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Windows XP Market Share Finally Falls Below 50%
An anonymous reader writes "At the end of July 2011, Microsoft can say that Windows XP finally fell below the 50 percent mark. In other words, Redmond's decade-old operating system is now used by less than half of all Internet users."
...And, of course, Linux took all the difference :)
Now seriously though, old computers die. New computers come in, they either have no XP drivers or come with preinstalled/bundled Windows 7, or Linux flavors, or whatever, not to mention the vast array of Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet and have no room for Win XP. Windows XP use falling is expected, just like any old OS or OS version. I suspect much of the change comes simply because time passes.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
That doesn't really seem like a logical upgrade path for an XP user. It makes a lot more sense for an XP user to move to Win7.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
A true Windows XP user's mindset, because you came in second. but have no fear! It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE :)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Yes, WinXP has dropped below 50% of the total market. But according to TFA, WinXP still has a 57% share of Windows installations.
Windows 7 is the new XP
Remember XP ends support in April 2014. Guess what XP's marketshare will be by them?
Computers age, and brand computers (i.e. everything that wasn't hand-assembled by a small shop or a user) stopped coming with XP preinstalled since ___?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
First of all I have to say that I think its commendable for a company to support a product for so long. Its also one of the reasons why there will always be a place for Windows servers (I wouldn't want them for Internet usage, but IMO they make very good office servers); you can be sure up front when you may have to replace said server with another OS.
There is however one issue here... Sure; Windows 7 is bound to get a larger market share; but did the researchers also keep in mind that with Windows 7 professional and up you can easily run a native Windows XP environment within Windows 7 ? I'm referring to the Windows XP mode which you can download here.
Its build on Microsoft Virtual PC (which is freely available) yet when you're running Win7 Professional or higher you can also download a Windows XP ISO (this is basically what it is) which is then used to quickly setup a full Windows XP environment. It gets even better: you can "propagate" applications from inside the virtual PC so that you can easily start these from the regular Win7 start menu as if they were regular Win7 applications (but because its running in a full virtual XP environment the application itself will also use the native XP look and feel).
To be honest I'm quite impressed and happy with this. I even use it to "put aside" applications which I want to try or use without having it "polluting" my main Win7 environment. And when I'm done with it I simply revert my virtual PC back to the original snapshot and all is clean again (of course I will need to re-install certain updates).
So... When they did this research I wonder if they kept this into mind as well? Just because someone is running Windows 7 doesn't necessarily mean he or she gave up on XP entirely.
btw... What I also really like is that MS' Virtual PC has no issues with installing BSD or Linux either. Sometimes MS can get things right IMO, not often but it does happen every now and then.
I never get any support from MS anyway. I used win2k for years after MS dropped support.
The problem here is that computers became "good enough" for homework and Facebook a long time ago, and even a 2 GHz P4 is fast enough for anything that's not a recent 3D game. This realization, along with the introduction of Intel's power-sipping Atom CPU whose performance is in the same ballpark as an old P4 clock for clock, led to the netbook fad and to the continued use of paid-for PCs.
Is this for desktop market? Then what's that 5.77% non Windows/OSX/Linux. BSD?
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Given that XP is no longer sold, it has 0% of the market share. I think they meant to say "installed base".
I re-installed windows on my gaming rig and tried out windows 7, I'll switch back, please don't ban me from the net!
Serious though, I just installed 7 on my gaming rig(was XP) a few days and even earlier today as I surfed the net to download 64bit drivers/apps was realizing this would show up on peoples pages (and the fact I'm using FF 5.x rather than 3.x)
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
The logical path is to stick with XP. And that seems to be what most people are doing.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista (bleck!), and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. However, it seems that Microsoft decided to do away with charity licenses. That means that we'd be stuck spending over $400 for a 3-pack of licenses for machines that totaled $750 in hardware. That's not even remotely going to happen. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Because the Pentium 4 was inefficient garbage. Assuming you leave it on all the time and replaced the board and processor with a Core 2 three years ago, you would have already made up the difference in power savings.
The logical path is to stick with XP.
I don't think you know what a path is.
Apple/NeXT took BSD and turned it into a polished Unix powerhouse embraced by both consumers and developers by using it as what it always was meant to be, at tool, not a religion.
Google took the Linux kernel and showed what grown ups can do with an open source operating system by absolutely dominating the cellphone OS market.
Meanwhile, Linux continues the oh so productive KDE vs Gnome wars over system settings in 2011.
High five Linux desktop developers!
All Hail Choice!
Honestly if you don't want or need the new features and have adequately secured your install ... Its fine to run older software as long as you aren't being limited by it or are OK with those limitations.
That's exactly what I think. My parents (in their sixties) use Windows XP that I installed, keep as up to date as it can be in terms of patches and the like, set them up with a lovely user account that limits what can be done. For the word processing that mum does, and the occasional bit of surfing that they do, there is totally no need for them to upgrade - and trying to teach them how to make things work ("How do I shut it down now? The button used to be there and look like this...") really isn't worth the neglidgable benefit to them.
