Lackluster Windows 10 adoption

If you are one of the 92 out of every 100 people that use Windows-based desktop/laptop PCs, chances are you have not yet upgraded to Windows 10, and are still using Windows xp, Windows 7, or Windows 8.1. Windows 10, of course, is the latest version of Microsoft’s engine (operating system – OS) that drives […]

If you are one of the 92 out of every 100 people that use Windows-based desktop/laptop PCs, chances are you have not yet upgraded to Windows 10, and are still using Windows xp, Windows 7, or Windows 8.1. Windows 10, of course, is the latest version of Microsoft’s engine (operating system – OS) that drives your PC. It was launched on 29 July 2015, accompanied by a lot of promises. However, for some reasons, many PC users have not yet upgraded. In fact, barely 8% have as of last month.
Contrary to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook’s rather puzzling and untrue statement of a few weeks ago, that laptops (desktops) were being replaced by iPad, it is the case that for any productivity-related tasks, you still need laptops or desktops, and for 93 out of every 100 laptops and desktops, chances are that you are running Windows. Apple’s McIntosh laptops/desktops and Linux machines account for 4.91% and 1.74%, respectively, of the OSs that drive laptops and desktops; while the rest are mainly one version or another of Windows. So, these other OSs can’t even see the back of Windows, and Microsoft is exceedingly powerful in this regard.
Certain tasks or projects will always call for laptops or desktops, in spite of the explosive growth of smartphones, and, to a lesser extent, tablets, in the past few years. These tasks include those requiring a significant amount of computer power and storage space, graphics/image processing, large-scale document or computer program generation, virtually all types of engineering analysis, accounting, document management, database management tasks, and so on. Also, the sheer size of the monitor in desktops is an attractive feature for many. Things just get pretty cluttered on a cell phone, making it quite awkward to use in many mission-critical scenarios. Studies have shown that larger screens make you more productive.
I summarized the capabilities that you get from Windows 10 in the 3 August 2015 article in this column. These include the return of the Start button, which was removed in Windows 8, Cortana – your special assistant, Windows Hello – which adds a few layers of security, and Windows Continuum – that allows you to switch from the desktop mode to the tablet mode, and vice versa. You also get the new Internet Explorer, which is now called Microsoft Edge. Windows 10 also supports devices used for Internet of Things (IOT) and there are advanced security features, which make Windows 10 the most secure Windows yet. For added security, there are the Windows Defender and SmartScreen functions.
I can suggest several reasons why the change to Windows 10 hasn’t caught on. (There are even more Windows xp users than there are Windows 10 users – 12.21% versus 6.673%, even though xp is 14 years old and Microsoft stopped supporting it last year.) The figures for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are, respectively, 56.53%, 2.6%, and 10.72%. (The numbers are in percentages of all PCs, including Mac and Linux, whose figures have been quoted above.)
Some of the plausible reasons why folks are not upgrading to Windows 10 include: a) the cost of upgrade, since the free upgrade ended a month after launch, b) reluctance on account of fully entrenched usage patterns, c) enterprise users who did not get the free-upgrade promotion, d) fear that the upgrade may not go well or that the upgrade process is going to be cumbersome, e) the feeling that your PC is old, and therefore, there is no need to rock the boat; f) not knowing which specific old version or patch of Windows is safe to install from, and, finally, g) the fact that Windows 10 is still work-in-progress, with still many bugs to fix.
Facts supporting some of these suggestions have been documented. For example, an update to Windows 10 on 12 November 2015 is said to have reverted back your default settings to the original Windows 10 settings. I can see why some people may find this to be headache. After all, it takes your valuable time to create these settings to start with – and now you have to do them again.
My earlier recommendations, regarding when to upgrade, in the previous relevant article, still stand. Furthermore, unless you are a very tech savvy person and you have a lot of time on your hand, I’ll suggest you should still hold off on upgrading till perhaps July of 2016, after the OS would have been around for a year, and all updates to the upgrade would have hopefully stabilized. (I am assuming that Microsoft will not force you to upgrade sooner.) And when you do upgrade, you should perhaps get a new computer. It is likely the case that your device has seen a few years, and, moreover, things always seem to go wrong – and they do, with major updates like the one in question.