Login details for millions of corporate accounts have been put up for sale on the dark web, new reports have claimed.
Research from ImmuniWeb found over 21m credentials belonging to Fortune 500 companies available to puchase online, with over 16m of these being compromised during the last 12 months.
Upon examining the credentials, the firm discovered that as many as 95 percent of them contained unencrypted plaintext passwords.
The company used its Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) technology to crawl through generally accessible places and resources on the Tor network, across various web forums, Pastebin, IRC channels, social networks, messenger chats and other locations known for offering, selling or distributing stolen or leaked data.
Stolen credentials
According to ImmuniWeb, the most popular sources of the exposed breaches were third parties, trusted third parties which includes partners, suppliers or vendors and the companies themselves.
The firm did not try to login into any of the accounts it found and instead, ImmuniWeb verified their accuracy and reliability be correlating, cross-checking and juxtaposing the data from different public sources aided by machine learning. Its own machine learning models were also used to find anomalies and spot fake leaks, duplicates or default passwords which were set automatically.
When it came to the industries with the highest number of stolen credentials, technology (5m) took the top spot followed by financials (4.9m) and healthcare (1.9m).
Out of the 21m credentials ImmuniWeb discovered, only 4.9m were fully unique passwords which suggests that many users are using identical or similar passwords. In the technology sector for example, password, 1qaz2wsx, career121, abc123 and passwordI were the top five passwords.
Of the industries examined by ImmuniWeb, the retail sector had the highest percentage of weak passwords at 47 percent followed by telecommunications at 37.57 percent and industrials at 37.36 percent.
CEO and founder of ImmuniWeb, Ilia Kolochenko provided further insight on the report’s findings, saying:
“These numbers are both frustrating and alarming. Cybercriminals are smart and pragmatic, they focus on the shortest, cheapest and safest way to get your crown jewels. The great wealth of stolen credentials accessible on the Dark Web is a modern-day Klondike for mushrooming threat actors who don’t even need to invest in expensive 0day or time-consuming APTs. With some persistence, they easily break-in being unnoticed by security systems and grab what they want. Worse, many such intrusions are technically uninvestigable due to lack of logs or control over the breached [third-party] systems.”
In 2019, you shouldn’t have to juggle more than one remote control to watch TV. With most media-streamer remotes, volume and power buttons are built in, so you don’t need to keep a second remote handy.
The Roku Express is a notable exception. At $30, it’s the cheapest streaming player that Roku sells. It’s also by far the worst, mostly because it lacks the TV controls that are now standard on every other streaming player. As more people drop cable or satellite TV and depend entirely on streaming, this omission has become inexcusable, especially when the Roku Express+ (sold exclusively at Walmart) has a superior remote for just $10 more.
I therefore implore you: Spend the extra money and thank me later.
Palm-sized streamer
In every other way, the Roku Express is fine. The 2019 version has a new design that’s more energy efficient—Roku says it can run off the powered USB port on nearly every TV that has one—but it’s still a palm-sized black box with an HDMI port in the back. It comes with a 2-foot HDMI cable, plus a strip of adhesive so you can stick the Express to your TV stand or to the TV itself. The box requires line of sight to the remote, however, so you can’t hide it inside an entertainment console.
Jared Newman / IDG
Around back, the Roku Express has just HDMI output and a Micro-USB port for power.
Performance feels similar to other Roku players, with the exception of the slightly faster (and much pricier, at $100) Roku Ultra. Roku has done an excellent job optimizing its streaming software for cheap hardware, so you’ll seldom need to deal with choppy scrolling of excessive load times. The only downside, as with all Rokus, is that there’s no fast way to switch between recent apps.
As for Wi-Fi connectivity, the Roku Express does not support hardwired ethernet, and its single-band 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) connectivity is well behind the times. It should be fine if you’re not putting a lot of other demand on your Wi-Fi network, or if you don’t have a lot of neighbors with their own networks in close proximity. If wireless interference is an issue, you’ll want a streaming device with dual-band Wi-Fi 5 support, such as the Roku Streaming Stick+, with a Wi-Fi 5 or better router to match.
Bare-bones remote
The main problem with the Roku Express, again, is the remote. If you’ve never used a streaming remote that has volume and power controls built in, you’re missing out on a much more convenient experience. And once you’ve gotten used to that convenience, going back is hard to tolerate.