It is exactly like the old phones that they have - okay, color screens and the like, but no smartphone, no web surfing. They use it for making calls and the (very) occasional text message. Why on earth would they want to "upgrade" to a new shiny smartphone that they have to learn all over again for the simple features and would never use the additional stuff?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
And there was much rejoicing.
So does this include "all" internet access, b/c honestly I thought smartphones were used more by now. And the 3DS and PSP. And the Wii and PS3. And Google tv. Guess this means for all the Apple vs. Android stuff Microsoft still controls the internet? Can't believe I was starting to buy into the hype.
As Wikipedians might say, citation needed. In TFA, where are the links to the original source, its data, assumptions, research methodology? I could spend 2 minutes doodling with some crayon and come up with something just as solid as that pie chart. Geez.
I thought so, but I put Win7 on a recently-built computer and I really like it. I had to make a few adjustments to fit the way I like to work, but at least those adjustments are possible with Win7.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Half the people I know with macs have installed Windows 7 on them. About half of those people have stopped using OSX all together, and intend on never buying Apple products again. Aren't anecdotes fun.
For a new computer, Win7 makes sense. However, I don't see much reason to upgrade an existing computer that is running Windows XP perfectly well. The only reason I can think of is if one's running 32-bit XP on a 64-bit computer and want to increase the RAM.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Actually I'll switch it up. I carefully waited for the specs to "mature" then I got an iPhone 3GS as a direct upgrade from an old Windows Mobile 6 phone. Clear improvement. But NOW I see no reason to upgrade "just to an iPhone 4".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I use Win XP to run Quicken 2008 in a VMware virtual machine on OS X. I paid $100 for an OEM version of XP a few years ago for this very purpose. I won't upgrade until there's no other alternative.
We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!
Tech for non-profits:
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It's not that suprising when considering how many companies still have WinXP as their main OS. For example, the company I work for has about 20K employees worldwide, and WinXP remains our OS platform. Thus, the people that your or I know who aren't using WinXP are probably a tiny fraction when compared to these large corporate install bases.
Bullshit, my Northwood ran Windows 7, Chrome and MS Office just fine.
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Yes, yes, security concerns and all... but since when does Joe Randomuser care?
WinXP is the first Windows OS that has everything the user wants, even when the next system (actually, the two next systems) is out. When 98 came out, it was a definite upgrade to 95, not to mention that quite a few games soon required 98SE. 2k was a big leap ahead from 98 and NT, combining the versatility of the 9x line with the stability of the NT line, adding out of the box USB support to both. XP again brought new bells and whistles and WiFi support, more stability and more user friendliness.
No, I didn't forget ME. I decided to ignore regressions in development.
But Vista/7? What's the big benefit compared to XP?
DirectX10? So what? Few games really require it, you can do without. Aero? Please, let's talk about something useful, shall we? Now, I am probably not an expert on Windows, but that's pretty much all where I can see Vista/7 sing "everything you do I can do better".
There is simply no reason for people to jump onto Vista/7. I do assume that the "drop" in XP is simply due to people getting new computers with a new system, which is pretty much by default not XP but probably Win7 if they decide for a Windows OS.
tl;dr version: Nothing to see here, move along.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A path need not continue forever. It can have a final destination.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
.
When an OS -- even from a company you don't like -- does the job it's supposed to do, what's the problem? Of course I like my various *nix installs as long as they do what I need them to do, but if you have to use Windows for anything, XP is the last in a (supported) line which will still more or less do what you tell it to do. You may recall that XP (like everything before it) installs with a basic version of Win3.1.
Not really a problem for me as I am running Linux on the Cloud\Laptop\Smartphone. The only reason it isn't on my Desktop is because that is mandated by my place of employ. Now hand me back my razor. I like to be clean shaven.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Who needs $1500 Macs when you have users willing to rebuy marginally improved $500 phones or tablet year after year? Or rebuy them after dropping them in the street, off the sailboat, or leaving them in a taxi?
Supporting stats March qtr. iPad shipments: 4.69 million, March qtr. iPhone shipments: 18.65 million, March qtr. Mac shipments: 3.76 million
There used to be Apple II vs Mac camp at Apple. Apple II lost out. It's obvious what the excitement and moneymaker at Apple is now.
The summary is not accurate. Just because 50% or fewer of those hitting their pages are using XP to browse the web doesn't mean that it has less than 50% of the desktop. I have multiple boxes, of which a few are XP that never hit the web. But that doesn't mean I don't use them. And, again, they imply that everyone that uses a computer uses the web. It's not even a good gauge. When it hits in the low 30% or even 20% then I'll think something of it, and that likely will be that people are upgrading their boxes, not their OS, and that the OS just comes along with it.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Alexa shows Wikipedia to be the 7th most popular site on the web. Wikipedia is unique in that it is one of the few top sites not run for profit. Consequently, they allow open traffic analysis of their web traffic to some extent, which I have found very useful. Here is what operating systems hit Wikipedia web sites in June 2011. They have that data for May, April and so forth. I made a chart from the data a few months ago on my blog.
