Windows 7 Won’t Shrink Fast Enough

Megalith

Megalith

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If Windows 7 were a person, it would be that party guest who stayed well past welcome, lingering long after everyone else has left, after the hosts have, in fact, gone to bed. According to metrics vendor Net Applications, its user share in October was 46.6%, a decline of six-tenths of a percentage point.

The faster Windows 7 relinquishes its user share, the less the chance that businesses will find themselves running unpatched, and thus, vulnerable, machines. No one wants a repeat of the panicky last few months of Windows XP's lifespan, when companies blew through IT budgets scrambling to purge the obsolete OS. Yet Windows 7 remains behind the pace set by XP.
 
Wrecked Em said:
The funny thing is that all they'd have to do is revert W10 back to the 7 UI, and the majority of users would gladly upgrade, despite the telemetry issues.
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The problem with your statement is you must define "majority of users". If you define that as consumers, you may be right. However, a large chunk of users are businesses.

A lot of large businesses don't want to deal with all the telemetry. They have to figure out if it's using more bandwidth (getting Network Admins involved), what information it actually is sharing (getting legal departments involved), locking down that craptastic MS store so users aren't buying games, and how the OS itself will affect compatibility with all currently running apps.

Let's use a bank as an example. This bank handles every kind of account imaginable, including Health Care and Credit Cards. This bank was very anxious to upgrade to Windows 7 primarily for security reasons. Now that the bank has reliable and secure operating systems, the focus is now on upgrading everything else, especially systems that took a back seat when money was tight during the economic downturn 10 years ago. The last thing the IT and Legal departments want to worry about right now is how a replacement OS is going to affect things like compliance with Federal Regulations and the sharing of information, especially for the Health Care and Credit Card accounts. Whether Win10 actually affects these things is beside the point, as it is still something that must be investigated by the company wanting the upgrades whether the OS does this or not.

This being said, MS may already have solutions to fit this need. Maybe this took a few years to flesh out, or maybe it was there from the beginning. This doesn't change the fact that businesses are still trying to catch up and bringing all the older systems up to date. With some businesses, especially ones heavily regulated (e.g. banking and health care), this takes a really long time.
 
Wrecked Em said:
The funny thing is that all they'd have to do is revert W10 back to the 7 UI, and the majority of users would gladly upgrade, despite the telemetry issues.
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. Yes this would be a great option, except combine it with10 enterprise ltsb. No telemetry, awesome user interface of Windows 7, modern ability of Windows 10 for hardware and touch screens. I wonder if some computer programmer genious guy could hack together something like this. Windows 7 interface over Windows 10 ltsb with all telemetry removed and everything metro removed. That would be awesome!
 
Megalith said:
If Windows 7 were a person, it would be that party guest who stayed well past welcome, lingering long after everyone else has left, after the hosts have, in fact, gone to bed.
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If Windows 10 were a person, it would be that guest sneaking into your bedroom when no one was looking, running a nose along your wife's panty drawer and, in fact, deep inhaling.

And that would follow with spilling red wine on your carpet, asking all your guests if they've "heard of Edge", and announcing it was unplugging the music in 10 minutes.
 
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Megalith said:
If Windows 7 were a person, it would be that party guest who stayed well past welcome, lingering long after everyone else has left, after the hosts have, in fact, gone to bed.
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Can't say that I agree with that so-called analogy to any degree whatsoever. If I had to offer one of a similar vein I would say Windows 7 is your wingman or BFF of sorts, dependable, rock solid, making sure you're good to go, driving you home after your drunken tirade, tucking you in, etc. Yeah, weird, but you started it. :D

Anyway, considering I use and still recommend Windows 7 because it's still viable in every situation except for DX12 which itself is meaningless I can't say I'm surprised at all to see this shift when people realize Windows 10 simply isn't all that. Windows should not be a rolling release OS, it's not working well for the majority and causing more problems than it's worth - even being free for so many folks doesn't mean anything in that respect.

Windows 7 forever. :D
 
Wrecked Em said:
The funny thing is that all they'd have to do is revert W10 back to the 7 UI, and the majority of users would gladly upgrade, despite the telemetry issues.
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Now imagine if they reverted back to the 7 UI, added a telemetry opt out, dialed back the draconian updates, provided uninstalls for Cortana, Edge, Store and default cellphone app bloat, and hired back the QA division to test updates before release.

