Microsoft leak reveals new Windows 10 Workstation edition for power users

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/5/15739192/microsoft-windows-10-pro-for-workstations-advanced-pcs-features

by rl3 • 9 years ago

123 190 9 years ago

theverge.com

rl3• 9 years ago

Hopefully they disabled all the telemetry and advertising crap.

userbinator3• 9 years ago

Don't bet on it.

richardwhiuk• 9 years ago

Hopefully all of the websites I visit have disabled all of their telemetry as well, but I doubt it.

8draco83• 9 years ago

Operating system is not website. I don't want my system to be sanding any data anywhere without my knowledge. Currently operating systems are used for handling various of very sensitive and potentially dangerous information (credit card details, bank accounts, SSNs, tax returns etc). There is tons of informations on computers that can cause a lot of problems if used by bad people. Blocking unknown and unnecessary traffic and strong encryption is our best bet against cyber criminals.

faragon• 9 years ago

How billing for socket/CPU could matter anymore with 16 core CPUs (32 SMT) with many DDR4 memory channels going to hit the market during this summer [1]?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/05/17/amd-an...

Already__Taken2• 9 years ago

MS need to drop the crazy minimum requirement for licences of 8 * 2 core packs per server. Otherwise the pricing seems to work. It feels like they're forcing smaller customers to buy Azure instead of paying a fair price for the software.

digi_owl2• 9 years ago

That is basically what is going on. MS i getting out of the shrink-wrapped software market, and trying to push everyone towards SAAS. This by either crippling local software or putting nagware everywhere.

Already__Taken2• 9 years ago

ReFS as a boot drive file system? That'll be the proofing for it by default from server 2019 onwards. Every three years is LTS/Server cut from current branch I thought I read.

43224gg2522• 9 years ago

As a power user, I hope this doesn't ship with ads and telemetry enabled. It's things like that that pushed me away from windows and towards Linux. If Microsoft had never participated in the NSA PRISM program I would have never decided to "just try this Linux thing out" and I'd probably still be a windows user.

I think at this point they'll have to do more than get rid of ads and telemetry to get me (and others) to switch back. Linux turned out to be much more stable than Windows for me, and after experiencing package management and sane update policies I can't go back to an OS that won't even let me use it while it's installing updates.

When I sit and try to make a list of reasons to use Windows it seems to come down to program compatibility and not operating system quality. Instead of trapping people on an OS because of vendor lock-in, try improving core parts of the OS to make it worth using.

userbinator3• 9 years ago

What "power user" means today seems to be something different than before --- essentially, users who just use more of the features of the OS, in the way these companies want them to; notice that "more configurability/customisation" is not mentioned at all, whereas that would be what I expect as a "power user" (the old type) myself.

Can_Not3• 9 years ago

The new definition of "power user" is probably going to be a user that runs applications acquired outside of the app store.

nailer• 9 years ago

Not wanting Ads I can understand - you've paid for Windows (and in some cases Surface hardware) and you don't want to be the product - but why do you dislike telemetry? I'd rather Microsoft know what crashes the OS (and why apps die) in the real world and fix it.

userbinator3• 9 years ago

Do you want potentially sensitive information leaving your machine? That's basically the counterargument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Error_Reporting#Privac...

8draco83• 9 years ago

Maybe they should go back to good old days of Windows XP when they've asked if I want to send them crash report.

v4n4d1s• 9 years ago

There are two main arguments:

- You can't disable telemetry completey. Some people want it, some don't. Let the user decide.

- Microsoft does collect an insane amount of data.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...

pmlnr• 9 years ago

There is nothing wrong with telemetry - if it's opt-in. That's all.

drdaeman• 9 years ago

Because telemetry is potentially not only the core dumps and performance metrics, but also all sorts of potentially sensitive information - like a data derived from the user input (keyboard , voice or pen - this data is said to be anonymized but AFAIK no one had audited this) or list of installed applications. Knowing that something is crashing or performing badly is one thing, knowing what I'm doing with my computer is another.

