Microsoft has no plans for a second Windows 7 Service Pack Waiting for a second Windows 7 Service Pack? Keep waiting – it doesn't sound like Microsoft will be releasing one. Sources close to Microsoft's sustained engineering team, which builds and releases service packs, have told The Register there are no plans for a second Windows 7 SP – breaking precedent on the normal cycle of …
That's my point (in a way). Of that demographic, most of the PC-owners are still happily using XP Home, blissfully unaware of Vista, Win7 or even 8! And those PCs are gradually seeing less use for the common tasks (surfing, email, solitaire) as they've bought iPads or Galaxy Tabs thinking that THEY HAVE upgraded their PC.
Think about it, of the 100 million people who've bought an iPad, how many of them do you think didn't own a PC beforehand? Close to 0 I'd guess, that's 100 million PCs that aren't going to be upgraded any time soon, Microsoft has lost those users.
And PC Whirled be damned, no one goes in their anymore; you can buy a computer/tablet at Tesco. And Tesco don't treat you like a shoplifter the moment you step through the door, or trawl your harddrive for pr0n.
Win 8 will not cut it on PCs because most PC users don't need the touchscreen bits, they will want Win 7 instead. Personally, I can't see how M$ can avoid committing longterm to Win 7 and more SPs until they make a version of the next gen WIndows OS without touchscreen capability.
"...until they make a version of the next gen WIndows OS without touchscreen capability."
I'll add another thing to that.
Yes MS. I realise that crappy tablets haven't got the horsepower for it, but my machine has a couple of highly puissant GPUs and the odd CPU core or two twiddling their thumbs while running anything less demanding than Crysis, so I'd like the option of the clever bits and the eyecandy back in the UI please.
You can keep your blocks of flat colour for the cheapshit[1] ARM / Atom stuff thanks.
[1] Ok overpriced cheapshit.
Yeah... trying to force people like me onto that stupid tablet OS is going to end well for them... I was very unenthused by 8 already... this news just means I'll be even less likely to upgrade to their Apple clone (seriously, App store? crappy interface?)
Unfortunately there is no real competition for desktop users who *gasp* WANT A DESKTOP OS. I wouldn't buy an Apple for all the tea in China, and don't even me that Linux bollocks, I want something that works, I don't want to be screwing around with Linux (tried it before)
>Unfortunately there is no real competition for desktop users who *gasp* WANT A DESKTOP OS.
This is a terrible condemnation of companies like HP, really. They've known for over a year that W8 was going to be a turkey, and 18 months ago HP was going to be supplying WinOS on every machine they shipped. if they'd had some guts, and were not being run by witless beancounters, there would be a real pre-installed alternative by now.
I think that Linux and OSX are decent alternatives personally, but 90% of customers want a 300 quid PC that works out of the the box. And the box shifters have wasted a year in which they could have been planning to break the monopoly that sees M$ designing their products for them.
Greed, short-termism, lost opportunity.
Ah, the old "tried it before" bullshit.
Linux, hands-down, works a lot better and more smoothly than Windows and has done for some time now. If you really had tried Linux more recently than five years ago you would know this. So many people tried it ten years back, probably with Slackware or Debian or something else hard for a newb and dissed it as unusable.
We've had our own [free] app-store for years before it was a twinkle in Appl€'s bank balance, let alone Micro$oft's typical oh-we'd-better-get-in-on-the-act-after-everyone-else's effort; we don't have to use pathetic anti-virus programs that grind the machine to a halt; we have mature, journaling file systems that negate necessity for disk defrag and are much more robust in terms of hardware problems; the whole system runs way faster (it amuses me watching poor saps running Windows and all the waiting they have to do while Windows grinds away); we aren't at the mercy of a bunch of bullies who want to charge you more for their latest, unnecessary fix.
The "screwing-around" with Linux is practically non-existent with a modern, user-friendly distribution such as Mageia, SuSE or Mint to name but three. You cannot say the same of Windows. On top of this you have complete freedom to do as YOU want, WHEN you want and it costs you absolutely nothing.
You can legitimately point at Linux having fewer mainstream applications than Windows, but if you're willing to use different apps, you can certainly run a company using nothing but Linux desktops. I know, because I do and I have a lot less stress because of it.
...you can certainly run a company using nothing but Linux desktops.
Chalk and cheese. There's a world of difference between the corporate world of a fixed, known desktop application set with everything configured by skilled staff and the user world of anything and everything looked after by the clueless.
