North American Businesses Reluctant To Adopt Windows 10

[Megalith]

In Microsoft’s defense, a lot of businesses are probably just too lazy to upgrade or have no real reason to. Windows 7 remains king, with 91 percent of machines evaluated for the study running that version, while five percent were still on Windows XP. Four percent were on Windows 8.

Based on an evaluation of more than 400,000 Windows-based computing devices between January and May this year, across 169 organizations in the US and Canada using the TechCheck asset management solution, the study reveals less than one percent were running Windows 10. It finds the vast majority of North American businesses adopted Windows 7 as the corporate platform-of-choice since moving away from Windows XP, and have yet to move in significant quantities to newer versions Windows 8 or 10. "It appears businesses are hesitant to take advantage of the various Windows 10 upgrades and, at least for now, are satisfied with Windows 7," says David Brisbois, Softchoice's senior manager of assessment and technology deployment services consulting.

 

[polonyc2]

XP is more popular then Windows 8?...that says it all...

 

[Mike89]

Just takes businesses a long time cause switching over is always a process that a lot of businesses don't want to go through. This same thing was said when Windows 7 came out. Businesses were hanging on then (and some still are today) to XP.

 

[Nenu]

lol

Even with their wanky tactics they cant score more than 4%.
LOL

 

[sleepeeg3]

I was amazed to see an XP machine in the lab at a very cutting edge biotech company. Been awhile since I have seen that. Then I realized it was mostly acting as a remote desktop portal to a Win7 PC. I also realized how little the GUI had changed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[EODetroit]

"It appears businesses are hesitant to take advantage of the various Windows 10 upgrades...."


Like what? Meanwhile, Windows 10 sends telemetry back to Microsoft that could be later patched to contain trade secrets that Microsoft or a government agency is interested in. Why take the risk? Seems most businesses won't take the risk.

 

[ChadD]

There is no advantage to upgrading from 7 so why would they ?

When things are working, and honestly working well... why mess with it. Spending money just to spend money isn't a very good way to make any.

 

[cyclone3d]

Just takes businesses a long time cause switching over is always a process that a lot of businesses don't want to go through. This same thing was said when Windows 7 came out. Businesses were hanging on then (and some still are today) to XP.

Generaly, a business doesn't change the OS until they replace the computers. And when working on about 5-year replacement plans, it is going to take a while for 10 to be more common place for businesses.

"It appears businesses are hesitant to take advantage of the various Windows 10 upgrades...."

Like what? Meanwhile, Windows 10 sends telemetry back to Microsoft that could be later patched to contain trade secrets that Microsoft or a government agency is interested in. Why take the risk? Seems most businesses won't take the risk.

Windows 7 and 8/8.1 already sends stuff back.

There is no advantage to upgrading from 7 so why would they ?

When things are working, and honestly working well... why mess with it. Spending money just to spend money isn't a very good way to make any.

7 is getting long in the tooth. And if you are a business that already does volume licensing, the only cost is the "labor" to re-image the machines.

 

[dandirk]

"It appears businesses are hesitant to take advantage of the various Windows 10 upgrades...."


Like what? Meanwhile, Windows 10 sends telemetry back to Microsoft that could be later patched to contain trade secrets that Microsoft or a government agency is interested in. Why take the risk? Seems most businesses won't take the risk.

Does that tin foil hat itch?

The main reason (hasn't changed in years) is that an OS upgrade is expensive. You have to test all your software, upgrade any that is not compatible and then deploy... which costs money. Most companies run pretty tight labor (especially in IT) so you either have to literally stop most projects/initiatives for a year + or so until the OS upgrade is complete or hire contractors which also isn't cheap.

I personally haven't heard a single IT professional in my industry blog or say they aren't upgrading primarily because of telemetry. I work in the software and OS deployment industry. I rarely hear any mention of it at all. I have seen it come up directly with MS developers and they showed us the data they collect with their particular product (SCCM) how to find the logs, how to even recreate the hashes to confirm the data.

