The majority of Windows users are business users running on PCs that generally lack the hardware necessary for gaming. (used in the same context above) If you want to include people playing Candy Crush on their lunchbreak that's fine, but I'm not sure what that has to do with DirectX 12.

Also, pretty much everyone that games on their PC uses Windows, but not everyone that uses Windows games on their PC. So by very definition it is a niche within the windows market.


That's partially true but it partly depends on the size of the company. In my experience smaller companies will just buy new PCs, leave the OS on it that came with it. Medium, sized businesses with a significant sized IT department don't typically roll out brand new hardware for everyone all at once. It is phased in and new hardware get's a customized image deployed based on whatever OS is supported at the time. Large enterprise outfits, will often rotate between upgrading Windows, upgrading, Office and upgrading hardware.

But no IT department I've ever dealt with would dream of migrating to Win10 just because it started coming on new hardware. Pretty much every IT department I've dealt with over the last several years upgraded to Windows 7 only because XP support ended. It had nothing to do with what came on the hardware.


I can categorically say you're wrong about this. It certainly doesn't happen everywhere, but considering the number of OS migration classes (including 2000, XP and Win7) I've personally taught at several companies I can say without question it absolutely does happen. And Office training was pretty common, especially when companies started moving away from Office 2003 to the newer Ribbon-style versions.

You mean besides pretty much everything? Most companies don't perform in-place upgrades and migrate user settings when they do OS upgrades. They typically do image deployment of some type of a customized install that has all of the necessary software preloaded. In some cases some of the settings might move over if the company has roaming profiles enabled, but that isn't a cure all, and many don't bother anyway. So when you sit down at your new computer at work, literally everything familiar can be gone. So for the people used to clicking on the shortcut to Excel on their desktop, now they don't have a shortcut. Okay simple, click on the start button and go to programs. What? that's gone now? Oh thank heavens there is a thing here that lists all of the programs alphabetically... but nothing is under "E." Crap. So unless I knew to use the search feature, I'd have to know to look for "Microsoft Office Excel 2013." That's just one example.

Of course you'll have one end of the bell curve that already knows it and has no trouble at all using it, on the other end, you have people that will be hopelessly lost until someone shows them where everything went (and if that someone is just a co-worker that's supposed to be doing something else, that's two people losing productivity) and you'll have a bunch of people in the middle that can probably muddle through it, but won't be nearly as productive as they were on their old familiar system.

I think you might be assuming that an upgrade at work just means a slightly different start button, and otherwise it's business as usual, and if that's the case, I think you're mistaken as that's not how the majority of upgrades go in the corporate world.

So you are using "a distinct segment" as your definition? Then ALL uses of Windows are niche uses. If you are using the definition put forth and in use in this thread, a very small and insignificant segment, then you have done nothing to support your position.


So, which definition of niche are you using? Be specific, something I know you have problems with, but at least try.

Unless MS changed something, you are correct.

PC games sell more than Xbox One right now, and are doing quite well, and will continue doing so as everyone wants to at least try VR in the coming year or so. And that will be on Windows 10 most probably for the best DX12 experience. Even older GPUs will benefit from the enhancements to framerate from DX12, especially on slower CPUs. So windows 10 makes sense.

And calling a significant platform out of a 100 billion dollar a year industry a "niche" is a stretch. Yes, it's a niche compared to windows office users at work, but it's not really a niche overall. That would be like saying action movies are a niche, because they consist of only a certain fraction of hollywood.

Videogames are bigger than hollywood now.

GTA V made 1 billion in sales in its first 24 hours. That's double the sales that the largest movies make on opening weekend.

Videogames != niche. Not even close.

Windows 10 is a step up from windows 8, and giving away free upgrades to windows 7,8 legit users (non-legit ones will pirate it anyway), is a stroke of genius. The platform is what matters. VR is going to be mostly on PC, and mostly on Windows 10. That's big.

For office and work users, yes, getting a free licence to upgrade now will be a big incentive to do so for larger companies. All Microsoft needs to do is stop supporting Windows 7 after it sees how well Windows 10 uptake is and then it can safely turn the shutoff valve that it always does and force people to upgrade.

And in this case, it will be an upgrade for their own good. At least for gamers' own good. That much is definitely true. There is no doubt that DX12 gives huge wins even on older hardware.