Jared Newman / IDG
Unlike other Roku remotes (such as that of the Roku Ultra, pictured in back), the Roku Express remote lacks TV volume and power buttons.
Those missing controls aren’t the remote’s only issue. It doesn’t have a microphone button either, so you can’t use voice to look up a specific show or search by genre, nor can you launch content directly by voice in apps that support this function, such as Hulu, Pandora, and The Roku Channel. Although Roku’s smartphone app still lets you perform voice controls on the Express, using it is a hassle compared to pressing a button on an actual remote.
The Express’ infrared remote also feels less responsive than other Roku remotes that use a radio-frequency connection. While the player is pretty good at receiving an IR signal when you point the remote in different directions, commands don’t always register when you press a directional key several times in quick succession, so scrolling through long lists takes more effort.
Jared Newman / IDG
Without a voice remote, you’ll need to do a lot more TV typing.
Once more, this is where I stress that for $10 more, the Roku Express+ is available from Walmart with volume, power, mute, and voice search buttons on its remote, and with a more responsive RF connection. (This model is not to be confused with the previous-generation Roku Express+, whose main distinction was composite video output for old tube TVs.) Do not cheap out on the one element of the streaming experience you’ll interact with the most.
Dead-simple streaming
On the software side, the Roku Express is functionally similar to other Roku players. The main menu presents a grid of streaming video apps alongside a list of other functions, such as search, the app store, and a selection of free ad-supported content.
Jared Newman / IDG
The Roku home screen puts apps at the forefront.
It’s all pretty straightforward, especially when you know what you’re looking for, but as with other Roku players, the Express falters a bit when you’re feeling indecisive. There’s no easy way to access the shows you’re already watching from across different apps, and no way to search for content by genre. (On other devices, Roku has started surfacing “zones” of movies and shows with certain genre searches, but these don’t seem to be available on the Express.)
On the upside, Roku players are great at surfacing free content to watch. The “Featured Free” section of the home screen pulls in ad-supported movies and shows from across different apps, while The Roku Channel app has its own free selection. The ability to listen privately through Roku’s mobile app, with headphones connected to your phone, also remains a nice touch that other platforms lack.
Jared Newman / IDG
Roku’s “Featured Free” section is a great resource that other streamers lack—provided you don’t mind ads.
Because of Roku’s ease of use and free content, it tends to be my default recommendation for anyone who’s new to streaming devices and doesn’t know where to start, even if the software is less snazzy than, say, Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV devices. If not for its substandard remote, the Roku Express would be a great budget pick, especially compared to Amazon’s sluggish Fire TV Stick, which costs $40.
Instead, those in need of a cheap streaming player should grab the Roku Express+ from Walmart or wait for a sale on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K, which is much faster than the non-4K version and often sells for less than its $50 list price. For just a little more money, better remotes are much easier to come by.
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A few months ago I reviewed Alienware’s m15 with OLED and, well, didn’t really know what to do with it. It wasn’t a bad laptop, but it was living on borrowed time. Alienware had already shown off its new “Legend” aesthetic at CES, and by May we knew that the m15 line was transitioning over as well. Why buy the old when the future is so close you can reach out and touch it?
And touch it, we have. The future is here and it’s very bright, quite literally. With RGB LEDs and a white chassis, the redesigned Alienware m15 R2 is a Kubrickian take on the space age. It’s still a powerhouse as well.
This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best gaming laptops. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them.
Variants on the theme
An expensive powerhouse. The m15 R2 variant we reviewed is damn near top-of-the-line, with an Intel Core i7-9750H, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, an Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q and a 240Hz display. Storage is equally excessive, with a terabyte’s worth of SSD space via a pair of 512GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration,
Let’s face it: It’s probably not the variant you’d buy at home, retailing as it does for $3,130. You’d probably want one of the cheaper models, which start at a relatively affordable $1,400. That baseline model’s limited to a Core i5-9300H, a GTX 1660 Ti, and 8GB of RAM—but hey, it’ll still look like an Alienware laptop.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
The real sweet spot is probably the $1,700 model, which bumps up to the same Core i7-9750H as our model and an RTX 2060. Or you could splurge for the $2,360 model, where you get the standard 16GB of RAM, plus an RTX 2070. Those are Alienware’s best bang-for-your-buck variants.