But they'd rather keep doubling down on what isn't working and what's keeping people away. Windows 7 holding strong is only a symptom of what's wrong with everything that came after; not an endorsement of it being entirely amazing. It's the last Windows without gotchas.
 
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TitaniumLizzard said:
It probably helps that it's only current replacement is an NSA dream. If I were in charge of a business there is no fucking way I would have machines running Windows 10. I think Windows 10 is Red Hat's biggest salesman.
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So you think W7 is more secure than W10? Really? Do you have any, you know, actual data to back that up?
 
Tiberian said:
Can't say that I agree with that so-called analogy to any degree whatsoever. If I had to offer one of a similar vein I would say Windows 7 is your wingman or BFF of sorts, dependable, rock solid, making sure you're good to go, driving you home after your drunken tirade, tucking you in, etc. Yeah, weird, but you started it. :D

Anyway, considering I use and still recommend Windows 7 because it's still viable in every situation except for DX12 which itself is meaningless I can't say I'm surprised at all to see this shift when people realize Windows 10 simply isn't all that. Windows should not be a rolling release OS, it's not working well for the majority and causing more problems than it's worth - even being free for so many folks doesn't mean anything in that respect.

Windows 7 forever. :D
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I like my PC booting in under 30 seconds.
 
someone needs to seriously pump money into ReactOS. Pronto. I'm tired of relying on an OS run by a company who gives 0 shits about its end users. I want to upgrade from win 7, but I simply cannot bring myself to upgrade to an OS which I have no control over.
Rolling release was a great idea for windows 10 - for computer illiterate folks who just need to check their mail, watch some videos and buy some stuff now and then. It's even great for ATMs and standalone kiosks and machines that will rarely be upgraded. They should have made rolling release only for windows home and windows embedded. now my only option is windows 7, server 2016 or hoping that one day productivity companies take linux seriously enough to develop software for (I'm looking at you adobe, atodesk, siemens, dassault Etc...)
 
ianken said:
So you think W7 is more secure than W10? Really? Do you have any, you know, actual data to back that up?
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Windows 7 is supported through January 14 2020 and that means security updates only at this point since the mainstream support ended January 13 2015. I've said it once or twice in the past so I'll repeat it again: if there suddenly becomes some massive Windows 7 hack that happens anytime between that mainstream support ending and the time that Windows 7 is no longer officially supported for any updates including the security patches (they'll extend it past 2020, I can practically guarantee that happening) I'm going to lay the blame at Microsoft's doorstep because they're doing everything they can to ruin Windows 7 for no really good or logically rational reasons.

ianken said:
I like my PC booting in under 30 seconds.
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You turn your PC off? Hell, my laptop at this moment has 4 weeks of uptime on it. You could use sleep/standby and still get pretty fast restarts, you know. :D
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
The problem with your statement is you must define "majority of users". If you define that as consumers, you may be right. However, a large chunk of users are businesses.

A lot of large businesses don't want to deal with all the telemetry. They have to figure out if it's using more bandwidth (getting Network Admins involved), what information it actually is sharing (getting legal departments involved), locking down that craptastic MS store so users aren't buying games, and how the OS itself will affect compatibility with all currently running apps.

Let's use a bank as an example. This bank handles every kind of account imaginable, including Health Care and Credit Cards. This bank was very anxious to upgrade to Windows 7 primarily for security reasons. Now that the bank has reliable and secure operating systems, the focus is now on upgrading everything else, especially systems that took a back seat when money was tight during the economic downturn 10 years ago. The last thing the IT and Legal departments want to worry about right now is how a replacement OS is going to affect things like compliance with Federal Regulations and the sharing of information, especially for the Health Care and Credit Card accounts. Whether Win10 actually affects these things is beside the point, as it is still something that must be investigated by the company wanting the upgrades whether the OS does this or not.

