Last week, Microsoft announced that they have more than 14 million devices running Windows 10 within 24 hours of the launch. Over the weekend, Microsoft has added additional 4.5 million PCs. Windows 10 has been installed now on 18.5 million machines, the new number comes from Neowin's source inside Microsoft. At its peak, Windows 10 was being installed at a rate of 1500 machines per second.
Office Mobile apps for #Windows10 are here! Created to work in the cloud and on-the-go, now you can enjoy the Office you love from anywhere. Learn more: http://off365.ms/hW4CXw
According to a survey of CIOs, security spending is increasing at double the rate of overall investment. 75% of individuals use only three or four passwords across all their accounts. Passwords are not always secure. Windows 10 introduces an alternative to password with Microsoft Passport and Windows Hello.*
Stay on the offense against cybercrime by protecting yourself with Windows 10.
Windows 10 is officially out. It’s the biggest update to Windows in years and represents a number of new directions for Microsoft’s premier software product. Windows 10 replaces Windows 8 and 8.1, and serves to attract those Windows 7 users that never bothered to update to Windows 8. There are a host of new features in Windows 10, ranging from updated interfaces to new apps and services. For all of our in-depth thoughts on the new platform, be sure to check out our full review.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the new platform is that you don’t have to pay for it, so long as you already have Windows 8 or Windows 7. But if you’re looking for a reason or two to update your current Windows 8 machine or aging Windows 7 box, here are the top new features in Windows 10 that might make you want to.
Join Managed Solution at one of our Windows 10 Roadshow events for a demonstration on the new features and mingle with industry experts! Click on a Local Roadshow Location to REGISTER:
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - Irvine, California
Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - Los Angeles, California
Friday, August 7, 2015 - Scottsdale, Arizona
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - San Diego, California
Windows 10 was unveiled in September with a plan for a new era of Windows. Windows was created to empower people and organizations to do great things. The vision was one platform, one store, and one experience that extends across the broadest range of devices from the smallest screens to the largest screens to no screens at all.
From the beginning, Windows 10 has been unique – built with feedback from five million Windows Insiders, delivered as a service with ongoing innovations and security updates, and offered as a free upgrade* to genuine Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 customers.
Windows 10 is available in 190 countries today. The launch of Windows 10 is being celebrated around the world with global fan celebrations and a new yearlong initiative to celebrate people and organizations making a difference around the world. We’d love to hear how you plan to help #UpgradeYourWorld. Starting today, you can vote for a global nonprofit to receive a cash donation by simply tagging their social handle and using #UpgradeYourWorld and #vote on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. More information on Upgrade Your World can be found at http://www.windows.com/upgradeyourworld.
If a new survey of IT Pros is some indication, Microsoft’s gamble with unified Windows 10 OS for various form factors may pay off well in enterprise segment. 48% of respondents said new Windows 10 Mobile features made them slightly or much more likely to consider it on tablets and smartphones.
Eighty-one and 77 percent of IT professionals said iOS and Android-based mobile devices are running in their organization, while Windows and Windows Mobile is used in a third of organizations. However, 48 percent of IT professionals said new Windows 10 features made them slightly or much more likely to consider Windows on tablets and smartphones. While new Windows 10 features such as Cortana, the Edge browser, and Continuum interface draw consumer attention, just 8 percent of respondents said they were interested in the touch-optimized interface and 6 percent cited Cortana. When asked for their general impressions of Microsoft’s new browser Edge, previously known as Spartan, a quarter of respondents said they were somewhat to very positive;, 23 percent said they were neutral, and nearly half said they didn’t know enough about the new browser to have formed an opinion. Four percent of respondents were somewhat to very negative.
Coming to interest in Windows 10 PC version, 96% respondents were found to be interested and 60% of IT departments were already testing it.
Nearly all IT professionals (96 percent) are interested in Windows 10, and 60 percent of IT departments have tested or are actively testing the new operating system, according to a survey of more than 500 respondents by Spiceworks.
