The Year Windows Died at Home and Nobody Cared

Megalith

Megalith

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ZDNet author Jason Perlow, who previously offered thoughts on “why Windows must die,” is back to insist Microsoft’s long-standing OS is facing extinction in the home – and Redmond happens to be “perfectly fine” with that. While it will remain strong in the enterprise environment, Perlow argues Windows is becoming irrelevant in the consumer space due to waning interest in the PC. And despite Microsoft trying to attract the average joe with productivity-enhancing services, much of the software is mobile-oriented and not dependent on Windows.

All indications are that Windows may very well be dead in the future of the consumer, at least at home and on their mobile devices when accessing resources for work and for play. But Microsoft itself has not lost its importance. If anything, it is becoming much more important as more activities of the home-based and consumer end-user are shifted toward consuming content and services in the cloud.
 
Well, i guess the home market is meaningle$$ to them. In all honesty, my computer just sits there most of the time, gathering dust... Last time i was going to build a gaming one and get back on the horse.. i looked at gpu prices and i was like screw it... MS abandoned home pcs too.. they never worked to add functionality.. what they added, then proceeded to take away, namely for me media center.. and they also killed a photo software that was pretty great. .. they don't badd functionality to the home pc becuase its all about the cloud, such bullshit. With the power of pc now a days, they could have been a great hub for your cellphones to connect... Download new pics organize them, connect and use the pc, in the cellphone or tablet.. shit like that, a lot can be done wirelessly... Gaming on the PC could be it, if work would have been done to connect to TVs and work on interfaces that made more sense shit like that.. there is simply a lot that could have been done... But the time and money was spent con cloud crap... But hey they be making billions. Meh.
 
auntjemima said:
Not just that, but one just has to browse their local stores to see that 2-in-1's are insanely popular right now and most ship with Windows.
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Yet any adult i talk about computing doesn't even remembers last time used... The rare occasion they had to edit a document only to discover their pc is dead shit like that have been the conversations I had.. pretty sad, and quite a change from past conversations... Its all about what is on their hands
 
Dying pc? Nearly everyone I know as 2~3 active computers in their house, almost all of them running Windows. Those with 3+ have other alternative OS's out.

Maybe the year after year is going down, but the total number of Window users has to be way up there.
 
oh look. yet another incorrect article about how PCs are dying.
i really wish they would start looking at patterns in the data over several years. if they did they would see that sales spike at q4/q1 and lag q2/q3. its been doing this for 8 years now and so far this years numbers match that pattern.
 
Windows as an OS fell out of Joe Sixpack's eyes somewhere between XP and Win7. They just expect the computer to work and don't care what is in the magic box that makes that happen. Look at all the trouble the IT world had and still has in prying XP out of end user's hands. And despite years of Microsoft's best efforts at forcing Win 10 onto everyone's desktops, adoption rates have stalled pretty much at the rate of hardware failure.

This isn't because the PC is Dead but more has become a generic appliance. Most folks only replace a toaster or microwave when it dies. PCs have fallen into the same category for the average end user.

You see much the same thing in the smartphone world. The average end user just wants the thing to work, they don't care if it is Android Gummy Bear or Marshmallow or Dead Chicken or Apple V10.2.X. And in much of the US and Europe, smartphone purchasing isn't much different then the replacement rate. Reports claiming the "Death of the Smartphone" probably aren't far away.
 
auntjemima said:
Mega sigh. Why are people so illiterate these days?

I said MOST.
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Because we are not as smart as you I guess. Which isn't saying much. ;)

I meant that people can use other OS's and probably be just fine.
 
Hagrid said:
Because we are not as smart as you I guess. Which isn't saying much. ;)

I meant that people can use other OS's and probably be just fine.
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My original comment was directly related to the article saying Windows is dying because PC's are dying. Would I agree that desktop PC's are selling less? Sure. But I also know that plenty of tablets ship with Windows and the MAJORITY of 2in1's have Windows on them.

So, in my opinion, which disagrees with the articles opinion, Windows is no dying just because desktop PC sales may be.
 
This made me laugh a bit. MS complains about OS's dying in the home really well MS should have never came out with Xbox's then games would have stayed on PC.
 
People prefer to use consumption-only device that are not designed to be tweaked. Film at Eleven.

You only have to learn something more powerful if you want to create content. That's the way things have been for the last five years.

As long as Windows has Enterprise locked-down, then folks will continue to use it for their jobs. That's how it's always been. Microsoft derailed the runaway train that was Linux by making Outlook/VBA a necessary evil, then creating Azure and absorbing Bash, so they have no more enemies in server (you can use whatever the fuck OS you want, just pay us for cloud servers :D

Microsoft has nothing to worry about.

Apple has no fucking clue where it wants to go as long as the iPhone is still standing, and none of their 1st-party productivity software products are a threat.

Google has docs and cloud, but for large-business needs these tend to fall short of MS. And if they want to go all-out against MS they must whip-up a Linux distro that can compete with RHEL. That won't happen overnight.

