Month: July 2015

It will temporarily hurt PC sales, but, it shows how much people are anticipating Windows 10!

Anticipation of Windows 10 Release Stalls PC Sales

Redmond Magazine – By: Jeffrey Schwartz – “It’s not unusual for PC sales to fall off in advance of a new operating system release and last quarter was no exception.

PC shipments plummeted 11.8 percent in the three-month period that ended June 30 over the same period last year, according to IDC’s quarterly PC Tracker report released Thursday night. The decline was 1 percent more than IDC had earlier projected but was overall in line with the fact that the comparative period last year was buoyed by Windows XP’s end of life and the fact that sales channels were reducing inventories to make way for this month’s release of Windows 10.

Similar to Gartner, IDC doesn’t anticipate an immediate bump after Microsoft’s July 29 release of Windows 10. Gartner earlier this week said it’s predicting a 5.7 percent decrease in PC spending this year. IDC points to another noteworthy, but certainly not surprising, point: the free Windows 10 upgrade for those with Windows 7 Home and Pro editions will certainly stall new PC purchases.

Another reason IT professionals will want to wait, at least initially, is for new PCs based on Intel’s new processor line, code named Skylake, as well as a new line of Broadwell CPUs. ‘All of the hardware vendors are readying new designs based on Skylake and to take advantage of the new Windows design with thinner, lighter and better battery life,’ said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst with Moor Strategy.

Moorhead, who follows the PC industry closely, believes Windows 10 will be a popular operating system. Despite the obvious criticism of its predecessor, Moorhead believes the return of application developers will be key to its success. ‘I believe there will be many more apps in this ecosystem, if nothing else because of the ease for which you can get them into Windows 10,’ Moorhead said.

However, Moorhead believes some predictions that Windows 10 will get a strong lift in in the first year are overstated. That includes our survey, published Wednesday, that found that 55 percent will upgrade in the first year, with 21 percent doing so in the first three months. A more reasonable expectation, Moorhead said, is 20 to 30 percent will roll out Windows 10 within a year. ‘I don’t believe any research out there is worth anything because upgrades will be dependent on the promotions Microsoft does,’ Moorhead said. ‘We haven’t seen them yet but they’re coming.'”

The new browser called “Edge” in Windows 10 will be really stripped down, and that is a good thing!

Microsoft confirms its new Edge browser won’t support Silverlight

Windows Central – By: John Callaham – “Microsoft has already announced that its new Microsoft Edge web browser in Windows 10 will not be using many of the features that were a part of its old Internet Explorer browsers. That includes support for ActiveX-based plug-ins. Today, Microsoft confirmed that the ditching of ActiveX also means Edge won’t support the company’s own Silverlight web-based media player.

In a blog post. Microsoft said:

‘Support for ActiveX has been discontinued in Microsoft Edge, and that includes removing support for Silverlight. The reasons for this have been discussed in previous blogs and include the emergence of viable and secure media solutions based on HTML5 extensions. Microsoft continues to support Silverlight, and Silverlight out-of-browser apps can continue to use it. Silverlight will also continue to be supported in Internet Explorer 11, so sites continue to have Silverlight options in Windows 10. At the same time, we encourage companies that are using Silverlight for media to begin the transition to DASH/MSE/CENC/EME based designs and to follow a single, DRM-interoperable encoding work flow enabled by CENC. This represents the most broadly interoperable solution across browsers, platforms, content and devices going forward.’

Silverlight was first introduced in 2007 as an alternative Adobe’s Flash player for web-based media. It was most famously used by Netflix for its desktop streaming video service. The last major release was Silverlight 5 in 2011 and Microsoft has not indicated plans to release a major new version. Most sites have now abandoned Silverlight and Netflix is transitioning its web player to HTML5.”