I would agree there isn't "killer" features to necessitate the need to upgrade. Though the trend I am seeing in this space is the need to be extremely agile. Where I work we actually fear and look forward to the new upgrade/servicing system of Win10. It will force us to be more agile. People say IT can't move fast enough... it can, its just the customers that want fast, perfect, and cheap all at the same time. MS Win10's new upgrade system literally takes the pressure off of IT in some regards. "That old crappy software you have Mr Customer? You know the one you are too cheap to upgrade, ahem maintain but is sooo critical to your job we should spend overtime to baby it along... Well you HAVE to upgrade it now because we won't get security patches any more until you do." We no longer have the option to just skip that one critical security patch.

Our first run in with this had to do with a GPO security patch, a lot of GPOs wouldn't work with out edits to permissions on a lot of them effecting pretty much all our customers. Our win10 machines weren't patched for 2 months because each month is rolled into the next. Some would say this is a stupid position to be in. I can see their point. Though this is forcing us to rethink what is actually critical... keeping custom or "not best practice" GPOs due to some purely political or hand holding reason or confirming and being able to be agile. This was a good first look into how we will need to adapt to a faster world, one which I actually embrace because these upgrade projects won't be so big or expensive once we do.

I work in a 10k node environment with practically every use case/software type imaginable...our first Win10 rollout will be in about a month or so.

 

[ChadD]

7 is getting long in the tooth. And if you are a business that already does volume licensing, the only cost is the "labor" to re-image the machines.

"long in the tooth"

Ok I'll bite what does Win 10 offer that is so great that companies need to have ?

Even assuming the "only" cost for a client is Labour, that isn't insignificant. Again why spend one dime "upgrading" systems that work fine. What does Win10 bring to the table that requires a company to bother... I mean as an IT guy frankly I would never suggest a Win7 Client downgrade to 10. If it isn't broken and security patches don't end I don't understand the advantage for my clients. My clients would NOT use Windows Account logins, The IT guys (ok me) would have to strip out all the junk from the new start bar, disable the windows store (and likely I'll have to be back to redo it when MS pushes updates that turn things back on, and of course their is the group policy issues if there running Pro which most companies are)... no one is going to want Cortana, which means I then have to disable that which as I understand it is a pain in the current Win10 version. No company anywhere is going to switch to Edge from IE if they are using IE. (I still hear lots of people use IE and I don't know must be a backwards US thing cause none of my clients have used IE in years). Any "security" upgrades MS claims are redundant as no company large enough to be concerned would be using a built in product anyway. The MS added Virtual desktops are cute... but any customers that are honestly using that type of stuff likely aren't using windows anyway. DX12 isn't a concern for any companies I can think of... I don't think where talking about game developers.

I can think of a lot of reasons to not upgrade and honestly none to. If we are all being honest Windows 7, is pretty much a good all around versions of Windows. 10 doesn't run better, it doesn't use a better file system, all the new features it brings to the table... are almost all things most companies would go out of their way to turn off anyway. (which MS may or may not allow you to do depending if your shelling out for the Enterprise editions or not the majority of the business world are outfits that aren't really large enough to justify expensive enterprise level sight licences. Considering the destain MS seems to be showing for costumers using PRO with recent changes to the GPM what IT guy in his right mind would consider telling some company with 20-100 Windows 7 Pro machines running fine with GPM set and running as expected to upgrade to 10. Ok some of us Pitch them an upgrade path that includes a proper OS... )

 

[daglesj]

Always amazes me how many here have never been involved in a corporate wide IT refresh. They are like painting the Forth road bridge. It takes fours-five years to go from one end to the other...and then you have to start all over again.

They take ages of planning, scheduling, testing, compliance, contingency, budgeting etc, etc.

No one ever does a corporate refresh for shits and giggles and because its new and shiny.

 

[[Spectre]]

I was amazed to see an XP machine in the lab at a very cutting edge biotech company. Been awhile since I have seen that. Then I realized it was mostly acting as a remote desktop portal to a Win7 PC. I also realized how little the GUI had changed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm still on 7.