Telemetry can be done right by letting end-user to see an example of the data that's going to be sent and then also audit the actual reports that were sent. Transcribed into a human-readable format with some comments about what the values mean - I can see the binary data myself, thanks. And a way to opt out if the data is found to be actually sensitive.

Basically, an opt-out switch and "sure, but give me a full transparency report" mode that a "power user" can optionally access if they happen to care. This is rarely the case, and not the case with Windows.

kabdib2• 9 years ago

Telemetry is this close to being apparatus for spying; a court order (secret or otherwise) could strip whatever anonymization MS is doing, say, for specific IPs or even whole regions by geography. Poof: keystrokes in real-time, available to state actors. Wouldn't that be grand?

Developed capacity may not equal intent, but if you can be ordered to do secret work and make it so anyway, the distinction is irrelevant.

giancarlostoro2• 9 years ago

On that note if they would do updates without forcing restarting it wouldn't be as horrible. Maybe a softer approach is "logout and log back in to see updates" on Linux unless it's a Kernel update I usually don't need to restart, just logout (in some cases that's not even needed just reopen the program and keep going). Of course if you're on Slackware you may just sit with the same files for years :) At least I did, (it was my first distro) so Windows needs updating improvements heavily. Also don't slow down my whole OS while they're downloaded / being processed.

slaymaker1907• 9 years ago

It is partly because of the poor design of DOS since you need to logout to set environment variables.

tjalfi• 9 years ago

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.11.windowsc... gives a rationale for why Windows doesn't replace files that are in use.

UnoriginalGuy• 9 years ago

participated in the NSA PRISM program

It is entirely unclear if they did.

While the name of big companies (Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc) got dragged through the mud, it only appears that these companies were responding to court orders and that "directly" in this context meant with cooperation of these companies and the courts. Companies are legally obligated to respond to valid court orders, issued from a normal court or secret court. See this slide[0], the fact that all data from those companies was going through the FBI instead of an NSA codename project, should tell you everything you need to know about the mechanism (i.e. legal, not technological).

The PRISM program seems to primarily be about hooking into telecommunication infrastructure (both in the US and abroad). Telecommunications companies were definitely complicit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...

toxican3• 9 years ago

What it comes down to for me is that I can do my job (web development) on Windows just fine. But I'm going to spend the entire time trying to trick Windows into doing Linux things. Mintty for terminal stuff, VMs or the new Ubuntu mode for Linux software, etc. And yes, that works, but it feels hacky, performance is so-so, and it takes considerably more time to setup than the native alternative.

The inverse of that is that all I need Windows for is Adobe stuff and Outlook (we use Exchange for mail, meeting scheduling, tasks etc.), which all run perfectly fine in a Windows VM with minimal resources. The only real extra setup involved there is running the Windows installer, which takes like 20 minutes tops.

So what's left to compel me to use Windows? The UI? Admittedly, I feel a bit more zippy in Windows than I do Linux, but Kubuntu feels pretty damn close and I kind of prefer its UI over Windows' at this point.

megablast• 9 years ago

Sounds like Mac OS would be perfect for you.

mschuster91• 9 years ago

Hmm... sounds like OS X would be the perfect fit for you. All the Adobe stuff, and Outlook/Office for Mac is pretty decent (although it uses Spotlight for its INTERNAL search, which means I have to use my org's webmail for search because I hate disk indexers that run in the background). Also you get a proper terminal (the built-in is fine but iTerm is a bit better imho) and a native Unix filesystem.

FussyZeus2• 9 years ago

All of this is exactly why I love my Mac. Native unix capabilities with the ability to use the big names (Adobe, Microsoft Office, etc.). I have an RDP to a laptop under my desk for anything Windows-related that needs a physical machine, but I live on my Mac.

zvrba5• 9 years ago

But I'm going to spend the entire time trying to trick Windows into doing Linux things. Mintty for terminal stuff, VMs or the new Ubuntu mode for Linux software, etc.

Windows is not UNIX and that's its strength. Don't try to coerce it into doing Linux things; learn Powershell and Windows concepts instead. I've recently switched development from Linux to Windows and couldn't be happier.

cmurf• 9 years ago

LVM thinly provisioned "virtual sized" logical volumes. This is how I'm installing non-linux VM's these days. Neither virt-manager nor Boxes will see them, but you can use virsh to edit the path to the LV.

