Vista Share Drops for the First Time In Two Years

adeelarshad82 writes "Windows Vista lost market share last month for the first time in almost two years, a sign that users are already abandoning the oft-ridiculed operating system in favor of the new Windows 7. According to Web metrics firm Net Applications, Vista dropped 0.2 percentage points during September to end the month at an 18.6% slice of the operating system pie. Windows 7, meanwhile, gained 0.3 percentage points, its biggest one-month gain since Microsoft began handing out the new OS to the public in January 2009. Windows 7 powered an estimated 1.5% of all computers that connected to the Internet last month, also a record."

Comments

just wait...

[King-of-darkness]

you just wait for june next year when all the RC versions expire...

Microsoft's done itself a lot of damage lately

[syousef]

A lot of people realized from the start that Vista was rubbish. Unfortunately MS has been doing a lot of damage to itself of late. Most of their main stream products are a complete pain to use. Genuine advantage has run rife, and hinders legitimate users and pirates alike. The ribbon is an abomination and no amount of marketing or brainwashed hyperbole from idiots parroting the marketing is going to change my mind - yeah I can use it just fine but it eats up a lot of screen real estate and it isn't better - it's childish shit with no advantage. Not to mention dropping support for old formats. Some of us want to be able to read our old documents without resorting to Even in gaming they fucked up then shut down the Flight Simulator franchise, and Xbox 360 has its red ring.

The only things I've seen that aren't bad that have come out of Microsoft lately are some minor photo and file utilities from it's research labs.

Vista being a bloated slow buggy pain in the arse that permeates every part of the user experience just takes the cake though. Windows 7 is going to need to shine big time. So far it's looking better than Vista (but for that matter so is a turd sandwich). They can't afford to get it wrong.

Re:Microsoft's done itself a lot of damage lately

[Alomex]

yeah I can use it just fine but it eats up a lot of screen real estate and it isn't better

I've used every windows systems in one form or another since 1987 and have generally found the criticisms of /.er types way overstated. The "awful unstable new versions" of Windows were usually better, more stable, easier to use than the previous one.

The are a total of three exceptions to that: Windows 2.0, Windows Me and Windows Vista. Windows 2.0 was a first release (Windows 1.0 doesn't really count). Windows Me was the last iteration of a dead end branch put out by the marketing department. Windows Vista on the other hand was driven by the tech types and was supposed to be better. The only noticeable difference in the user experience are useless changes for change's sake, and idiotic Allow/deny dialogues.

Re:Microsoft's done itself a lot of damage lately

[NickFortune]

I think they can afford it. MS still has a monopoly on providing OSes for home and buisness users, and even a fail like Vista did not make a dent into that monopoly. Another fail might, but I'm not so sure.

Mmmm... I don't think they're quite as bulletproof as you suggest. The thing that's been preserving MS' monopoly, post-Vista, is the fact that XP users have been refusing to upgrade. As any MS apologist, and they'll tell you that Vista's biggest competitor is XP.

But they're not going to offer XP forever. And at that point in time, a bad release on the scale of Vista or WinME could prove catastrophic.

Also, I don't think it's quite true to say Vista didn't dent the MS monopoly. They've been losing market share lately. Not by a lot, and mainly to Apple, but they've been shedding users. With Macs currently enjoying the cool factor, and with some Linux distros getting increasingly accessible to the non-geek user, another big fail could accelerate that trend considerably.

Re:Microsoft's done itself a lot of damage lately

[Zontar The Mindless]

Windows 200 had major problems with hardware drivers. Printing was a real pain, and running both AutoCAD and office on the same machine was almost impossible...

My anecdotal evidence suggests the opposite of yours. I had 4 or 5 Windows 2000 Pro and Server boxes for several years, and found them to be generally reliable and efficient, even on older hardware. When I was writing, I'd typically be running MS Word/Access, Photoshop, a LAMP or WAMP stack, DreamWeaver, UltraEdit, and a few other goodies, on something like like an 800MHz P3 and 512 MB memory without any performance problems. Never had any issues with MS-certified drivers that I can recall.

