Slashdot Mirror
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."
This shows something, that Windows 7 is good enough that people are running the trial of it en masse. The date that will confirm this trend is when W7 gets released to the street for both upgrades and bundled with new PCs, on October 22.
you just wait for june next year when all the RC versions expire...
... 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".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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.
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.
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." -Archimedes
From my own stats, I'd have to agree with Win7's market share; I get about 1-1.5% too.
My web domain.
What will be most interesting is whether people will be willing to make the jump from XP to Win7. XP has held pretty steady since November last year at ~70% market share. Vista never even got to 20%.
Why is Vista "stupid?" Why do you think XP is better? Why didn't you buy a Mac if you wanted a Mac?
A lot of Vista's original criticisms revolved around drivers (since the entire driver architecture got re-invented). After a lot of the driver issues got resolved (*cough* Nvidia and Creative *cough*) the OS became no better but no worse than XP.
If I purchased a laptop today I'd rather have Vista than XP since I lose nothing but owning Vista but I lose a few things by owning XP (low privileged IE, UAC, et al).
A lot of people who continue to bash Vista are just sheep that have no real clue why exactly Vista was bad or why Windows 7 is better (hint: Vista paved the road for 7).
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.
Add to that list: Windows 200 and Windows XP.
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. Running Autodesk Inventor was near to impossible because it was so slow you could draw the screen by pencil faster.
Windows XP's "Genuine" disadvantage was the main reason I switched to Linux. I do value my privacy.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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!
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. ;-)
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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 :)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes. Good job Microsoft. You have successfully beta tested a version of Windows and actually made money from it too by selling it to your customers. You got all the negative feedback that you need to improve it, so now you get to charge all them poor saps all over again with Windows 7! I despise this company, but I gotta admit. They are business geniuses.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
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.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Vista's been decent for the last couple of years. They released some patches soon after its release that really sped it up. Trotting out FUD like that contained in your post doesn't help anyone.
a prime reason FOR those issues in usability is because lots of users don't know how to actually use them properly
Just a minor nitpick, but if the user can't figure out how to use it properly, that is a usability problem.
Sorry dude. That never works as an excuse when some Linux interface baffles the average user, so I don't see why it should let Microsoft off the hook here.
Besides which, these same people knew how to use XP just fine by and large, so you're not talking about naive users baffled by computers in general. The complainers, on the whole tended to be seasoned Windows users who didn't get on with the new O/S. That's got to be a black mark, however you look at it.
It wouldn't be so bad, but (in technical terms, at least), user interfaces are what Microsoft do well. I don't have a good word to say about MS on the whole, but aside from two or three glaring exceptions, they do seem to have a knack for making things accessible to the less technical end of the user spectrum. So when someone tells me that if they couldn't even get that part right, I have to wonder what horrors lurk elsewhere.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I'm sure MS will spin this in a positive way but let's face it. This just goes to show how shit Vista was.
Everything has its limits
The reason microsoft and windows have been so successful has been because their software has been so friendly to use.
Its so easy it attracts developers, that make applications for the platform, which attracts end-users, some of which go on to become developers.
Its a self-feeding cycle, which is why microsoft has been so successful, and its also where linux is starting to show real growths.
Now your saying MS can give its customers anything it wants and they'll eat it. You might be right, but only in the short term. Longer term, a small amount, lets say that in frustration/annoyance 5% less developers drop windows vista, and start using using linux instead.
They go on to develop apps that DON"T work on windows but instead on linux, these apps appeal to other users who go on to get linux instead, and the linux cycle grows.
Those few developers, taht tiny market share, is all it can take to crush the windows monopoly. And without the monopoly, or ease of use, why would you pay money over a linux distribution which is free.
No microsoft can't afford to stuff up windows, its the cornerstone of all their software, everything is dependant on it, it just takes time (read: years) before screwups play out fully.
Heres a small post showing that MS's vista screwup has cost them dearly, the Mac's web presence nearly doubling from 4 to 8%.
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/06/macs_web_footprint_growing_at.html
It'd be simlar with linux.
Just wait a few years, and the results will play themselves out.
Don't even get me started on the fact that the netbook market is cut-throat pricing wise, MS are already having a hard time jusifying the cost of windows (to the point where they cut prices on windows oem to stop being excluded from that market)
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
I will probably be modded into obscurity for this, but hell, I have karma to burn.
I would venture that many of the Vista Haters have never really spent any time with the OS. A poster above commented that the initial release was flawed, primarily due to crappy driver support (and I was burned on the nVidia chips in my laptop), but by the time that the first SP came out, it was solid, reliable and, dare I say it, almost a pleasure to use.