At the top you’ll find a $4,410 m15 R2 with a Core i9-9980HK, an RTX 2080 Max-Q, 16GB of RAM, and an absolutely ridiculous 4TB of M.2 SSD storage. Oh yeah, and a 4K OLED screen. It’s the only m15 R2 where OLED comes standard, though you can add it onto any of the cheaper models for $150. That’s markedly better than the m15 we reviewed earlier this year, where OLED was a $350 mark-up. For $150, you should absolutely take the upgrade.
Shining happy laptop
The variant we reviewed is also—you probably noticed—very white. Blinding white. It’s beautiful and elegant and eye-catching, and I really love the look from a distance.
But it’s a look that demands a white-glove approach as well. Beautiful it may be, but the M15 R2’s finish does not hold up to the rigors of a laptop lifestyle. During our review period I’ve managed to put two marks on the top, and I have no idea how. Stacked something on top? Bumped in my bag? In any case, the lower-tier M15 R2 comes in standard black, and that might be the safer bet for long-term upkeep.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
Hard to see maybe, but the scuff marks are there.
Either way, I love the new look. After six years of silver lids and chunky vents, Alienware’s new “Legend” aesthetic looks properly science-fiction again. The lid’s stylized ’15’ stencil logo is a bit over-the-top maybe, seemingly lifted from the corridors of a space station—but when has over-the-top stopped Alienware?
The ultimate “Yes, they went there” moment is when you realize the laptop’s entire tail lights up, with an LED ring that encircles the ports and rear vents. Now that’s showing off.
I don’t usually go in for gaudy, but there’s something about the m15 R2 that wins me over. It’s ridiculous, and not even all that practical. Using the m15 R2 in a dark room means disabling all the lights or at least using the Go Dim setting, because they’re blinding otherwise. But I love the m15 R2 all the same. It does look futuristic, in a very particular RGB-laden sense.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
The new design is slimming as well. The m15 R2 isn’t much smaller than the m15 we looked at earlier this year, nor any lighter (at 4.7 pounds), but the redesign’s tapered front edge and overall softer lines give it an elegance that’s long eluded Alienware. It’s properly portable, from a company that until recently only made massive, inch-thick deadweights. Alienware’s laptops have come a long way in a short time—even if they’re admittedly three or four years late to the trend. Better late than never.
And hey, they’re early to the OLED trend—though unfortunately not on our review model. That’s a shame because while our m15 R2’s 240Hz refresh rate is great, the 1920×1080 resolution feels like a compromise on a $3,000 laptop. And while color reproduction is good, it pales (quite literally in the case of shadows) in comparison with the richness of an OLED screen. If you can afford the extra $150 for OLED, the day-to-day benefits are worth it I think, though I still have some worries long-term about burn-in potential.
One area that didn’t need much improvement but received it anyway: the keyboard. I liked the old m15’s keyboard but noted it was a bit shallow. Alienware agreed apparently, as the m15 R2 features a generous 1.7mm of key travel while retaining the old model’s enjoyable clickiness. It feels a bit stiff at first, but after adjusting it’s become one of my favorite laptop keyboards. It feels almost like a Topre switch, only condensed. Also, Alienware omits the numeric keypad this time, which gives the whole keyboard more room to breathe.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
The trackpad continues to disappoint, though. I lamented the lack of dedicated mouse buttons on the old m15. The m15 R2 carries that over, and I think the trackpad might be even smaller than before. Alienware really seems to be saying “Just use a mouse for gaming,” but that’s not always possible. This undersized trackpad is the m15 R2’s most irksome flaw.
And as always, I remain annoyed by Alienware’s rear-facing ports. It’s fine for desk use, but the m15 R2 is small and portable enough you might actually take it elsewhere. Anywhere besides a desk, the rear-facing barrel charger is a serious detriment, as is trying to access the sole USB-C port. (The others, which include HDMI, DisplayPort, and Alienware’s proprietary Graphics Amplifier dock, are less important when away from home.) Thankfully three USB-A ports, ethernet, and a 3.5mm headphone jack are all side-facing.
Performance
When we put the old m15 to the test I feared Alienware’s transition to lightweight laptops might hobble performance. Those fears thankfully proved unfounded, and I came away pretty impressed by the m15.
The m15 R2 matched its predecessor’s scores and then some. Of course, it did have a bit of help from its Core i7-9750H and RTX 2080 Max-Q, as opposed to our previous review m15’s Core i7-8750H and RTX 2070 Max-Q.
