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66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP
An anonymous reader writes "Almost one year after the introduction of Windows 7 it appears that the hype surrounding it has faded. The overall market share of Windows has turned into a slight decline again. Windows 7 is gaining share, but cannot keep pace with the loss of Windows XP and Vista. Especially Windows XP users seem to be happy with what they have and appear to be rather resistant to Microsoft's pitches that it is time to upgrade to Windows 7."
Just a few off of the top of my head.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
You're an idiot because your opinions are already biased by the fact that you "refuse to give Microsoft" your money. I must give you kudos for not using M$ though, so thanks for that. But nonetheless, when you already approach an argument about their Operating Systems with an added bias about the company, it's hard to take any opinion you have objectively.
The latter remark I made regarding reduction in spyware and viruses is directly the result of the significantly extra protections added in Vista/7 to help protect end users. This is pretty much a fact of the products. You could be the most vigilant person in the world and you can still get a virus loaded onto your system. I'd rather reduce the attack surface they have to exploit.
You have to keep in mind that vulnerability ratings on websites (such as secunia) don't take into account the environment that it's running in. For example, a "critical" vulnerability in a browser might not actually be be that critical to you as a user. An example is, you could be using Firefox on Linux with a heavily restricted user account that has no local privilege escalation point. Every website will rate the vulnerability as critical, but your environment makes it not as critical to you. Taking that statement there, with various protections added in Windows (UAC in particular), the amount of damage that can be wreaked by a specific vulnerability is significantly reduced. Particularly if you use IE or Chrome rather than Firefox. The former 2 of which lower their privilege use on the system and require elevation to execute.
Nonetheless, you're still "vulnerable" a lot of the time. You could visit websites that you think are safe that have a compromised banner ad or webserver that got exploited with some compromised javascript. You could counter this with "oh I use adblock/noscript!", but then when you have to turn on javascript to get the site itself to work--you're kinda screwed. While these windows of opportunity are relatively rare, they do exist--and you cannot assume "perfect" security by simply only visiting sites you think are safe (though it does help).
Interesting, so you're saying the improvements are basically: a good command line where you only have to type the first few letters for a command, and good short-cut keys so you don't have to use the mouse. That all sounds oddly familiar ...
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Anyone that talks about any version of Windows "making headway" is just a mindless blithering Lemming.
The current version of Windows replaces the previous version of Windows as the OEM monopoly OS. Nothing changes except for the label attached to the monopolyware. It used to be MS-DOS 5. Now it's Windows 7.
The transitions from DOS and then to NT were genuine if overdue improvements.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Wow, and to think when I upgrade Mac OS X it only cost me $30 and already had that shit...
Vista cost something near $300, and 7 is around $200. For... larger icons... and fancy graphics. The problems with Windows for most consumers is the constant update treadmill. Most support calls I get from my family have to do with their anti-virus software that has it's own grinding death march of updates as well. MS Office is terrible for this even on the Mac, if the 2000 version for Windows had a citation manager I'd still be using that. Adobe does the same, yet their software is capable of running just fine for years w/o an update performed (in fact, it is more stable if you is the pirated versions).
Which makes me wonder: why does an office suite take a gig of RAM to run? Didn't we run old ones off of floppies? I mean, really, Google Docs does 99% of what Office does and it runs in a web browser.
Once you start USING a computer for something instead of having a digital hot-rod on your desk you grow weary of the upgrade grind. Nobody gets excited about a new washer/dryer like how people froth about new MS releases.
Hire me...
What exactly is the point in switching to Vista/7? And it has to be compelling to get my company to re-invest significant amounts of time and money to 'fix' all the annoying issues out of the box, and to spend tens of thousands to pay Microsoft for the privilege?
You know what, it's a tough job market out there, enjoy 1999's technology to it's fullest.
>>>An 800Mhz G4 can handle Mac OS 10.3 or 10.4.
How much would that 10.2 to 10.4 upgrade have cost me?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
For the home user, and as competition for those that think they think different... sounds great. For the average white collar office user? You and Microsoft are kidding themselves. No one cares about 7 but the IT fanatics. It has no purpose that XP and the previous MS Office/ Exchange/ Active Directory paradigm already covers. Unless a company is seriously considering data center virtual desktops consolidation... and even if they are.., there is zero good reason to upgrade other than to give MS a bunch of licensing fees and to excercise the IT muscles during migration. Even when MS drops support for XP and updates... the office user is STILL DOING THE SAME LAME CRAP, no matter how shiney the bells and whistles are, for 95-98% of them, it just won't make any measurable difference in their work output.
The Admin and the Engineer