Our oldest running OS are Win3.11, IRIX 6.4, and I believe the version of MS-DOS that runs the scintillation counter is 6.2. Somethings just can't be replaced, or can not be replaced cost effectively, or still work so why replace them?

 

[heatlesssun]

This stuff takes time. I work at a mega bank and I didn't get my first Windows 7 machine until August 2013, almost four years after the launch of Windows 7. We have about 200k Windows PCs dealing with the obviously the most sensitive kinds of personal and corporate information there is. We spend a considerable about of time with independent testing and working with Microsoft before Windows upgrades. We're piloting now and starting next year will begin to offer 10 to certain teams and over time expand the release. We're trying to do it is much smaller steps than XP to 7 such that the upgrades corporate wide won't be done before 2020 when 7 support is scheduled to end. But I'm guessing that Microsoft will extend that like they did with XP.

 

[SuperSubZero]

Like what? Meanwhile, Windows 10 sends telemetry back to Microsoft that could be later patched to contain trade secrets that Microsoft or a government agency is interested in. Why take the risk? Seems most businesses won't take the risk.

I work for a young, nimble company, and we've been deploying Windows 10 since November. The majority of our PC users are on Win10. We've been deploying the Anniversary Update since it was released.

Our users are generally pleased with Win10, and our IT Security/Network folks haven't seen anything worthy of a red flag.

 

[LFaWolf]

Personally I am very reluctant to switch to Windows 10 but for what I do, sigh, I have no choice... have to keep up

 

[heatlesssun]

I work for a young, nimble company, and we've been deploying Windows 10 since November. The majority of our PC users are on Win10. We've been deploying the Anniversary Update since it was released.

Our users are generally pleased with Win10, and our IT Security/Network folks haven't seen anything worthy of a red flag.

Windows 10 certainly has it's problems but overall it's actually been pretty well received. And IT folks at the bank I talk to are pretty big on it, they think it's a good deal more secure and easier to maintain.

 

[ChefJeff789]

Because of legacy software, nearly every software engineer in my company still has a box that runs Windows XP. I don't see them switching in the near future, as everything else can run in a virtual Linux environment on the same system. The willingness of MS to throw BASH support into Win 10 might be the only bridge the company is even remotely interested in taking to a new OS.

 

[SGTGimpy]

It's funny, I am currently at my office now pushing out Win 10 Anny update to all our corporate office PC's when I saw this. As far as Windows 10 goes, it has been the easiest and cleanest OS to manage that Microsoft has had. Once you customize your image or install configuration. It is quick and clean to roll out. It has also allowed me to keep some of our older machines a little longer because they run a lot better now than when They had Windows 7 on them.

Now as someone that has specialized in dealing with large corporate refresh for 20 plus years. I can tell you most of the time when companies hit the wall on upgrading it is usually due to 3 reasons.

first: Old POS software. This is the one reason I absolutely did not accept. If the software is so damn old that Novel engineers are saying it's old. It is time to cough up the money for something new. Usually it is not a problem of finding a suitable cost effective replacement as it is more of people not wanting to learn something new. 99% of the time I have been able to find a suitable, updated replacement software that didn't brake the bank in these situations and allowed them to move forward with the refresh.

Second: Poor or lazy IT management. This is usually the one that is at the top of the list for why things can't get refreshed. Not keeping the systems and software updated within 6 months of the latest release or patches is what causes the start of the shit storm rolling downhill. If you have a proper roll out schedule for patches and system updates as well as proper testing methodology in place. You will never fall behind in your software or systems. Also having proper licensing structure to fit your companies size and requirements also helps. If your over 100 users, stop buying OEM licenses and go Volume Licensing.

Third: Just plan ass cheap Executives. This one is my absolute favorite because I get to play CPA and show these CFO's or Controllers how much they are not saving by being cheap. (I once got a CFO fired for being cheap and costing the company 200K a year for not upgrading things.) Most of the time, these executives are only bottom line readers when it comes to IT budgets. They do not look past initial cost of investment and don't realize how much it is costing them by hanging on to that old stuff. Yeah, might have a big upfront investment on the solution and training everyone. But if your ROI for the new solution is a 20% year of year reduction in Employee time waste and an increase of 50% total production efficiency. Then that initial investment starts looking pretty good.