I have no interest in making MS look better; two of the things that prompted my switch to Linux in 2004 were WinXP and Server 2003, each of which was a giant step backwards IMO. I could already see the direction in which Redmond was headed and knew that I didn't want to go there today. But Win2K generally rocked, and I even miss it a bit sometimes, especially when I have to deal with someone's XP or Vista machine.

They CAN afford to get it wrong

[Errol backfiring]

... They can't afford to get it wrong.

I'm afraid they can. They can force it on every new machine, like Vista. They can pre-install their office suite. With their influence on the resellers, they effectively have a monopoly.

They can force DRM down the customer's throat, Make every new version a pain to rediscover where all the existing features are, and have customers look out for the new version, because "everything will magically be better in the new version".

Re:They CAN afford to get it wrong

[jonbryce]

Dixons Store Group, the largest computer retailer in the UK has been struggling since Vista came out because nobody wanted to buy computers with Vista on it.

Microsoft at it's finest,

[Capsy]

Now, while I've always maintained that Microsoft is an evil bloodsucking corporation, gaming would not be what it is today without Windows 98. Being that I run Vista, and it is forever crashing me out of classic games such as Warcraft III and Sacred Gold, not too mention the core compatibility issues for certain games and their online features, I've often times looked to switching to a Linux OS. But, the problem there is Linux, quite simply, is not up to snuff on gaming as of yet. Sure, Wine made it much easier to play games on Linux, but the fact is, most people simply won't swap because of the simple fact you have to find the correct drivers for the OS your on for your hardware, you have to install and configure Wine, and even learn to use commands. Since most people at this point in time are so established in Windows, the number of Windows gamers vs the number of Linux gamers is obviously in Microsoft's favor. This is why they aren't overly concerned with Vista's shitty performance, and this is also why they haven't been breaking their balls trying to fix it. Yes, I know, 7 is their "fix", but you have to realize, Microsoft doesn't particularly care about us anymore.

Re:Microsoft at it's finest,

[Colonel Korn]

This is why they aren't overly concerned with Vista's shitty performance, and this is also why they haven't been breaking their balls trying to fix it.

I think they might not be overly concerned with Vista's shitty performance re: games because when there are other OS options to run the same game on the same hardware (take WoW on Vista, Wine, and OSX for example), Vista runs it the fastest.

Vista's share doesn't matter

[Umangme]

Considering that Vista's share is less than 1/3 of XP's share (72% vs 19%), Microsoft will be more worried about getting people to move from XP to Win7. The 19% who have Vista really won't (can't, to be more precise) stay with Vista for too long. They will definitely "upgrade" (let's hope it's really an upgrade, not a regression).

Microsoft surely doesn't want XP's ghost to haunt them like IE6's ghost has.

Re:Vista's share doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The 19% who have Vista really won't (can't, to be more precise) stay with Vista for too long.

Why the hell not? I have Vista, and I'm certainly staying with it. Windows 7 forces me to use the retarded new start menu and the retarded new task bar. Given that there's absolutely nothing wrong with Vista, and the only changes in Windows 7 are removals of functionality, I don't intend to upgrade at all.

How many Vista licences running as downgraded XP?

[dan_barrett]

Having just gone through the corporate PC purchasing vendor circus once again, I find it interesting that you can currently purchase a PC with an OEM Vista licence, which Dell/Lenovo etc will happily factory-downgrade to XP for you. As an added bonus you can also upgrade to Windows 7, for free. Yay! 3 licences for the price of 1, sort of.
I assume this is still counted as a "Vista" licence in the statistics as that's waht it was sold as.

I predict a big jump in Windows 7 licences as all the corporate PC OEM and volume licencing moves to the "Windows 7" licence with downgrade rights, as that's the only way you'll be able to get XP. I'm guessing at least 80% of those will still be downgraded to XP for at least the next year. Makes the stats for Windows 7 look good, though.

Btw, I like Windows 7, I use it at home. All our work PC's are XP as our "enterprise-ready" software won't run on Vista. One vendor recently installed their latest document management system onto our Windows 2008 server, only to discover the indexing service had been replaced by "microsoft search". They hadn't tested it on anything beyond Windows 2003/XP as "that's what everyone else runs". Yay for corporate software!

