Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share

An anonymous reader writes "With the first half of 2013 now over, Windows 8 continues to grow its share steadily but slowly, while Windows XP and Vista decline. In fact, Windows 8 has now passed the 5 percent mark, as well as surpassed the market share of its predecessor's predecessor, Windows Vista. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that June 2013 was an impressive one for Windows 8, which gained 0.83 percentage points (from 4.27 percent to 5.10 percent) while Windows 7 fell 0.48 percentage points (from 44.85 percent to 44.37 percent)."

Comments

Surpassing Vista

[vikingpower]

Not that much of an achievement. If that is all they can announce... Sounds to me like the German Army bulletins toward the end of 2nd World War.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

it does sound like damage control

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

And mind you: it's not passing Vista's market share as it was in October 2007 (equally 10 months after launch as Windows 8 is now). It's just passed Vista's *current* market share.

No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Ignacio]

How long do you suppose Microsoft can hold out until Windows 9?

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

That completely depends on the release date of Windows 9. Windows 7 for example was released before Vista could surpass XP's market share.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[RogueyWon]

How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").

If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".

Re:Surpassing Vista

[lxs]

Windows 9? You think MS can go three full Windows releases without changing the naming scheme? That hasn't happened since Windows 1,2 and 3.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Trepidity]

I'm waiting for them to put out a press release when they hit 5x Linux market share.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares?

It's only the Corps keeping Windows alive now. Let it die in peace.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[wvmarle]

It has: Win '95, Win '98, Win 2000.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

Windows Me was in between. And of course "Windows 98 Second Edition", which might win the "silliest name of a Windows version ever" award.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

How long do you suppose Microsoft can hold out until Windows 9?

More to the point, how long do you suppose WE the users can hold out until Windows 9?

I dread the day my Win 7 machines die because I'll have to replace them with those blasted Win 8 machines. I'd much rather stretch my existing machines' life until Microsoft gets its act together and I can safely skip the Win 8 experience. Exactly the same way I went straight from XP to Win 7 and avoided Vista.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

Yet Vista never managed to get more than a mere 26%, and that's the best number I could find. Some research indicates Vista's market share actually maxed at about 19%.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[gl4ss]

How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").

If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".

me might have done comparatively well. pc sales were in a huge upswing back in those days.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[wvmarle]

What may be more notable, is the staying power of Win XP.

Win XP is with 37% market share not far behind the 44% of Win 7 (two major versions ahead of XP, and released almost four years ago by now). If all computers that had been replaced would have received Win 7, the market share of Win 7 compared to Win XP should be much higher: if the average lifetime of a PC is five years, some 80% of the computers that were in use back in summer 2009 have been replaced by now. Yet newer-than-XP versions of Windows are far behind that number.

And while it's market share is falling, it's falling only slowly, with a 0.5% loss over the past month. And I really can not imagine just 0.5% of computers are being replaced in a month - at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month. So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

They were sort of different product lines though.

NT3, NT4, 2000,

95, 98, ME

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

Probably both. People are holding on to a machine that works because of the economic situation and a lot of people still prefer XP to anything else and install it on brand new systems. I guess it will be until 2014 when support is dropped that the numbers will show some real drops, although it will be mainly from businesses as they are the ones who care about support in the first place. I doubt home users will think a lack of updates is a bad thing.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

> So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.

Both. Some corporate images are still based on XP, and XP compatibility is required when purchasing new hardware. I know this is unbelievable, but there was a similar situation with NT4.0, which was used way post the point where it was still indicated (especially given that Windows 2000 was actually quite good, but unfortunately incompatible in quite a few areas).

And some companies got ride of automatic PC replacement. I know colleagues that work on a 5 or 6 year old PC. Actually for light office use that would not really be an issue, but for engineering it is a bit of a drag. Companies are pursuing all potential cost savings in the current economic climate.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell no, let it rot and die in pain. Microsoft more than earned it.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Pino Grigio]

Only corporations, small business, medium sized business, large business, government, home users (especially gamers). Apart from these people, it's dying, yes.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unless some OEM decides, against all good sense, to either give the corporate market the shaft or to multiply their driver-support headaches by using substantially different hardware, rather than just different plastics kits and other minor differentiation, between 'corporate' and 'home/small business', we'll probably still be seeing Win7 compatible machines for years to come. Unless you are a volume license customer, coming up with a copy of Win7 that passes activation is your problem(so you might want to buy a non-OEM copy, or get some practice at wheedling MS phone support to reactivate you on new motherboards); but hardware shouldn't be a significant issue(outside of specific Wintablets, where 8 may actually be a better choice).

To this day, with something like a year left on the clock, we can still get boring business desktops and laptops with XP support(and not just old stock, though there is plenty of good condition off-lease gear to be had, for crazy cheap, these are fresh-off-the-line new models).

Microsoft has considerable leverage over people who aren't volume customers(a group whose willingness to pay for software MS loves; but which is very inflexible about its upgrade timelines and shitty in-house software), or who don't own 'floating', non-hardware-locked licenses for their OS of choice; but they don't have all that much ability to force silicon vendors to drop support(especially for 7, which is architecturally much closer to 8 than XP is, and actually popular, unlike Vista).

Re:Surpassing Vista

[kthreadd]

Exactly. The NT branch is what Windows is on now. They ceased development of the DOS branch with ME.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[syntheticmemory]

Windows Me was in between. And of course "Windows 98 Second Edition", which might win the "silliest name of a Windows version ever" award.

You probably forgot about "Bob"

Re:Surpassing Vista

[KingMotley]

Or it could be that the statistics are being pulled from sources that have unusually slow adoption rate. I typically check the statistics that I see come from netmarketshare and the like from a couple other sources, and I've always noticed that they lag considerably from both another source, and my own statistics from visitors from my client's web sites.

For example, my statistics show 6.6% for Windows 8 , 7.88% for Vista, 30.28% for XP, and 54.69% for Windows 7.
netmarketshare shows 5.1% for Windows 8, 4.62% for Vista, 37.17% for XP, and 44.37% for Windows 7.
My other source shows 12.7% for Windows 8, 7.2% for Vista, 7.9% for XP, and 66% for Windows 7.

There is quite a bit of difference between the three, but ntmarketshare typically seems to poll from placed that hang on to their systems longer than most, I'm guessing some very large businesses as their primary source, which skews their numbers.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[KingMotley]

I should note that my other source is taken from mainly home PC's, so adoption rate is typically quicker than the average.
netmarketshare seems to favor large businesses, so their adoption rate is abysmal.
And my own client's statistics is a blend of the two.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[KingMotley]

Only as silly as Windows Server 2008R2, and Windows Server 2010R2.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[roarkarchitect]

We are an XP shop except for the engineering work stations which are windows 7 - I can't see us going to windows 8 every, our legacy CRM and MRP systems will not work. We still use a Windows 2000 domain- which we are virtualizing. and my workstationis Vista :(

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Joce640k]

I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[AmiMoJo]

No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.

That's a worthless measure of success for Windows. 99.9% of copies are sold on new PCs or as part of bulk licences in businesses. The former is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely of new PC sales. The latter is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely IT spending and the amount of lag between release and companies rolling out new operating systems.

Conversely because almost 100% of Windows 7 users installed SP1 that doesn't mean SP1 was a huge success, merely that it was put forwards as a critical update and people had no reason to reject it.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Lumpy]

"More to the point, how long do you suppose WE the users can hold out until Windows 9?"

Scumbag hardware makers are your problem. if you cant get Win7 drivers it is because the hardware maker was a scumbag and set the minimum OS id at Win8. the underlying kernel and driver substructure is 100% identical for Vista, Win7,Win8.

That would be the only reason to switch. to prolong your windows 7 bliss, research any hardware you buy for the next 4 years to make sure that windows 7 drivers exist.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

You say it like Microsoft is a victim of the circumstances. But some people in the industry are saying PC sales and IT spending is down because of Windows 8.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Lumpy]

"Unless you are a volume license customer, coming up with a copy of Win7 that passes activation is your problem"

no it's not. In fact Windows 7 is easier to deal with in this regard compared to windows XP and Vista. just find an OEM disc, then use one of the windows loader variants to crack the OEM crud. after that you can automate a keychanger to use your legal key and get around all the garbage for activation.

I have made several automatic install disks that do all of this for me from a DELL OEM windows 7 professional DVD

Re:Surpassing Vista

[wbr1]

It's not just the economic situation. I have an old P4 box running XP that is fine for most browsing and email. If you have the most common needs, there is no need for new hardware.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[ArcherB]

I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.

My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).

Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

Yeah, that's why I'm still using my iMac from 2007. It's got a fairly fast Core 2 Duo chip and 6 GB RAM and basically the only thing I need is a browser and text editor. A newer/faster machine is simply not worth the investment.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jbolden]

I would suspect that XP users have well below average replacement rates. The XP people are the people who keep their computers for 10 years on the home / small business front. On the corporate front those are companies that haven't been spending on desktop infrastructure and still have XP licenses. The ones that are probably going to have a rough transition now that Microsoft is finally EOL XP and forcing them onto Win7.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jbolden]

Net statistics bias towards heavy internet usage which biases towards heavy usage which bias towards frequent upgraders. You want data on all machines you have to count the people who use their computer once every 2 weeks or only do one or two things with it.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Sesostris III]

I've got XP installed under VirtualBox on my Mint LMDE XFCE desktop. I installed XP because I've got a retail license which I bought in 2001. For what I need Windows for (a few work-related websites that need IE and for a work-format CV that needs to be in Word format), it is good enough. I do not feel inclined to buy another copy of Windows that I only need to boot into once a month or so. I especially do not feel inclined to buy a version of windows that has been as comprehensively slated a Windows 8! (I've avoided Gnome 3 and Unity and use XFCE - yes, I'm that sort of guy!) Until XP becomes unusable, or those few sites need a later version of IE than can be installed with XP, I'll keep to XP.