This being said, MS may already have solutions to fit this need. Maybe this took a few years to flesh out, or maybe it was there from the beginning. This doesn't change the fact that businesses are still trying to catch up and bringing all the older systems up to date. With some businesses, especially ones heavily regulated (e.g. banking and health care), this takes a really long time.
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Most enterprise environments are moving to Windows 10 assuming they were already on 7. It doesn't have the issues that 8/8.1 had. Standard IE is still built in as well so the appropriate ancient IE support is there as well for those that need it.

As for the telemetry stuff that's only applicable to the standard consumer/home version of Windows 10. It can all be turned off for the enterprise environment.
 
TitaniumLizzard said:
There is no telemetry in windows 7. Your move.
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While I'll defend Windows 7 till my laptop is torn from my cold dead hands, I have to call you out on that one. Telemetry does exist in Windows 7, it's known as the Customer Experience Improvement Program or CEIP but you can disable it by loading up the Task Scheduler and deleting - don't stop the tasks, delete them entirely - the handful of tasks that send CEIP data back to Microsoft. Since Windows 10 was released Microsoft has created retroactive telemetry updates for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 that get installed by typical users and it adds more telemetry which ends up being similar to the level of telemetry that Windows 10 itself has out-of-the-box so one has to be very careful on allowing updates on 7/8/8.1

It can be and is done somewhat easily considering with 7/8/8.1 the end user still has near total control of what can be or should be installed. The problem is that Microsoft, being the deceptive fuckers they are, will often mask a telemetry update inside a "critical" security patch so if you're not paying attention to what's being installed during updates you could end up getting a telemetry module put in place and not easily removed. It can be removed, however, so again that's why Windows 7 (and 8/8.1 to some degrees) is still better IMO for the end user that simply wants the choice to participate or not and not have it shoved down their damned throats.
 
Tiberian said:
if there suddenly becomes some massive Windows 7 hack that happens anytime between that mainstream support ending and the time that Windows 7 is no longer officially supported for any updates including the security patches (they'll extend it past 2020, I can practically guarantee that happening) I'm going to lay the blame at Microsoft's doorstep because they're doing everything they can to ruin Windows 7 for no really good or logically rational reasons.
Click to expand...

This. Microsoft has a few choices after January 2020:

1) Make some concessions in 10 (telemetry, forced updates, tiles, bloat)
2) Release a proper successor to 7, with new features that are actually useful to desktop users
3) Continue patching Windows 7, because it will still be 35-40% of the market and too big to ignore
4) Take on more negative PR and deal with an angry Enterprise segment

The only segment that's historically been powerful enough to get Microsoft to change anything in Windows (besides government) has been Enterprise. And unless MS gives Enterprise a good reason to upgrade, they're not going to budge from 7 just because MS is beating an EOL drum.
 
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people stuck with XP to avoid Vista...but eventually Windows 7 won people over...the people that are sticking with W7 now have a much more negative opinion of W10 so I think W7 will last for a longer period of time...but will people be willing to stick with W7 even after end-of-support?
 
DPI said:
If Windows 10 were a person, it would be that guest sneaking into your bedroom when no one was looking, running a nose along your wife's panty drawer and, in fact, deep inhaling.

And that would follow with spilling red wine on your carpet, asking all your guests if they've "heard of Edge", and announcing it was unplugging the music in 10 minutes.
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All you get from the panty drawer is fresh laundry smells. The laundry hamper is where the real magic is. Oh wait this is about software my bad
 
Windows 10 . Windows 7 with more ways to make it harder to use. I have 2 computers with win 10. My wife's work one because they have win 10, and a game computer . My main computer uses Win 7 and my laptops are Apple.
I prefer OSX to Win 10. I prefer Win 7 to Win 10. I would be happier with Win 10 if it had a Win 7 interface. Even using Win 10 on a game machine is inconvenient.
 
W7 SP1 (no updates) with Common Sense 2017* as well as Adblock. I like to live on the dangerous side and am not afraid to nuke my installation.

Linux will be it's replacement for me.




* I also have a lot of blocking being done at my firewall running pfsense. Using pfBlockerNG.
 
Comparing Windows 7 to Windows XP is a very false comparison, makes me want to stop reading it immediately.
 