The RTX 2080 Max-Q is the more important of the two. We’ve already had enough hands-on experience with the Core i7-9750H to know it’s an incremental upgrade at best over the Core i7-8750H. Diving into our first test, we ran the m15 through Cinebench’s multi-core and single-core tests to see what kind of CPU performance we were looking at. And the answer? About the same as the old m15.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
That’s no surprise, really. Intel technically gave the Core i7-9750H a clock speed increase over its predecessor, but thanks to power draw limits and thermal throttling the two behave almost identically in the wild. It’s a pattern we’ve seen across multiple reviews now. The upshot is, while there’s no reason to abstain from the Core i7-9750H, it’s hardly an “upgrade.”
The same pattern plays out in our longer HandBrake test, wherein we use the free utility to encode a 30GB MKV file down to the Android Tablet preset. The m15 R2 posted a faster score than the old m15, but only barely. Given the fact we’ve seen speedier scores come from i7-8750H laptops in the past, the m15 R2’s improved performance here likely has more to do with Alienware’s redesigned cooling solution than the CPU itself.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
Note: In this graph and all the graph’s below, the bottom (pink) bar for the m15 R2 is the default performance. The top (orange) is running Alienware’s “Overclocked 1” profile with “Performance” cooling enabled—basically, fans on full-blast all the time. Yes, it’s as annoying as you’d expect, but it works as advertised.
Of course, both are handily trounced by the Alienware Area 51m R1’s desktop Core i9-9900K, as well as the MSI GE 65 Raider’s eight-core (but still laptop-specific) Core i9-9880H.
As I said, the RTX 2080 Max-Q is doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to improving upon our previous m15’s times. That’s disappointing in a way, as I wish we had a one-to-one comparison to test out the merits of the new chassis. All we’ve really proven here is that the RTX 2080 Max-Q is faster than the RTX 2070 Max-Q, which…well, given what you’re paying, I’d certainly hope that’s how it played out.
The m15 R2 with its RTX 2080 Max-Q posted substantially better scores than its predecessor in 3DMark’s FireStrike Extreme benchmark. It’s hard to quantify real-world differences from an artificial benchmark, but whereas the RTX 2070 Max-Q feels barely better than an RTX 2060, the 2080 Max-Q pulls significantly ahead of both and fully justifies its presence, even surpassing the MSI GE 65 Raider-51’s full-sized RTX 2070.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
We also ran the m15 R2 through 3DMark’s more recent TimeSpy benchmark, a DirectX 12 test that’s more of a challenge for modern systems—albeit with similar results.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
In-game performance is excellent too. With Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the m15 R2’s RTX 2080 Max-Q performed nearly 25 percent faster than the last-gen model, and its RTX 2070 Max-Q,again surpassed the Raider-51’s full-sized 2070 by a significant margin as well.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
Scores in Rise of the Tomb Raider are a bit less clear-cut because that game takes more advantage of the CPU. Still, the m15 R2 more than holds its own. Note how much the m15 R2 outperforms the HP Omen X 2S as well. Both have the same Core i7-9750H and RTX 2080 Max-Q parts, but the Omen X 2S’s thermal throttling resulted in scores closer to those of an RTX 2070 Max-Q.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
Finally, kudos to Alienware for continuing to surpass our battery expectations. Gaming laptops are notorious for their poor battery life. Those high-end components are hungry, usuallt requiring you to stick close to AC. That’s little comfort when your laptop dies an hour into an international flight. While the m15 R2’s battery still won’t get you from New York to Paris, its five-plus hours of rundown time in our test does far better than most.
IDG / Hayden Dingman
Keep in mind, that’s not gaming time. Our rundown test involves looping a 4K video file at 250 nits’ brightness, which is far less demanding than even a classic adventure game. You can expect maybe—maybe—half the battery life while gaming. But even so, for a gaming laptop of this caliber? Not bad.
On a related note, the m15 R2’s power brick is massive by modern standards—enough to draw comments when we unpacked the box. We’re well past the days where power bricks were actually brick-shaped, but the m15 R2’s footprint is easily double that of any other laptop I’ve reviewed this year.
Bottom line
Here’s the part where I usually give you a purchase recommendation, but I always find that harder when it comes to these high-end laptops. The Alienware m15 R2 performs as advertised, a powerful machine stuffed into a stylish and portable package. It’s an excellent laptop.