And if I change my main desktop (I'm thinking about either Arch or Xubuntu), I shall again install XP in a virtualised environment. It does the job. If (heaven forfend!) those work-related websites I need to visit cease to be IE only, and I can update my work-format CV using something other than Word, I can then ditch Windows completely.

(Sudden though - Amazon's MP3 downloader only runs under Windows. OK there is an old Linux version but it seems it is no longer supported. I'll need to keep Windows for that as well!)

Re:Surpassing Vista

[nanoflower]

I bet many of those same people in the industry said that PC sales were down before Windows 8 was released because people were waiting for Win8 to be released. People in the industry can be wrong just about as often as the average Slashdot reader when it comes to why sales are down. Everything from the economy, to having PCs that are good enough there's no need to upgrade. to not liking Win8 (or the comments people have made about it without having seen it/tried it) play a part. Which one is the most important is unknown. My own guess would be a combination of the economy and current PCs being good enough but it's just a guess. I've industry analysts say one thing about where things are heading and why. Then a few months later they completely change their story. Which just shows that without some clear indicator of why things are happening they have to guess. It may be an educated guess, but it's still a guess.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[oh_my_080980980]

Yeah because all of those are using windows mobile devices...oh wait they're not....jackass.....

Re:Surpassing Vista

[nukenerd]

How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time ...... At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap.

As I recall in those days, queues of people camped on PCWorld's doorstep for a few days before each new Windows release (like they do for Apple stuff today).

I do not recall ME being regarded as a stopgap. The name "ME" even suggested it was forward looking. True, those who knew better recognised it as W95 on a Zimmerframe - one last fling by MS to extract money from the consumer market with a pointless upgrade. I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.

Also, there was no gap to stop. Windows NT was already available and had been runnable on entry-level PCs' for some time (and did, in the form of XP just a year later). It was games compatibility that kept the crappy 95/98/ME bloodline going, but MS needed to tell the games writers to port their stuff to NT/XP sooner or later; and they should have done it sooner.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[drinkypoo]

at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month.

When was that replacement rate calculated? When Americans still had money?

Re:Surpassing Vista

[drinkypoo]

Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there.

I have a machine which runs Vista because it won't run anything else. Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on, and which fglrx never supported. The drivers I need are not included in any Linux distribution out there — they don't exist, because ATI lied about their commitment to Open Source, and their commitment to Linux as well.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[RogueyWon]

From the gamer's point of view, the problem with NT was its complete lack of directx functionality. This was addressed by 2k. But games developers could hardly be blamed for focussing on Win98 when MS's own tools for gaming weren't there on NT. Uptake of 2k was slower than it could have been, primarily due to third party driver issues that caused stability and performance issues for many games. That one's perhaps slightly harder to pin on MS.

I followed what is, I think, a very typical path for gamers at the time. I hung on to 98 until 2k service pack 2 was released, at which point most of the problems related to gaming under 2k had been addressed. I never made a conscious decision to move to XP, but a couple of years later, when I bought a new PC that came with it installed, there was no reason to move back to 2k.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Luckyo]

Seven stopped being windows and stopped being sold?

Re: Surpassing Vista

[AJH16]

Let me know how writing code or actual real letters goes on your smartphone or tablet. The desktop market isn't going away, it just won't move as many machines (since they last longer now).

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Chris Mattern]

Bob was stupid, and had a stupid name, but it wasn't a Windows version. It was a shell. It was released to run on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[arth1]

I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.

No, I don't think it was worse, I just think it was rushed.
Me deprecated many of the VxD drivers used with Windows 98, and needed updated WDM drivers that didn't require real mode. Also, it came with generic USB drivers, and USB was just becoming widely popular, but with lots of "almost-compatible" devices on the market, requiring special drivers. The manufacturers weren't ready, and the result was highly unstable Me systems, especially when using USB or older hardware.

But they felt they HAD to rush it - Windows 2000 was coming.
Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm. But boy, was it buggy before SP1. Anyone sane would run 2000 instead.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[armanox]

You forgot Windows 95 OSR2

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jones_supa]

Windows 9? You think MS can go three full Windows releases without changing the naming scheme? That hasn't happened since Windows 1,2 and 3.

Hilarious!

Next up: Windows RedBird.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Uptake of 2k was slower than it could have been, primarily due to third party driver issues that caused stability and performance issues for many games. That one's perhaps slightly harder to pin on MS.

Odd, then that back when Linux had driver issues, Microsoft lovers blamed Linux for it.

I never made a conscious decision to move to XP

Neither did I until XCP trashed my system and when I reinstalled 98, I couldn't find video or audio drivers for 98 and was forced to upgrade. That's when I started looking at Linux more seriously, especially after the clusterfuck of the 98-XP upgrade. It disabled my CD burning software saying it made the system unstable, despite the fact that I'd not had stability problems with 98, and would not ley me uninstall it. Then, it installed patches and replaced a perfectly good network driver with one that was completely nonfunctional. My ISP said he could see the modem but not the computer so my NIC was probably bad. Hoping it was cables I swapped, no help. I would have bought a new NIC except when I reinstalled XP to get rid of the software it nagged me that it had disabled, and all of a sudden my network was functional, untile I reinstalled the patches.

Microsoft used to be even shoddier than it is now. I put Mandrake on it dual-boot (I was still into gaming and wasn't yet used to Linux) and was amazed at the difference, never realizing what a true piece of shit Windows was until I'd run Mandrake. Linux is actually useable, while Windows gets in your way and tries to make computing look hard (witness the fact that with every upgrade you have to relearn the whole damned interface). Honestly, if Windows didn't come on every new computer sold I don't see how they could sell a single copy.

My notebook came with W7 and I haven't put Linux on it out of laziness. But the damned thing which used to be blazing fast has slowed to a crawl, so it won't be long until that computer is running Linux, too.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[arth1]

(I guess reddit is what kids do these days)

4chan, instagram, chatroulette... Pretty much anywhere with a low risk of getting themselves into big trouble.

I.e. pretty much like when we were young - it's only the venue that has changed.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jbengt]

. . . if the average lifetime of a PC is five years, some 80% of the computers that were in use back in summer 2009 have been replaced by now.

. . . at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month.

I believe your math is off. Your numbers describe the situation if all computers were replaced within 5 years, and then only if the replacement occurred at a constant rate.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[psergiu]

Actually the first Windows versions were:

1985 - Windows 1.0
1987 - Windows 2.0
1988 - Windows/286 2.10 & Windows/386 2.10
1990 - Windows 3.0
1992 - Windows 3.1
1993 - Windows 3.11 for Workgroups & Windows 3.2 Simplified Chinese
1995 - Windows 4.0 alpha (extremely short lived, renamed as Windows 95 after a alpha release was leaked to various FTP sites. It did not have the "Start Button")

On the NT side:

1993 - Windows NT 3.1
1994 - Windows NT 3.5
1995 - Windows NT 3.51

Re:Surpassing Vista

[pr0fessor]

The laptop provided to me by work is an IBM runing xp sp3 and it is nearly indestructible {so long as you treat it well} I have been using it for 9 years. When we upgrade it will not be to win 8 because about 70% of the software we use is still not compatible with it. Right now we are migrating any remaining XP to win 7.

We tried to adopt vista early {pre-service packs} and found that it was a huge hassle, scraping the migration; had we waited for SP 1 or 2 to be released then we may have been successful. All it managed to do was root us deeper into XP.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Thornburg]

You forgot Windows 95 OSR2

OSR2 isn't nearly as fun as the ultimate version of Windows 95--OSR 2.5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Jaruzel]

I can third this.

My MAIN Machine (I use many, but the one that I sit in front of most), is a P4 3Ghz running XP SP3.

I code in .NET (2.0), I surf the web, I do email, I make ugly websites, and I play old games. I also intermittently play World of Warcraft on medium settings.

It does me. Every time it gets a bit slow I'll whine for a bit about getting an i5 or whatever, and then I just defrag the thing, and carry on...

I think support or no support, XP isn't going anywhere yet for a LOT of non-power users.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[gl4ss]

in the late '90s I had _ZERO_ driver issues with linux. 3dfx voodoo? SUPPORTED. my german crazy ass isdn card? SUPPORTED.
dumpster soundcards? supported. back then driver issues weren't a linux thing at all, soon after that it changed though and you were hard pressed to find good 3d drivers. but for some reason in the late '90s it was fashionable to either release enough specs that someone could do a driver or release a driver themselves.

(oh and getting windows drivers for that isdn card? well, you had to use the program that came with the card to call a number in germany to download the windows driver.. "fun").

Re:Surpassing Vista

[AmiMoJo]

I really doubt many people were putting off buying a new PC just because any version of Windows was around the corner. Most consumers don't even know when a new one is due, they just buy a computer when they need one and assume it comes with "windows". In fact a lot of consumers don't even realize that MS Office isn't part of Windows and get upset when they find out they have to pay extra to keep using it after the 60 day trial.

IT departments never want to roll out a new OS until it is a few years old and has a service pack either.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[gl4ss]

It has: Win '95, Win '98, Win 2000.

well sure it's easy if you skip versions in the middle and count windows 95 and windows 2000 as the same naming scheme.. with NT 4.0 in between there too.

it's not only ms that does this shit though. look of s60 naming tree..

Re:Surpassing Vista

[UnknowingFool]

The way I see it, there are several reasons for the slow adoption rate and all of them are working against Windows.