My new job demanded that I go back to XP, and it reminded me of how much I prefer Vista over XP.
The true test will be how long will it take for major corporate IT uptake in Win7. Perhaps the learning curve of watching Vista and the polish that Win7 has added will begin migration plans. I sure hope so, 'cuz I can't stand XP.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
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.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I had a Microsoft refrigerator, top of the line. My neighbor couldn't figure out how to set the temperature with the foot pedal and built-in accelerometer, so all her food spoiled. The stupid woman took it back and got one of those Apple refrigerators that doesn't have a built-in accelerometer or foot pedal, choosing instead to have one that matched her decor. I painted my kitchen fuschia argyle to match and it looks AWESOME!!!11!!1!!eleventy. Why would you use a refrigerator that doesn't let you have that level of control?
yes, using the "Start" button to shut down was brilliant and I love the power button symbol on Vista and how when you click it, it doesn't power down but logs you out. It's also brilliant to place icons on the desktop or in the taskbar menu system so that they can't be removed like other icons around them. Brilliant UI designs they are not and new/naive users are confused by these kinds of inconsistencies. I've seen it first hand helping a few good friends with their screwed up Windows based computers.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Obviously, I'm not "many" users. Certainly not a majority. But, I have installed every operating system that MS has offered since MS-DOS 3.1. Every single one. I've done every Windows version since Windows 1.something - I missed 1.0.
I will state bluntly here that WinME was the single worst abortion that MS ever put out, followed closely by Vista.
Windows 7 runs perfectly on the very same hardware on which Vista failed. Longhorn, in various versions, runs perfectly on the very same hardware. With some moderate tweaking, Win7 runs just as fast as XP ever ran, it's stable, reliable - it just works. Vista refused to work properly on any of my home brew machines. When it ran at all, it was a resource hog, and ran as sluggishly as Win98 would run on an early 386. No exaggeration.
I will allow for the fact that Vista probably does run decently on high-end equipment that was designed for Vista. But, where does that leave the rest of the world? And, how does that explain the fact that Win7 runs perfectly on hardware that Vista barfed on?
"The true test will be how long will it take for major corporate IT uptake in Win7."
I can agree with that statement, at least. And, I'm sure that the test will be passed. A mediocre IT dude such as myself will be able to migrate a small company from XP to Win7 (let's say 50 machines) in a month or so, with only moderate headache. (Yes, migration ALWAYS involves some headache.) You simply couldn't say that with Vista. It simply wasn't going to run on a lot of the existing hardware, and the boss wasn't going to spring for all new hardware.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Maybe this is nitpicking but both of his points are valid.
Windows 2000 had an awful process scheduler, which I'm guessing caused the problems GP referring to. By the way never attempt to run vmware-server on Windows 2000 box. Also Windows 2000 didn't have plug-and-play whereas Windows 98 did.
XP was okay until Microsoft silently added genuine advantage in it, incidentally that was one of the big reasons for me switching to Linux. Now it's been 3+ years using Debian. I'd rather live with flunky wireless card than a computer that holds me in contempt.
Lots of people gave Vista a bad rep because -- get this -- they didn't know how to use their damned computers!
I'm sure that must be it. I've only personally owned computers since 1982, taught myself assembler to write faster games on a C=64, hacked hardware on an Amiga, switched to Linux in '98 or so, got a Slashdot login some time the same week, picked up FreeBSD a few months later, snagged a degree in CompSci, built the home server sitting next to me from Newegg parts, and turned an HP Mini into a Hackintosh last month. That must be why my wife's dual-core laptop with 2GB of RAM and Vista ran like crap from the day we bought it, even after I stripped out the OEM junk and have almost nothing running at startup: because I'm a technophobic newbie who doesn't know how to use my damned computers.
Yeah.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Let us not forget Windows Bob.
It even became a joke at MS. Check out Bill Gates Last Day Video @~5:40 Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie crack on BillG saying that they have to give credit where credit is due; Microsoft Bob was all Bill's idea.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Yeah, okay...get back to me when you don't need to tweak xorg.conf just to make video work okay...with Compiz no less.
Uh, Windows 2000 definitely had plug-and-play.
Millions of people on every forum on the Internet are bashing a product they've never really spent any time with that's actually great.
That's plausible. Why didn't I think of that?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yes. That's exactly my point.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
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.
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. ;-)
Linux broke into the single digit in the Net Applications stats in March. But has not been able to hold the ground.
Consider yourself 'gotten back to' as of last year. Hell, you don't even need an xorg.conf on Slackware any more. If it's shown up in Slackware, it works.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.