The only real issue I have with Windows 10 is that in the Pro Edition it has a bunch of junk games installed by default. I have to uninstall Bubble Witch Saga and all that crap every time I set up a new machine. Why is that in the Pro Edition? Home, sure that is fine, but not in something that is intended for use in a business environment. The Enterprise version of the OS is fine, I use that on my laptop and one desktop. My main machine is still Win 8.1 because it is rock solid and Windows 7 feels dated to me. I haven't gone to 10 because I don't want to reinstall everything.

On the Enterprise side of thing, they are using things like WSUS for update deployment, and firewall rules to block what little telemetry data might be leaking. Might take a bit in testing to make sure it isn't going out, but it can be done. I know several people who work for banks, most are using mainframe setups, they aren't running Windows for anything other than the logon servers and workstations. The sensetive stuff is all on an IBM AS400 or similar server.

I remember reading an article or seeing an interview, I can't remember which, years ago when someone from MS was talking about Office, and how 98% of the users never touch 75% of the features ( I could be wrong on the numbers, but they were high). How do you think they knew this? They have been collecting useage data for years, just no one knew. I'd be shocked if Apple and others aren't doing the same thing. I can see from their point of view where this data is useful, either promote what they think are useful features that the end user might not know are there, or refine the ones that people use and make them easier or better.

On the other side, I use to work support for a company that sold Point of Sale devices, if customers knew what I could see on the servers they would never use a credt card anywhere ever again. So who knows what MS can actually see, and what we think they can see.
 
Tiberian said:
I'm going to lay the blame at Microsoft's doorstep because they're doing everything they can to ruin Windows 7 for no really good or logically rational reasons.
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And this is one of the main reasons I decided to start moving the office to Windows 10. It seems Microsoft is intentionally making it more difficult to use Windows 7.

The newer Intel chips no longer "officially" support Windows 7, and Microsoft will not be providing updates for Windows 7 running on the newer chips.
Windows 7 updates are largely broken. Trying to update a fresh install of Windows 7 is painful due to the time it takes.

While I still like the Windows 7 GUI better, the Windows 10 GUI is good enough (unlike Windows 8).

I have had more of a problem moving from Server 2012 to 2016.
Server 2016 GUI is much better, but I've had a number of intermittent problems with 2016 Servers.
Just last week I rebuilt a server with 2012R2 due to a Hyper-V performance problem in 2016.
It's just not as stable as 2012R2
 
nutzo said:
Windows 7 updates are largely broken. Trying to update a fresh install of Windows 7 is painful due to the time it takes.
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Windows Update has always been crap, there are some updates you can manually install before doing windows update to speed it back up (there's a forum thread with the list).
 
ChoGGi said:
Windows Update has always been crap, there are some updates you can manually install before doing windows update to speed it back up (there's a forum thread with the list).
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Not sure when the last time you installed Windows 7 updates was but, that is no longer the case.
 
Windows 7 updates? A few weeks ago. Windows 7? a few years ago (though it was slipstreamed).
 
TitaniumLizzard said:
It probably helps that it's only current replacement is an NSA dream. If I were in charge of a business there is no fucking way I would have machines running Windows 10. I think Windows 10 is Red Hat's biggest salesman.
Click to expand...
Fact is most companies have already switched their non-technical users to Red Hat. Those users universally say it's the best OS ever and they all immediately switched their home machines to Red Hat too.

DPI said:
This. Microsoft has a few choices after January 2020:

1) Make some concessions in 10 (telemetry, forced updates, tiles, bloat)
2) Release a proper successor to 7, with new features that are actually useful to desktop users
3) Continue patching Windows 7, because it will still be 35-40% of the market and too big to ignore
4) Take on more negative PR and deal with an angry Enterprise segment

The only segment that's historically been powerful enough to get Microsoft to change anything in Windows (besides government) has been Enterprise. And unless MS gives Enterprise a good reason to upgrade, they're not going to budge from 7 just because MS is beating an EOL drum.
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Why are enterprises that can shut off telemetry going to be angry?
 
Wrecked Em said:
The funny thing is that all they'd have to do is revert W10 back to the 7 UI, and the majority of users would gladly upgrade, despite the telemetry issues.
Click to expand...