For June in Wikipedia, XP was 36-37% of traffic. Vista was about 13% of traffic. Windows 7 was 29-30% of traffic. Mac plus iPhone plus iPad was 12% of traffic. Android was 1.4% of traffic, and Ubuntu was 0.5% of traffic.
The saddest thing I've read on the Internet this week is not anything about the debt ceiling; it's the fact that Vista has twice as many users as OS X.
My Northwood runs Win98SE fine too. Best Windows FTW
The summary is not accurate. Just because 50% or fewer of those hitting their pages are using XP to browse the web doesn't mean that it has less than 50% of the desktop.
True, but there is no reliable (and practical) way to measure the OS usage other than to look at web server hits. And since it is a purely arbitrary statistic which should not be used to determine which OS is right for you then it really doesn't matter how accurate the percentage is.
My anecdote is funner, but it has financial results to trump your anecdote. See, everyone I know with a Mac has a Windows partition, but none of them use it. They 'think' they need Windows, but as new Mac converts, they learn that they really don't need Windows, and they start to understand that people like me who have been Windows free since 1989 aren't crazy zealots, and they no longer boot into Windows except to play games (and even that is dwindling).
I just left a Windows-only company of 3,000 employees for a Mac-only company of 50k+ employees. It's only a matter of time until other companies figure it out and ditch Windows.
A Mac-only company of 50K employees.
Must be an interesting world on the other side of that Einstein-Rosen bridge you managed to find there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We keep hearing that Mac share is increasing, but I've yet to see any study that shows Mac usage over a few percent. They don't need to control the market to make $Zillions.
I'm not even Joe Randomuser; I work at a software development company and work my Windows XP PC hard every day. Then I go home and play games on my Windows XP system at home. When I'm out and about, my Windows XP laptop does the trick.
I've never had a virus, trojan, or anything. I've followed basic rules - run Windows update, run a virus scanner, don't install foreign objects.
My PCs are rock solid. I don't want the downtime of upgrading and the hassle of moving to a new environment. They're tools that do exactly what I want and need.
I'm not clinging to it because out of some sense of nostalgia or anything - it all Just Works and I won't get any benefits from upgrading.
The only thing that I wish I had that I would get from upgrading to Windows 7 is the ability to do some GPU-accelerated stuff that is not natively supported in Windows XP.
a 1.6ghz atom is roughly equivalent to a pentium3 800Mhz. a 2Ghz P4 should have no problem. none of them will be speed demons.. the only issue is ram. if you have less than 1GB, it will swap. turn off the bling and you're fine..
Why would he consider installing Windows ME?
it was one of the few things that ran fine on a k62 with a VIA chipset
Well, he could have skipped ME and XP and went from Win98 2E right to Win7 (the only 2 decent OSes out of Redmond in my lifetime).
Still running it on a Dell P4 with 2gb ram. Yet to see a reason to upgrade. I don't game, I don't code. What do I need to upgrade for?
Don't game, don't code. What do ya do?
Subtle innuendos follow
Hm... so what you're saying is that it takes over 16 Mac users to equal one windows user? Wow, that sure doesn't bode well... :D
To the average user, it has eye candy and flashy cool stuff. And it's not bloated and slow like Vista. It's what they should have released 2 years after XP, to compete with Apple. And what they should have put on phones within the next 2 years.
I have HDMI out to a 42 inch HDTV, and use 7 with WMP for DVDs and MP3s and such. It's refreshing, although annoying since I'm used to XP, and have to use Vista for work. If I could stay on 7 only, I'd be happy enough.
Keep in mind, I curse Vista daily, and I'm saying 7 is pleasant. It's better, it does what I want, and does it well.
XP was a kludge, SP1 and 2 were major stability fixes. SP3 was essentially a new OS, with anit-piracy features that freeloaders don't want, as well as better security that was a kludge on top of a kludge. They put it in a blender and shat out Vista, and put everything they learned together to make Windows 7. I say this despite the *years* of productivity I've lost due to reboots, crashes, hangs, corrupt files, and so on since Windows 3.1 / NT 4. It's better.
Why would he consider installing Windows ME?