Interested in learning more about Windows 10? Join Managed Solution at one of our Windows 10 Roadshow events for a demonstration on the new features in Windows 10 and mingle with industry experts!
Windows 10 – Improving the Enterprise Experience by Collecting the Opinions of Large Corporations
Thought-Leadership by Jon Nicponski
Microsoft is going to great lengths to ensure Windows 10 is better received than its predecessor. Unlike the experiment with Windows 8, Windows 10 Developers have gone out and engaged large corporations to discern which features they needed. Product support was involved from the first on Windows 10 in order to maintain the vision for a common experience across device platforms.
Regular Maintenance Makes for a Reliable Enterprise Solution
Probably most important to enterprises, the start menu is back, so user confusion will be an absolute minimum. There are a LOT of features that make Windows 10 a compelling upgrade including much improved security, but here we will focus on how easy that upgrade will be to accomplish.
Automated updates used to NEVER be an in-place upgrade option, but now, Microsoft has enabled the ability to do an automated update that is un-attended from Windows7/8. This update can take as little as 7 minutes.
The update carefully inspects the machine and if there are ANY known issues it behaves as you have configured by either rolling-back or displaying the errors. In fact, the US Air Force, one of the fastest adopters of new Microsoft technologies, will be using the in-place upgrade.
Microsoft’s recommended upgrade path for Enterprises is to go direct via unintended upgrade 7-10, 8->10, 8.1->10. There is not a Vista or an XP direct upgrade path.
There are some scenarios where an upgrade won't work, for instance with X86 to X64 systems. Also, the base language needs to be the same. As an example, you can’t have a base language of German and try and upgrade with Base language of English.
In-place upgrades can also happen other ways, included SCCM, or even a batch file sent via email that points to your customized source media.
Changes were made to SCCM/WSUS for compatibility, so make sure you get the updates to these tools for preparing and deploying your new images!
Simplified Deployment and Provisioning
The preview for the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) is available now, with all the tools to do image creation for windows 10. The final version is scheduled for the launch on July 29th.
There were some early issues with 3rd party encryption products because the Windows pre-execution environment did not have drivers for some of the vendors. Microsoft and these vendors are working hard to have these issues resolved by the release date. A couple of security companies are going to create a management engine for Microsoft Bitlocker and drop their own encryption. This is HUGE: it will be the least expensive way to use Microsoft Bitlocker in an enterprise environment. Previously you had to purchase Windows Enterprise plus the MDOP product to get the Microsoft Bitlocker Management Studio.
What happens when an employee leaves with a Windows Enterprise enabled device?
To help corporate IT better manage devices, Windows 10 can re-provision a machine from Pro to Enterprise and connect to a domain in the process. You will also be able to roll-back a machine from Enterprise to Professional if the machine isn’t domain joined. For now, Microsoft recommends joining the machine to an Azure domain (a new feature of Windows 10), which can be rolled back. Microsoft is working on the ability to roll-back Enterprise to Professional on domain joined machines, however, this will likely not be a feature in the released product.
Lastly, if an employee leaves the company and has Windows Enterprise installed on their BYOD, the Windows Enterprise version won't be able to see the company’s KMS server, so after 180 days, the end user will get a watermark, and some reduced functionality on updates. Microsoft is recommending AADJOIN (Azure Active Directory Join) for BYOD devices so that they can easily have company specific information removed and rolled back to Windows Pro.
For more information on Windows 10, tune in to SoftwareONE Tech Talk on the SoftwareONE Radio Network every other Wednesday of the month where we talk regularly on IT topics, especially Windows 10 as we get closer to the date. Click the banner below and fill out the form to receive information on joining this innovative radio show!
Simplified Deployment with Windows 10 is almost here and educators will be pleased as a dog with a spoonful of peanut butter with new tools to optimize all things scholarly.