Amazing

[RAMMS EIN]

In other words, Windows Vista market share is falling before it ever hit 20%, and Linux has more market share than the latest version of Windows. ;-)

Browser stats were more interesting

[Kjella]

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1

IE: -1,26%
FF: +0.77%
Safari: +0.17%
Chrome: +0.33%
Opera: +0.15%

Everybody's taking a piece of Microsoft. The version graph is pretty interesting too:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=3

While IE is switching from versions 6/7/8 at a glacial pace, Firefox users are upgrading rapidly. Since May with 20.03% vs 0.44% for FF 3.0 vs FF 3.5, it's now 9.62% vs 12.65%. That means you can much more rapidly rely on Firefox being a recent version and not dealing with supporting ancient versions.

Why do I care about that? Because browser stats drives most the ways I have to interact with the world. Linux has 1% or whatever, but what matters is how well it works together wtih the other 99%. Therefore, death to IE :)

Re:XP still going strong

[gbjbaanb]

trouble is, people said that about Vista when it first came out too.

where is OS 10.6?

[je ne sais quoi]

Another thing to point out is What the article states way down the page:

Mac OS X climbed nearly the same amount that Windows fell -- 0.25 percentage points -- to finish above 5% for the first time under Net Applications revised its methodology.

So, XP fell 0.2%, win7 rose 0.3%, but OS X rose 0.25%. Considering that the source for their data, hitslink, doesn't even have OS 10.6 up on their survey yet, I'd say the interpretation that Windows 7 is the one eating Vista's market share is unfounded, it's much more likely that it's a combination of losses to apple and win7.

Moreover, if you look at other stats like statcounter, the monthly data shows no decrease in Windows Vista adoption rate (i.e., still increasing usage share), but still shows OS X increasing its market share.

Basically, there's just as much evidence that it's snow leopard that's eating Vista's lunch as it is win7. Win7 installs could easily be coming from people who skipped vista.

Re:Not even October 22 yet...

[Ralish]

Since we, users of Unix desktops, have been using virtual desktops for ages, we don't need to cram tens of windows on each desktop.

What's wrong with both? I'm a Windows user and use virtual desktops, and tend to end up with virtual desktops that have applications that fit into a certain category. For example, programming related fun on one virtual desktop, recreation on another, and so forth... That doesn't mean I don't have a lot of windows on a virtual desktop, quite the contrary at times. Swapping constantly between virtual desktops purely to try and ensure that no single virtual desktop has enough windows to cram the taskbar is in itself just as unproductive, if not more so; I'm sure I've read studies that scientifically prove this point.

Simply, the new taskbar is quite a nice step forward from what I've seen, and just because your current paradigm makes crammed taskbars (or alike) less likely, that doesn't mean that an improved taskbar should be shunned for no express reason than the fact that the problem it addresses is less likely to be personally encountered by you. Add in the progression of Linux moving into the mainstream of desktop computing with distributions like Ubuntu, and you'll find that many of your target audience will be _very_ confused by the notion of multiple desktops, and an improved taskbar such as that in Windows 7 is a far more intuitive solution (for most typical users that I've seen) while still being effective.

Traditional Windows users don't like virtual desktops. I never understood why. Couldn't do without them myself.

I think it's not so much the "traditional Windows user" but more just the "average user" irrespective of OS. As mentioned above, it's conceptually a bit hard for typical users to grasp, or at least, that's been my experience. It complicates the usage of the computer for them, and I can understand this perspective. Also, I'd argue you really need to be using hotkeys for the full benefit of multiple desktops to rapidly switch between them, or the actual time saving from moving the mouse to whatever control you need to use to swap the desktop (system tray in the bottom right usually) and then finding your target window on the new desktop is going to be barely faster than finding it with a single click in a cluttered taskbar. Average users rarely care to learn more than a very minimal set of keryboard shortcuts.

Honestly, Unix users probably use them more simply because the average Unix user is far more knowledgeable about computers and their usage than the average Windows user. It's (although slowly changing) a computer geeks/hackers OS; Windows has a much broader demographic. I'd be interested to know what the picture is with OS X with respect to the above?