You can beat the details to death all you want. My point was and still is that the gamer market is significantly smaller than the non-gamer market, and I think I've established that already.

As a non-gamer I shouldn't have to deal with MS catering to the significantly smaller gamer market. I don't care what OS the XBOX runs nor how easy it is to develop games for the XBOX. As a non-gamer that is something completely inconsequential to me (and the majority of Windows users)

Microsoft is going to run their business however they want, so I don't necessarily expect them to change because myself (and the majority of Windows users) don't benefit any from their business strategy to unify their OS across platforms, but that doesn't mean I'm going to buy what their selling (literally or metaphorically) and I certainly don't have to like it or agree with it.

Call it whatever you want. You're missing the point. How would you feel if they started sticking car chases and explosions in every movie just to appeal to the minority of movie fans that like action movies?

Even if the particular segment you're talking about is significant, in both cases they are still a distant minority compared to the whole, and catering to them at the expense of the majority isn't necessarily a good move.

If I don't ever watch action movies because I prefer indie flicks, telling me I should be excited about all the new indie flick coming out because it has explosions and car chases is pretty poor logic.

If you're a gamer or an action movie fan, then by all means, get excited about that stuff all you want, but don't expect the majority to go along with you because for the majority those things not only don't benefit us, they actually detract from what we want.

From my experience in corporate IT you couldn't be more wrong about everything you just said. Larger companies aren't interested in upgrading to something new just because it's new, and there is nothing particularly compelling in Windows 10 for corporate users. It's a huge headache to rollout a new OS with almost no benefit in most cases. Upgrades are done usually more out of necessity (expiring support or unavailability of drivers for new hardware on the older OS) than out of any desire to have the newer OS. As far as MS changing their end-of-life support dates, they can't. With larger customers they are typically contractually bound to support the products through the end-of-life date. MS has extended it before, but cutting it short would almost certainly end in tons of litigation.

I'm not much of a gamer, but have been to the last two SXSW gamer expos and got to experience VR a little bit. It was mind blowing. The potential is enormous.

But the role Win 10 will play in VR is unclear to me. DX12, Hololens, other?. In simple terms, what should I look for?

ajheib - You're on the mark.

Navy pays Microsoft $9 million a year for Windows XP - http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/navy-m...ft-windows-xp/

XP...not even Windows 7. They never even upgraded to that. Granted, this is an extreme case, but it illustrates the complexities in switching to a different platform.

Yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize how much stuff relies on old technology and how much of a headache it is for corporate customers to upgrade. Back in the late 90's when I was working for an aerospace contractor, we were paying about $2000 a pop for old (even at that time) Compaq 386 systems because that's what the software was certified to run on. Certification for stuff like this wasn't a matter of having some guy install the software on a newer computer to see if it worked. The entire testing rig (3 racks of equipment) would have to be recertified which was a tremendous amount of work, plus all of the bureaucratic red tape that would have taken months and in some cases years to finish. Running everything on a newer PC or upgrading the OS simply wasn't an option. (and considering that was for testing vital avionics going into a commercial airliner that you've likely been in before, you should be glad that the scrutiny was as in depth as it was)

Go into a hospital and you'll find computers all over the place connected to medical equipment. Same situation there (minus the bureaucratic red tape) Pretty much anywhere you go you'll find PCs that are connected to proprietary equipment, that can't just be upgraded on a whim.

Even if you just ignore all of those PCs, and decide to just upgrade the standard desktop PCs.... Why? The cost to do so (even for a "free" upgrade) is substantial and the benefit is usually marginal. From what I've seen of Windows 10 thus far it will be no exception. I can't help but think that the people insisting that Windows 10 will be useful and/or popular in the corporate world have no experience at all in the corporate world.

You have done no such thing. You provided your own personal view and no supporting evidence. You even refuse to say what you mean by niche.

He's pretty well established that "niche" is anything someone uses their computer for that he doesn't.