You could run a company's PCs very reliably using Win2K on the desktop, which was of absolutely sod-all use for private purposes, being horribly prone to cruft and having terrible compatibility issues.
You must also be talking small company here. When you get into the tens of thousands of seats, the costs of migrating, redefining the app base, recompiling / recertifying existing code, porting all those Access databases / Excel macros and so on piss all over the potential savings.
@TeeCee
There's a world of difference between the corporate world of a fixed, known desktop application set with everything configured by skilled staff and the user world of anything and everything looked after by the clueless.
Quite. In the corporate world there is an IT department, with skills and training, who look after the network of PCs and ensure that everything runs smoothly. As long as the IT department have the right skills it doesn't much matter what software the network runs -- the end used doesn't have to know how to maintain it because it's all done for him.
It's at home, where there is no onsite IT support department -- and where the most-used applications are likely to be PC games -- that Windows is an obvious choice, and Linux is riskier.
... Win2K on the desktop, which was of absolutely sod-all use for private purposes, being horribly prone to cruft and having terrible compatibility issues.
I liked Win2k. It was nicer than XP in some ways. Yes, there were a few Win98 applications that wouldn't run on it (Quicken was the only one I encountered) but those didn't run because the vendors had not followed Microsoft's development guidelines ... which is a fair indication that they didn't understand what they were doing and that the applications were worth avoiding anyway.
You must also be talking small company here. When you get into the tens of thousands of seats, the costs of migrating, redefining the app base, recompiling / recertifying existing code, porting all those Access databases / Excel macros and so on piss all over the potential savings.
Yes, there's always a cost involved in changing to a new system -- even to upgrading to a new Microsoft release -- if you're a corporate with tens of thousands of seats Microsoft will offer insanely large discounts to keep your business, and will help you with migration of your own software to help you bear those costs. They don't offer that sort of incentive to smaller customers, so they have less incentive not to upgrade outside the Microsoft ecosphere.
For a new business (of any size) with its own support department and no legacy of macros and templates to convert Linux is a reasonable proposition.
Ah, the old and fallacious porting apps/retraining argument comes out again. Another old favourite of those scared of change.
Porting/retraining is a one-off cost. Savings gained not being tied in to expensive, proprietary software, ongoing and far outweigh those one-off costs. It's being shown again and again by BIG users such as French police, city of Munich etc etc. All full of non-techy users. It is an utter fallacy to say Linux is harder to use than Windows. It quite simply is not. If you started out with one person using Linux and one using Windows who have never touched a computer before you would have no difference in how long it took them to get going.
In fact, when these companies and organisations change to Linux there is a notable drop in how many support calls IT gets because fewer things go wrong.
The Win2k argument is bizarre; no-one is saying stick with something old, we're saying go with something modern that doesn't leave you at the behest of proprietary companies that want to lock you into their ever more locked-down and expensive systems.
...had a GoTo Meeting client for GNU/Linux, I'd switch tomorrow. Everything else I can do native, in WINE or under virtualisation, but I need GoTo Meeting on the main box and there is simply no GNU/Linux client.
Which sux big, fat, hairy, donkey balls.
If anyone would want this, please let Citirx know.
With XP Microsoft seemed to move to a much more mature model of software with longer periods between major releases, rather than expecting users to constantly update to get the latest features (and loose compatibility with other software.) Obviously that looses the regular upgrade sales, but I suspect it more than makes up by building customer loyalty. I was hoping with Windows 7 they'd continue that (whilst burying vista.) Sadly that policy (whether deliberate or accidental) seems to have gone, which is making Linux etc. look increasingly appealing.
agreed.
One thing consumers dont like, especially those who work and not play (so not kids who get excited with tablets but people who do work on their machines) is a constant changing UI and especially having to change their hardware or operating system. In the corporate world sysadmins are calling out for SP2 because they integrate hotfixes onto reinstalls and these reinstalls get cluttered fast. eg. My laptop now MSE just scanned it, 288k files scanned because its a SP1 image with all hotfixes integrated, that leaves tons of dormant files on the disk. SP2 would be far smaller and cleaner.
What microsoft are doing is essentially copying google and apple (n my opinion poor) business practices, both those companiues have a trend of rapid releases especially google, kiddies love this as they get over excited on new versions but for me its a nightmare, I want a stable platform that I can use for several years, I wait a year after a OS release (at minimal) before I use it usually and then I expect to use it for at least 4 years. If I then upgrade I then expect the upgraded version to keep the same fundamental UI design with only enhancements not a rehaul.
