Continuing its series on data recovery, operating systems and keeping data safe in today's Internet dependent computing environment, Hard Drive Recovery Group's latest post discusses Windows 10.
The popularity of Windows 10 for PCs and laptop computers is unlikely to be shaken without significant a catalysts in the PC market, which remains unlikely.
"Although for many people having a desktop computer is part of their everyday life, this segment is one that few vendors are really focusing on for growth," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Hard Drive Recovery Group. "The market itself has been seeing lower numbers for desktops since about 2010, which means any innovation at that level is not exactly something a hot, growing company might be interested in."
Interestingly, the industry recognized cause of lower growth numbers for desktop computers, the sales growth of laptop and tablet computers, also appears to be falling. Whether that is because of higher quality materials, better hard drives or faster chips in newer computers that enable users to use them for a longer period of time, or because the platforms are becoming stale, PC growth has stalled.
"One of the major drivers of growth for PCs in general in the early 2000s tended to be the fact that software vendors were continuing to create their applications with a focus on using more and more computing resources as they became available to mainstream machines," said Davies. "Even as early as 2010, almost all software companies outside of maybe video and gaming app developers had simply stopped building software that would test the capabilities of the hardware. The hardware had grown too strong."
Not entirely coincidentally, around 2010 smart phones began to be real competitors to even laptop computers in their ability to perform computing tasks on the go. Microsoft at the time did make an attempt to port its Windows OS to smart phones, but was able to find very few partners for the OS, and even fewer for the Windows Store - the latter which had to compete with far larger application marketplaces like Apple's App Store and Google's Play.
"I'm sure there will be many books written about Microsoft's missteps in the smart phone market, but it appears obvious that they simply did not have an answer for the iPhone at the time," said Davies. "But in the end, Windows wasn't willing to ease some of the developer restrictions that Google was, and the result was that Windows 10 didn't have the phone environment to establish new growth with."
In another post, entitled Tracking Down A Lost Hard Drive, Hard Drive Recovery Group spotlights a case where a man had a hard drive stolen. The lost drive led to identity theft as well as the loss of thousands of photographs of his young son. There are lessons to be learned for every hard drive user.
"External hard drives and flash drives are incredibly useful and portable while being one of the cheapest forms of data storage available," said Davies. "The problem with them is that some people use them to completely backup their lives. If these drives are lost or stolen, they can cause a lot of headache."
Hard Drive Recovery Group recommends that external hard drives that contain critical file backups and personal data should be kept at home, and not transported anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Simply keeping a hard drive in the same place is going to mean the likelihood of theft or loss is very small.
"In the end, there really should not be a reason why you should need to carry a drive with all of your critical data on it anywhere," said Davies. "In fact, if you have a portable drive, we recommend deleting personal items that have been backed up elsewhere to ensure safety."
from Hard Drive Recovery Group
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