I'll wade in with some facts from my company. We have approximately 1200 desktops/laptops machines in locations in the US and Europe. We stayed on XP and 2003 until Windows 7 and Office 2010 were released. We started deploying Surface Pro 3 devices last year to our senior team members as they requested them. The SP3 has been a popular upgrade for the people who travel a lot. It is light, fast and the ability to use it while you're taking off and landing is very popular with these people. We deployed the SP3 with Office 2013. We did not provide training when we deployed Windows 8 and Office 2013. We did provide training when we moved to Windows 7 and Office 2010. We deployed Office 2013 to everyone else on Windows 7. We don't necessarily care about supporting different versions of an OS. We do not want to support different versions of Office. We did a full reimage when we went to Windows 7/Office 2010. We did not reimage when we upgraded Office 2013 on the Windows 7 machines. We deployed it with SCCM. We spent about a 1000 hours writing a PowerShell/VB script to pull out all off the add-ins, uninstall Office, reinstall Office and install all of the upgraded add-ins again.


We will be deploying Windows 10 and Office 2016 next year to all of our machines. We are doing this to get on a unified platform again. We will continue to deploy touch devices as requested to stem the tide of BYOD devices like the iPad/Android tablets. Supporting different platforms is a nightmare. We will provide several five minute videos for training. Training in person is going the way of the dodo bird. We do provide three days of onboarding training that includes about three hours of IT training.

Wow, in for a penny, in for a pound. Tends to make many of our situations seem puny.

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwin...in-windows-10/

Built in mkv decoder but what about lossless audio such as dts/HR-MA and Dolby TrueHD?

I don't know if lossless audio codecs are built in ... but ... why should that matter? Does the OS need to do it all?... There may be room left on the hard drive for some additional software.

I've been running Jriver on Windows 10 for months and have no issues with DTS MA and Dolby TrueHD.

-Brian

Windows 10 will have native support for FLAC and Dolby sound formats. This means Windows Store apps and streaming content though their new Edge browser will be able to take advantage of them, such as Netflix or Hulu. This is actually a big deal that can't normally be overcome by simply installing a codec.

Well, that's good. I don't like streaming but I've heard other people do.

That's interesting.. Will Win 10 run only in a media mode like WMC and work with a Media Center Remote?

What's interesting? There is no WMC or MCE remote capabilities in W10. You are going to have to rely on Plex Theater, Emby Theater, hopefully SiliconDust will throw W10 a bone...

Basically, here it is in simple terms. NO DVR/Theater functions in W10. Period. Stay on 7, why wouldn't you anyway on an HTPC? It isn't like you need the latest OS to do what already works now.

I was merely talking about the streaming capabilities for netflix which was docked from WMC..

It stunk anyway. I'd rather buy a Roku and stream on that than have to watch and listen to the horrible Netflix streaming on W7. Oh wait, I did.

You can count on any "media center" functionality in W10, even for Netflix, to be stripped out. Netflix already won't work in W8 with a remote in a media center mode.

What's the point? Admittedly, I don't stream much content so maybe I just don't understand the target demographic here, but who is this appealing to? What device, what service, what speakers, what environment is it going to benefit someone to have lossless audio support in their browser and Windows Store Apps?

Until some online store actually lets you purchase music in FLAC format... none?

It might have something to do with integration of the Win10 apps with X-Box One. I don't plan on using either of those products so I didn't look into it any further.

H Hdtracks. Sells flac files.

I should have said "reputable" online store. People have checked their so-called high resolution tracks and found that at least some of them are fake upsampled 44.1 kHz files, so I wouldn't trust them to sell only lossless tracks, either.

Anyone who buys 24 / 96 tracks just for listening is wasting their money. Maybe if you are mastering...

Just sharing some windows 10 info : SVP 3.1.7 was released and works GREAT on windows 10 now. I couldn't use SVP at all, kept crashing all the time. Since MS updated my beta of windows 10 installed yesterday, plus this upgrade, I am supper happy with windows 10. Definitely going to get it.

I know. My point was that they are dishonest, not that they are cheating people out of something worthwhile.

And to be clear, my point wasn't whether or not there was some scenario where one might want lossless audio support in their browser or Windows Store Apps, but how common that scenario might be.

Suffice it to say, I'm not entirely sold on the "big deal" status of lossless audio built into the OS.

I don't really see the importance of having integrated MKV support, either. MPC is surely going to be superior to anything Microsoft could possibly offer, so I wouldn't really care if the OS knew what an MKV file was. I'd still use MPC-HC, anyway.