Amazon is already established as the cloud leader, but they have no inclination to own the OS side of things. Like Google, they release their own version of Linux just to power media consumption devices. And unlike Google, theere's not even the barest attempt at office software.
 
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THRESHIN said:
Yup windows is done. Time to dump your steam accounts guys.
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Don't forget to drop visual Studio, 3ds Max, photoshop, substance applications, unity/Ue4, zbrush, and any other windows productivity. Have fun typing a term paper on a phone! No more office for you!
 
Tiberian said:
And yet Windows still rules the world with > 90% market share. I'd almost be willing to bet the article was written on Windows software, go figure. :)
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Not by choice for the most part. Also people who only browse could be using other OS's for that.
 
Tiberian said:
And yet Windows still rules the world with > 90% market share. I'd almost be willing to bet the article was written on Windows software, go figure. :)
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I'm going to guess you completely forgot about iOS and Android when writing this post.
 
The corporate meme of "The PC is dying" isn't going to go away until they have everyone on dumb terminals connected to the cloud with an always on internet connection.

That is their ultimate goal.

The corporate borg don't want people having personal computers anymore, they want you on a cloud computer which they control to siphon all your data.
 
thecold said:
PC gamers are becoming a thing. I mean even Walmart now has ibuypower pc's.
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I was at Walmart today (shudder) - and swung by their computer section. I was surprised. Lots of Razer devices, a few high end gaming monitors, and they had an iBuyPower PC on display (but not plugged in - thinking it should have as it had water cooling and likely lots of LEDs). The Walmart close to my house is the only computer within 15 miles that sells any products like this. Have a few BestBuy's if i'm willing to drive a bit. A Microcenter a little further out.
Wonder how many computers Walmart sells? I swear half the people shopping their have less than a 6th grade education. The web site peopleofwalmart.com must have taken a lot of inspiration at this one :)
Anyway, back to the point. the home PC market is not Microsoft's bread and butter. Mobile phones have replaced a lot of peoples home computing requirements. (I think I have like 12 systems at my house - half Windows 10, FreeNas, Ubuntu systems, a (gasp) a few macOS systems). I gave away a few computers recently - didn't know what to do with a few older ones.
 
Tiberian said:
Neither of those mobile operating systems have anything to do with the desktop OS market share we're discussing in this thread, at home even.
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This article is about Windows dying in the home, which they absolutely have a lot to do with. It's literally what the article is about, not some prediction that linux is taking over or something.
 
steakman1971 said:
I was at Walmart today (shudder) - and swung by their computer section. I was surprised. Lots of Razer devices, a few high end gaming monitors, and they had an iBuyPower PC on display (but not plugged in - thinking it should have as it had water cooling and likely lots of LEDs). The Walmart close to my house is the only computer within 15 miles that sells any products like this. Have a few BestBuy's if i'm willing to drive a bit. A Microcenter a little further out.
Wonder how many computers Walmart sells? I swear half the people shopping their have less than a 6th grade education. The web site peopleofwalmart.com must have taken a lot of inspiration at this one :)
Anyway, back to the point. the home PC market is not Microsoft's bread and butter. Mobile phones have replaced a lot of peoples home computing requirements. (I think I have like 12 systems at my house - half Windows 10, FreeNas, Ubuntu systems, a (gasp) a few macOS systems). I gave away a few computers recently - didn't know what to do with a few older ones.
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I think it's safe to say most of the things they sell are laptops. Now they even have decent gamer laptops.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Windows as an OS fell out of Joe Sixpack's eyes somewhere between XP and Win7. They just expect the computer to work and don't care what is in the magic box that makes that happen. Look at all the trouble the IT world had and still has in prying XP out of end user's hands. And despite years of Microsoft's best efforts at forcing Win 10 onto everyone's desktops, adoption rates have stalled pretty much at the rate of hardware failure.
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I would argue that Windows 10 adoption has never really exceeded the rate of hardware failure/replacement in its entire life. It's at about 36% after three years, or about 1% per month on average. I'd argue that that's even less than the natural turnover rate for PCs. And that 1% average takeup includes the first year (and then some) where Microsoft was literally giving Windows 10 away for free, and doing it by default on Windows 7 devices.

I think Uvaman2 is on the nose--Windows 10 really isn't much of a value-add for the end user. I mean, it's hard to get excited about having a Microsoft Account, or Onedrive, or the Windows Store. It's as if MS's upper management started the Win10 design process with "how can we get more money out of Windows 10?" rather than "How can we improve Windows 10 so that people will want to buy it?"
 
I do not have any Loyalties with any Operating Systems; If it can run most games from steam including AAA games and my interwebs without ^&%&^% around with it, I'm sold.

As of right now Windows platform covers all of it. *shrug*
 
Darkcyde said:
I do not have any Loyalties with any Operating Systems; If it can run most games from steam including AAA games and my interwebs without ^&%&^% around with it, I'm sold.

As of right now Windows platform covers all of it. *shrug*
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This exactly. This is why MS pays to keep it that way.
 
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