Granted I have run into a hand full of times were the company did have a custom piece of software that couldn't be replaced. In these cases, I was still able to create a solution that allowed them to still use the software while completely updated and refreshing there infrastructure. There is always a way, just have to be willing to take the time to find it.

 

[dyzophoria]

On our Company, we still have XP we well (well in a virtualized environment). It's just due to old stuff to support. We are moving to 10(It will take some planning, buy hey, it's our job as IT Pros!) and if you are still on the "We are stuck on Windows 7 coz it works!" reasoning, well you are no different from the XP people.

 

[dandirk]

It's funny, I am currently at my office now pushing out Win 10 Anny update to all our corporate office PC's when I saw this. As far as Windows 10 goes, it has been the easiest and cleanest OS to manage that Microsoft has had. Once you customize your image or install configuration. It is quick and clean to roll out. It has also allowed me to keep some of our older machines a little longer because they run a lot better now than when They had Windows 7 on them.

Now as someone that has specialized in dealing with large corporate refresh for 20 plus years. I can tell you most of the time when companies hit the wall on upgrading it is usually due to 3 reasons.

first: Old POS software. This is the one reason I absolutely did not accept. If the software is so damn old that Novel engineers are saying it's old. It is time to cough up the money for something new. Usually it is not a problem of finding a suitable cost effective replacement as it is more of people not wanting to learn something new. 99% of the time I have been able to find a suitable, updated replacement software that didn't brake the bank in these situations and allowed them to move forward with the refresh.

Second: Poor or lazy IT management. This is usually the one that is at the top of the list for why things can't get refreshed. Not keep the systems and software updated within 6 months of the latest release or patches is what causes the start of the shit storm rolling downhill. If you have a proper roll out schedule for patches and system updates as well as proper testing methodology in place. You will never fall behind in your software or systems. Also having proper licensing structure to fit your companies size and requirements also helps. If your over 100 users, stop buying OEM licenses and go Volume Licensing.

Third: Just plan ass cheap Executives. This one is my absolute favorite because I get to play CPA and show these CFO's or Controllers how much they are not saving by being cheap. (I once got a CFO fired for being cheap and costing the company 200K a year for not upgrading things.) Most of the time, these executives are only bottom line readers when it comes to IT budgets. They do not look past initial cost of investment and don't realize how much it is costing them by hanging on to that old stuff. Yeah, might have a big upfront investment on the solution and training everyone. But if your ROI 25% for the new solution is a year of year reduction in Employee time waste and an increase of 50% total production efficiency. Then that initial investment starts looking pretty good.

Granted I have run into a hand full of times were the company did have a custom piece of software that couldn't be replaced. In these cases, I was still able to create a solution that allowed them to still use the software while completely updated and refreshing there infrastructure. There is always a way, just have to be willing to take the time to find it.

All very good points and can certainly agree with... My environment is full of niche software which 75% of time is 10 years behind in best practices. Thankfully as you mentioned as we go through these refreshes we are forced to build better standards, testing methods and processes that make it much easier.

#2 is huge from my experience... Previous posters said to not upgrade because of "shiny" but it IS important to keep fairly close to current, otherwise the barrier to get current will be just that much more difficult and expensive... your standard kick the can down the road for another day. This is why I think while difficult to adjust the new servicing methodology will ultimately help IT departments.

 

[daglesj]

It's funny, I am currently at my office now pushing out Win 10 Anny update to all our corporate office PC's when I saw this. As far as Windows 10 goes, it has been the easiest and cleanest OS to manage that Microsoft has had. Once you customize your image or install configuration. It is quick and clean to roll out.

Yes its quick and clean to roll out as it hasn't got 5+ years of updates etc. plumbed into it.