1. Older hardware is good enough for consumers
   Most consumers don't upgrade the OS on their existing hardware. Most of them get the next version of Windows when they get new hardware. For the most part, consumers are staying with existing hardware longer.
2. Businesses don't try bleeding edge software
   Most businesses are now migrating to Win 7 to replace XP. They skipped Vista for many issues. Even if Win 8 didn't have issues, businesses may not have migrated to it anyways and chose every other Win version.
3. Tablets/smartphones are starting to replace desktops/laptops for most consumers
   For consumers who decide to get new hardware, most are opting for tablets and smartphones as they provide the majority of functionality. They can never replace all the functionality but for what what consumers do, it's enough. Most consumers are buying Android or iOS tablets for now.
4. Touchscreens are not standard for laptops/desktops
   OEMs are only now starting to offer touchscreen hardware for consumers. Part of it is that it adds cost and OEMs are reluctant to increase costs because their margins are thin. Metro/modern works better for touch but without the right hardware, it is a cost disadvantage for most OEMs/consumers.
5. People hate Metro
   Most people hate change. Metro is a big change. In addition to that, I think there are major UI deficiencies of Metro like little self-discovery and lack of hints. I don't have Win 8 but my roommate does. Every time she asks me how to do something. I have to look it up on another computer. Metro simply provides little help to me about what to do next and I'm a power user that uses CLI.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[vlueboy]

Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm.

Unlike today's version madness, Windows 2000 came in only one edition: Professional
It was never intended to be marketed for home use. That was XP's job.

I never saw it in home computers except for people pirating a copy. For those who bought some business-tier machine with 2000 and dedicated it to home use, there were tons of problems with "home" hardware. I got a Win2k second-hand, and "lost" my webcam. I also lost some Soundblaster MIDI features that would return as soon as I dual-booted to Win98. Win2k also broke my Windows 98 Rhide IDE support.

Later on moving to XP brought its share of problems with some games. I also learned that laptop hardware has horrible driver availability if you want to wipe-and-install-older-windows. I just don't upgrade anymore, and keep the pain limited to when some PC dies and I must migrate files to whatever new Windows is out there. I'm sure non-technical people are just as annoyed

Re:Surpassing Vista

[RogueyWon]

Thing is, while the driver situation back then may have been better for Linux than Win2k, the simple fact was that you couldn't actually play most games on Linux.

Thinking back to the games I was mostly playing back in my final days as a Win98 user, when I was weighing up a shift to Win2k, I can recall a good few (as a postgrad student at the time, I had a lot more time for gaming than I had now). I was heavily into the online scene for Counter-Strike (was the head admin of a major UK league) and also fairly heavily into online Warcraft 3. I was also a more casual online player of Battlefield 1942 and Tribes 2. Offline, I spent a lot of time with the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series. Playing that lot on Linux? Very, very unlikely.

So it was a case of sticking with Win98, tolerating the requirement for reboots pretty much daily if you wanted to preserve performance and stability, and waiting for reports that 2k was actually usable.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[MightyMartian]

I loved Win2k; one of the most stable OSs Redmond ever put out. But yeah, the joke around the office when Win2k machines were put into our production environment was it was "the day the scanners died". We had a bunch of Umax scanners that wouldn't work due to a lack of drivers. We did get some machines to work with the NT 4 drivers, but it was very unstable.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Tarlus]

This discussion is about the Windows desktop operating systems, not Windows Mobile. When WM fizzles out, it won't impact their family of desktop operating systems.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[PastTense]

I think you need to look at the energy consumption of some of these older machines. If you seldom turn a computer off these older machines consume a substantial amount of electricity in a year. Thus on a cost basis they can end up more expensive.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jawtheshark]

I can't say for printers (but if they're PostScript, I'm sure generic drivers will work). However, for scanners, do take a look at VueScan. It's not all that expensive and the amount of scanners that are supported is staggering. It also works on Linux and OS X... Since I don't use Windows any more, but do have some speciality scanning devices (still on SCSI, so you can guess the age), VueScan on LInux did all I needed an more.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Zero__Kelvin]

Linux already has XP built into it. It isn't perfect, but for your purposes it will work fine and you don't need that machine anymore!

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I bet many of those same people in the industry said that PC sales were down before Windows 8 was released because people were waiting for Win8 to be released."

You seem to be implying that the two are contradictory, but they aren't. First they don't buy because they are waiting for it, then it comes out and it is garbage, so they still don't buy.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[LinuxIsGarbage]

But they felt they HAD to rush it - Windows 2000 was coming.
Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm. But boy, was it buggy before SP1. Anyone sane would run 2000 instead.

Windows ME was released September 14, 2000. Windows 2000 was released February 17, 2000. Windows 2000 wasn't coming, it was already here. I think 2K helped paved the way for XP, encouraging release of compatible drivers, etc ahead of time before it was released for "home users".

At the time home PCs were still being equipped with dreadfully low amounts of RAM. I remember buying a Win98SE machine mid-2000 that sold with 32MB RAM. That's hardly enough to run Win9X well (should have at least 64MB), let alone 2K/NT which should have at least 128MB, with 256 being noticeably better. OEMs would have to ship with more RAM in order to market 2K.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[poetmatt]

the "Especially gamers" part has become less and less true with linux steam, android and other things on the way.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

I don't think my iMac from 2007 is such a power hog. All of the internals are basically laptop hardware.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Quirkz]

I'm kind of hoping for Windows 8 version 2.0 "Manx"

Re: Surpassing Vista

[sexconker]

You do realize Win8 has a desktop environment and your Win7 apps will work just fine, don't you? Geez, I can't understand how much this crap gets mentioned over and over here.

Yes, because software which doesn't run on Windows 7 and only runs on Windows XP will totally work on Windows 8 because Windows 8 has more in common with XP then 7 does because that makes sense.

Maybe you should learn reading comprehension before giving MS a public blowjob.

Maybe you should learn about Windows XP Mode.
You just set up a VM that runs XP, and you can even pin a program within that Windowx XP VM to your Windows 7 taskbar and set it to show only that application's window, so it's just like a natively running application to an end user.

I assume it's still around in Windows 8, though I'm not sure if the "Pro" or whatever license of 8 gives you a free XP license.

The only things that wouldn't work would be shit that depends on specific video drivers, or shit that needs to talk to external hardware that has no Windows Vista / 7 / 8 compatible x64 driver. Don't know how 16-bit programs would work.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[im_thatoneguy]

Actually writing code on my Surface Pro is better than writing code on the desktop at a lot of stages since I can test touch-enabled apps without compiling, copying to an Tab, iPad or surfaceRT.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[LoRdTAW]

"That's when I started looking at Linux more seriously, especially after the clusterfuck of the 98-XP upgrade. It disabled my CD burning software saying it made the system unstable, despite the fact that I'd not had stability problems with 98, and would not ley me uninstall it.

This is why you never upgrade windows. You always do a fresh install. Yea its annoying to lose configurations and installed software but its not like it was difficult to get back up to speed, maybe a week at most. I learned after a 98-2k install that hard crashed (no bsod just locked up) after upgrade and wouldn't boot. From then on installing a new windows OS ment starting fresh which always worked flawlessly. And with windows we all know it better to start fresh.

Back in the days of 2k/XP changing a motherboard which had a different chipset ment endless headaches. You had to be sure you uninstalled all of your hardware drivers then shut down and installed the new mobo. Then boot up and pray the brain dead windows kernel would see the changes and try a default IDE/ATA driver instead of BSOD. Going from a single core/non-HT CPU to a dual CPU or HT CPU? Then you had to fuck around with the HAL to get a multiprocessor HAL working (back when moving from P3 -> p4/xeon). windows 7 was much better and could handle a hardware swap, so could Vista, amazingly.

Linux has always worked flawlessly and is always superior to windows when it comes to driver and hardware. You could yank a hard drive with Linux installed from an Intel PC and install it into an AMD PC with COMPLETELY different hardware and it would happily boot. Though, back in the days of ISA cards things weren't that easy. But it never was except for maybe DOS when you assigned memory ranges, IRQ's and DMA's by hand and you knew your limits.

Nowadays I only use Windows 7 on a PC for gaming and general use. Everything else is Linux, even my laptop. I don't hate windows, I just don't need it to do everything I want/need to do. And some things windows simply can't do without hacks or third party software which may or may not work (eg. SSHFS).

Re:Surpassing Vista

[LoRdTAW]

NT 4 did have some direct X support, up to DX 4. BUT its major problem was complete lack of Direct 3D and USB. It did however support OpenGL perfectly so OpenGL games like Quake and Unreal ran fine. There was even an unofficial DirectX-5 hack.

I ran 2k, admittedly a pirated copy, the Compaq corporate ISO. Never had any big gaming or driver issues when it came to gaming. I think it was worse when 64 bit windows came out and many gaming devices did not have 64 bit drivers. I remember waiting a long time for Belkin to get its shit together and release a beta 64bit Nostromo driver to run on Vista 64. Video card manufacturers are always on point when it came to new windows releases, they always had drivers.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[AJH16]

That's testing rather than writing code and a Surface Pro isn't really a tablet, it's a laptop pretending to be a tablet. It has an actual full fledged OS on it and runs x86. You could also accomplish the same with a touch screen monitor on a much more powerful desktop that would build faster and give more area to work on your code in. Don't get me wrong, not saying tablets don't have their uses, but they are substandard for many, many activities.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[TemporalBeing]

I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.

No, I don't think it was worse, I just think it was rushed. Me deprecated many of the VxD drivers used with Windows 98, and needed updated WDM drivers that didn't require real mode. Also, it came with generic USB drivers, and USB was just becoming widely popular, but with lots of "almost-compatible" devices on the market, requiring special drivers. The manufacturers weren't ready, and the result was highly unstable Me systems, especially when using USB or older hardware.