But as I said up top, this probably isn’t the m15 R2 you’re going to buy unless you’ve got very specific needs. An RTX 2060 or even an RTX 2070 Max-Q would do you just fine, especially for half the price. You could even purchase the RTX 2060 model, take the extra money and buy Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier dock and a desktop RTX 2080, and still come out ahead. I’m not recommending you do that, but it goes to show how expensive this RTX 2080 Max-Q-equipped m15 R2 really is.
Alienware’s been firing on all cylinders recently, and if you’re in the market for a laptop I’d absolutely recommend giving the lower-priced m15 R2’s a look. They’re beautiful, they’re durable, and as an added benefit? They come in black. After all, if you’re going to pay this much for a luxury machine, you don’t want it getting scratched the first time you take it out—no matter how futuristic the white version looks. Forget Dieter Rams. Richard Sapper had it right.
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Huawei is no stranger to high-end tablets, but currently that corner of the slate market is dominated by Apple’s iPad Pros, with top-end specs and a dedicated tablet operating system. It looks like Huawei is set to make another assault on the market though, as its new premium tablet, the MatePad Pro, has just leaked.
The leak comes from acclaimed leaker Evan Blass, who posted two simple tweets: one confirming the name ‘MatePad Pro’, the other a press render of the tablet complete with a keyboard folio and stylus. While we’d usually recommend caution with leaks, because they can often be wrong, Blass has a commendable track record.
The image of the MatePad Pro lines up with previous leaked renders, but at the time we thought they were of the MediaPad M7. The images look almost identical though, with the iPad Pro-esque design and a ‘punch-hole’ camera system.
The real big news here is the name: Huawei MatePad Pro. That shows Huawei is dropping its current tablet line, or at least its ‘MediaPad’ name, to bring its slates more in line with its computers and phones, like the Matebook 13, one of its newer laptops, or the Mate 30 Pro, its recent smartphone.
It’s probably also no coincidence that the MatePad Pro is named similarly to the iPad Pro.
What is Huawei’s new tablet?
The MatePad Pro looks to be a fairly thin tablet with a large screen, broken up by the front-facing camera which is in a ‘punch-hole’ cut-out in the top left corner, unlike other high-end tablets like the iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, which have it housed in the bezel.
There’s a keyboard folio and stylus, and it’s not clear if both or either come with the device – the Galaxy Tab comes with a stylus but you have to buy the peripherals for the iPad Pro range separately.
(Image credit: Twitter)
We don’t know the internals of the MatePad Pro, but if Huawei wants it to stand a chance against its rivals, it’s going to need the best specs possible. That means a Kirin 990 chipset, as that’s the latest from the company, a battery pack that’s well over 7,000mAh, and a decent selfie camera for video calling.
Then there’s the question of the software, which we have to ponder every time Huawei launches a new device. Thanks to the Huawei ban, the company can’t use any of the Google Mobile Services (GMS) including the Play Store, limiting the apps available on the devices, and it’s likely that’s the case with the MatePad Pro too.
Because of this, we’d expect the device to only land in China initially, as that country isn’t gripped by the need for Google apps (as GMS isn’t available in that country). However if the Android ban is lifted, we could see Huawei’s devices repopulated with Google’s apps, and on that day the Huawei MatePad Pro could be a valid contender for the title of ‘best tablet’.
Or it might not. We’ll need to get hands-on with it to find out for certain, and we don’t even know for sure if it’s a real device yet. When we hear either way we’ll let you know, so stay tuned to TechRadar for all the latest phone, tablet, and tech news.
It looks like Windows 10X could run regular Windows applications, which is good news for anyone who wanted to run popular Windows 10 programs on their dual-screen devices.
A leaked document suggests that Windows 10X will support Win32 apps. This is noteworthy, as it’s the first time we’ve seen mention that Windows 10X, which is a special version of Windows 10 designed to run on dual-screen devices like the upcoming Surface Neo, could be able run regular Windows 10 apps.
Microsoft has in the past released ‘special’ versions of Windows 10, like Windows 10 S, which are limited to only running certain apps (such as UWP apps from the Microsoft Store), so the fact that Windows 10X may not have those restrictions – allowing you to run your favorite applications without worry – is welcome news.
Appy days
Of course, this doesn’t mean Windows 10X will definitely be able to run every Windows 10 app in existence. The reference to Win32 app support is only brief, and appears in leaked documentation which has since been deleted.
According to Windows Latest, which has published the latest leak, the document states that “Office – Co-existence of Win32 apps and PWA (Progressive Web Apps) on Santorini; related to Shellification efforts.”