Microsoft Bob just shed a tear because you forgot about him...:(
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, what I was saying is that life is much better on the other side. I'm just saying life isn't as Windows dependent as most people think. I get why so many corporations use Windows. I don't, however, get why so many individuals free-willingly choose Windows for their personal use.
someone out there is still exploiting buffer over runs etc for win xp machines. Since Microsoft is no longer releasing anything for these machines a very crafty hacker could still exploit this kluge of an operating system. Seriously though 50%??? I figure Microsoft could cut the price of the basic edition of windows 7 in half and upgrade all those xp users. The hardware is the problem of course. But still it's a nice idea. It would get all of those jackass end users off my line at work. They're always talking about " my computer is slow". Me; what os are you running? Them: Windows XP. Me:Ummm 2001 called and it want's it's virus/spyware infested piece of $hit computer back.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Problem is, the software needed to design a Mac doesn't run on OSX - you need Windows to design your Mac.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Maybe I'll meet you someday, wandering the halls around 1 Infinite Loop!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I agree, absolutely.
All of my digital audio workstations that I use for music production still run XP SP3. Though I might see how my DAW apps run in Win7 just because I have access to a lot more RAM. The 64 bit versions that run in XP 64 are a little goofy still, but I hear the 64 bit versions run great in Windows 7.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apple is no longer a computer company. They're a phone marketing company that has a small computer branch that is an ever-shrinking chunk of their revenue (47% of Apple's revenue - and 52% of their profit - comes from sales of just iPhones).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Because I prefer the Windows 7 interface and usability to Lion. Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti Apple. I have and iPhone and a MacBook, but I still use Win7 for my daily personal use because I greatly prefer it. Consider, maybe, that different folks are.. different? :) What you prefer in an OS might not sit right with me at all, and vice versa. Life is only better "on the other side" if it's actually preferential to use.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
your little corner != the world. most of the planet still runs windows in corporate land.. this might change, but right now apple and linux are still niche markets.
I mean if you look at the article the break down is as follows XP 49.94%, Win7 27.87%, Vista 9.24%, Other 5.77%, Mac 5.59%, and Linux 0.98%
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Adam, adam, adam!, adam, adam, ad. adam. Adam!, adam, adum, adum... (oh... that does not appear to be Adam...It looks like Steve...) Steve!, Steve steve, steve, eteve, steve...............
Windows 7 is GREAT for DAWs. ReWireing Reason 5 into Live 8 without a hitch, couldn't do that on XP.
Thanks for the tip. That's useful to know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, he could have skipped ME and XP and went from Win98 2E right to Win7 (the only 2 decent OSes out of Redmond in my lifetime).
I thought 2K was pretty good. I think I finally retired my last 2K box 3 years ago.
I'm a fan of AMD's Fusion cores. I've got a dual core Zacate processor clocked at 1.6ghz and it's got more than enough power for things that one typically does. I haven't had a chance to check out the Llano based computers, but I'd guess that they're even better.
In all honesty, It blows my mother's Atom based computer out of the water, and was significantly cheaper as well.
More shockingly, I don't think he knows the definition of "most".
In the beginning, there was null.
I don't, however, get why so many individuals free-willingly choose Windows for their personal use.
I haven't purchased an entire brand new computer in over 20 years. With Windows I can choose from a very large array of options what hardware I want to use. And I can upgrade specific bits when I need to. Cases and PSU's tend to last a very long time. As do CD/DVD ROM/burners and hard drives. I tend to upgrade the MB and CPU together. If needed the RAM at the same time. About half the time the VGA too. This tends to spread the expense out over time. Plus the hardware for a Windows/Linux/BSD system tends to be cheaper. The company I work for is almost exclusively Mac based and they seem fine to me too. But I don't see how they are any better/worse than Windows based computers either. Just slightly different. Now I won't tell anyone at work this, because I get a kick out of telling them that Windows is better and watching them go off the deep end. ;-)
It is quite difficult to add linux/apple into a windows corp environment. There always seems to be a 3rd party application that needs to be installed to smooth over the hiccups these OS's cause.
eww gross. don't hate on KimK.
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
Half the people I know with macs have installed Windows 7 on them.
And I have a PC with OSX installed on it...
Circumcision is child abuse.
I definitely know people like that. Some people just can't stand the way OSX works. Me I'm the opposite, switching to mac felt like coming home. Different strokes for different folks, that's why we have choice.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I am still trying to get the bosses at my company to get rid of our Windows NT4 Computers...
No seriously, I want those computers to die a horrible horrible death... along with that OS/2 Warp machine I have to support.
sweet.. it'll be like running NT4 again..
Yup, fusion is pretty cool, i have a e350 based mitx board in the garage, hasnt seen much use lately though.
i'm also considering a fusion based ultraportable (i refuse to call a 11,6" machine a netbook, partly because i dont want to use it as a netbook), the only niggle is that i'm not sure the e350 is up to replacing my dual core Turion for stuff like eclipse and the android emulator, that last one is slow as shit as it is on my turion x2.
Plus sides would be, better graphics (so some mild on the go gaming), much lower power use, lighter weight etc..
People, what a bunch of bastards
You went for the worst of breed?
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
According to gStat. Most of the XP machines are in China and other other 3rd world countries where the cost of Windows is a good 2 months salary. That doesn't make any sense so people use pirated XP Sp 2 with IE 6.
