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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."
That's probably the same as saying 66% of all Windows users are on older hardware which was already "good enough." They probably won't get Windows 7 until they buy a new computer. I have Win 7 x64 Pro in a VMWare image and it works relatively well in there, but I had to tweak the settings for the container, and if I run it with less than 2GB of memory allocated, it starts to get pissy. Maybe its different when running it on the physical machine, but I'm somewhat skeptical, and if I were running on an older PC, I'd probably skip the software upgrade and wait for a hardware upgrade.
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.
Our standard at work is XP, and Office 2007. Right now XP simply handles all our needs. There is nothing offered with w7 that really justfies upgrading.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
I still use xp.
Everything I've seen suggests that Win7 is a better OS - stability, security, etc.
However we have 6 computers in the house. Two are 3.0+ GHz dual+ CPUs with 4 gigs of RAM; those are the only two that I suspect would run it well. The other 4 range from 2.7 GHz 4 gig RAM (my older gaming rig, that probably could run it) down to a 1 GHz Athlon with 1 gig of RAM.
XP runs "well enough" for everything we want/need to do. I'm uninterested in climbing another learning curve so I can admin 2 different OS's in my house. I'm uninterested in buying new hardware just to all run Win7. I'm uninterested in buying 6 licenses of Win7.
So....no Win7 here, although I readily agree it would probably be a better system on the hardware that could run it. Sorry Microsoft.
-Styopa
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
if you're upgrading from XP, you also get these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
Vista/7 have LOTS of new stuff under the hood. It's not just the eye candy.
When MS announced that dx10(and up) would not be upgraded in XP and would only be available in win7 (vista doesn't count), I felt cheated. Something that is basically a driver standard should be included in any xp maintenance release. What MS did was strictly a marketing ploy in my mind and an attempt to get money out of my pocket. Considering that this was when xp was very much the main operating system at the time and the announcement came out before there was any new OS, it just seemed to be a pretty shabby trick especially on gamers. So I'm resisting getting win7 until I absolutely have no choice because something I need to do requires win7. Until then I have a reasonable OS on this comp, linux on my other one and see no need to spend hundreds of dollars for basically what I see as $50 worth of upgrades that apply to me. The rest is just worthless junk that in some cases is more of an impediment than anything else.
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.
There is one "special folder" that is meant for user-independent storage of application data. You can get its name with feeding the value CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA into the proper API call.
See http://www.mvps.org/access/api/api0054.htm for an introduction.
The actual path varies with Windows version and language. On my German Win XP Pro, for instance, it is
C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\All Users\Anwendungsdaten
Also note that every user can create files and directories in there, but per default they are only writable to the user who created them. So it may be necessary to change permissions during installation.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Lots of little things that add up.
Start-menu search, means I don't have to go hunting through the "All Programs" menu when it gets big, or remember in which little folder that little applet was, or hunt through the control panel. If I know what I want, I just type a few letters, and boom, there it is. Same with most recently used documents.
In Windows Explorer, there's a new "favorites" section on the left nav. I can add any folder I use regularly to that, and not only can I now instantly get to very buried folder hierarchies, I now have an always-available drop-target for dragging files to them.
Windows 7 also nags me less. I'm not constantly dismissing or being interrupted by "notifications" that I don't care about.
The new task bar, and in particular "jump lists" are amazing productivity enhancers (I was skeptical at first), and there are a ton of new hot-keys and short-cuts for doing just about everything you'd want to do, from moving windows around to launching apps to switching from laptop screen to projector.
The UI just seems snapper and smoother on the same hardware too. It "feels" more reponsive.
Even things like errors... when you try to copy a file but it's locked by an application, it now tells you which application is locking the file. When you're running tons of things, that can be a major time-saver right there. I'm a developer, and I used to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the heck was holding on to that file... now I don't spend ANY time doing that.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It's just more refined and polished.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Moral of the stories: Stay Reasonably Current
Sure, sure, that's the *practical* moral, but how about some *dogmatic* morals:
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.
Everybody knows the real reason not to switch to Win 7 is because Civilization V runs better with DX9 than with DX10.
Everyone likes to think that 7 buries stuff deeper, but in reality, almost everything is 2 or 3 clicks away from the desktop.
Especially if you make yourself a GodMode folder.
Make a new folder
Name (or rename) it
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
You can of course make shortcuts to this folder for use on Desktop, Start menu, etc..
Oh, it will also run from a thumb drive (a copy of the folder, not a shortcut) plugged into another Win7 machine
Most fun Windows control panel ever.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I run Windows 7 on my my new Revo box 64-bit 2core, 4GB, Nvidia, 500GB Hard Drive. Runs so slow. I spent £300 on it because of lies like yours.
Alrighty. I run Windows 7 on my old Dell Inspiron 1520 with 64 bit dual core, 4GB (aftermarket), Nvidia and 120GB Hard Drive. Bought it in Feb 08 with XP on it. This was during the reign of Vista and this was the only laptop Dell still sold with XP on it.
Got hit by a virus (damn AVG Free did not protect me; even though I scanned the suspect file thoroughly before trying to use it. Switched to Avira, we'll see how that does ;D) and had to re-install. I had already tried Win7 during RC and decided it is marginally better than XP, just not better enough to switch unless you're rolling a new OS anyway.. and now I was. So I switched from 32 bit XP to 64 bit 7.
Now it seems to run every bit as fast as XP did, with Aero turned on. It eats more RAM (900MB used at startup instead of 350MB, overhead appears constant after days of uptime) and this is after applying most of Black Viper's recommended service tweaks to both OSen. I find win+tab is handy when you've got a ton of browser windows open (each with tabs; I generally run one window per distinct project) and want to quickly get to one which is visually distinct.
so tuppe, does my counter-example anecdote mean that you're the liar now? Or perhaps we should yeild the predictive power of all of our personal one-off experiences in favor of actual research?
ZDnet's benchmarks maintain that Windows 7 is faster than XP for standard use, although XP remains more capable for devices with limited memory and outdated graphics.
Maximum PC's benchmarks claim that Win7 simply feels faster than XP on the hardware they tested.
Tom's Hardware's netbook benchmarks show that Windows 7 does not beat XP on the netbook but that it is quite responsive, and would probably surpass XP with better driver support.
TechRadar's benchmark includes many plusses and minuses for Windows 7 with a net plus, but clearly states that it provides "better performance than XP can deliver on today's hardware."
I'm not picking up on any benchmarks that have the same trouble you've had, so unfortunately I have no way to confirm you did not just misconfigure your machine.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.