2 in February this year, we announced that Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core, a version of Windows 10 for small Internet-of-Things devices that may or may not have a screen, would be available for the device. Since the Windows Insider release of Windows 10 Core in August, we’ve found that lots of people looking for a Pi 2 are arriving at sellers’ websites from sites catering for Windows developers. Many Windows developers are coming to Raspberry Pi for the first time; we couldn’t be more pleased to welcome them, and we hope they’ll encounter much...

Ever since Windows 10 launched back in July, one topic of conversation has overshadowed everything the new operating system does right: privacy concerns. Everyone with a Windows device is (rightfully) terrified that Microsoft is monitoring everything they do, so on Monday, Microsoft decided to finally issue an official response in order to clear the air. In a blog post on Windows.com, Microsoft executive VP Terry Myerson has taken the first step to earning back the trust of the individuals who are concerned about their privacy in regards to Windows 10. He noted that the data Microsoft collects “is encrypted in...

Released on July 29, Windows 10 has reportedly surpassed the 100 million installs milestone, sometime last week.Microsoft released the new operating system version as a free upgrade to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users and saw the adoption rate spiking through the first few weeks. While sluggish in the later days, Windows 10 has finally passed the 100 million mark last week, according to sources. We already saw reports of the operating system reaching 75 million and then 81 million downloads earlier this month. Citing unnamed sources, reports are now claiming that the OS has finally reached the 100 million installation milestone,...

My Win 10 computer updated to FF version 41 two days ago and since that time, when I scroll, the page freezes and many times I am unable to get out of it. This does not happen in the new MSFT browser, just FF. Anyone else having issues?

Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 for over a year now, and it seems to be "successful."

Although it initially tempted Windows 8.1 users, Windows 10 has increasingly grown its usage share at the expense of the much more widely used Windows 7, an encouraging sign for Microsoft's efforts to convince the old guard to switch. Using data from Irish analytics company StatCounter, Computerworld calculated the changes in usage share -- a measurement of desktop-and-laptop-driven online activity -- of the various editions of Windows since 10's debut on July 29. For the first four weeks after Windows 10's release, Windows 8.1 led in losses, beating Windows 7 by a wide margin. During that month-long span, Windows 8.1...

The last four years have been quite troublesome for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). The company has been rapidly losing market share, especially since the release of Windows 8. Users were not happy with the live tile ecosystem offered and felt that the company did not provide a a user-friendly interface, which had been the main reason for Microsoft’s success in the past. Many users shifted to available alternatives i.e. Linux, iOS and Android. Windows 7 was a huge success and users soon got accustomed to using it. Later, Windows 8 was released with one foot each each in mobile and computing...

Conspiracy theories are gaining steam as accusations about Microsoft "spy patches" heat up. But a much larger part of the story may sound familiar to any experienced Windows or Office user. The tinfoil ball started rolling on Aug. 24, when Sergey Tkachenko at Winaero.com published an incendiary discovery: Four recent Windows 7 and 8.1 patches -- KB 3022345, 3068708, 3075249, and 3080149 -- were sending a potful of data to Microsoft's servers. In at least one case, the spying patches transmit data through hard-coded servers, bypassing the Hosts file and making it even harder to block their activity. On Aug....

Just when we thought that all the hoopla surrounding privacy in Windows 10 and questionable disclosure practices was starting to die down, Microsoft has to go and stir the pot once again with another seemingly overzealous move. It’s not enough that Windows 10 is installed on over 75 million PCs and counting; Microsoft is aiming for one billion installs within the next two to three years. And to get to that one billion figure, Microsoft wants to entice customers to upgrade their Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines to Windows 10. Making the upgrade free during the first year...

If you have Windows 10 and you want Microsoft to stay the hell out of your computer activities, do the following: 1. Click the windows icon located at the bottom left-hand corner of the main screen. 2. In the Search Windows dialog box, type "privacy". 3. When the Change Privacy window appears, turn all options "off". 4. After that is completed, click "Manage my Microsoft Advertising and other personalization info". 5. When that appears, click the purple box labeled "choose" and turn it off. 6 click the green box regarding personalized ads (you have to sign in with this one)...

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system has been praised for improving upon the flaws of its predecessor, but the company is facing widespread criticism for what some are calling invasive data collection. Under its default privacy settings, Windows 10 tracks the way users type, what applications they use, their browsing history and other personal information. Windows 10 also sends a weekly “activity update” on childrens’ web browsing and computer history to their parents. Some parents have publicly described receiving those emails from Microsoft as “creepy,” while others warn it could serve to humiliate teens at a vulnerable period in their...

Windows 10 adoption is going really well, stats show. Microsoft has an ambitious goal of bringing Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by 2017, and while that might sound like a really big number, the early adoption figures of the new operating system show that Redmond has all the chances in the world to meet the expectations. New reports coming from Petri reveal that Windows 10 has already been installed on 81 million PCs in the world, up from the 75 million figure we received a couple of weeks ago. This is impressive since Windows 10 was released just one...

Microsoft is using a new tactic to keep Windows 10 users from switching away from its Edge browser. The first time Edge users search for “chrome” or “firefox” using Bing — presumably with the intent of downloading those browsers from Google or Mozilla, respectively — they are shown a serious-looking message at the top of the search results. “Microsoft recommends Microsoft Edge for Windows 10,” it says. A “Learn why” button next to that message brings you to a website showing off Edge’s features... The message only showed up the first time I searched for “chrome” and “firefox” in Edge,...

Before you install Microsoft Windows 10 you need to ask yourself one question. If they are giving the software away for free, how do they make back the money invested in development and sustainment?