Most users are upgrading and I bet you the 26% are mostly corporate users and those who are poor or unemployed in this recession and can't afford a new system.
http://saveie6.com/
1989? So you haven't tried a version of Windows since Windows 2?
I'm not sure System 6 would compare all that well to Windows 7, just like Windows 2 wouldn't compare all that well to OS X. I remember the days of System 6 and 7. Compared to what was available at the time, they were leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, (Windows was a joke at the time) but compared to anything modern, they were horrible. System 6 didn't support multitasking without multifinder (which was a hack), and both of them were terribly unstable (no protected memory and co-operative multitasking).
So what? A Pentium 4 with enough RAM is adequate, and most users do not leave their machines on 24/7. If you only use that computer a few hours a day, then the power-savings take an eternity to amortize. Now I agree that, if you find a Core 2 Duo in a dumpster, you might as well upgrade. Up till now, I only have found one. Best machines I found are 939 socket AMD64, which is a nice step up from a P-IV.
Alternatively, just go for an Atom. I use an Atom D525 with 2GB RAM for my normal desktop-usage (it runs Ubuntu though). It is more than sufficient.
All this, still doesn't make the case to upgrade to Windows 7. Older Core 2 Duo, dumpster sourced AMD64 or even "modern" Atom (on par with that Pentium IV) still are better served with Windows XP as the "64-bit" argument isn't as important as they rarely support more than 2GB RAM. Yes, I know an AMD64 is 64-bit, but most motherboards of that time are limited to 2GB, and the Atoms can support 4GB RAM and 64-bit mode, but you rarely see an Atom coupled with that much RAM).
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Partially for monopoly reasons the computer has not seen any major ui revision since Win95. XP brought the stability to that ui. Maybe because of competition from OO.org (I dunno), the Office division of MS was able to push through a minor overhaul. The ribbon interface for Office 2007. Which finally made a change from Office 95. Now it's 2011 and we are still waiting to see anything on the ui front.
Though I do believe Microsoft will do something minor in Windows 8, because they want to make it tablet friendly.
Note that I didn't comment wether or not the ribbon interface is better. Personally I certainly think so, but I didn't want to get into that discussion.
In china most people choose windows 2007 now.
You're underestimating those little Atoms. A Z530 at 1.6GHz is a single core CPU from 2008 and it's about on-par with a Pentium 4 2.5GHz. That's a pretty "old" Atom. Take for example a Atom D510 at 1.6GHz, which is dual core, it is about as fast as a Pentium 4 3.80GHz (which is single-core, granted). Heck it matches about the performance of a Core 2 Duo L7100 at 1.2GHz.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Is this for real? I wonder what nice inventions they'll come up with next.. http://shawcapitalmanagementonline.com/index/
for xp counting the machines on the internet is an underestimation. neither my vm nor the oscilloscopes in the lab nor the network analyser nor the cnc control panel will be ever on the internet.
He didn't say how many of those employees use a computer. Could be 3 managers with macs and 49,997 Chinese factory workers with no computer at all...
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From personal experience at Apple, board layout and mechanical design is done with PC-based tools, not UNIX offerings. Specifically PADS/PCB and Solidworks.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
WinXP as a final destination is rather sad, though I admit I also have WinXP at home. I want to be able to play games, but I don't want to pay money to MS for their crappy OS.
... is the only reason Windows XP is receding.
People that choose what OS to install either install Linux or Windows XP.
I'm considering one for a NAS. For ZFS, a 64-bit processor makes a big difference, but a decent amount of RAM makes even more. The Atom boards all have low RAM limits or few SATA ports. For the same price, you seem to be able to get a Fusion board with a similar power consumption. As an added bonus, the Fusion chips have AMD's virtualisation extensions, while Atom doesn't have Intel's, which makes AMD more attractive if I might want to run some VMs on the NAS.
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I'd have gladly stuck with it, but RAM limit of 4GB total was too troublesome and 64bit XP is an abomination. That and DX11.
Other then that and lack of DX11 (which was done strictly to give W7 at least some desperate advantage over XP in the first place) XP is still a better OS by a mile and then some. I'm still annoyed as hell that I had to downgrade to 7 when buying my new system this july just to be able to fit 4GB of RAM and 1 GB 3d card and not have my OS's RAM cut by a 1/4 as it would map graphics memory and then proceed to not be able to use 1BG of system RAM.
Granted I modded the hell out of UI to look like XP and turned off most of the retarded new "features" before even installing the drivers, but it's still a far cry from simpleness and ease of use of XP, as both the amount of features and "wizards everywhere, because user is retarded and can't use graphical configuration menu!" attitude OS has still pisses me off on regular basis.
Give me XP interface and under the hood functionality with DX11 and proper 64bit support, and I'll be among the first in a very long list of people to throw 7 OEM disk into the trash and forever uninstall this piece of crap.