Now, that might seem like a lot of jargon, but what it could be suggesting is that Windows 10X (codenamed Santorini) will come with PWA versions of Microsoft Office applications – however, you could also download and install the full Win32 versions if you’d like.
In theory, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals should now be old news – right? Well we would disagree, the phone might have now been replaced by a few newer Samsung models but it still stands as one of their best releases yet, now at a super affordable price.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Note 10 and the Galaxy S10 have come out since, full of high-end specs but, they both carry massive price tags. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals are definitely still well worth a look. And it’s still getting cheaper!
The Note 8 is not by any means a budget device, however. It’s a absolutely massive smartphone, not just in size but also in raw power. It’s got the screen size and specification smarts to be a competitor to the highly praised iPhone X or iPhone’s new massive iPhone XS Max and neither of those come cheap. But there are now some excellent Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals floating around. Check out our comparison chart and handpicked favourite Galaxy Note 8 deals below.
Now we know some of you may have fiery memories of the Galaxy Note 7 in your head when looking at this device but leave those worries behind. Both the Note 8 and 9 have massively improved their batteries and you won’t be facing overheating problems anymore. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals truly are miles ahead of the 7 in every way.
Should I get the Galaxy Note 8 SIM free?
Are you determined to get the very best price? Always looking to see how you can trim a few pounds off your new favourite gadget? As you probably know, you can now pick up cheap SIM only deals for as little as £4 a month, which could make it worth buying a SIM and handset separately.
The Galaxy Note 8’s RRP has dropped massively recently to £649. That is much cheaper than it used to be but you will still be putting up a big chunk of money upfront. Even if you get the cheapest SIM card (usually around £4 a month for 500MB data), that would still cost near to £800 over the two years. You’re probably better cranking up the upfront cost in our price comparison chart above, imposing a low maximum for monthlies and finding a cheaper deal in the long run.
Wondering what all the fuss is about? Well the fervour for the Note 8 is probably doubled due to the fact that the Note 7 was pulled from shelves soon after release. But it doesn’t take more than one look at the Note 8 to see that it justifies the hype.
The huge 6.3-inch ‘Infinity Display,’ is gorgeous to look at, the 6GB RAM innards go like a train and there are two best-in-class rear cameras. It’s expensive, but we think the Note 8 is worth it.
Windows 10 May 2019 Update got a big boost in adoption last month, and over half of all Windows 10 users are now on this version – although whether they made the move of their own volition, or were pushed, is another matter…
According to the October stats from AdDuplex – which compiles its figures from adverts in Microsoft Store apps across some 90,000 Windows 10 PCs – the May 2019 Update now represents 56.6% of users.
That’s another big leap for the latest version of Windows 10, and in fact an 11.1% increase compared to September.
So on the face of things, it appears that all the recent problems which have been popping up with cumulative updates issued for the May 2019 Update aren’t putting people off upgrading.
However, when you consider that the April 2018 Update dropped from 24.1% of Windows 10 users in September to 13.6% in October, that’s a decrease of 10.5% – meaning that almost all the May 2019 Update upgraders (11.1%) came from here.
And remember that the April 2018 Update is now living on borrowed time, and as the end of support deadline is November 12, Microsoft has been forcing upgrades to the latest version of Windows 10 on these users for obvious security reasons.
Upgrade cattle prod?
So while we can’t know anything for sure, it seems a pretty obvious conclusion that the fact that the May 2019 Update is forging ahead – it really has made massive gains over the last couple of months – has a great deal to do with those upgrades being mandatory.
It’s also a pretty safe assumption to make that the majority of the remainder of those April 2018 Update users will have upgraded when we get November’s stats; so that’s likely another big 10% or so increase in the cards.
The Windows 10 October 2018 Update, incidentally, remained almost static on 25% of market share, only 0.5% less than in September. And those are users who don’t need to upgrade due to any imminent deadline, of course…
Another interesting snippet is that 0.5% of folks are running Windows 10 preview builds, meaning that around one in 200 users are testers for the OS.
Having made all of these observations, however, we’d do well to remember that we need to be cautious about relying on one set of statistics as a picture of any particular market.
As the background to all this, Microsoft is now preparing the next big Windows 10 upgrade, the November 2019 Update which might land on November 12 (and if not then, it’ll be coming soon enough). However, it’s a minor update more about tweaking and small performance improvements, with no major new features being introduced.