Agreed. ME was a very good OS. It just had requirements that most hardware vendors could not meet. My 1997 desktop worked fine with it - a nice upgrade from Win95 OSR2.1 that did resolve some things for me. I continued to run for 3-5 years until I moved the system to a pure Linux system.

But they felt they HAD to rush it - Windows 2000 was coming. Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm. But boy, was it buggy before SP1. Anyone sane would run 2000 instead.

Win2k was suppose to have version called "Consume Edition" or CE (I remember reading about it and being disappointed when WinNT 2k didn't have the CE version, shortly after that WinME was announced); however, I strongly believe they ended up scraping it and turning out WinME instead.

Then again, one thing I always said about WinME was that it was essentially a WinNT and Win9x merge. It was the first version (and only) of the 9x series to have NT error messages in it. They probably stabilized it just enough for release and then moved on to making WinXP - which was probably the result of the work done for WinME any way, and what Windows 2000 CE was suppose to be.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[TemporalBeing]

Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there.

I have a machine which runs Vista because it won't run anything else. Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on, and which fglrx never supported. The drivers I need are not included in any Linux distribution out there — they don't exist, because ATI lied about their commitment to Open Source, and their commitment to Linux as well.

Try the open source driver. The free ATI drivers tend to drop support for chipsets rather regularly. Fortunately the open source driver usually supports them pretty well when ATI does drop it. My Dell 2003 era D600 has that issue - ATI drivers worked with it for a very short time before ATI dropped support; but the open source driver works great.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Artifakt]

I have an old HP box that is still running ME. The biggest issue is that it won't run IE above 6.0, or a recent Firefox, and so I only connect it to the internet with Opera (and pretty damned rarely now that it's set up properly). It probably has better up times than Win 98 SE, as I've left it running for up to a full week without problems. Once I replaced the default Explorer with a 3rd party file manager, I'd give it overall higher marks than 98SE Right now, it's been about a month since I booted it. It's full of old games, back to TSR .Gold box days, and has all the old cursors, icons, and other such graphics I did during that era. With KVM support, it's vaguely worth keeping.

It's a shame MS finally got software that would stay up more than a week, but only after I learned about Linux. When XP came out, the early reports I heard were that it still wasn't much more stable than 2000 or ME, and that's where I started looking for something better, and switched, about StormLinux 3. Now I run a couple of boxes with Kubuntu and Mint, and the Microsoft box is next to the Amiga 500 and the C-64 SX.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[TemporalBeing]

Exactly. The NT branch is what Windows is on now. They ceased development of the DOS branch with ME.

I'd argue that WinME was a merge between the 9x/DOS line and the NT line. Name another version of Windows on the 9x/DOS line that had NT error messages in it.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[aztracker1]

Win2K's DirectX support was very limited, and iirc was userland code, not kernel space, so the performance was horrible... I do remember it working well enough for the handful of games I ran at the time, but I had a pretty beefy machine compared to most at that time.

I really liked Win2K a lot... it was the first version of Windows I actually liked (preferred OS/2 before that), and it wasn't until Windows 7 that I liked another MS OS release (though XP was around for a long time, I really didn't care for the Fisher Price inspired UI. XP's first release was when I started to use Linux a lot more. I do find it funny how much people bashed on the initial Vista release considering how bad XP was before SP1.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[aztracker1]

Games support (DirectX and OpenGL) was really poorly done on Windows 2000... that was the biggest change in the code from 2000 to XP, and the main reason just about any 2000 drivers other than graphics or sound worked in XP.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[aztracker1]

My mom's laptop has the same issue... couldn't even use windows 7 with the generic drivers, they were specific to vista, and that version of the graphics chipset... linux was a no go as well.. :-/

Re: Surpassing Vista

[DanielOom]

"Only corporations, small business, medium sized business, large business, government, home users (especially gamers)."

Except for a few billion primates who use computers, Windows is irrelephant. Besides, come spring Windows 8 will shrink again, as users switch to Windows 8.1.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[arth1]

I ran Windows 2000 for a long time after XP came out, and experienced no DirectX problems until after XP SP2 came out and W2k support stopped. Games generally worked as well as on XP, if not a little better, due to not having the overhead of the more graphic intensive bells and whistles used by Windows itself.

DirectSound had some problems, but that was with the Creative drivers, not the sound interface itself. Switching to an M-Audio 2496 interface, and there were no more problems.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[DocSavage64109]

If I recall correctly, the big deal about ME is that they completely removed DOS. It actually caused problems with people trying to play DOS games which were still common at that time.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[lgw]

Real talk: Linux + Steam has exactly fuckall users because exactly fuckall games run on it. Gaben may have made it a personal mission to make sure all their recent and upcoming games run on Linux, but none of the other publishers ever will. It's assloads more work and they don't see any benefit.

I've seen steambox support for new, non-AAA titles starting on Steam. There's no back catalog, to be sure, and Metal of Duty Gear 17 won't support it, but others may - it's just too early to say.

It's kind of like that "Greenlight" nonsense - they're obviously still figuring it out. I do find it funny now that I'm now passing on "indie" games because they're charging 30-50% above what I think is reasonable. Perhaps Valve will figure that out - I do like steam, but not enough for a 30% premium.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[F.Ultra]

Have you tried the Radeon (open source) drivers? The R400 (which is the "engineering" name for the R690M) is listed as supported on http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

Re:Surpassing Vista

[drinkypoo]

Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on,

Try the open source driver.

Try reading before replying.

The free ATI drivers tend to drop support for chipsets rather regularly.

I meant the open source driver, as opposed to the commercial driver.

Fortunately the open source driver usually supports them pretty well when ATI does drop it.

One more time, for those with poor reading comprehension skills: the card has never worked with fglrx, nor has it ever worked with ati. In fact, the last time I tried the open driver, it was actually worse than before rather than better. ATI is not providing enough information to support my display card, which is why they are lying liars who lie about their commitment to OSS.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[kimvette]

You have it wrong.

Windows family:
(Windows 1.0 through 3.1), Windows 95 (and Windows 95 OSR2), Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me (end of product line)

Then the NT family:
Windows NT 3.1, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1

Re:Surpassing Vista

[kimvette]

They most certainly did NOT eliminate DOS from it. They just made it very difficult to boot to real mode. It still included and relied upon MS-DOS behind the scenes.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[kimvette]

They certainly did NOT eliminate DOS from it. They just made it very difficult to boot to real mode. It still included and relied upon MS-DOS behind the scenes.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jader3rd]

I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.

That could be because anyone tech savvy enough to move beyond XP has discovered that they use printers and scanners so infrequently that it's too much of a cost for them to own one personally.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[mcrbids]

I know of nobody who likes or prefers Windows 8. I know of a few people who "don't mind it". The fact that this is what customers are saying about their flagship product should have them a bit concerned...

Re:Surpassing Vista

[wvmarle]

Average, so yes that would be like "all" computers replaced: some not, some twice - that's what averages do.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Pino Grigio]

I've had Windows 8 since it was released and I haven't been to the windows store once. Bought quite a few games on Steam and Origin since then, though. Spent 100% of my time at the desktop, just like I did with 7.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Mashiki]

Gee, I wonder why they've stopped showing DirectX / OS numbers? Everything else loads fine, but anything that might indicate operating system choice is suspiciously absent

Being realistic, Steam occasionally fudges out and they break the hardware survey, back hmm 6 months ago? Maybe 8 months ago they introduced a bug relating to CPU speed and it being unselectable as it lumped all CPU types together. Usually when they figure out where and when it went wrong they'll post an update stating that "x period hardware survey has had x issue." And seeing that it's been a 2month period it does look like it's a DX parsing bug.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[kwark]

"Unlike today's version madness, Windows 2000 came in only one edition: Professional
It was never intended to be marketed for home use. That was XP's job."

There were more version:
-professional
-server
-advanced server
maybe more. It had something to do with memory and cpu/sockets. But there was only one non server version.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[ShakaUVM]

>99.9% of copies are sold on new PCs or as part of bulk licences in businesses

They (used to) sell large numbers of upgrade copies of their OS. Win7 sold 100 million copies in six months, which was much faster than Win8 adoption due to the upgrade copies being sold.

I'd buy Win8 in a heartbeat if it wasn't a piece of shit.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[TemporalBeing]

If I recall correctly, the big deal about ME is that they completely removed DOS. It actually caused problems with people trying to play DOS games which were still common at that time.

No, it was still DOS-based. Just had to use F8 to get to DOS as they tried to hide it more, again going towards it was a merge towards the NT series.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[TemporalBeing]

Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on,

Try the open source driver.

Try reading before replying.

The free ATI drivers tend to drop support for chipsets rather regularly.

I meant the open source driver, as opposed to the commercial driver.

Well that was not clear from your original reply, which seemed to hint at using the ATI driver.

Fortunately the open source driver usually supports them pretty well when ATI does drop it.

One more time, for those with poor reading comprehension skills: the card has never worked with fglrx, nor has it ever worked with ati. In fact, the last time I tried the open driver, it was actually worse than before rather than better. ATI is not providing enough information to support my display card, which is why they are lying liars who lie about their commitment to OSS.

The fglrx is one option for OpenGL - it's the ATI proprietary opengl suite. There are other options. Again, mentioning fglrx seems to indicate use of the ATI driver. I believe the open source one doesn't care - e.g. it'll use mesa/mesa3d or whatever. So there are other options. Been there, done that.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[AmiMoJo]

I'm using WIndows 8 now on my laptop. I didn't bother upgrading my desktop, but it really isn't that bad. There is some stuff that is quite nice, like the fast boot times (my laptop is booted in under 4 seconds from cold), better multi-monitor support and flat UI.