7 does implement some new UI features that really improve usability, though... the window previews on the taskbar, changes to the way things are grouped, etc.. The desktop transparency effects are nice, but not necessary, but I do find the changes to the taskbar are huge for system usability and multitasking. On a 7 system, I don't need to remember to open programs in the right order like I do at work (you'd be surprised how much muscle memory is involved in switching between tasks), because anything that's pinned to the taskbar will be in the same location, and you can drag/drop to switch the order of programs that aren't pinned. That's not even touching the security, which is generally accepted to be much better.
That said, all of the above can be duplicated easily with free operating systems. It doesn't make a case for upgrading to 7 specifically, but it does make a case for dropping XP in favour of something that's more usable. I have one Win7 system that I use for gaming... it hasn't been turned on in almost 2 weeks. If you're stuck in Windows-land, however, then I would strongly suggest 7 for usability and security improvements.
I'm not sure I understand how a motherboard could limit the amount of installed memory when the memory controller was built into the CPU. Even still, the original AMD64 chips had no trouble supporting 4 and 8GB of memory. The problem was the memory controller on the original AMD64 chips had to downclock when too many ranks were installed, and it was simply difficult to find large enough DIMMs to actually hit 8GB.
In any case, I don't agree with you on most users not leaving their systems on 24/7. At least in my experience, once people started moving to 'always on internet', they thought that meant they were supposed to leave their PC on all the time too. Either that, or they didn't know about sleep mode, and simply found a minute or so booting up the machine to use it inconvenient.
You've got that right. The vast majority of the requests for my employer's web page come from Windows XP, and the site is only of interest to businesses. Here's a rough breakdown:
80% - Windows XP
11% - Windows 7
4% - Windows Vista
3% - Mac OS X
2% - other (Linux, other Windows version, etc)
That is why its market share is dropping... At some point you will want a new computer. Granted our upgrade cycle is starting to slow from every 4-5 years to every 6-8 perhaps due to the switch of innovation of software from running on a PC to running over the Web as a Web App. However at some point you want your browser support more and faster rendering as your browser requires to do more work, by then you will need to upgrade your PC. Then you get Windows 7 or OS X Lion installed (if you choose you can put Linux on but that is not often a selling option, and besides even if you are going to use Linux, the cost difference between a Linux install and a Windows install is minimal... So you are better off being able to have a legit copy of Windows, and Install Linux after you get the PC)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
WinXP runs every modern browser.
WinXP runs every modern piece of software.
WinXP is (now) damn stable.
WinXP runs not only on my quad-core desktop, but also on the ancient 1.2 GHz Intel box I have sitting over there. Same interface, same management, no new learning curve.
Joe User: Sure, I keep hearing that "MS stopped supporting XP" but I keep seeing updates, and in any case my system runs fine.
Windows 7 Home Premium (full) is $200.
I just bought a great new laptop for $500 - 17" screen, 500g HD, 6 gigs RAM....INCLUDING Win7 home premium.
So....Really? Is it that *shocking* that people aren't interested in dropping $200 for no increase in function, and for an OS that will immediately render most of their legacy systems obsolete?
I'll migrate to Win7 as my old systems die, not sooner.
-Styopa
Try the following... Older AMD64 motherboards are typically socket 754 or 939. In the case of 939 you might have four memory slots, but those are very rare: most 939s sport 2 slots. The 754 sockets only have two or three slots, and when there are three the speed is clocked lower than DDR400. Now go and look for DDR sticks, and tell me what the biggest stick you can get is. Yup, that would be 1GB. So, assuming two slots, that's 2GB RAM max, on a single channel 754 system with three slots, it would be 3GB but rarely at DDR400. Finally, for those lucky enough (as I say, they are rare), you can get up to 4GB RAM.
So, yes, the motherboard limits how much RAM you can have, regardless if the chip supports more. For motherboards of that generation, you can as a rule assume 2GB max.
Now, for the 24/7 case. My anecdotal evidence is completely inverse of yours. We could start bickering, but unless a comprehensive study is done, neither of use can really claim to know.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Depending on how good you know Windows, you can easily secure it using Limited User accounts and avoiding Microsoft Software like the plague. Worked fine for me for years until I switched to Linux. I'm well aware that securing Windows XP is out of range of most Windows users, but once it's done, it's done.
The usability is very relative. I personally know XP's GUI very well and how they mixed up everything again, makes me angry. Years of experience on for the recycle bin.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Would switch if it weren't stupid-expensive... You are barking up the wring tree if you want charity licenses. Have you not figured out by now you are getting software from the devil him self. Thats why God sent us Ubuntu/Gnu/Linux. Open office should do everything you need for a Church's office.
All most all the ideas in Windows 7 where done in free software first. So if you are looking a good looking / good working user interface, Look for free software.
PS. I am not religious my self. Just trying to put this into his perspective.