For example. Create a new VM, and just have it create a dummy LV that you can throw away later (I actually keep a 4MiB one around just for the purpose of having something virt-manager will see and select).

Create the virtual size LV:

    sudo lvcreate -V 50G -T thintastic/vg -n windows

Then 'virsh edit daisy' and find the disk section.

    <disk type='block' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='unsafe' io='threads'/>
      <source dev='/dev/vg/dummy'/>
      <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
      <boot order='1'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x07' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>

Change the path from /dev/vg/dummy to /dev/vg/windows, save it. Now start the VM normally, and it'll use that thinp LV just fine. So the neat thing about that is, you give 50G to Windows, but it's only going to suck up from the VG what's actually being written to disk from Windows; i.e. an installation involves about 15G of writing, so it will only take up 15G of the VG pool's extents. The other 35G are still in the VG pool.

You could make the virtual size LV 500G and Windows will see it as 500G, even if it's only backed by 75G of VG. Obviously if you hit 75G of writes, the virtual block device spits out ENOSPC and then presumably Windows gets pissed that it doesn't in fact have 500G to play with. But what this means is you make the LV as big as you would practically ever want it to be, without having to second guess and go "well if I give all that space over to Windows, now I can't ever use it for anything else without it being a hassle of fs resizing and repartitioning".

Also fstrim commands on NTFS will cause previously deallocated space (file deletions) in the LV to be returned to the VG for other use. It's actually more efficient doing this than fs resize.

I find NTFS on either qcow2 or raw disk on top of a file system means a bigger performance impact than just handing the VM its own virtual block device in the form of an LVM LV. It is easier to move file backed VM's around, like if you have to do a backup-restore. But so far I just backup the user data onto my NAS or cloud, and expect if I have a hardware failure I'm rebuilding the VM from scratch.

foolfoolz• 9 years ago

I think your concern is actually going to be the same on all platforms. these days we work in a lot of repos. a lot of services that depend on services. almost every one I work in now has its own environment set up. each Python project has its own version of Python. Java projects can share a jvm but get all their own jars. a few services only run in docker locally so it can do further set up. with this in mind, I don't see anything running natively for work anyone. it's always going to be packaged up in a manager/container/vm. the times I do have service specific stuff at an OS level it's actually bad and bites me later on

api• 9 years ago

That was my first thought as well. I was hoping for a high-end system that I actually own, but nope. Nobody will provide that.

Apple still provides the closest thing, at least on Mac. (iOS is another story.) Their telemetry is more minimal than Microsoft's, and it's possible to disable it in a way that hasn't changed much in some time. There's not much evidence Apple cares if you do so. I also trust Apple's security far more than Microsoft's.

zvrba5• 9 years ago

Instead of trapping people on an OS because of vendor lock-in, try improving core parts of the OS to make it worth using.

For a software developer, "core parts" of the OS are way more advanced and have much more to offer than Linux. If you don't believe me, start browsing here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/desktop/bg126469....

Every functionality for which you would use a (one of many) 3rd party libraries on Linux, is included in the core OS on Windows.

rocqua• 9 years ago

One might argue that replacing 3d party libraries isn't doing the "core parts" better, it's just being bloated.

Moreover, it's being bloated without choice because most people just use the included version so alternatives don't get to thrive.

gcb0• 9 years ago

no telemetry

ha. They did that even for enterprise. But in truth they did that following Apple's footsteps. There are several projects documenting all that new versions of osx phone home data leaks. It's a ton of data and every single start up is just fine giving macbooks like it's candy for the employees.

SippinLean3• 9 years ago

As a power user, I run a PS script once, at install, to remove ads, telemetry, and other annoyances, as I did with Win7.

myrandomcomment• 9 years ago

So it has become quite a bit harder to do this, as the package names have changed in Win10 and some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore to remove the "updated" packages. No, I cannot think of an example off the top of my head. Also there are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates, etc. I have had to delete all the tiles on the start menu by hand. OneDrive is still in your face on most systems, etc.

MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in.

If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us.

The only place I have Windows 10 is on my Intel Compute keys for the media center running Kodi. One of these days I will get around to trying to get Linux to run on those devices.

komali24• 9 years ago

What platform are you on that Linux is more stable, and what flavor are you using? I prefer Linux in everything but I am forced to use Windows and OSX for when I need to be guaranteed "the damn thing will work" - i.e. live coding, presentations, meetings, emergency hotfixes, etc.

marklyon• 9 years ago

They really need to fire their VP of SKUs. Creating that role has resulted in far too much unnecessary fragmentation.

At this point, it's like she's just trying to justify her position.

mtgx3• 9 years ago

Mission creep.

"Maybe if I invent more Windows editions my salary will also increase because of the increase in responsibility as well as the higher revenue from the nickle and diming customers?"

I imagine that would be her line of thought.

kawsper2• 9 years ago

I dare you to go explore their ERP offerings. It is impossible to grasp, and if you ask for help, your support request will be redirected to one of your local third-party Microsoft partners.

UK-AL• 9 years ago

As far as I know, every ERP vendor is like this. They all work via partners.

drzaiusapelord• 9 years ago

This is a feature, not a bug. The idea is to continue to devalue the Pro version of Windows so that business has to pay for the more expensive Enterprise to get rid of all the crapware via LTSB or just being able to use a version that will respect the 'disable store' GPO setting. Worse, there's no upgrade path from OEM Pro to Enterprise Volume. So you're paying for Windows twice, once via the OEM Pro license you'll never use and another by buying Enterprise.

This product is a another way to devalue the old SKUs by introducing yet another premium priced product.

Cant reply below so adding my comment here:

That path doesn't exist for volume. There is no OEM to Volume path and guess what every business uses: Volume.

Dell and Lenovo and HP have standard agreements to put Home on every PC, youre not paying for an individual OEM license.

The cost per OEM license of windows was reported to be $40-$80 depending on edition. That is baked into the cost of the computer you buy from them. You're not getting it for 'free' the same way you aren't getting leather seats for free because you bought the LT model of a car. You're paying for that too.

basch3• 9 years ago

OEM Pro to Enterprise Volume

there is an upgrade path in that you can type in a key to transition from pro to enterprise.

So you're paying for Windows twice, once via the OEM Pro license you'll never use Buy the computer with home. You cant buy most computers without Home anyway, so unless you are going to buy from a very slim line of linux laptops or become a laptop manufacturer, its not really paying twice. Dell and Lenovo and HP have standard agreements to put Home on every PC, youre not paying for an individual OEM license.

mtgx3• 9 years ago

Does ReFS support native encryption like Apple's new filesystem does? What's keeping Microsoft from enabling encryption for all Windows users by default, other than nickle and diming them for it by forcing them to choose more expensive versions of Windows if they want full disk encryption?

Windows is pretty much the only OS left that doesn't support encryption by default.

nkvoll• 9 years ago

Isn't BitLocker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker) how Windows supports full disk encryption by default (shipped with Vista and later)?

From an end-user perspective it seems to behave very transparent as well. In what way does it come up short?

jpalomaki• 9 years ago

Yes. And with suitable hardware Bitlocker actually uses the SSD encryption which is anyways enabled, so there's zero performance hit. The drawback is that not all modern hardware supports it [1,2]. For example the Samsung 960 series do not support this. Since Apple controls the whole stack, I would assume they are also doing this, but I'm not sure.

[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831627(v=ws.11...

[2]https://helgeklein.com/blog/2015/01/how-to-enable-bitlocker-...

kefka2• 9 years ago

BitLocker.... In what way does it come up short?

By forcing an escrow key linked to Microsoft and whomever owns the TPM on your computer.

By definition, backdoor keys and hidden users who can access encrypted content is just absolutely, horribly wrong. And there's no way to turn it off... Well, I'm sure someone will say there's 10 regkeys to change that might fix it on a specific version.