It isn't the UI for W10 that is the issue. That argument ceased being valid after 8.x or whatever the last version of that trainwreck was. Win 10 is close enough to Win 7 to make even those like me who were 100% in open revolt over 8.0's UI generally happy. The problem with Win 10 is the ongoing power grab that MS is trying to exert in removing features I specifically paid for. As a couple of examples, I still run my copies of Win 7 Ultimate on my primary machines because I use Group policy and resent the fact that MS decided "Fuck you, you don't need it" in win 10 Pro. I'm largely indifferent to Media center, but I understand how most aren't because they use it. The telemetry doesn't bother me because they long ago changed it where you can turn it off to the point where it is no more intrusive than Win 7. Before anyone argues this point I've spent hundreds of hours monitoring a Win 10 machines (my wifes) against my Win 7 using wireshark and It is exactly the same data being sent from both machines and I only used the built in options to turn it off on win 10. However what instantly got Win 10 rolled back off my machine after I had upgraded with the intention of keeping it was when they started stripping features out of it I explicitly paid to have. So yea, people like me aren't going to be upgrading until we have zero other choice and no amount of UI changes is going to do jack damnit about it.

As to someone complaining a few posts back about Windows updates being broken and do a fresh install. I actually just did that about 2 week ago on the very laptop I'm typing this on. It took the machine all of an hour from fresh install to be fully up to date. I mean honestly, boo fucking hoo if that is too long for you. If it takes longer there is a problem but it isn't windows update.
 
Ignoring all other things, w10 is evidence that the new-leadership of MS are not interested in making a better OS for PC users. It like google, facebook, apple, etc are not interested in creating more useful UI's or OS's, but dumbing them down so that 99% of people can do 50% of tasks, a clear improvement from 95% of people doing 75% of tasks.
 
Also what about large corporations or even smaller for that matter who want to switch, but 10 being so different it could cause loss of $$$.
I use classic shell but still can't figure out why they had to change the whole UI. It would of made it easier for people who are not tech savvy and USED to the interface of 7.
 
nutzo said:
The newer Intel chips no longer "officially" support Windows 7, and Microsoft will not be providing updates for Windows 7 running on the newer chips.
Windows 7 updates are largely broken. Trying to update a fresh install of Windows 7 is painful due to the time it takes.
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I installed Windows 7 on a Kaby Lake box last week for a client - those so called "no support" things being pushed out by Intel and Microsoft and now AMD, it's utter bullshit but because the overwhelming majority of consumers that own computers that run Windows aren't interested in putting in some effort to learn how their hardware works and how to understand that what Intel/Microsoft/AMD is saying is just that - utter and complete bullshit - to get people to buy new hardware that's not really needed. Microsoft isn't making mad profits from Windows 10 itself since it was free for so long (and can still be had for free through the end of 2017).

As for the update thing, I have a Windows 7 ISO that I keep updated monthly and it has everything up through Oct 15th so far but NONE of the telemetry and useless BS updates.

Again, it's a matter of a little bit of effort put into learning how things work (disclaimer: been using computers daily since the 1970s so I am far far from an average computer owner) and the majority of computer owners just aren't going to go that far or even close to it.
 
WarriorX said:
W7 with the task manager of W10? Sure. I don't mind Windows 10 UI though but I could never go back to W7 task manager lol.
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I assumed he meant window borders/file icons, not programs?
 
ChoGGi said:
Windows Update has always been crap, there are some updates you can manually install before doing windows update to speed it back up (there's a forum thread with the list).
Click to expand...

I've been through all of that, and still it sucks.
I've had less problems with Windows 10.
Hopefully I can get rid of the last of our legacy software next year and upgrade the rest of the office to 10.
 
For those who want the Windows 7 UI on a Windows 10 machine, download Classic Shell and select the Windows 7 UI.

I have installed classic shell on well over a dozen computers for friends and family.
 
Tiberian said:
Again, it's a matter of a little bit of effort put into learning how things work (disclaimer: been using computers daily since the 1970s so I am far far from an average computer owner) and the majority of computer owners just aren't going to go that far or even close to it.
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I've been using computers since the TRS-80 & Apple II days, so I go way back.

I could do all that, but I don't have the spare time to deal with all the Windows 7 work arounds.
Besides, it's also important that we show our software working on the currently OS's, so any system a customer might see (demos, sales, consultants) needs to be running Windows 10.
 
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