Now here is what I think is going on at microsoft now.
They are clearly panicing because they not a major player in the mobile market, they have also discovered how profiteable a online app store is for companies like google and apple. So I can understand why this is been released for touch devices.
However their mistake is in forcing this down user's throats on the desktop and radically forcing a touchscreen UI on the desktop, usually when they release a new version of windows they dont do it with such brunt force, but they acting so desperate they going all out to make windows 7 less and less attractive to keep like xbox music windows 8 only and no more service packs. But the message they sending out to me is this.
1 - any future software I buy of them will have a short life before its treated as obselete, it may get security updates but will lose 3rd party support quicker due to fast progression of replacement products and lose quality focus because of rapid replacement products.
2 - any future UI changes I have to learn again and even when learned are less efficient may only last 2-3 years before microsoft panic again making more radical changes, microsoft gained my lotalty because the UI was stable all the way from 95 up to windows vista (taskbar changed too much in win7 to be called stable), but now I know microsoft dont care about that they will sell their soul to get mobile market share, mark my words if windows 8 fails in the mobile market, metro will be considered obselete and trashed by microsoft and a win9 will be pushed out quickly to try again.
Before I wasnt even considering a new OS, now I am evaluating various distros and freebsd as future desktop OS's for my use. Until then I will use windows 7, windows 8 is just for me to toy with in a VM as thats what it is a toy.
You may already (since posting this) have caught up with the replies to previous posts, but just in case you haven't:
No it doesn't. Support for Win7-with-SP1 ends either two years after SP2 comes out (it may not) or with the end of the product lifecycle, whichever is the sooner. For Win7, the product lifecycle has mainstream support going through to 2015 and extended support to 2020. Using past performance (ie, XP) to interpret those statements that means MS will continue supporting Win7 in Windows Update until 2020 as long as you have whatever is the latest service pack by then.
Ergo, any corporate currently in the middle of an XP-to-7 transition has 8 years to enjoy the benefits. They probably will, too, since MS are looking increasingly *unwilling* to deliver a viable desktop platform to replace it. People *talk* about waiting for Win9, but no such product is on the drawing board and when it does appear we might find that it is another phone OS.
Monolithic bundled up Service Packs made sense back in the NT4 days, when you could "get away" without applying intermediate patches and the lack of controlled deployment tools for OS patches meant that deploying and testing minor fixes was a major hassle.
These days the security landscape has changed and with an ever increasing number of zero-day vulnerabilities it's no longer worth the risk to hold back on patching. And with free tools like WSUS to manage the process in larger environments, as well as Automatic Updates for standalone machine, there really is little point in bundling updates into a single big bulky patch as opposed to just letting the system update itself.
I think you and (OP) were talking crossed purposes.
You say that WSUS can update everything... and you're correct, in time.
OP said (in effect) having to use WSUS to push N+ patches with an unknown (the first time) number of reboots is a pain, and having a point update, for example, Windows 7 SP2, would make life for medium-sized shops easier, since the large shops use Norton Ghost or some other application to clone standard images onto new machines.
Except that WSUS has been capable of differential patching and combining updates into a single reboot where possible anyway, so you end up with pretty much the same result as rolling out a Service Pack without having to actually re-test another update (heck even when it does roll out SPs, it only actually applies a diff between what you already have installed and what is in the SP anyway). And doing it that way is *much* easier than re-ghosting machines with a completely new OS image (especially since you'd need to maintain a WSUS or similar setup anyway).
"Service Packs" are just a relic of old-school thinking. I'm pretty sure the only reason there is an SP1 at all is simply to placate those stuck in the "wait for the first service pack" mentality, which is equally flawed/
No, Service Packs also result in new version for OEMs to install. If you buy a machine today with Windows 7, it's going to be the SP1 release. This makes a new machine a bit less vulnerable when first fired up and getting the latest update installed. It also means a lot less to download and install for the updater.
Enterprises don't care about this because they roll their own images. They can add updates to the image on whatever schedule makes sense to them. They also have infrastructure for handling new updates better than individual consumers.
Where the Service Packs save a lot of time is for someone like me who does work on individual consumer and small business systems. If they've screwed up the machine so badly the most practical course is wiping and restoring the lot, and if it is a big brand OEM system, I'm not going to install the older version the machine shipped with and install a massive amount of updates and SPs. I'm going to install from the OEM most recent version of the OS for that machine. Those versions recognize their brand signature in the firmware, so there is no issue with activation.