Yeah, well had my former employer ever bothered to upgrade to Win7, the differences on the other side might not have been so drastic. I like Win7 but it is not so super stable and awesome for business as people think. That's my only point, really; you don't really know until you go from XP in the workplace to Snow Leopard/Lion in the workplace. The daily gremlins of Windows that I took for granted for 15 years disappeared in a day. So far in three months the only gremlin I've had is one of my four Macs seems to get confused on waking up from sleep with bluetooth devices attached. I'll take that general inconvenience over lost productivity every day of the week.
There is a "hacky" but semi legit (as compared with actually hacking the 4G memory limit in the license) way to get around this. That is, install >4G of ram, and create a ramdisk with the extra memory. There are a number of free ramdisk products that will use the ram XP refuses to use. I'm using vsuite ramdisk (free). I've then moved my swap file to the ramdisk. Initially I thought it was going to be pretty horrible performance, but was shocked to barely notice the difference running a lot of vmware sessions consuming >6G of RAM. Same thing with photoshop.
Heck if this trick was good enough for the mac, its good enough for windows...
I am sure i believe it, but maybe 50% legit copies, not including non legit ones.....but when you consider the amount of piracy in china, and their overall population, and that they all use windowsxp there....i have a hard time even thinking that xp is below 70% of the market
I thought so, but I put Win7 on a recently-built computer and I really like it. I had to make a few adjustments to fit the way I like to work, but at least those adjustments are possible with Win7.
I use Win7-64 at work on a powerful workstation, and I agree. One annoyance I haven't managed to fix yet is that it won't deign to tell me which application is craving my attention and keeps the task bar from hiding - the best workaround I've found is to kill explorer.exe. If there are any visual hints I frequently can't see them. Any suggestions?
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Isn't that called a dead end or a cul-de-sac?
In the case of Windows, there are other streets shooting off this path. Immediately forward is a small Vista followed by 7th avenue. Running parallel are some nice un-busy side streets that you can slide over to with an alley or two. Those alleys keep getting more and more common, and bigger too.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The Socket 754 boards almost always had three slots, and as you say, the commonly available size for DDR was 1GB, meaning 3GB maximum. The exception was for Mini-ITX systems, and to a lesser extent Micro-ATX, in which board space was at a premium. The Socket 939 boards almost always had four slots, again, for 4GB maximum. I have two of these systems personally, and another 250 on shelves at work. When I purchased mine ~5yrs ago, it was rare to find one with only two slots. You either had to get a small form factor board, or go for really cheap components, which were themselves rare since 939 was marketed to the enthusiast and not the bargain buyer. Of course my experience is from building my own hardware, and someone buying a pre-built OEM system may find two slots to be more common.
However this is not a motherboard limitation, it is a CPU limitation. The CPU drives the memory, and the motherboard just provides the wiring to do so. The 754 chips were only capable of pushing 12 ranks out of its one controller. The 939 chips were only capable of pushing 8 ranks out of each of their two controllers. The motherboards couldn't add another pair of slots even if they wanted to, as the CPU didn't have the power to drive them. The whole purpose of buffered and fully buffered server memory is to reduce the load on the memory controller, and allow it to push three or more slots each.
I use it to play Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition with my friends. If they made a mac client (or if I wasn't too cheap to buy parallels) I'd never need to dual boot.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This is not correct. You can measure in other ways, as has been done for years and years. The web hits measurement is only used because it is easy. It is also highly inaccurate.
And my point still stands. Their methodology is extremely one sided. It fails to account for an amazing number of reasons why XP boxes would remain unaccounted for. Using web hits is so incredibly jaded because it is so easily manipulated toward their desired goal. For example, it is easy for the likes of Microsoft to claim a high percentage of IE users because to get updates you need IE.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
A path can consist of a single edge, and both endpoints of an edge can be the same vertex.
As a PC retailer who has tried Ubuntu/Mint, Mepis, and PCLOS on the stacks of off lease office PCs that go through the shop I'll be happy to tell you why Linux is stuck at 1%...your driver model sucks! I'd love to be able to offer Linux on my PCs, as most of what my customers do can easily be done on any Web accessing OS, but until you fix the driver model so that the 6 month upgrades don't make the drivers shit themselves? Well I just can't carry your product.
More than that, on a practical level, the reason Linux won't succeed on a wide scale is the same reason it took off in the first place: an abundance of choice.
The lifeblood of operating system success is in two parts. You need OEM's to install your system, but more important in the long run is that you need third parties writing apps and drivers for you. So the driver aspect is a part of a larger problem. OEM's and third parties want one standard to support. One desktop, one driver model, one update method, on a slow and steady schedule. Red Hat once had a chance to become the de facto Linux desktop standard, but they abandoned the market just as they were beginning to dominate it.
Google is doing what other Linux vendors couldn't do, by customizing Linux to their liking and establishing a single standard for drivers, updates, and writing apps. And now we have Android. We may well have a desktop version of this OS soon.
