Windows 7 market share still increasing...

Asif Dasl

Windows 8 market share stalls, XP at record low


I guess it's not too much of a surprise, a lot of people don't seem to like Windows 8 & 8.1 even though I think it's fine as my main OS.

So Windows XP is finally being replaced with Windows 7 and a little of Windows 8.1 - I'm glad to see the back of XP, it just brings back bad memories of dealing with old PCs! I'd hate to be working with it now...

Just thought it was an interesting article and thought I'd share!

jibbajabba

The worst thing about Windows XP was Microsoft cancelling a Volume License which was leaked online so at my job then about 6k workstations had to be re-activated. As far as I remember initially it wasn't even possible to do via GPO so we had some Microsoft monkey coming in doing some magic ...

Ah good times .. and man XP 64 Bit was more than painful ..

I still liked it though ....

DevilWAH

jibbajabba wrote: »

The worst thing about Windows XP was Microsoft cancelling a Volume License which was leaked online so at my job then about 6k workstations had to be re-activated. As far as I remember initially it wasn't even possible to do via GPO so we had some Microsoft monkey coming in doing some magic ...

Ah good times .. and man XP 64 Bit was more than painful ..

I still liked it though ....

So are you saying it was you volume licence key that was leaked? Or that you where using the leaked Key?

As I understood it customers each had there own unique volume licence Key, so should one get compromised only that company was affected when it got blocked.

DevilWAH

Worst thing about 8 and 8.1 is that you have to retrain your support staff, the move from xp to windows 2000, vista and 7 was that it was progressive, and you could support a windows 7 users based on your understanding of XP. All the stuff was still in the same places near enough.

But with 8 its a completely different lay out, so compnines don't want to spend the money retraining there help desk and having them support 2 different OS's. Its a big investment for a company to move to 8 so I think a lot will skip it as the returned in terms of productivity for there office workers over 7 are nothing. Most office users use 3 or 4 applications in total (not including there browser) So what benefits for the user or for the people managing the desktops are there to move to 8?

good for touch screens, and for bringing mobile and desktops in to line with each other. But in my view it was miss timed in its release, need a stepping stone between it and windows 7.

Jon_Cisco

Interesting but I think they should lump 8 and 8.1 together to show the upward trend in Windows 8 more accurately.

It's misleading as it implies there are less people running 8 but most of them probably switched to 8.1 rather then reverting back to 7. XP appears to have lost 7 percent to market share and Win7 picked up most but not all of that. Windows 8.1 probably picked you the rest.

MTciscoguy

Once I installed a start window app on my win 8.1 machine, I have had no problems, works very similar to win 7 64. I still have a couple of XP pro machines, one of them is the one I use to do my lab work. I also still have a few win 7 machines as well, and right now, see no reason to upgrade them, as the OS is still fully supported and has tons of programs and stuff that are still working and being developed for it. Win 8 was a shock to the system if you had never seen that type of environment or used anything that was touch, I believe that is where they made a big mistake is installing win 8 on machines that don't have touch screens, made the transition very difficult for a lot of people and companies. There should have been an option for the new interface or a regular start menu if no touch available.

daviddws

MTciscoguy wrote: »

I believe that is where they made a big mistake is installing win 8 on machines that don't have touch screens, made the transition very difficult for a lot of people and companies. There should have been an option for the new interface or a regular start menu if no touch available.

I still remember the first time I saw Windows 8, and my initial reaction was "how did this POS interface pass any focus group on this planet?" I have windows 8 currently on my netbook, and it runs great. It's not a touch screen which is why I boot to the desktop. I have mixed feelings about Metro, but understand why M$ went that direction. I believe that Microsoft execs forced the option to not include a start button option, and that was based on arrogance and not on user input. This seems to be a problem when corporations get too big. They "think" they know what their customers want, but don't bother to get input on what that is.

N2IT

I think it's going to be like this for a while. It's a great OS.

7 was well thought out and makes sense. 8 is nothing more than a concept with some rolled back enhancements.

lsud00d

Since WinXP just EOL'd last quarter, this all makes sense.

langenoir

I run W7 on all my virtual instances and I don't even mess with the W8 on my laptop. I've come to the conclusion that every other MS OS (Me, Vista, W8 ) is a bit wonky and not worth the effort to mess with.

MTciscoguy

langenoir wrote: »

I run W7 on all my virtual instances and I don't even mess with the W8 on my laptop. I've come to the conclusion that every other MS OS (Me, Vista, W8 ) is a bit wonky and not worth the effort to mess with.

Win 8 and 8.1 are not bad OS, they work, if you know how to set them up, it takes a bit if you buy a pre-configured system, but if you have been working with windows for as many years as I have, then you understand how things flow, I would not want my 83 years old mother in law trying to work with win 8, t would be a nightmare and even my wife refuses to look at it.

Asif Dasl

I don't know, 8 was pretty bad... it looked like it was released before any proper user testing was done - I agree with a post above that it was probably corporate arrogance which probably railroaded it through.

Windows 8.1 is definitely much better but with the update that happened pretty short afterwards, again showed to me that they didn't get everything right with 8.1 so had to fix the fix - the release has been a disaster from beginning to end really.

It just has a bad rep in most peoples eyes, even though I think it's fine now once I've gotten used to it. XP was the same though before SP2!

DevilWAH

Always remember the stick vista got (rightly so), but windows 7 is based on the Vista release lessons learnt. I think microsoft knew at the time that there where issues with Vista but used the release as a UAT program. And in the same way I think 8 is a test bed for new ideas. With the next major release where they take the best bits and polish the rest and deliver a decent OS again.

tpatt100

I ran away from Windows 8 originally but after 8.1 I am pretty happy with it now but mostly for a couple of features it has. In previous Windows versions my initial setup was placing a couple of the most commonly used programs on the desktop or Quick Launch. Then in Windows 7 I really liked the task bar.

Windows 8 though.... 8.1 fixed a lot of the issues I had but I wonder how they tested 8 with common users during development. I think an issue I had was some third party programs I installed wouldn't show up in the Apps list so I would have to do a search for them and then add them to the Start menu. I guess this is an issue when your OS isn't a sandbox like iOS the app store is your primary software resource, so some issues are bound of pop up.

I had to help a cousin out with her laptop and it had Windows 7 and I had become so used to Windows 8 that I almost kinda missed it lol.....