Slashdot Mirror

is not the "vast majority" of computer users. The PC gamer segment is estimated at 100-300 million individuals worldwide. Sure, that's not nothing. But in comparison to estimates for total worldwide PC use (workstations, desktops, tablets) approaching 2 billion, it's not a big percentage.

There will always be some hardcore gamers. But the enthusiasts with the 1,000 watt+ power supplies and SLI GPUs are not the "vast majority of lightweights" about which we're talking. Angry Birds has 1.7 billion downloads. Show me a PC game that does that volume.

if you include iOS as an operating system, the ratio has dropped to about 2:1.

No not even close the number of Desktop PC's in the world is about 1.6Billion http://www.c-i-a.com/pr02012012.htm to pit that figure into some kind of perspective Apple only sold 26.9Million iPhones last quarter https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23771812. Even Android which sells 5 times as many phones as the iphone is only expected to overtake PC's in 2016.

So... they told Microsoft 5 days ago AND GAVE THEM A FIX...

There are roughly 500 million users running XP.

63% of all PC users globally. Operating System Market Share, PCs In-Use Reached nearly 1.2B in 2008

XP is backwards compatible with many programs written for MSDOS, Win 3.1 and Win 9x.

But protecting the installed base of small business and enterprise applications written for XP is truly misssion-critical for Microsoft. The patch must not break these apps.

It would be lunatic to blindly trust a patch from a competitor -

and it is Microsoft - not Google - that has thirty years experience in its core markets. That knows which apps are likely to break and why.

In decline? You can't just spout bullsh*t without backing it up.
Oh look! I quickly found a link that is contrary to your claim
/me adjusts his world mindset so that "20% increase in 5 years" is now considered a decline.

Now tell me, why is it okay for Steve Wozniak to be a "one-hit wonder" but not okay for an artist to be one? Just because computers sell faster than books?

Lol, computers DO not sell faster than books. They just cost less, because they provide less value.
Retail bookstores do roughly 16B in new sales each year, in the USA alone.
Assuming an average selling price of $30 per book, that's over 500 million books each year.
http://news.bookweb.org/news/4131.html

While only about 250 million PCs were sold during all of the 20 years from 1981 to 2000, long after the Apple II stopped generating any revenue.
http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0806.htm

Didn't the release of Windows, especially Windows 95, induce a huge increase of demand in IBM compatibles?

That at least is my impression, and it's kind of supported by a lazy google search. So, CPM-86 doesn't have all that much to do with the growth of the industry and the abundance of cheap hardware it caused.

There's a few things to consider here. We're talking about the history of the "IBM PC" platform, or rather, the history of commodity computers. And we're also looking at the much larger trends in computing in general. These are intertwined. You can't look at that linked chart without this understanding.

Commodity hardware is what provides "the growth of the industry and the abundance of cheap hardware." This doesn't begin with Win95. It begins well before Windows.... it begins with DOS. Or rather, DOS plays a key part. However, as the parent suggests, it could have easily been CP/M-86 instead. As a side note... CP/M-86 eventually becomes DR-DOS and there's a lot more interesting history in that.

So what about the linked chart? Keep in mind that there's overall trends at play. The microcomputer starts as a hobbiest toy. The Apple II and VisiCalc brings the microcomputer to business. IBM follows with the "IBM PC." That's the beginning of the chart. At that point, some folks (like me) have already realized "home computers" but most folks really don't see a reason. And while VisiCalc was the killer app that put microcomputers on the business map, it isn't until the mid-80s that Lotus 1-2-3 provided the killer app for the IBM PC. By this point, IBM had lost control of the platform and the industry is awash in "clones" due to the pioneering steps of Compaq and evidence in outfits like Dell and Gateway 2000.

Still, the market really is business. The platform is not really a gamer's rig (which starts changing in the late 80s). And it's expensive (both issues that make the Commodore 64 popular at home). Home buyers who buy a IBM clone are, most likely, buying it to take their work home with them. There's little that drives the consumer market for any home computer at all. What consumers needed was the killer app.

The chart makes it look like Win95 is that killer app. But that's ignoring a rather large event - public awareness of the Internet. Email. The web. Those are killer consumer apps. That's what drives home computer sales. It helps that this is when we're seeing a price war and a push towards the âoesub-$1000 PCâ as Intel, AMD, and Cyrix slug it out in the market. And, of course, we have even more adoption of personal computers in the work place.

So again - Microsoft is definitely a part of the story. But there's plenty of others who should be credited for these events as well (if not more than Microsoft).

Didn't the release of Windows, especially Windows 95, induce a huge increase of demand in IBM compatibles?
That at least is my impression, and it's kind of supported by a lazy google search. So, CPM-86 doesn't have all that much to do with the growth of the industry and the abundance of cheap hardware it caused.

Actually, for its per capita income, Brazil is doing pretty well as far as internet access goes. They are 10th I believe in numbers of people online - ahead of Canada, Mexico and Spain. http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0106.htm

I see a number of people asking the question "But how many computers are there per country?" I found the numbers at:

http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0904.htm

Here's what they show. I've added the % of spam coming from each country as the last entry in each line:

Top 15 Countries in Internet Usage
Internet Users (#X1000) Users% Spam%
1. U.S. 185,550 19.86 23.2% of spam
2. China 99,800 10.68 20.0%
3. Japan 78,050 8.35 1.6%
4. Germany 41,880 4.48 2.5%
5. India 36,970 3.96 N/A
6. UK 33,110 3.54 1.8%
7. South Korea 31,670 3.39 7.5%
8. Italy 25,530 2.73 3.0%
9. France 25,470 2.73 5.2%
10. Brazil 22,320 2.39 3.1%
11. Russia 21,230 2.27 N/A
12. Canada 20,450 2.19 N/A
13. Mexico 13,880 1.49 N/A
14. Spain 13,440 1.44 4.8%
15. Australia 13,010 1.39 N/A
Top 15 Countries 662,360 70.88
Worldwide Total 934,480 100

It looks like the USA's numbers are right about on track with most other countries with China way out in front as to percent of the spam problem compared to percent of Internet connected computers. What's this? France has twice the percent of spams relaying through their country compared to the percent of Internet users? For shame!

According to the Computer Industry Almanac the U.S. uses 25% of the world's PCs. While I know our broadband penetration is not has high as other countries, we sure have a lot of hardware. Another thing to look at would be total messages in/out versus total messages claimed as spam. Sophos doesn't give us that piece of information. At least last year, Andrei Serjantov and Richard Clayton had done some work along those very lines in a paper found here. I don't know if they've updated it.

According to the Computer Industry Almanac (may only include IBM-PCs, but close enough) and this article, Linux desktops are on about 1.2% of all desktops. Better than I could ever do with a little hobby OS I guess.

How many more years of Slashdot articles saying "Linux is dramatically gaining desktop share" are we going to see before that percentage even hits double digits?

Take off your "M$" hating blinders and smell my special blend of coffee: it's called "Linux as you know it is not destined for a large share of desktops and won't topple 'evil M$' period." Long name, but focus groups liked it over "OpenFolgers".

Two things...

1) The data from that graph appears to be from 2000 (the Computer Industry Almanac confirms this, though I give no representation of their accuracy). I imagine that world wide computer usage has grown at a comperable (if not greater) rate than US usage in the interim.

2) You seem to be implying that the statement "there are more computers outside the US than inside" is false. From your graph, the US contains 161,000,000 computers of 427,270,000 world wide, or under 38% of the world's computers. My appologies if I misinterpreted your intentions.

Neither source contains information on what percentage of these computers is internet connected, so I don't know what relevance any of it has to this story.