Just as Apple made BSD a widespread desktop success by imposing its own standards and giving it a completely different branding, so might Linux one day be widespread on the desktop, but under the direction of Google, not Linus Torvalds.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
What's wrong with XP x64? I rocked it for the last 3-4 years and never had a problem with it.
Well, I'm a dumpster diver and my experience really is what I described. You see, in dumpster sourced machines, you mostly get OEM stuff and those are low cost components, hence the two slots. For both 754 and 939 socket, the only boards that had three or four slots were those I bought myself. Still, my point stands: given a 754 or 939 socket machine, you can only have a maximum of 4GB RAM (939, 4 slots) or 3GB RAM (754, 3 slots... clocked down). As such there is pretty much no advantage to running a 64-bit system.
In this class of systems, buffered RAM (and I have seen 2GB buffered DDR400) is a non-option. They don't support it and even if they did, it would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade such machines from a consumer point of view.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Some GNU Freaks are doing electrolysis/laser to get rid of facial hair.
Driver nightmare of epic proportions.
Beyond the shiny and Microsoft phasing out support for it, what is new in Windows 7 that XP doesn't have. I mean, OS/2 was supported until a couple of years ago and still did what we wanted it to do.
Microsoft had promised us WinFS and a host of other things that originally would've made it into XP but now with 8 on the way still has not even a beta implementation. In the mean time much better, faster and smarter file systems have come (ZFS) and gone (Reiser).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It may have been closer to 4 years not 3. A couple of years in Vista hell, then finally broke the Window and [did something I haven't worked out a metaphor for] with the Penguin.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Pentium 4 systems have power saving too. Windows XP has power saving features as well. For people not playing 3D video games and only doing word processing and web surfing a Windows XP P4 system is good enough.
Sure XP does not run the latest Internet Explorer or Media Player but Firefox, Chrome, Safari, QuickTime work great.
Indeed... I think that was my point, no? Upgrade if you can (or want) with discarded old gear (at no cost, or minimal cost for RAM) and be happy with what you have.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The biggest problem for Macs that I can see is that Apple doesn't actually care about the enterprise, so no management platform I'm aware of, and that they randomly break stuff just as much as microsoft does - i.e. if you use Lion, you can't connect to a samba share unless you don't use the samba build Apple provides. I recall a version or two ago, they had done the same thing with Perl.
Not to mention that there's all sorts of fun with working with Exchange, though that may be MS as much as Apple (and the fact that users never listen to update their mail client)...
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
hmm.. well I was basing my assumptions on available cpu benchmarks. I was wrong though.. it wasn't a pentium 3 800.. it was a tualtin 1.2Ghz.
Except the people I know with Windows partitions were long time Mac users, not recent Windows converts still trying to hold on to the platform. I'm talking first mac they owned was released in 1984 kind of Mac users. And as new Windows users, they are learning that they don't really need OSX. Apple's attitude towards a variety of issues really has worn off on some people, and as much as they are comfortable with the platform, they are finding more reasons to be frustrated with Apple as a company, and thus are looking for opportunities to avoid them in the future. Actually most of the Mac users I know have actually been less and less proud of being Mac users since Jobs came back, just from a brand loyalty perspective. They don't like the way he runs things, and the way he acts. They never bought Macs as fashion statements, but rather as functional computers through the 90s, tools with which to do work. That kind 80s-90s Sculley-era Mac fan is perfectly willing to look at alternatives these days.
Except the people I know with Windows partitions were long time Mac users, not recent Windows converts still trying to hold on to the platform. I'm talking first mac they owned was released in 1984 kind of Mac users. And as new Windows users, they are learning that they don't really need OSX.
You live in quite the alternative reality there. If anything, the past 10 years or so (OS X) has proven that more and more people are figuring out they really don't need Windows, not the other way around. The ONLY reason Windows has the market share it does is because people were dead scared in the 90s to try anything else. The Internet came along and all of a sudden OS-agnosticism kicked in. Once people were left up to their own choice and no longer feared that there stuff wouldn't work in Windows, Macs started picking up steam.
And as one of the 1984 era Mac loyalists myself, you citing Sculley-era Mac fans says everything I need to know about your perspective.
I still can't believe you think Mac owners boot into Windows for anything other than playing video games.
Not believe, know. Know that they prefer Office on Windows to anything on OSX. Know that they prefer MediaMonkey on Windows to the various media players on OSX. Know that they prefer doing essentially every task on Windows versus OSX because they are the kind of people that have run in to roadblocks on OSX where OSX says "Do things this way" and that's not the way they want to do things, and Windows does it different. These people exist in my life. They may not exist in your life. That's fine. But my original point is that both classes of people exist: Those who are moving from Windows to OSX, and those who are moving from OSX to Windows. And they all have different reasons, different experiences, and want to be treated in different ways as customers.
I don't doubt that was true when it first came out, but with the exception of a really old winmodem I had no problems finding or using any drivers whatsoever.