 

[djoye]

I would love to learn more from people that have built a CLEAN Windows 10 Enterprise image. I'm working on it but I'm trying to figure out how to remove the JUNK included; twitter, Candy Crush, Get Office, etc., that stuff has no place in an Enterprise build. So much app trash in Windows 10 Enterprise. I'm just learning to use MDT (need to also learn to get WDS working with UEFI) so I imagine that I'll be building a reference image and then incorporating scripts to remove the bloat crap and turn off features during deployment.

Other than that gripe, Windows 10 works with all of our stuff so we're putting it on some machines but still using our Windows 7 image for most equipment since we don't have a proper Windows 10 image just yet.

 

[THRESHIN]

I work for a very large company with some very sensitive data.... And we use win7. We only upgraded from xp a couple years ago when the security patches for xp stopped.

Upgrading costs time and money. Companies will never upgrade anything unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Skripka]

Generaly, a business doesn't change the OS until they replace the computers. And when working on about 5-year replacement plans, it is going to take a while for 10 to be more common place for businesses.



Windows 7 and 8/8.1 already sends stuff back.



7 is getting long in the tooth. And if you are a business that already does volume licensing, the only cost is the "labor" to re-image the machines.

Except tons of industry software doesn't work on W8+...or is outright not even supported anymore. Why would you "upgrade" OSes when you know it breaks your company software tools?

Doesn't matter is W7 is "long in tooth" or not, it works. And the company software tools work with it.

 

[LFaWolf]

I would love to learn more from people that have built a CLEAN Windows 10 Enterprise image. I'm working on it but I'm trying to figure out how to remove the JUNK included; twitter, Candy Crush, Get Office, etc., that stuff has no place in an Enterprise build. So much app trash in Windows 10 Enterprise. I'm just learning to use MDT (need to also learn to get WDS working with UEFI) so I imagine that I'll be building a reference image and then incorporating scripts to remove the bloat crap and turn off features during deployment.

Other than that gripe, Windows 10 works with all of our stuff so we're putting it on some machines but still using our Windows 7 image for most equipment since we don't have a proper Windows 10 image just yet.

I can't believe that stuff is in the Enterprise build. Really? That is funny. Is there a simple way to prevent people from downloading apps from MS Store as well?

 

[Skripka]

I can't believe that stuff is in the Enterprise build. Really? That is funny. Is there a simple way to prevent people from downloading apps from MS Store as well?

LTSB Enterprise N didn't even come with the App Store, or Win Media anything, nevermind apps. Did they add it back in the AU?

 

[cyclone3d]

I work in a 10k node environment with practically every use case/software type imaginable...our first Win10 rollout will be in about a month or so.

I work in a 7.5-8k node environment and we have started rolling out Windows 10 already. The IT people have been using it for about 3-4 months and any new computers we get and any computers we have to re-image are being imaged with Windows 10.

"long in the tooth"

Ok I'll bite what does Win 10 offer that is so great that companies need to have ?

Even assuming the "only" cost for a client is Labour, that isn't insignificant. Again why spend one dime "upgrading" systems that work fine. What does Win10 bring to the table that requires a company to bother... I mean as an IT guy frankly I would never suggest a Win7 Client downgrade to 10. If it isn't broken and security patches don't end I don't understand the advantage for my clients. My clients would NOT use Windows Account logins, The IT guys (ok me) would have to strip out all the junk from the new start bar, disable the windows store (and likely I'll have to be back to redo it when MS pushes updates that turn things back on, and of course their is the group policy issues if there running Pro which most companies are)... no one is going to want Cortana, which means I then have to disable that which as I understand it is a pain in the current Win10 version. No company anywhere is going to switch to Edge from IE if they are using IE. (I still hear lots of people use IE and I don't know must be a backwards US thing cause none of my clients have used IE in years). Any "security" upgrades MS claims are redundant as no company large enough to be concerned would be using a built in product anyway. The MS added Virtual desktops are cute... but any customers that are honestly using that type of stuff likely aren't using windows anyway. DX12 isn't a concern for any companies I can think of... I don't think where talking about game developers.