Still does nothing regarding the "trust" with the TPM.

mtgx3• 9 years ago

It's not available on Windows Home, for one.

ericfrederich2• 9 years ago

Haha... "workstation mode". Didn't everyone who tested "Game Mode" on Windows 10 creators update come to the conclusion that it didn't do anything?

kawsper2• 9 years ago

Is it the "Game Mode" that enables the Xbox DVR by default? If so, it did do something, it locked my FPS at 30.

It is such a big problem that Valve had to build in detection into their game where they warn you about it.

And in order to turn it off, you either have to login to their Xbox App, or play around with regedit, Valve have documented it here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6239-DZC...

And it seems like updates are enabling it again automatically, because I have had to do it twice.

toxican3• 9 years ago

LTT did a review and for at least one game the result was worse performance in game mode. It was minutely worse and probably within margin of error for something as fickle as hardware, but still. Not an improvement.

artimaeis• 9 years ago

One of the features of the Windows 10 Game Mode is that it raises the thread priority of the application. This proved incredibly useful for me in some games - most notably GTA 5 - and in a lot of other games it didn't seem to do anything at all. I'm pretty thankful for the feature - because manually raising the thread priority every time I open the application was a very unnecessary pain.

revelation• 9 years ago

Windows has raised the thread priority of the foreground program since at least 95...

komali24• 9 years ago

How is that different than ctrl + shift + escape, selecting the program, and clicking "high priority?"

ksk2• 9 years ago

It probably only works if you have a ton of random shit installed and running in the b/g - which isn't most reviewers, but is most users.

ericfrederich2• 9 years ago

"Resilient file system"... sorry, if you want professionals to use and trust your new filesystem you should give it to end users first; wider audience. Then the pros will pick it up.

Aoyagi• 9 years ago

The only version of Windows 10 I'm interested in is the one where it is I who is mostly in control, or, you know, be the power user, not just some power sheep.

Sir_Substance• 9 years ago

The notion of "Developer editions" and "Power User editions" of windows really bothers me. I discovered a love of computers and IT from having my own computer with windows 98 and just fucking around on it.

I destroyed the OS on that computer at least twice by doing stupid things like deleting DLL's in the windows folder because 8 year old me decided he "didn't need them" and bypassed the system file protection, but apparently that's part of learning to use and understand computers. Certainly it taught me how to install a new OS, which opened up a world of new OS's to me, which brought me to VM's, which inexorably lead to experimenting with hosting services, which lead to sysadmin skills, and so on.

Considering Microsoft is operating in and even leading an industry that alleges it is slowly starving to death from lack of new talent, creating versions of the OS with anything less than 100% control seems like a really stupid long term move. How are people supposed to form an intuitive grasp of the potential of general purpose computers if they grow up with machines that say "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"?

monochromatic3• 9 years ago

An administrator account can still do all that.

HelloNurse2• 9 years ago

I understand you stopped using Windows several versions ago.

digi_owl2• 9 years ago

Sadly it is a notion that is creeping into the FOSS world as well. Just look at the antics of certain desktop projects.

Basic thing is that power users and "security" do not mix. And yes, there is a small aspect of protection from external threats in there. But just as much it is about paternalism, and, in the case of Microsoft, about shoring up revenue streams.

ksk2• 9 years ago

Yeah, that bothers me too, and its actually scary to think that in the future, we could all be locked out of our own machines. As it is, looking at UX trends, it seems like everything is slowly being diluted to the lowest common denominator. Soon there will be no more "pro" devices - because who needs all those ports, and who needs to upgrade the ram/hdd/etc - but hey, atleast it will be shiny!

quickben• 9 years ago

Is this why my win 7 ultimate, got upgraded to 'pro'?

MS is really outdoing themself lately.

appleflaxen• 9 years ago

Adding SKUs to a product line that is already confusing to non-windows users is not going to help them win back market share.

it might help them wring more cash out of already-windows-users who need these new features. but those users will be glancing to the side and noticing all the features packed in for free by OSX and linux, and without a malignant upgrade process.

dzdt• 9 years ago

Everything I know about business I learned from Joel on Software. This sounds to me like trying to sell (essentially) the same product at a higher price point to users who are willing to pay more, to maximize profits. See Joel's "Camels and Rubber Duckies": https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

marcosdumay• 9 years ago

It's called market segmentation.