Install Classic Start Menu and it's fine. You never even see the metro stuff.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[hairyfeet]

Exactly, every article we get with MSFT in the title we get what I call the "FOSSie faction" which frankly live on Mars if they think the entire population is gonna deal with CLI, Googling for fixes, bi-annual death marches, and all the bullshit.

I mean I just retired a Sempron that served 9 years in the shop, that is TWO service packs and over 1500 patches and not a SINGLE driver screwed up, with windows you get the drivers working they will work for the LIFE of the OS, I have given the "Hairyfeet challenge" to a good 15 Linux distros, and I have YET to have a single one pass. You always end up with dead Wifi, dead sound, all that talk about "Oh if the driver is in the kernel its all good" is a load of horseshit as this post shows quite clear.

Believe me as a retailer there is NOTHING I want more than to have a viable third way, if you think MSFT fucks the consumers they REALLY fuck us system builders, but with every Linux out there it ends up being neither free as in beer or freedom, it ends up free as in worthless as all the time I end up wasting because some damned update shit all over somebody's laptop or put their graphics in single user mode makes the cost of Windows trivial compared to how much Linux costs.

And please don't waste your breath trying to hype LTS, or as I call it "here is some old shit that most will never get backported to" because not only is Ubuntu going rolling release (thus making LTS just marketing bullshit) but you NEVER seem to be able to just go to the store and buy a printer or wifi adapter or anything because it ALWAYS ends up needing kernel blah blah blah and you have kernel blah blah. which to me just shows how damned crappy that old driver model Torvalds refuses to let go of is, no damned reason I should have to KNOW what kernel I need just to buy a piece of hardware, all i should need to know is like whether its Debian or ubuntu, making the consumer know all this trivial shit just makes it more a PITA.

So there is a REASON why nobody has challenged MSFT in the desktop and laptop space, and that is because nobody has offered a product that is as easy to use, stay stable and have the drivers work for the life of the OS, nothing sadly comes close and believe me I've tried, you name the release I've given it the challenge, I probably blew a good $400 in bandwidth and never had a single one that could last without something shitting itself, not one.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[hairyfeet]

Sorry I have to throw a flag, bullshit on the field. One of the reasons I advised my customers against Windows 8 is how many programs i found that run fine on 7, crap themselves on 8. some of it was hardware like drivers not playing nice, some of it was software, it ended up just a mess.

That is why I hate posts that say "Oh its just 7 with Metro" because no, its really not. since i'm not on the dev team i can only guess and say that all that mobile and tweeting twits for shits changed too much of the background, all I know is that its less stable, has more stupid "senior moments", almost as bad as vista in that regard, and while the Win 7 units have been running since RTM I've had to do multiple "refresh my PC" jobs for customers which I still think that tech was added to cover for a corruption bug they couldn't nail down.

I do have to say how much I find the irony moist and delicious on how many "keyboard commanders" try to cover for the OS...which was DESIGNED FOR TABLETS and therefor in its natural state doesn't HAVE a keyboard for the commanders to try to cover up for its failings! IMHO if your OS requires you to memorize commands like its fricking 1989? You have failed at OS design and should be ashamed. This guy says it better than I can but one thing I agree on, if you need a Win 7 PC to google how to use the Win 8 PC? Its a fail of epic proportions.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[hairyfeet]

What most people refuse to realize is that it was a BUBBLE, the MHz wars made even a 3 year old PC too slow to run most programs. Hell since 2007 PCs have been overpowered for what folks do with them, my GF is running a Pentium D with an HD2400 and for the stuff she does? Its fine, most of the time the CPU is slowed down because her little chats and FB games simply don't even need the power of that 7 year old CPU.

I mean when my entry builds 5 years ago was Phenom and Athlon X3s with 4Gb of RAM and 400GB HDDs? Then things are pretty well overpowered. People still buy nearly 300 million a year its just they aren't replacing the ones they have before they die and when they aren't slamming the PCs they don't die as quickly.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[AJH16]

Android isn't a desktop OS, nor is it intended to be. It is designed specifically for high levels of process isolation and low power consumption. These are the opposite of what you want on a desktop where you are looking for power and interoperability. Windows 8 is a huge misstep driven by trying to compete with the vertically integrated dominance than is making Apple so much money. Metro is simply a move to push Windows Market on the world that is failing. If it wasn't for Metro, Windows 8 is actually a very nice step up from Windows 7. If MS realises that Metro isn't the way to get the vertical integration they are looking for, there is still lots of hope for them. They do need to see the error of their ways though.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[InsectOverlord]

I assume it's still around in Windows 8, though I'm not sure if the "Pro" or whatever license of 8 gives you a free XP license.

Unfortunately, no, the XP mode is gone in Windows 8 (even Pro). Instead they suggest you use Hyper-V (which is included in W8 Pro), but that is a poor replacement. It lacks app virtualization. no XP license is included, and VMware Player is a better product anyway.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[toddestan]

You should be able to, in theory, run those applications on the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista/7/8. Though I have found applications like that tend to not like the security model that Microsoft introduced with Vista.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Mashiki]

One of the reasons I advised my customers against Windows 8 is how many programs i found that run fine on 7, crap themselves on 8.

So, want to list the programs? I've found one program in nearly a year of using it and it was an outdated version of Gamemaker Pro which was fixed in a subsequent release by developers. Hell even some programs that I had from the early '00's and '90's will work under 8, where they wouldn't work at all under XP or 7, and this has proven more-so true with games.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[aestrivex]

It took me 8 hours to set up steam on debian wheezy. It is fantastic that we have steam on linux. I think what Steam is doing on the whole is fantastic and it will keep getting better. There really has been so much progress in the past 10 years, and in the next 10 there will be even more. But, speaking as a gamer, my free time is still spent on Windows and it will be until linux can just run the games I want without hassle.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[gl4ss]

which sw?

I find that my legacy apps run better in 8 than in win7. for example some opengl programs had a habit of freaking out and updating the opengl surfaces maybe every 100 frames... but that has never happened under win8.

win8 for me has been quite nice.

metro sucks balls though, classic shell is a must.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[Applehu Akbar]

The latest version of Windows is now two percentage points behind OS X...

Re:Surpassing Vista

[UltraZelda64]

I have to admit, it makes a good entertaining subject for an article though. I laughed my ass off when I read it.

Re: Surpassing Vista

[hairyfeet]

Cubase, Quicken, Quickbooks, those are just three off the top of my head, run great in 7, gotta buy the latest version (at several hundred dollars for some of them) to get them to work on 8.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[arth1]

Citation please?

Asking for citations for everything you disagree with makes you look like a tool.

Here are the short lists of what was fixed in SP1 and SP2.
In my opinion (which does not need a citation), XP before SP1 was too buggy for production use.

It's not exactly secret news that early versions of XP were buggy compared to the versions of W2k that were available at the same time. Sure, later versions of XP were better, but when it came out, it was quite buggy. Also, XP Pro had SMB networking deliberately crippled compared to 2000 Professional - you were limited to 10 SMB connections to servers and printers. While this might not have affected the average home user, it was often an issue for workplaces.
If you need more "citations", use a search engine.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[vlueboy]

Yeah, I loved win2k's stability.
For XP, one of the first signs of a bad stability design was that normal explorer Windows go into "(Not responding)" mode quite easily (no spyware connotations here). I think reading bad floppies / CD's would trigger that. I added killing "explorer.exe" to my toolbelt with that release... silly that the whole shell should die just because of bad I/O.

Actually, I think this kinda affects our other non-Windows OS's too. Sad state of affairs.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[jonadab]

Indeed.

My stats (from the website of the public library where I work) for the entire second quarter show Eight lagging a couple percentage points behind Vista, but since it's increasing, that may no longer be the case at the end of the quarter. (The traffic volume on our site doesn't, in my judgment, really support looking at very much less than a quarter at a time, so I generally don't.)

But yeah, what you said: Vista has been on the decline here since early 2010. It peaked at about 25% usage share (a little more than half of what the then-leading version, XP, had) sometime in the second quarter of that year. 25%, incidentally, is several (perhaps five) times as much share as Eight has now.

It's also worth pointing out that Vista has less than two-thirds the usage share that XP has, and XP has less than one-third the usage share that Seven has. (Again, that's all for the whole second quarter.) Eight has roughly a tenth as much share as Seven.

Also, Eight is in a dead heat with Snow Leopard (Eight comes out slightly ahead of Snow Leopard on my numbers, but statistically, at our level of traffic, it's a wash) and has about twice as much usage share as Jelly Bean.

I suspect Eight adoption will pick up a bit when 8.1 comes out. In a couple more years, it may even manage to attain a higher usage share than XP.

Eight does not, however, appear to be much threat to Seven yet.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[dingen]

Daily reboots with Windows 2000? I think it might be your system which had hardware issues if that truly were the case. Windows 2000 was super stable, probably the best of version of Windows ever released by Microsoft to date.

Re:Surpassing Vista

[Eivind]

A large fraction of new PCs come with 8. And it's a problem. For example, my wife bought a 8-PC a couple of months ago, and hates it. Now she wants to buy a new computer for her mother, except she can't imagine going with a win8-thingie since she conciders those horrible. Might end up going with Mac, or scrounging for one of the new PCs still being sold with 7.

You know things are bad when nontechnical users are willing to pay a premium to get your 4 year old product, rather than the current one.

So it should

[Ice Tiger]

It's the best OS MS have produced in my opinion, runs well and like the UI and yes I'm running a desktop computer! I use OSX, iOS, Ubuntu and Windows so maybe am used to switching UIs so learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if you stay in desktop mode. Classic Shell would help. Metro is terrible.