I can think of a lot of reasons to not upgrade and honestly none to. If we are all being honest Windows 7, is pretty much a good all around versions of Windows. 10 doesn't run better, it doesn't use a better file system, all the new features it brings to the table... are almost all things most companies would go out of their way to turn off anyway. (which MS may or may not allow you to do depending if your shelling out for the Enterprise editions or not the majority of the business world are outfits that aren't really large enough to justify expensive enterprise level sight licences. Considering the destain MS seems to be showing for costumers using PRO with recent changes to the GPM what IT guy in his right mind would consider telling some company with 20-100 Windows 7 Pro machines running fine with GPM set and running as expected to upgrade to 10. Ok some of us Pitch them an upgrade path that includes a proper OS... )

Windows 10 does run better. I've been running it since the preview version and have never once felt like I should go back to Windows 7.

You DO NOT have to use a Microsoft login for Windows 10. You can skip that step and create a standard login with/without a password just like previous version of Windows.

It also sounds to me like you are not running in an AD environment. And even if you are, then you must not be using a standardized image for the computers you are setting up.

If you are not running in a big environment, the absolute easiest thing to do for imaging with Windows 10 is to set up a machine like you like, run sysprep with the "standardize" option (to make it redetect all hardware), pull an image with imagex/gimagex, and then reimage with that image until you need to change it.

I used to make Windows 7 images like that every few months after a number of new Windows 7 updates got to be too many after imaging. Took a couple hours every few months, but then I could image a machine in about 15 minutes, install the drivers and any special software and then deploy. That single thing right there saved me at least 2-3 hours per machine as opposed to just installing Windows from scratch.

And you can set IE to be the default browser as well.

After imaging it takes me no longer to set up Windows 10 than it did Windows 7.

 

[djoye]

I can't believe that stuff is in the Enterprise build. Really? That is funny. Is there a simple way to prevent people from downloading apps from MS Store as well?

Fortunately, there are group policy settings to disabled the Store. The Store app will still be there, but if the user launches it they will receive a message saying that policy has disabled access to the store.

 

[Bigbacon]

worked switched to windows 10 a few months ago. No problems so far other than the fact that some programs won't run as admin by default and the short cuts have to be configured to do so. That is my only complaint. If I am an admin of the machine, let everything run as admin by default.

having it for work for many months is what made me upgrade my gaming PC to 10. I was reluctant to do so but when I work with it every day, it seemed like a good OS.

 

[SGTGimpy]

Yes its quick and clean to roll out as it hasn't got 5+ years of updates etc. plumbed into it.

No Shit. Installing Windows 7 was a pain in the ass even with a WSUS server. I think the last time I did it the count was 198 updates for the first wave for Windows 7 and it took like 2 hours to get them all installed. Our WSUS server after removing all windows XP thru 8.1 out of it now has regained 3/4 of it total space back.

 

[Mohonri]

No Shit. Installing Windows 7 was a pain in the ass even with a WSUS server. I think the last time I did it the count was 198 updates for the first wave for Windows 7 and it took like 2 hours to get them all installed. Our WSUS server after removing all windows XP thru 8.1 out of it now has regained 3/4 of it total space back.

Makes you wonder why MS didn't just push out a W7 SP2 to avoid all that.

 

[mdburkey]

I personally haven't heard a single IT professional in my industry blog or say they aren't upgrading primarily because of telemetry.

The telemetry data itself isn't as much of a concern, but the data collected by Microsoft connected accounts and Cortana, however, *IS* of concern -- especially in the industry I primarily work for (medical).
Even with the telemetry data, which is theoretically "non-identifiable," it is a bit touchy, as Microsoft has been unwilling to share exactly WHAT data is being sent back.

Basically, it is almost impossible to make Windows 10 Professional HIPAA compliant (and be able to prove it, in case of an audit).

