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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."
This same story is trotted out months after every version of Windows ships. Hardly anyone ever upgrades a PC to the next major version of Windows. Instead, the upgrade happens automatically when people ditch their PC's and buy a new one.
There are many reasons why people stick with XP.
One is that they have a perfectly good machine that's overkill for what they use it for, but that doesn't meet the requirements for Windows 7.
Another is that they have so many programs installed that it's a major task to upgrade. Especially these days when many programs are bought online and uses DRM -- you may not even be allowed to reinstall under a new OS without re-purchasing.
There's probably a few disillusioned Vista users who (IMO rightly) don't believe the street hype and won't rush into installing what could have been released as Vista SP2.
Then there are those who don't feel like paying big bucks for the upgrade when it's not needed to run the programs they use.
Then there's a small amount of users who have figured out that XP is faster for their use, if nothing else because it uses less memory.
And let's not forget the large amount of users who wouldn't dare upgrade an OS at all, but use whatever the manufacturer put on their machine. They'll get a new OS when they buy a new machine, and in this economy, that might not be now.
In any case, this is Slashdot and a car analogy is in order. Just because a new model has come out doesn't mean that everybody with older cars will switch. Expecting that is silly.
There's one very good reason to buy new hardware: When the old hardware fails.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
They probably won't get Windows 7 until they buy a new computer.
Not necessarily. I still run XP, because it still works.
I do actually like Windows 7, but until I want to use my computer for something that I can't do on XP, I see no point in making a not-inconsiderable outlay of cash to upgrade just for bells and whistles. And as for the hardware, as you mention - XP runs a hell of a lot faster on older hardware. My computer doesn't count as obsolete by any stretch of the imagination, but I would most likely need to upgrade hardware to get anywhere near the same level of performance if I went to Win7.
So why bother?
But I do substantially agree with you - Looking at the bigger picture, I think Microsoft has a rather serious problem, not of their own making for a change. Even the last gen of PCs as "fast enough" for everything most people want to do. I very much don't mean this as a "640k should be enough for anyone", but do you really need quad core, over 4GB of RAM, and a video card that could render an older Pixar movie in realtime, just to check your email, surf the web, and play the occasional "casual" game? And if not... Why upgrade?
However, with the exception of large disasters (lightning, fire, flood etc), usually a single component fails and not the whole computer. Which means that it's cheaper to replace the failed component instead of the whole computer.
If my PSU failed, I'd rather buy a new PSU than a new PSU, motherboard, CPU and RAM (I could still use my case, videocard, hard drives etc).
You're right that computer replacement is slow, but XP got about 38% of the installed base in only three years. Vista was released on Jan 2006, more than 4 1/2 years ago, and still Vista + 7 combined don't best XP's installed base.
This might be an indication of a changing user base, and it may be it's because a lot of businesses and households aren't doing as well these days.
Um, a lot of people sit on WAY older hardware than Core 2 Duo.
In the room I'm in now (and counting only x86 compatibles) I have one Opteron 175, one P4 3.06HT and one PIII 1.13S. They work, so why should I trash them?
And how many of those 65% have geek friends that they call and say "Hi, my computer broke, can you fix it?"?
That's probably a lot, considering how many computers I fix for my friends, and yes, that includes asking them to buy a new motherboard "Go to the store and ask for 'motherboard for Socket A CPU, that's mATX'" or just asking for the money and buying it myself. When the "broken computer" problem occurs, people try to save money, and if the new part costs less than a new PC, they'll buy the part.
The rest have kids they can ask the same question.
In any case, "broke" normally means:
The battery in the wireless mouse is flat
A plug fell out the back
Its teh viruses, stupid!(I for one welcome our new porn overlords)
Profit!
If you upgrade them to Win7 they will hit you with a clue bat: Working means "Running WIndows XP".
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Could this be based on the economy too?
I Usually buy a new pc after a good bonus or raise. I think I was running XP last time that happened.
The thing is, it's a bad idea to just keep running an old system, even if it still works just fine for you. I see this all the time. People calling looking for help because they can't get on their bank's web site anymore. (java out of date, OS issue, NOT browser) Or they bough software that says it can't install. (not enough memory or OS too old) Or they have a special piece of hardware that broke, bought a replacement, and the newer software it came with won't run on their OS.