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who knows anything about the market knows this is actually ridiculously slow adoption rates. Even slower than when Vista came out, and WAY slower than Windows 7. This is announcement is trying to put a positive spin on really bad news.

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels like MS changed-for-the-sake-of-change with the Start Menu than anything else. Yeah, some people might adopt to the new style quickly and some may like it more however they seemingly came up with this new paradigm and forced changed to it all within one version of the OS.

Re:So it should

[gigaherz]

Well if you compare it with OSX, iOS and Ubuntu's Unity, metro is not THAT bad. It's when you compare it with a proper desktop environment like Xfce or Windows 7's Aero that Metro is terrible.

Re:So it should

[mwvdlee]

To be fair, Metro seems to work fine if all you do is browse the internet, play some games and perhaps even occasionally edit a Word document.
The only people that don't like Metro are the professional users, developers and power-users. Though there are a lot of us, we're still the minority.
I think Metro will do just fine for the home market and the serious market will just have to wait for 9 (or whatever it'll be called).

Re:So it should

[somersault]

If it was really a "new paradigm", ie the whole OS was built around it, it would actually be fine. The problem is that Metro feels more like a hacked on 3rd party replacement for the Start Menu, than something that works well with the Windows desktop.

Re:So it should

[JaredOfEuropa]

I have to agree: it runs well. Booting is exceptionally fast; in Windows 8 I'll be running on the desktop while my older (but more powerful) machine is still loading the Windows 7 login screen. I dislike Metro though; I suppose I could make it into something usable, if I spend the effort to nicely organize my favorite apps on the Metro canvas, but why should I? The old Windows start menu does that for me in a very usable way with zero effort (other than installing the tool to bring back that start menu). Besides that, I like to use the desktop like my real desktop, to organize and sort files I am working on. The Metro canvas is useless for that.

A real problem with Metro is that so many basic actions are hidden or counter-intuitive. You're doing something wrong if people have to search for help on how to close an app or manage windows on your OS. And before they can even try and search for that info, they have to use another computer to search for help on getting the damn address bar to appear in IE! People's hatred for Metro doesn't just come from having to learn a new UI, a lot of it is due to (piss-)poor design.

Re:So it should

[Unkl_Shvelven]

The reason why Windows 8 boots so fast is that it doesn't actually boot. When you "Shut Down" from the charms bar, it actually just kills your user session and hibernates. You can turn off fastboot and see for yourself.

Re:So it should

[Joce640k]

learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.

Um, the problem isn't learning it, the problem is liking it.

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

it actually just kills your user session and hibernates

Yep. And if you copy files to a directory that is in memory in the hibernated system (say from a Mac or Linux dual boot partition) Windows 8 will eat your files with corruption! All because Microsoft lied so they could add another "feature".

Re:So it should

[HJED]

To be fair, Metro seems to work fine if all you do is browse the internet, play some games and perhaps even occasionally edit a Word document. The only people that don't like Metro are the professional users, developers and power-users. Though there are a lot of us, we're still the minority. I think Metro will do just fine for the home market and the serious market will just have to wait for 9 (or whatever it'll be called).

Talking to many non-power users, especially less tech-literate people they all seem to find win 8 confusing and hard to use. Specifically I have had people complaining to me about it defaulting to using windows live accounts for login and not being able to find anything.
In my personal experience with it I've encountered bugs, such as file sharing seeming to be completely broken in terms of login-in to win 8 shares with samba, etc.

Re:So it should

[Yaotzin]

It works just like the start menu, only bigger. You use just like you would the regular start menu, type whatever you want to run and press enter. Don't see how this can be such a huge gripe. I haven't switched to Win8 yet but from what little I've used it, I couldn't find much of a problem with it apart from poor network drivers.

Re:So it should

[KingMotley]

That would not be true. Shut down and restarts aren't the hybrid hibernate that you talk about. That's only if you tell it to sleep, or it goes into hibernation. Or you tell it to shutdown and you have your system set to allow hibernation. Most desktops won't be configured that way. Even if you do have hibernation enabled, and you tell it to restart, then it isn't one of those "hybrid boots".

And in any case, for most users in the cases it actually does a hybrid boot, they wouldn't care that it's not doing a "full boot" anyhow. The effect is nearly the same, but only faster.

Re:So it should

[Bert64]

Which is just an extension of the old kludges they've been implementing since XP...
Displaying the login screen quickly isn't terribly useful if its continuing to boot in the background such that your login and initial use of the machine is significantly slower.

The real boot time, is the time it takes to be ready for you to use it properly.

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

It works just like the start menu, only bigger. You use just like you would the regular start menu, type whatever you want to run and press enter. Don't see how this can be such a huge gripe. I haven't switched to Win8 yet but from what little I've used it, I couldn't find much of a problem with it apart from poor network drivers.

Here's why it's such a huge gripe: I use more than 6 or 12 applications on my computer and, since I only need some of the more esoteric debugging apps once a month or so, I can't memorize all the damn vendor-assigned names (or icons, which is why the Win 8 screen doesn't help)!

Consider an alternate scenario if it might help you understand why users are so upset that the catalog of installed programs was replaced with a search function. Imagine if Microsoft removed the Folder pane and the Inbox pane from Outlook 2015 leaving only the Reading pane and a search box. No big deal since you can just type whatever you want to read and press enter, right? In fact you should ask them to do this because those other panes take up huge amounts of display space when all your real information is in the Reading pane.

Re:So it should

[Ice Tiger]

Reading through the comments there isn't too much disagreement about the underlying OS its with Metro.

I first used a computer back in 1981 and seen and used a lot of UIs over the years as well as using different UIs over different systems at the same time, hence I don't tend to invest effort in learning the ins and outs. On a desktop machine without a touchscreen I flip between desktop and metro and am fine with search to find something as that's how I find things on the Internet. My typing speed isn't so bad having used all those CLIs over the years.

Metro with a touchscreen works and in fact for my three year old she finds it awkward that my 2010 Mac Book Pro doesn't have a screen that responds to touch and what's this mouse thing on my Windows 8 desktop. Is Metro perfect, no, but at least its a start to move away from a desktop metaphor that was introduced way back when, in a world dominated by mobiles / browsers is the desktop metaphor still relavant?

My intention was to start a debate as I know my opinion about Windows 8 isn't mainstream.

Re:So it should

[JasterBobaMereel]

I don't want to "Learn" Metro! I just want to use my computer!

If the interface is not obvious then it is getting in the way, and Metro (or whatever it is called this week) just gets in the way

The Start button was a faster than the program manager
the Search in the start menu was often faster than using the Start menu
Metro is in all cases slower ...

I don't want to run windows, use windows etc ... I want to use the programs that run on it ....!

Re:So it should

[Anonymous Coward]

Metro is in all cases slower ...

How would you know if you've never learned it? Metro is faster in a number of ways. The start screen with its large tiles allows for the display of more information than just a static icon. Thus you can check weather, email, news headlines, social network feeds, etc. while keeping your workspace (desktop) free of a million widgets. The larger icon sizes also take advantage of Fitts' Law, reducing time to access compared to the start menu. The start screen also can hold more icons than you cab pin on the start menu, and it scales better with resolution.

Here is a concrete example of how the start screen is faster. Let's say you don't remember the exact name of your app you want to launch so you can't search. You don't remember know the company or publisher that made it. All you really remember is the icon, and when about you installed it. With the start menu, since each folder has the same exact icon, and the folders are normally labeled with the publisher name instead of the app name, you need to search through every folder individually to find your app. With the start screen, you just sort by date installed and quickly scan the icons. Done.

Re:So it should

[Jerry Atrick]

Type 'readme', then wonder which result is the one I want... assuming it's even in the list because a lot of my apps are portable and sitting on another drive Win8 doesn't want to search.

Re:So it should

[Jerry Atrick]

Maybe. But that just means you get to see Win8 sit there ignoring you for longer after it boots.

My copy boots a whole 25% faster than XP did on the same hardware (45s v 60s - old style HD), it then sits for longer than that before I can get anything to actually respond to input enough to do anything! It's the usual smoke&mirrors, the frustration's still there, they just delayed it a little.

If Win8 didn't need rebooting so often fast bootup would be irrelevant anyway. I used to reboot my XP install every 10 days or so when it had leaked enough RAM to get sluggish. That's about 7days more uptime than I'm averaging with Win8 on exactly the same hardware.

Re:So it should

[oobayly]

It's all well and good having an OS that boots quickly - everyone like that. However, it would be interesting to compare the time saved due to a fast boot, to that wasted by trying to find which "Visual Studio 2..." is the one you actually want.

Re:So it should

[nukenerd]

Reading through the comments there isn't too much disagreement about the underlying OS [the disagreement is] with Metro.

Got it in one.

I first used a computer back in 1981 and seen and used a lot of UIs over the years ... My typing speed isn't so bad having used all those CLIs over the years.

Me too

[I] am fine with search to find something as that's how I find things on the Internet.

I don't just use the Internet. There is a polarisation here between (shall we say) people who are organised and people who are not. I know where my stuff is, in organised directories, but MS seems to assume that everyone is disorganised and needs to search. We organised people find that insulting and patronising.

Metro with a touchscreen works and in fact for my three year old she finds it awkward that my 2010 Mac Book Pro doesn't have a [touch]screen

Good Lord, take a look at your foot Lord Uxbridge, it seems to have been shot off! So Metro is OK for 3-year-olds. That is what many of us have been saying all along.

