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Windows XP Drops Below 40% Market Share While Windows 8 Passes 1%

Posted by timothy on from the meaningless-stats-to-ponder dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just three months ago, we reported how Windows 7 had finally overtaken Windows XP in terms of market share. Now it's time to see how long it takes Windows 8 to succeed its predecessors. Between October to November, Windows XP fell to 39.82 percent while Windows 8 jumped to 1.09 percent."

9 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. I Wonder? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if win8 will ever pass the xp market share

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    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    1. Re:I Wonder? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh boy, I sure can't wait to install an OS with a phone interface on my desktop/laptop, that makes so much sense!

    2. Re:I Wonder? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That way there's no cognitive effort when switching between your phone and your desktop.

      I'm looking forward to the Microsoft car, which will have a bicycle seat and controls.

    3. Re:I Wonder? by penix1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder if win8 will ever pass the xp market share

      Microsoft's biggest competitor has always been itself. This is an effect of having the software pre-installed and aiming for the unwashed masses who don't go beyond what they got with the machines.

      As a side note, for shits and giggles I just ran the Windows 8 upgrade assistant and it informs me I will have to dump almost a quarter of the applications I use daily and that my screen resolution was too low for snap (whatever that is). It also informs me the touchscreen I have (HP Tx2Z) isn't compatible and that gestures won't work right. Now the question is why I should update and lose perfectly good software I purchased and is working right now as well as system functionality that is working right now just to have the "latest" version of an OS? Why should I go through the pain of the update when I don't need to? That will always be the Microsoft fight and why XP is hanging in there for so long.

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    4. Re:I Wonder? by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So use the desktop interface then. It's still there.

      You should have a look at this usability report which will help you understand it better. Basic summary: applications are written for either the desktop or the Metro interface. Where the apps are written for a particular interface you have to use that interface to use the app. There are some places where two different apps have the same name on both sides (for example "Internet Explorer" exists as both a Metro and a Desktop app) but you can see that they are separate from the way that they don't show the same Window list. Imagine the confusion which can happen if you use "Metro Internet Explorer" started from another metro app and then a desktop app also opens "Classic Internet Explorer".

      All this confusiion adds up to an interface which very much slows down and confuses the user.

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      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    5. Re:I Wonder? by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Informative

      on this, but Win 8 is probably a better fit for inexperienced users than anything else out there right now.

      Please remember that it's for usability it's better to go with testing with multiple users than opinion since what seems to an technology expert to be good for a beginner might not actually be. In this case the testing has been done and a summary is avialable.

      having two environments on a single device is a prescription for usability problems for several reasons

      • Users have to learn and remember where to go for which features
      • [..]
      • Switching between environments increases the interaction cost of using multiple features.
      • [etc... ]

      Read the full report to get the rest. Basically added to an interface which has been designed for graphic effect rather than usability:

      the new look sacrifices usability on the altar of looking different than traditional GUIs

      this all adds up to a system which will take much longer to learn and have much higher training costs than other UIs which exist currently, including Windows 7.

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      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  2. Re:The Linux desktop beating Windows... by bmo · · Score: 5, Informative

    >Let me know when Ubuntu can do something simple like change the amount of lines scrolled with the mouse wheel.

    http://i.imgur.com/tfca6.png

    Look how silly you are. Look.

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    BMO

  3. Re:You've never tried Windows 8 then by Archimonde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If it runs so well, how do you explain that those metro programs are total pigs in terms of running them? I have a fairly fast computer with SSD and even microsoft's metro apps take 10 seconds to open. On the same computer, photoshop takes 3.5 seconds to open. It just painful to watch those those full screen loading screens for applications which are gui-wise not much complex than win3.1 programs.
     

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  4. Re:I really don't like Windows 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, as a power user I run more than one thing at a time. Let me give you a simple example. For several years I have used Windows 7 and done this simple thing: Watch a webcast from a site like twit.tv and play a game of freecell while watching it. This worked great on Windows 7. On Windows 8, Freecell is not built int - but you can get it free from MS in their Windows Store. It is a huge (196 MB) download, but it installs fine. Every time you launch it, it asks you to sign in to xbox live (I guess MS forgot that solitaire means "alone"). There is no setting to make it stop asking. Then, it is FULL SCREEN. On my 27 inch monitor. There is no way to make it anything but either 100% or 80% (with that Metro Snap thing where you can put a tiny strip of a second metro app up next to it). No webcast I have seen fits in the 20% space without being too tiny to watch. So that simple workflow: watch a webcast while playing freecell no longer works unless you hook up a second monitor. I've been using Windows 8 as my primary OS for 9 months now and I still hate it. Whoever thought that apps should always be full screen on large monitors is an idiot.