MS does this to windows since... I'd say since Windows was a thing, but I don't know how they sold versions 1 and 2. So, since Windows 3.

Yet, if you segment your market too much, people stop knowing the segment they belong, and stop playing the game.

dmead• 9 years ago

they spent the early years (including 3.x) competing with ibm. note the "power windows" language on the side pic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0

15charlimit• 9 years ago

Still no actual control over what data they suck up and keep for who-knows how long and sell to anyone who asks? Still no actual control over what updates happen, when?

Still don't care about W10.

SippinLean3• 9 years ago

The same telemetry is in 7, and you can Defer Feature Updates in 10.

valarauca1• 9 years ago

This sound a bit like horseshit.

Win10 Pro supports 2 CPU sockets and all cores within them. Expanding this up to 4 sockets seems to undercut their server market as past 2 sockets Win10 Server charges per socket.

technofiend• 9 years ago

It's not perfect but the tron script will turn off a lot of the more objectionable MS services.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/

Personally I just boot into Linux unless I'm streaming (Netflix 720p on Linux, boo), playing Civilization or doing my taxes.

seanp2k23• 9 years ago

Blackbird is another similar thing: http://www.getblackbird.net/documentation/

komali24• 9 years ago

I thought Netflix was locked at 720p on Chrome and Edge as well? Are you using the windows 10 app?

epalmer• 9 years ago

Workstation mode: Microsoft plans to optimize the OS by identifying “typical compute and graphics intensive workloads” to provide peak performance and reliability when Workstation mode is enabled.

Shouldn't reliability always be as high as possible? Why would workstation users get more reliable operation than anyone else?

Joeri• 9 years ago

Reliability could also mean reliable performance, where the power saving functionality gets dialed down.

But probably this was written by some marketing guy with only half a clue.

youdontknowtho• 9 years ago

The features that they mention...SMB Direct, large memory, more sockets, REFS...are great, but I think that they should only have one client SKU.

Also, it should have a telemetry manager that applications have to use for sending telemetry data to Microsoft. It should have UI and PowerShell cmdlets that help people see the data that's being collected. It should have a global off switch for people that are concerned about it.

I tend to think that things like telemetry or "swarm" downloading of updates and patches are good things. I know that's not popular. I think that they need to be far more transparent about that stuff to make privacy concerned people happy.

Also, there are some people that are never going to like Microsoft, Windows, or anything that they do. I kind of wish those people were less involved in the conversation. If you aren't going to use their stuff, why should they listen to your feedback?

1024core• 9 years ago

Why does Microsoft have to waste so many resources coming up with a dozen different "editions" ?

I remember (back in the day) Windows NT came in "desktop" and "server" editions. Someone did some digging, and it turned out the difference was 2 registry keys, whose settings were checked at boot time, and depending on the settings, the "server" or "desktop" editions were created.

Times have changed; Microsoft needs to change too.

bborud• 9 years ago

From time to time (every 2 years or so) I make an attempt at buying a Windows license in order to run some program that only runs on windows. In 10 years (5 or so attempts) I have yet to figure out what edition of Windows I want, how to buy it and how to download an ISO image of it so I can load it into a VMWare image. Every time I realize that the effort just isn't worth it so I give up.

I just want an OS that works. So I use OSX and I use Linux. Where I don't have to care much about what I'm running. At most I have to occasionally care about the revision I'm running being a bit old. But there's no nonsense with different editions that I need to waste time on.

vesak• 9 years ago

In 2017, a piece of software is decidedly not for power users unless it's open source.

SN76477• 9 years ago

10 is garbage. The start button doesn't even do what it should most of the time.

I feel tricked into using the worlds worst OS.

nippples• 9 years ago

It's not an actual leak, this is just native advertisement.

Microsoft leak reveals new Windows 10 Workstation edition for power users

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