Is Metro perfect, no, but at least its a start to move away from a desktop metaphor that was introduced way back when

That is like saying Smartcars are a move away from pick-up trucks. Some of us need or just prefer pick-up trucks. Motor vehicles when they were invented were all pretty similar, then specialised types came out - vans, limos, sports, pick-ups, etc. Same is happening with PCs. Those of us who create stuff rather than just "consume" the internet, or who play full sized games, will continue to provide a market for full-sized PC with mice and keyboards.

Re:So it should

[oobayly]

Yay, I can check the get regular weather & social updates on the start screen. Funnily enough, that's not a priority for most business users. And I especially like trying to reorganise the tiles - it's like playing a Sliding Puzzle - how could anyone hate that?

Re:So it should

[BonThomme]

"start to move away from a desktop metaphor "

At this point, there are more handheld devices than there are people on the planet. Windows has essentially zero presence in that market.

Re:So it should

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You are forgetting users like my step mother who can't figure out why her new laptop acts like someone's phone instead like her computer at work. If she wanted something that acted like a smart phone she would have bought a smart phone.

Re:So it should

[gnasher719]

You are forgetting users like my step mother who can't figure out why her new laptop acts like someone's phone instead like her computer at work. If she wanted something that acted like a smart phone she would have bought a smart phone.

Years ago my daughter bought a laptop which came with the then brand new Windows Vista. She called me and asked if I could put Windows on it for her...

Re:So it should

[gnasher719]

Well if you compare it with OSX, iOS and Ubuntu's Unity, metro is not THAT bad. It's when you compare it with a proper desktop environment like Xfce or Windows 7's Aero that Metro is terrible.

Obvious that your snarky remark had to be voted up as "insightful". The reality is that Microsoft couldn't have possibly made Apple a bigger present. There were all these rumours that Apple was going to merge MacOS X and iOS (supported by both clueless fanboys and Apple haters and denigrated by anyone with common sense), and guess what: Microsoft "copied" what Apple was too clever to do.

Re:So it should

[gl4ss]

And why is OSX not a proper desktop environment?

it ships with finder

(and lacks support for arbitrary sizing of the ui. shipping with finder should be enough to convince you though. metro is horrible compared to osx though, it's like MS took a direction cue from osx additions like fullscreening(HAHAHA WHAT A FEATURE) and the stupid fullscreen launcher and went full on crazy forward with that thinking and boom we have metro and a shitty appstore).

Re:So it should

[gl4ss]

Metro is a weird interface, being a long time xp and os x user it feels very counter intuitive, I seem to go into desktop mode as soon as I boot and get annoyed when metro pulls me out off it (eg when editing a photo).8.1 will be a welcome update.

you're better off installing classic shell than waiting for 8.1. the start button just takes you to metro.

Re:So it should

[Tarlus]

Even without classic shell, I have gotten by just fine in desktop mode. I only see Metro when the computer reboots (not often) or when I press the Windows key and start typing to do a search. I do prefer 7's style of searching over 8, but it's not a huge deal for me. I had to get used to using WinKey + i to initiate sleep/restart/shutdown, but other than that my workflow has not suffered from switching.

Re:So it should

[Tarlus]

and get annoyed when metro pulls me out off it (eg when editing a photo)

You can change your file associations to use non-Metro software. The image viewer that came with 7 is still there in 8, so you can set it to be your default for viewing images. (Or there are some great alternatives out there, I like Irfanview.) Same deal with Windows Media Player, you can tell it to use the desktop version rather than the Metro version. (Or in my case, Media Player Classic.)

Re:So it should

[MrNemesis]

The huge gripe is that not everyone uses the start menu in the same way as everyone else. Personally, I hate the "search to launch something" functionality; I only search for things when I don't know where they are. This is handy to have in the start menu when I know what something is called but don't know where it is... but my memory is primarily spatial and I have a terrible memory for names, so I remember things by placement and the shape of what the icons/words look like rather than by remembering the letters per se. For when I do know the name of the command, nine times out of ten it's already in $PATH (or %PATH% depending on your poison) and I can launch it from a command line with tab-completion anyway.

Microsoft's problem here is that take people like you into account, for whom search is a perfectly good way of launching stuff, but remove, or at least impede, any alternative for people like me you find it clunky. Lots of people appreciate having both available but in my opinion MS appear to have gone headfirst down the "tyranny of choice" route.

As an aside, it always infuriated me that the XP/7 start menu "learnt" the priority of your programs so that a) their relative position was always changing and b) the more frequently you used them, the further away they moved from the start button. This is mostly why I'm still hooked on quicklaunch and other folders full of shortcuts I can turn into a toolbar.

Re:So it should

[CannonballHead]

Mine shuts down (it POSTs when I turn it on). But then, I don't do it from the charms bar. However... it does boot fast; faster than XP, faster than Windows 7 (which was also faster than XP).

Re:So it should

[Patch86]

Well if you compare it with OSX, iOS and Ubuntu's Unity, metro is not THAT bad. It's when you compare it with a proper desktop environment like Xfce or Windows 7's Aero that Metro is terrible.

Unity is way better than Metro- and that's making a statement and a half. At least Unity is just a task bar with icons (like Win7) and a menu (not full screen) with text search (like Win7). The manual filtering in the Dash is still pretty stupid, but no more so than the classic Windows Start menu's folder structure.

Compared to that, Metro is a phone interface on a 22" screen- it's ridiculous, even if you can get used to it. And also, I hate menu "hot spots". Hated them in Gnome 3, hate them in Win8. That is a GUI paradigm that just needs to crawl away and die.

Re:So it should

[Ice Tiger]

I'm not trying to convince anyone but just stating my own opinion which doesn't have to be mainstream.

Re:So it should

[Ice Tiger]

I don't just use the Internet. There is a polarisation here between (shall we say) people who are organised and people who are not. I know where my stuff is, in organised directories, but MS seems to assume that everyone is disorganised and needs to search. We organised people find that insulting and patronising.

The ability to create hierarchical file structures is still in Windows 8, however its a good point, I tend to work collaborative with lots of different people and finding something in someone else's file structure I find a real pain, hence would rather have a good search. Doesn't mean either of us are wrong, just different.

For your other points, I tend to use OSX for work and Windows 8 for play i.e. FSX, Electronics (IDE etc) so maybe that is why I don't mind metro as there is always a desktop to fall back on.

Different UI metaphor's are good though as what is good for one person may not be for another, is the up and coming generation going to be more familiar with how their smart phones work or a work desktop environment? What's important is the realisation that one size does not fit all.

Still sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Windoze still sucks whether it's at 5% or 50% or 98.3%. And I for one refuse to allow that filth to touch my machines. Any sensible person is already running almost anything else (e.g. Linux or BSD based systems). The fact that the majority of the computing population are not sensible (at least computer-wise) indicates that the education systems of the world have failed.

Fuck Microsoft and let's burn their filth and cleanse the world.

Re:Still sucks

[sosume]

You forgot to write Microsoft with a '$' .. you heretic.

Re:Still sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's just too young to have used Microsoft products, back when Microsoft products were what the geeks among us loved.

10 READ M$

Re:Still sucks

[Tarlus]

It's okay. He is redeemed by his clever portmanteau of "Windows" and "doze."

Huh

[Ignacio]

I guess cramming it down people's throats really *is* an effective way to gain marketshare...

Re:Huh

[Mike Frett]

Exactly, it's not like they have a choice. I do wonder how these statistics are gathered, and how many of those people use it for a day or so and then install Linux; does it account for that?. It's like TV Ratings, send a few hundred surveys to people and based on those, simply assume that's what everybody is watching.

What gets me is all the news about the NSA and Microsoft. I simply can't understand why people would use Windows after all that, it's insane and no logical at all.

XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[blarkon]

The real news here is that an OS that has less than a year of support left is at around 37% market share. XP is falling at about 1% per month - but will still be a substantial part of the market (probably at least 25%) when Microsoft stops releasing software updates.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[dingen]

A lack of support might push a few businesses to adopt a newer version of Windows, but I doubt people at home will care. Actually, a lack of updates might be seen as a feature (no reboots!) by those who are still holding on to a 12+ year old operating system.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone keep bringing up the 12+ years like it is a valid argument ? The only valid argument to determine whether it is reasonable to stop providing updates is the last sale date. And that is October 22th, 2010 for Windows XP
Measured by that metric ending the support by April 2014 seems a bit soon.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[peragrin]

actually businesses won't care either in the short term.

As when th updates start businesses will no longer worry that an update might break their tools, so they can keep on working without fear. Also a lot of businesses are going virtual.

I took a new job last august, the machine I was initially given was win 2K. Now they updated it almost immediately for me, but other than the crappy keyboard, mouse and monitor,all it ran was remote desktop to the server.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[Teun]

12 y/o? Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.

I would count the age of up to date XP installs from the issue date of SP3, early May 2008.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[wonkey_monkey]

Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.

In what ways have the Service Packs changed XP such that average (or even "power") user would notice?

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[jbolden]

That was netbooks mainly. Those were never designed to be 4 year machines.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[Lawrence_Bird]

People often try to read into this some undying love for XP. The reality is the useful life of hardware has been extended and combined with the recent and current ecomic climate, hardware purchases have been delayed or cancelled. As a case in point, I just upgraded my main development desktop. The old one was built in Dec 2002 and it was only recently that the performance dropped below tolerable. I would have upgraded the windows OS to 7 but it failed the compatability test.

I think the take away from my case and more generally is that since XP there is generally not a compelling reason to upgrade the OS, especially given many tech firms failure to support legacy products with drivers. XP worked fine. 7 is fine, as is 8. There are certainly under the hood improvements, but nothing so wonderful to junk hardware or make a $100 outlay for the OS.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[gl4ss]

you count the date they should provide updates for the os from the date they provided updates for the os? I don't remembe seeing it listed as a separate product or paying for the sp..