PS: The snipe about Unix users using multiple desktops for ages is unwarranted. NT (and 9x?) has supported multiple desktops since the dawn of time via the Windows API, but the OS has never included a built-in tool to harness them for the usage of multiple desktops. Multiple 3rd-party utilities exist to address this, and I've been using them for probably over a decade now, as do most other Windows "power-users" I know.

Re:Not even October 22 yet...

[geekboy642]

I'm going back to school to get a CS degree. I've been looking forward to the MSDN-AA for nearly a year. (Say what you will against proprietary things, the MS VS IDE is quite nice to work in.) I finally get access now that classes have started, and I discover the Internet's immense crop of freeloaders have trampled all over it. Thanks, guys.

The geek needs to lose this excess baggage

[westlake]

They can force DRM down the customer's throat

This is what DRM means to anyone but a geek:

The PC with a Blu-Ray drive ships with a licensed Blu-Ray player.

DVD play out of the retail box.

No searching for the gray market codec.

The single cable HDMI solution for audio and video. HDMI 1.4 adds support for Ethernet, 4K x 2K video, and 3D.

Subscription and rental services of every sort - if he wants them.

"Trusted Computing" solutions for his employer or small business.

Re:Stupied Fucking Vista

[hairyfeet]

I have, and was one of the beata testers for Vista (RC1 was actually good) that got the free Vista copy for reporting bugs and I gave it away. last I heard it was being passed around like a bad fruitcake. here is why I HATED Vista RTM:-

Networking- Networking slowed to a fucking crawl while listening to music, so much so that before file transfers I would have to remember to shut down WMP 11 or you might as well pack a lunch. Networking- Network would occasionally just lose its little mind and would be unable to see network shares. Everybody else, from the ancient Win2K 1.1GHz Celery I'm typing this on to my XP office box worked just fine. The ONLY way I found to "fix" the problem was a full reboot. WTF? I thought stupid network problems died out with Win9X. I actually had a better experience networking with the 733MHz Win9x box I keep for running DOS games than I did the 3.6Ghz P4 I had Vista running on.

File System- I never did get the damned file system to keep from thrashing the hell out of everything, even with 2Gb of RAM and every tweak I could find on the net Vista just kept grinding away a hell of a lot more than it needed to, so much so that it ended up killing a 200Gb HDD that I had it installed on. And what was up with the RAM suckage? Yes I know all about prefetch, but that is supposed to give RAM BACK when I actually need it, yes? Launching any of MY programs, even those that I used daily, was grind city. And with 2Gb of RAM, plus a 7600GT to offload the desktop to, that was just nuts. And don't forget about the little fricking irritation I called "senior moments" where Vista would just hang for 5-15 seconds for no damned reason whatsoever, just long enough to really piss me off. That was a several times a week occurrence.

I could go on, but you get the picture. As a PC repairman who has run and worked on and built machines with every MSFT OS for Win3.x up I can say without a hint of overstating that Vista RTM was an even worse experience for me than WinME, and that is saying something. It was slow, buggy, irritating as hell, and generally a giant PITA. My network is now a combination of Win2K, XP32 and my main rig XP X64, and the difference between those and Vista is like night and day. ZERO problems with the network, network shares are instantly available to any machine on the network, no need to reboot anything, actually able to listen to tunes or watch vids while files transfer, etc.

I bought Win7 HP just in the hopes that unlike Vista it doesn't blow chunks, and the fact that I'm gonna be forced to learn to service it as MSFT killed XP even though folks still want it. But just because YOU got "lucky" with Vista doesn't mean the rest of us wasn't in Vista hell. After all, I have a customer who got one of the few WinME machines that has only WDM drivers. For him WinME is a nice little OS that never screws up and he just doesn't understand why folks hated it so. But MY WinME machine, which is now running Win2K and has been stable now for going on 9 years, had the mix of Vxd and WDM drivers and you could literally set your watch by how long after it reached desktop that it would BSOD. Just because you got lucky with Vista doesn't change that is only that, luck. Luck that most of us wasn't blessed with when it came to that turkey.