So, if someone brings me a thoroughly infest Dell that shipped with XP SP1, I'm going to rebuild it with XP SP3 and save a bit of time. It's a convenience to people working at my level but the lack of a Win7 SP2 is not going to be a major problem. For starters, machines needing to be completely rebuilt has come up a LOT less in the post-XP era. This means less income for me but I'd rather make my money helping people set up and understand new stuff for their business than do repairs. An SP4 for XP might have been nice to have but I'm not the one footing the bill at Redmond.
I expect there will still be things like roll-ups that combine a bunch of updates. If you look at the history of any OS, you'll see the patches tend to be focused on a small critical set of files. Installing 100 updates on an old version of XP can mean the same file gets overwritten with a slightly newer version may times, until finally arriving at the most current version. (At least until some obsessive figures out a way to break it that has been there for ten years but was never discovered before.) So why not just cut to the chase with a rollup that is essentially a mini-SP focused on a single portion of the system?
Updating isn't the same process it was during XP's reign. It used to be common to be brought machines that hadn't been updated in over a year. That just doesn't happen much with the post-XP versions of Windows.
It took me until last year to adopt Windows 7 at home and we are only just now discussing moving the 300+ PC/laptop fleet in my network in late 2013 or early 2014. This announcement makes no sense to me. Everything I've read about Win8 makes me think it's a complete turd and there's no way I'm subjecting my users to completely relearning an OS (not to mention none of our current equipment will leverage any of the "features" that make W8 even slightly appealing). M$ doesn't seem to understand that the success of XP is what made them the OS leader. It's BECAUSE we were able to keep using XP for a decade that made it the standard and there's no way I'm going to convert our computers to W7, W8 or any future flavor if I'm going to have to turn around and repurchase the "next" version 2 or 3 years later. M$ needs to understand, the OS isn't the goal, it's the vehicle. Their strategy should be making the OS as safe and stable as possible so everyone uses it, then they make their real money off the applications (office, exchange, ISA, etc.)
This is the stupidest move M$ has made since pushing our ME to appease OEM manufacturers concerned about the Y2K bug.
Well...
a) rolling a bunch of seperate patches into a single service pack SHOULD NOT take away loads of time Microsoft wants to use on Windows 8. The patches are already there.
b) I don't use Windows anyway so I don't give a toss. You shouldn't either.
b.5) This isn't going to push anybody into using Windows 8, if Microsoft actually thinks it is going to they are delusional.
c) WSUS may work for patching EXISTING systems, but this doesn't make up for the lack of a service pack's ability to install a bunch of updates at once to a "fresh" install. Autopatcher, however, does... stick all the patches and autopatcher into some directory (usually on a USB stick) and it'll install them for you, problem solved.
It hasn't anything to do with Windows 8. Anyone who believes that is delusional.
But anyone who thinks creating a Service Pack is a trivial undertaking is also delusional. At best you hope to get the number of systems with weird setups that don't work right after the SP to a minimum. The range of machines within the PC standard just makes it impossible. There is always going to be something not covered by your testing regime that turns out to have thousand of users who are not pleased when their machine breaks.
Recall the incident a few years ago when Microsoft discovered the hard way that many OEMs were creating images that were used to prep both Intel and AMD based machines. Each processor family needs its own version of the HAL, which is selected and installed when the OS is installed. A system normally shouldn't have both HALs on the boot volume. So somebody at Microsoft thought it was useful to check the HAL to know which versions to use of some files the Service Pack updated. The problem was that the installer would see the AMD file first, even if it was an Intel machine. DOR (Dead on Reboot.)
It was an innocent mistake. Both HALs should not exist on the same machine. At least not in the directory in question. But it was convenient to the OEMs to do it that way and the result was a lot of machine needing attention.
The Service Pack worked fine on the great majority of systems. But when you're talking about the Windows installed base it only takes a couple percent to make for millions of broken PCs. So, putting together a Service Pack is not trivial or cheap.
In the Exchange world there are SPs and rollups. Microsoft hasn't done much about rollups on the OS side, and they should. XP SP3 was basically SP2 with a rollup.
I think the more concerning point is that given the common codebase that means no more SPs for Server 2008R2, right?
I'm not saying Microsoft should issue 6 SPs like the NT days, or even 4 like Windows 2000 but not even 2 is a bit chintzy, especially since Win8 is likely to be as popular in corporate shops as Vista was.
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