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[Patch86]

Interestingly, my employer (big UK national, 21,000 employees or so, branch network, etc.) is leaving the Windows 7 upgrade to the extreme last minute. I believe the project is due to get the last of the deployed machines off it by February 2014, with a couple of months contingency (they're something like 20% of the way through it right now). Cold dead hands, and all that. My guess is that Windows 7 is going to see a big market spike from now until April while other companies do the same, which will probably outstrip Windows 8 growth for a while; which is going to be pretty embarrassing for MS.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[jbengt]

In what ways have the Service Packs changed XP such that average (or even "power") user would notice?

Well, SP-2 did render my printer unusable for 6 months until HP finally got around to issue and updated driver that worked. My fairly "average user" wife definitely noticed.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[wonkey_monkey]

Is that a serious question? Or has it got to the point where I'm going to have specifically declare which of my statements aren't meant sarcastically?

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[Molochi]

I was looking at HP workstation laptops (elitebook 8570w) this morning. They were all advertised with Win8pro downgrade licenses shipped with Win7pro preinstalled. I wonder if those will count as Win8 sales or Win 7.

Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support

[toddestan]

Heck, Microsoft was still selling licenses of Windows 3.1 up to November 1st, 2008, and OS they stopped releasing patches for sometime in the mid-90's.

Regular users

[Loki_666]

I bet even non-techie users don't like Metro.... for a start, where will they store their documents now? The desktop and the recycle bin were the usual two favourite locations pre Win 8. :P

Re:Regular users

[KingMotley]

On the desktop.

Re:Regular users

[Anonymous Coward]

Many non-techie users don't know where their files are stored at all.

They may use recent documents, but if you are truly not that tech-savvy and only have to keep a lot of word documents with no need for any folder structure, you may just think "I need word", open up word and look for their work there.

Of course simplifying things hurts power users, but for users that didn't grasp the abstract concept of "folders" anyway, it's no loss. (but no gain either)

Re:Regular users

[Loki_666]

Until they say they can't find a file they want, and can't remember the name of it, and call their family member who knows computers to ask them to find it for them.

Re:Regular users

[PsychoSlashDot]

I bet even non-techie users don't like Metro.... for a start, where will they store their documents now? The desktop and the recycle bin were the usual two favourite locations pre Win 8. :P

I run a Terminal Server farm that does application publishing. Basically programs punch their view on top of the user's remote view, seamlessly. On our end we have a nice My Documents that maps to a folder on our server as the DEFAULT. Users still manually navigate to "Desktop" to save things despite that they'll never, ever see those documents because there isn't a desktop to view. Once they start doing this, they keep doing this despite that it clearly doesn't do what they expect it to do.

Win7 as an alternative

[ubersoldat2k7]

I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.

OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption rate would be higher.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[Teun]

Indeed, especially the non-consumer versions of brands like Lenovo, HP and Toshiba still come with Win7 and Win8 as an option.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[Bert64]

With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[blahbooboo]

I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.

OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption rate would be higher.

Funny, I remember when Win95 launched and most people were very enthused about it as it was a great upgrade.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[blahbooboo]

With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.

Really?? First I ever heard of this...

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I did that, but it was called program manager, not task man. I think the option existed in 98 as well. The OS didn't present you with an option but it was configurable in System.ini file.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[blahbooboo]

Wow, didn't ever know that... surprised I didn't hear of it. I remember liking Win95 a lot because networking and winsock was part of it instead of having to do add ons for dialing onto the internet with Win 311!

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[jbengt]

I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked . . .

On the contrary, I remember that when I first used Win95, I felt that Windows was finally usable. (I always disliked DOS, but found DOS much preferable to Win3.11)

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I used program manager for a while on Win95 but then as I learned more of the explorer shell I eventually converted to it. I would switch back to it from time to time for shits and giggles and would put other people's computer in that shell when I was in college to be an asshole. It seems that the metro UI is a more disorganized version of program manager that requires a touch device. The networking support was a godsend in Win95 and I wasn't sad to see trumpet winsock disappear.

Re:Win7 as an alternative

[twmcneil]

I bought a Lenovo laptop and it came with Win 8 installed. I tried, I really did. I tried to learn to like Win 8. After a few weeks, it just wasn't happening and I found a copy of Win 7 and installed that. All is well now. I wish my laptop had come with Win 7 installed as yours did.

Off-topic link

[trifish]

The link that ought to have been in the summary:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=11&qpcustomb=0

Hooray!

[jasper160]

Should be titled: Windows 8 sucks less than Vista.

Re:I don't care about the OS - I'm old and want 3:

[drinkypoo]

fullhd windows needs you to adjust dpi scaling. just do it, nobody expects you to read text that's the size of ant legs.

OK, then what do you do about all the apps that don't display correctly?

Tired of the whining

[readingaccount]

I don't like Windows 8. More specifically, I don't like this direction Microsoft is taking of basically throwing the refined desktop experience under the bus all for the sake of mobile. That, plus their business practices and general contempt for their users has certainly annoyed me and many others.

But... at some point you have to decide to either sit up or shut up. If you don't like what's going on with Microsoft/Windows, move to Linux/OSX now or at least invest some time in running more cross-platform software such that it'll be easy to leave in the future, as you'll be accustomed to most of the software. You can't just keep whining about the bullshit that Microsoft does and not act upon it. It shows a lack of backbone and proves Microsoft can do whatever they like and people won't do anything about it.

I'm not a hater. I don't hate Windows 7 for example, and I don't hate Windows 8. I don't even hate Microsoft - they're not even worth expending the emotional energy to hate in the first place, honestly. But I do look out for my long-term computing prospects and even if Linux isn't quite ready for me yet, I'm utilizing more and more cross-platform software on a regular basis such that it won't be painful (for example, I actually LIKE using Eclipse/Qt Creator instead of Visual Studio - don't care if I'm the only one, they do the job quite well and aren't painful once you learn).

Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8: The operating system no one wanted.

Ballmers bonus

[plopez]

Secure!

It is not that bad

[aggles]

Yeah, metro is useless, but there are some nice aspects to Win 8, like the new task manager. I installed a fan controller (TPFC.62), which boots me to the desktop once it starts. Finding drivers can be a challenge, but so far, I have what I need. I'll go to 8.1 as soon as it is ready.

8 == Vista

[h8sg8s]

Windows 8 is about as functional as Vista as well. Pretty low bar. If folks had a choice Windows 8 would simply die.

Re:8 == Vista

[CannonballHead]

8 is far better than Vista.

Because PC buyers have no choice

[walterbyrd]

Most places that sell PCs only sell Win8. If you can get Win7 at all, you have to pay a premium for it.

Also, people figure "I might as well buy it now, since I am going to be forced to use it anyway."

People are *not* buying Win8 because they like it. If people had a choice, they would stay with win7, or XP.

Re:Try and NOT buy Win8

[flyingfsck]

I bought two laptops recently. One for me and one for my niece - both Apple. I just cannot bring myself to buy a Windows machine and torture someone with it.

Sales vs use

[jklovanc]

The company I work for just bought 2 Windows 8 laptops because they were not sold with windows 7. The first thing I did was install Windows 7 on them. In the sales statistics they are seen as Windows 8 machines when in reality they are being used as Windows 7 machines.

Obligatory Eric Frank Russell quote

[Dusty101]

"For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralized enemy who is advancing in utter disorder." - E. F. Russell

Actual In Use Installs or Defaults?

[Scarletdown]

Is that number only counting Windows 8 installs that are actually in use, or is it also counting systems that had 8 preinstalled (due to no other choices), and then wiped and replaced with something better? (like Linux, BSD, or Windows 7)

Market share, but they hid the real story

[hazydave]

Claiming this is market share, that implies this is for new sales only, not installed base. Sounds like they screwed up the terminology... otherwise, that doesn't say much at all good about Windows 8.... and also suggests some crazy people are still buying new Windows Vista systems.

If this really does mean installed base, then you have to ask how that's actually computed. If it's just based on sales figures, it's likely very skewed in Windows 8's favor. On the day that Windows 8 shipped, all of the enterprise licensees started buying Windows 8 licenses. These are the licenses that let the IT department clone their standard disc for all new PCs and just pay MS for each one. These licenses, of course, include full downgrade rights, and most of them are still being used for Windows 7 or Windows XP... but they come up as Windows 8 for the purpose of sales figures. The last study on this I saw showed that less than 60% of the actual sold Windows 8 licenses were actually being used for Windows 8. Some detail on which set of assumptions (lies, etc) this is used for would be interesting.

And the real news... earlier this year, late last year, etc. many different similar installed base reports put MacOS growing from 4.8% last year to just over 5% earlier this year -- this is internationally, Apple of course does much better domestically. It's probably just a difference in their calculations versus the various other industry numbers people.. but if MacOS really did jump 2% in one quarter, in installed base rather than just quarterly sales, that would be big news. Of course, that growth might come as much from a failing PC market as some rally of Apple products.

Thanks MS....

[3seas]

I really needed a good laugh today... but this might just last all week.

BS growth

[DarthVain]

When you cannot literally buy anything else but Windows 8, it isn't much of a metric of growth in relation to OS strength.

Helped the folks pick out a new laptop about a week ago at Futureshop.

Options (Approx):
About 100+ featuring Windows 8.
About 6 featuring OSX (all north of 1000$)
1 lonely Chromebook.

Ya ya, you can get computers elsewhere, etc... However this is probably typical, particularly for laptops.

So I got to introduce my parents (and myself) to Windows 8, Metro interface and all ("Chimes" Menu, really?). I feel like there is a piece of my brain I need to scrub. Of course the first thing we did was download and install a 3rd party Start Menu.