We had previously been testing out Windows 10 Pro on several systems -- with a nice set of GPO's applied to prevent people from installing non-approved apps, to disable the store, to disable Cortana, disable Microsoft accounts, etc. (we also push out quite a few registry and task scheduler changes to disable as many feedback and telemetry tasks as possible). Unfortunately, many of the GPO's we were using got removed/disabled with the Anniversary Update -- as did the ability to block Microsoft from pushing apps into new accounts by default.

The forced upgrades and removal of features and GPO's in Windows 10 is especially concerning -- especially with "upgrades," like AU, that are essentially new operating system versions. Both TH2 and AU have removed software we had installed, reset permissions and options we had changed or disabled, and tried to reinstall app's we had specifically removed.

We have come up with registry based workarounds for most of the newly removed GPO's, but it has been annoying, to say the least. We have also managed to handle the app push and store disabling issue through some PowerShell scripts that we have set to run every time a users log in -- that essentially remove ALL universal apps except the ones we have in a whitelist in the script (INCLUDING the Store app itself).

With the Enterprise version, we can lock it down and make it HIPAA compliant, but Enterprise costs significantly more and has a continuous recurring cost -- which no one is willing to pay.

Right now, we are standardizing on Windows 8.1 Pro with ClassicShell on all our machines -- with all the telemetry updates blacklisted and removed.

 

[mdburkey]

Makes you wonder why MS didn't just push out a W7 SP2 to avoid all that.

They essentially did: the "Windows 7 Convenience Rollup".
KB3125574 (which also requires installing KB3020369 first).

 

[Skripka]

The telemetry data itself isn't as much of a concern, but the data collected by Microsoft connected accounts and Cortana, however, *IS* of concern -- especially in the industry I primarily work for (medical).
Even with the telemetry data, which is theoretically "non-identifiable," it is a bit touchy, as Microsoft has been unwilling to share exactly WHAT data is being sent back.

Basically, it is almost impossible to make Windows 10 Professional HIPAA compliant (and be able to prove it, in case of an audit).

We had previously been testing out Windows 10 Pro on several systems -- with a nice set of GPO's applied to prevent people from installing non-approved apps, to disable the store, to disable Cortana, disable Microsoft accounts, etc. (we also push out quite a few registry and task scheduler changes to disable as many feedback and telemetry tasks as possible). Unfortunately, many of the GPO's we were using got removed/disabled with the Anniversary Update -- as did the ability to block Microsoft from pushing apps into new accounts by default.

We have come up with registry based workarounds for most of the newly removed GPO's, but it has been annoying, to say the least. We have also managed to handle the app push and store disabling issue through some PowerShell scripts that we have set to run every time a users log in -- that essentially remove ALL universal apps except the ones we have in a whitelist in the script (INCLUDING the Store app itself).

With the Enterprise version, we can lock it down and make it HIPAA compliant, but Enterprise costs significantly more and has a continuous recurring cost -- which no one is willing to pay.

Right now, we are standardizing on Windows 8.1 Pro with ClassicShell on all our machines -- with all the telemetry updates blacklisted and removed.

What an f'ing mess.

 

[mdburkey]

Fortunately, there are group policy settings to disabled the Store. The Store app will still be there, but if the user launches it they will receive a message saying that policy has disabled access to the store.

This GPO no longer works in AU.

Forcibly REMOVING the Store app from the computer still works quite nicely however (for now).

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Even if you have access to some kind of less-BS enterprise version of 10, the fact remains that it's a feature regression from 7/8. Why would ANYONE downgrade to this shit is the real question.

 

[Evil]

Goodwill... is using Windows 10. Goodwill... and most of their stuff is donated. So like... come on...

 

[cyclone3d]

Even if you have access to some kind of less-BS enterprise version of 10, the fact remains that it's a feature regression from 7/8. Why would ANYONE downgrade to this shit is the real question.

What specific features are "missing" from Windows 10?

 

[ChadD]

Windows 10 does run better. I've been running it since the preview version and have never once felt like I should go back to Windows 7.

You DO NOT have to use a Microsoft login for Windows 10. You can skip that step and create a standard login with/without a password just like previous version of Windows.

It also sounds to me like you are not running in an AD environment. And even if you are, then you must not be using a standardized image for the computers you are setting up.

