Windows 7 Trumps Vista By Reaching 20% Share

CWmike writes "Windows 7 cracked the 20% share mark last month, a milestone the problem-plagued Vista never reached, Web measurement vendor Net Application said over the weekend. Gregg Keizer reports that Windows 7's online usage share reached 20.9% in December, up 1.2 percentage points from the month before. Windows Vista, meanwhile, fell by half a point to 12.1%, its lowest share since July 2008. Vista peaked at 18.8% in October 2009, the same month that Microsoft launched Windows 7. The other standout finding: XP is projected to still account for 13% when it's retired in 2014." An anonymous reader adds news that Google's Chrome browser is nearing 10% market share.

Comments

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention that XP was TERRIBLE at managing multiple cores/processors and memory

I'm surprised how often this isn't mentioned. To extend, XP also has problems differentiating between an SMT core and an actual real core (important with all these i5s and i7s). Seen XP SP3 think its a good idea to put a double threaded job on "processor 0 and 1" with 2 and 3 empty. Problem is 0 and 1 was the same core, so effectively half the CPU was unused. Windows Vista and 7 don't make the same mistake - and thats part of the reason you on a SMT capable processor often see certain cores facing much higher workloads on average than others.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP, as is Windows Explorer. Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used? Or have you tried to use them as if you were still using XP?

For example, I almost never use the "All programs" menu any more. No need. Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.

I find I'm far more productive with Win7 than I ever was with XP. Going back to XP just gives me this feeling of XP constantly getting in the way... I feel utterly constrained by its limitations and annoyances. Windows 7 is a definit advance, and is definitely worth the upgrade.

I "upgraded" my XP laptop a while back (after using it at work for a while), and even though it's not a true 'upgrade', it was one of the most painless windows installs I've ever experienced (and I've done a LOT of them). Yeah, I had to reinstall my apps, but the data moved over pretty painlessly. I was up and running in under a day, easily.

I'm not sure what you even mean by the XP start menu working more "cleanly" than Win7's... the exact opposite is the case. The Win7 start menu is just vastly superior. Of course, you have to take the time to actually learn this fact.

Re:Windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

XP's Service Packs were the equivalent of Mac OS's upgrades, but they were free. The most notable upgrade was Service Pack 2, which introduced the firewall, pop-up blocker, Bluetooth support, Windows Security Center, etc. Sure, it is not a patch on the monumental changes introduced with Vista, but when people say that XP did everything that they needed they actually should say that XP SP2 did all they need. If you gave someone a computer with the original version of the OS then they wouldn't be so happy.

Re:Windows 7

[icebike]

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're even talking about. I haven't experieenced anything like what you're describing (and can't even really follow what you're talking about)... are you talking about just blind-typing really fast into the start menu search bar and pressing enter without even looking?

Essentially, yes, thats what he's talking about.

Lots of machines have that Windows Menu key now days.
Whack that, (or click the start icon)
Cursor is already in the search box.

At that point, if you know the name of the application, a fast typist, or a keyboard oriented user can launch just about anything faster than a mouse user drilling thru the start-bar.