Windows 7 Share Grows At XP's Expense

CWmike writes "Microsoft's Windows ran to stay in place last month as Window 7's market share gains made up for the largest-ever declines in Windows XP and Vista, data released today by Web metrics firm Net Applications showed. By these numbers, Windows 7's gains were primarily at the expense of Windows XP. For each copy of Vista replaced by Windows 7 during November, more than six copies of XP were swapped out. Meanwhile, Apple's Mac OS X lost share during November... betcha Ballmer is having an extra giddy time with that news. Linux came up a winner last month, returning to the 1% share mark for the first time since July. Linux's all-time high in Net Applications' rankings was May 2009, when it nearly reached 1.2%."

Comments

Well..

[El Lobo]

I can only speak for the university I work for. We have upgraded 8000 machines from XP to 7 after passing over Vista all these years. And boy are we glad we did.

Yes, 7 is ***cheap*** for education.

Re:Well..

[bongey]

Well how about managing linux boxes in active directory http://likewise.com/ .

To be expected?

[Monkeedude1212]

I mean, the headline makes it sound like Microsoft isn't do so well, but the full summary suggests that Apple is the one lowering its Market share to Linux.

I mean, Considering PC's have the most market share, anyone who doesn't use Windows is essentially using whatever their alternative is (OSX/Linux) to get AWAY from Windows (Especially Vista, that pushed a few people I know towards a Macbook).

So, was Windows 7 expected to Rip all thsoe Happy Mac customers back to Windows? Or was it majestically expected to make Linux users go insane?

Windows Users use Windows, and Windows 7 will only grow from the market share of other Windows operating systems. It'll be a long while before Mac and Linux users go back to Windows, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse will be just as stumped as I will be.

Re:Good news for Linux

[Meshach]

snip

Second point: I had my first hands-on with Windows 7 today. I'm somewhat bewildered. In what way is this not Vista 1.1? Sure, okay, there are some cosmetic changes to the taskbar but really, I fail to find anything revolutionary. Certainly nothing that justifies the same folks who've said all along that Vista was "bad" to say that 7 is "awesome". Is a slight reduction in UAC prompts really enough?

I think that MS did that intentionally. Vista was such a pain because it was such a sharp break from XP. Porting any reasonably complex application from XP to Vista is a difficult task; especially if that application has existed since the 9x days. I think MS is trying to do smaller more incremental releases now.

Trend is viewable on Steam Hardware Survery

[Suiggy]

PC gamers are abandoning XP and Vista and moving towards Windows 7. For the first time ever since Valve began publishing their hardware survey back in 2003, Windows XP usage among Steam users has finally dipped below the 50% mark, and is losing ground relatively fast. Steam Hardware Survey

Re:Trend is viewable on Steam Hardware Survery

[shutdown -p now]

Yes. The big deal is that Vista and 7 are your only choices for a well-supported 64-bit version of Windows (XP x64 or 2003 works for some, but drivers can be a problem, and there's no clear future there) - and you need that for 4+Gb of RAM, which is becoming more and more common on gamer rigs these days.

  There were also some tests that have shown that 7 actually beats XP in some popular games. On the other hand, Vista lags behind consistently.

Re:Linux has a 75% market share

[Belial6]

I assume you are only counting desktops. In my house I have 2 - Windows 7 Desktops 1 - XP nettop 1 - XP Media Box (XBMC) 1 - Linux Desktop 5 - Linux Wireless Routers (2 for a wireless to wireless router when I travel) 2 - Linux TVs 2 - Linux NAS 1 - Linux VOIP adapter 1 - Linux Phone (Android actually, but that sits on top of Linux) That puts me at 4 Windows and 12 Linux systems in my home, so Linux has a 75% market share here too. I would guess that there are a LOT more people running Linux in their homes than are counted or even realize it.

Re:Yet another story stating the obvious

[budgenator]

Of course they are upgrading, my Vista system just decided it wasn't genuine, last month my boss's XP machine decided it wasn't genuine coincidence? If you can't find that little certificate what choice do you have, you can't even buy XP anymore! At least I was dual-booting with Linux but Mozilla reports it's IE6 on Vista.

Re:Linux is more succesful than the iPhone

[flyingfsck]

If you count iPhones which is an embedded device, then you should compare it against Linux embedded devices, of which there are more than 300 million made each year. If one counts ALL Linux devices then there are at least 1.5 billion Linux devices in use (300 million times a 5 year lifetime) - possibly more than 2 billion if you add desktops and servers. So Linux is actually by far the most popular OS ever.

Re:Finally...

[TropicalCoder]

OK - if your a developer - or anybody who is - please tell me something...

I just made a big jump from Win XP Pro and MSVC 6 to Windows 7 64 bit and VS2008, and I am trying to get up to speed. I created a very simple benchmarking console app on the old system and compiled a release build under MSVC 6, and then compiled exactly the same code under VS2008 on the new machine. No matter what optimizations I used, or whether I created a 32 bit release build or a 64 bit release build with VS2008, the exe created under the old MSVC ran about 25% faster on my new platform than the new build on my new platform. Question - what is it with VS2008? This is intolerable!

Try it yourself and get back to me.