If you are not running in a big environment, the absolute easiest thing to do for imaging with Windows 10 is to set up a machine like you like, run sysprep with the "standardize" option (to make it redetect all hardware), pull an image with imagex/gimagex, and then reimage with that image until you need to change it.

I used to make Windows 7 images like that every few months after a number of new Windows 7 updates got to be too many after imaging. Took a couple hours every few months, but then I could image a machine in about 15 minutes, install the drivers and any special software and then deploy. That single thing right there saved me at least 2-3 hours per machine as opposed to just installing Windows from scratch.

And you can set IE to be the default browser as well.

After imaging it takes me no longer to set up Windows 10 than it did Windows 7.

I am glad to hear Win 10 runs better then 7... I am just not convinced its better enough to convince money men its worth bothering with for performance issues... as others have pointed out Win 7 isn't new and it tends to run very well on hardware that is put together any time in the last 6-7 years.

I don't bother setting up windows no. I have done a few things here and there the last few years for clients that absolutely had to have windows on some machine. (almost all of my clients are Linux based because that's what I "sell") In fairness the last time I did any larger (50+) setups of windows I think XP was considered current. I guess I have ended up being the linux guy, I have setup plenty of clients with essentially what amount to dumbish terminals. (which I find is exactly how 90+% of offices use their windows 7/xp machines)

I know rolling out windows isn't rocket science get it setup and push it out, its no different then what I do where I more or less push a customised distro to a bunch of PCs.

I only made the point about IE over edge as a way of saying Edge isn't an upgrade I see any of my clients finding value in. As I say mostly their all Linux now so there running Firefox or Chrome... really I can't say I have walked into any offices and found them using IE before I got their anyway. (as I say I keep hearing how many companies still use IE and perhaps its just the business sectors I tend to deal with, perhaps there is some need for IE somewhere... I think someone told me in another thread the US Gov still have some sites that require IE to work properly, could be I don't know... I'm Canadian and so are the my clients IE seems pretty dead here windows users included.)

I have heard that MS have improved some of the back end tools and made taking care of roll outs a lot neater. That's great... but it still doesn't change the fact that the end users (the clients) aren't going to see any major advantage to upgrading. Sure there are plenty of companies with their own IT depts and it might make those guys lives easier... the majority of business installs though are in companies that simply hire that work out as they are not quite large enough to hire someone full time, and not small enough to have Joe from accounting take care of it either.

MS main issue is Windows 7 is just that good. It doesn't do anything wrong... its fast enough, and it does exactly what most companies want it to do. It tends to be a very stable desktop OS that runs what they need. If 10 had some really compelling features that would sell to end office users or their bosses MS would have an easier time convincing companies to upgrade. All the bad press surrounding 10 (I know most of it BS) makes it very easy for me anyway, MS is trying to go after specific markets obviously with things like adding a hacked up bash. I think they have underestimated how many of their installs simply aren't being used for much more then Web/Email and some basic word processing and spreed sheet work. Heck I have even gotten a few switch deals done because I was able to demonstrate integration with some STUPID old software designed to work with Win3.1. That is the junk people run into in the real world. Those clients where honestly copying data from that old computer they needed for some expensive custom hardware... moving it around with floppy disks. (that machine now runs on a Linux machine, I had no issues running that software in a linux emulator and saving the data on to their network drive... in fairness the previous guys they where dealing with sucked and they likely could have set some sort of solution up for them) So many companies still dealing with stuff like that, I'm honestly shocked XP numbers aren't higher then they are still.

 

[DPI]

Our users are generally pleased with Win10, and our IT Security/Network folks haven't seen anything worthy of a red flag.

My girlfriend used to drive around with the check engine light on for months and didn't see anything worthy of a red flag. Ignorance is bliss.

As far as "users generally pleased", I'd be curious to know what specifically theyre "pleased with" that's new in 10. Because I'm not aware of a single must-have business related feature that's new in 10. Nobody can ever seem to answer this question in these types of threads - it's always crickets.