Another day, another shocking press release from an IT company trying to build its name recognition by stirring up controversy.
Here we go again. A small IT management company, Lansweeper, is trying to boost its name recognition with yet another shocking press release about Windows 11 adoption. The headline is pure catnip for tech editors: «More PCs running Windows XP than Windows 11.» And it worked! Just look at these credulous headlines: The topline numbers are themselves literally incredible. According to the company’s press release, only 1.44% of PCs are running Windows 11 as of April 2022, six months after the release of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Another 6.6% are running «End of Life Operating Systems,» mostly Windows XP and Windows 7. That would be a spectacular failure for Microsoft if those numbers were indicative of the actual adoption rates for Windows 11. But a closer look at the report suggests that those numbers don’t really prove much of anything. For starters, where does the data come from? According to a footnote in the press release, the company «scanned 10 million Windows PCs coming from a mixture of Lansweeper (20%, enterprise) and Fing (80%, consumer).» So, let’s unpack that. Lansweeper is an asset management tool designed to identify all «assets» on corporate networks, including servers, routers, workstations, printers, monitors, and associated software. Fing, which was acquired by Lansweeper in 2020, makes a network scanner of its own and says its «Device Recognition and Fingerprinting technologies give visibility over the entire digital environment, from Consumers and Industrial IoT to OT [Operational Technology].» Neither of those products are exactly the sort of analytics tools that are likely to be found in a typical consumer’s home.