I tell people, "You really need to get a new machine. Yes, I know, it still works just fine for you, but eventually you're going to be forced to upgrade, and the longer you wait, the bigger of a problem it's going to be". I'll tell you a few stories of businesses that didn't listen to me, and paid the price:
Story 1:
Local designer. Designs posters, not sure what for, maybe movies, he's apparently pretty good, customers all over the usa. Anyway, he has a fancy machine that looks like a giant printer. It cuts posterboard to exacting size, for use in his big printer. Cuts perfectly straight long lines on the really heavy stock, both side and end. Brought in the computer and cutter, the computer had an OS meltdown due to dying hdd. It was 10 years old. He was lucky I even had experience with an OS that old. But although I could fix the OS, the software that ran the cutter had draconian DRM on it that made it require reinstallation when moved to another hard drive. I was unable to crack the protection, and he was unable to find the original discs. So he had to buy new software. (several thousand dollars) Come to find out, the new software wouldn't run on the old computer, NOR would it run the old cutter. He went from cussing over having just put in a new set of $250 blades, to REALLY cussing for having to buy a new cutter. (10 grand) And a new computer of course, which ended up being the cheapest angle.
Story 2:
Audio recording man. Does high end audio mixing and CD mastering. Had problems with a reinstall of his pro audio software. Come to find out he'd been with them since the start version 1.0, 1995'ish. He tried to reinstall the software, and it was an update and failed to find the older software so it wouldn't install. (and it wasn't the type to ask you to insert the older disc or type in the older license code, it required the previous version to be installed)
It took several days of scrounging around to find ancient machines and MEDIUM DENSITY FLOPPY DRIVES so we could start the installation chain from his version 1.0 floppies on Mac OS 7, and work forward, to vers 2, 2.,5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, and finally to his version 7. This wasn't so much a case of living in the past, but his software sure was.
Story 3:
Local newspaper. 7 machines about 8 years old, including server. Running old versions of adobe, quark, and pagemaker products. Kept telling them this is a bad idea holding off on upgrades so long. Editor was a penny pincher and refused to listen. Put more memory in. Upgrade/replace that hard drive. Who cares if the server has no video, it still works.
One of their desktops dies. Unrepairable, parts not available. So they bought a new machine. Whoops, it comes with a new os, won't run the old pro software. So they buy one set of licenses for it. Whoops, it can import from the old software but not export back to it and they have to be able to share. So they buy more licenses. Whoops, those won't install on the older systems, OS is too old. Looking further, whoops, their hardware is too old to install the reuqired OS.
So, all at once, they had to buy a new server, 8 new desktops, tens of thousands of dollars in software, and spend the next several months in the hell that is doing an import-open on everything they double click, requiring proofing and corrections/adjustments. I'm amazed the editor didn't have a heart attack.
Story 4:
This is one I see retold several times a y
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
When the hard drive dies, what's stopping you from just re-installing XP using the license you already have? Seriously?
The flip side of that is, nobody wanted new hardware because it was coming with Vista on it. PC makers must have hated Vista a lot more than us, because I know many people who waited to upgrade old hardware because they didn't want Vista. Unlike Vista, I generally hear good things about Windows 7.
I'm still building new computers with XP or Linux on them (or dual boot). With hardware that Vista ran doggy on, XP runs like a bat out of hell. A 55.00 dollar single-core processor and a couple of gigs of RAM and XP will do what large numbers of people want it to do.
And I hate to say this, but look at the prices of Vista and Windows 7. The computer savy people I know have a copy of Windows XP Pro Corporate that they can install on anything without worrying about WGA or activation. They don't have that option with Windows 7, so XP and Linux still look good. It is very easy to build a very nice, very fast PC in the 300.00 range...until you start adding in the cost of Windows 7.
Realistically, that could make XP stay around a little longer and make Linux start to eat into their market a little more.
And it will be a fine day for Linux when there are no longer any corporate editions of Windows anything available!
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
PCs now last longer, since the exploding capacitor problem was solved. The result is a dip in sales of new machines and therefore a dip in whatever new junkware comes with new PCs...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I run Linux as my basic operating system but like to keep Windows around for purposes such as tax software that require it. If a machine came with XP pre-installed, I could squash the Windows partition down to about a quarter or less of the hard drive. Starting with Vista, you had to use M$'s partition resizing tool and it would not go to below half the hard drive. I managed to get XP for all my systems.
I don't know what I'll do some time in the future when I might need a new machine. Perhaps FOSS partition resizing will have caught up by then.
I'm not really sure why you were modded up. The cases you cited are fringe cases. Do you work for a major PC distributor?
Or you could beat the big box stores for any hardware by not buying the windows license at all. Especially if you don't use it.
The story is "66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP". This discussion is about average Joe computer breaking, and they need to fix or buy a new computer. The majority of average Joes wants Windows. You're clearly not the target audience.
Story 1: Dead HDD due to old hardware. Solution: Backup your data using drive cloning, swap the disk, done.
Story 2: Need a new version? Solution: Contact the company for a new version's license code, perhaps by presenting the fact you've had all the upgrade codes.
Story 3: New OS breaks backwards compatibility. Solution? Reinstall the old OS.
Story 4: And this generalization also generalizes the problem with the tech industry.
The tech industry moves too fast for individual consumers, and in recent years more and more time is spent on adding bells and whistles instead of any real functionality.
Games, for example, are constantly adding better and better graphics and hogging more space, but I often find that they lose the core gameplay concepts which makes games, well, fun.
Software, for example, are trying to become more flashy and bloated, such as Office and iTunes, piling on feature after feature which are sometimes redundant.
People should upgrade because they want the new functionality.
Today, the tech industry forces them to upgrade because not upgrading will cause them compatibility pains in the future.
The reason? Profits from selling a new software version with "great new enhanced features" yearly.
You took way too many words to say what can be translated as "I really dont know what I'm talking about, not one bit, but just the same I have formed the opinion that Microsoft is trying to screw me with this DX10 stuff"
The fact of the matter is that the DX10 hacks for XP fail miserably as soon as multiple processes/threads attempt to use a single DX context at the same time. To enable a DX context to be highly threaded, the display driver specification itself needed to be changed.
So while some early DX10 games work fine on the DX10+XP hack, many newer ones do not because they use multiple threads and expect to not deadlock in the display driver when presented with DX10. Microsoft alone can't solve the problem because it also requires that nVidia/ATi go through extra work (more than they need to do on Vista/7 because its driver hooks implicitly supports threading) within their XP drivers, and its work that actually destroys the benefits of multi-threaded rendering.
The upshot is that even if nVidia/ATI were to play along on this, most DX10 games would still be listed as only supporting Vista/7 for DX10 anyways because XP just wouldn't have the same performance with the same hardware. The only realistic way to make XP properly support DX10 is to change the driver model of XP, which is an insane thing to do for a 10 year old OS that is in extended support phase. Its not a conspiracy. Its just the way it is.
"His name was James Damore."
And anybody who knows ANYTHING about money knows that these people did exactly the right thing, except for not having money set aside to cover situations like this.
Let's assume all those computers were 12 years old. Let's assume you'd advocate a 4-year upgrade cycle. They skipped 2 upgrade cycles, and got caught having to do the 3rd one all at once.
Let's assume an upgrade costs $1k - after all, you wanted them to keep their software current as well and that costs money too. For each of those PCs they saved $1k 8 years ago, and $1k 4 years ago.
Let's assume that the business makes a 5% return on capital (if they just put their money in a mutual fund they could make that much - so this is a VERY conservative figure). Plugging that into a TVM calculator tells me that they saved $2692 per PC in TODAY's money deferring those upgrades. Unless they spent more than $2692 per PC as a result of the delay, they saved money.
If your upgrades are more expensive, or if you upgrade more often than 4 years, then the savings is even higher. If the business could have taken advantage of an opportunity by sinking some of that money into capital then they'd make out even better, compared to just having shiny PCs.
Now, the only issue that might apply is that they ended up having a catastrophic failure and suffered downtime, which has a cost of its own. The solution to that isn't to keep upgrading computers under the hope that this will prevent breakdowns (it won't - it just reduces their frequency) - it is to have continuity plans (redundant hardware, backups, etc).
The bottom line is that a PC is capital for a business. It has a return on investment, like any other capital investment. Money spent on that PC is not available to spend on other things. You should spend money on the PC if it has a good ROI, and it is the best investment option available.
If I ran a business I wouldn't be upgrading my PCs all the time either. I'd upgrade them as often as serves a business purpose. If a shiny new PC will make me more productive I'd buy it that afternoon. If it won't, then the money goes into the bank for when I need to replace it. I'd anticipate failures and plan for them.