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Windows 8.1 Passes Windows Vista In Market Share
An anonymous reader writes "With the release of Windows 8.1 to the world in October, January was the third full month of availability for Microsoft's latest operating system version, which was just enough time for it to pass Windows Vista in market share. While Windows 8.1 is certainly growing steadily and eating into Windows 8s share, the duo only managed to end 2013 with 10 percent market share, barely impacting Windows 7."
Wake me when it passes XP
In all fairness I would bunch 8.0 and 8.1 together. Together they sum up to 10.58%.
No one is "forced" into purchasing a Windows machine of any type, let alone Win8/8.1.
New Egg and other places sell all the hardware a person needs to build his own desktop. There are several vendors for Linux laptops, and there is always Apple. Mobile devices free of Windows are all over the place.
It's more than a decade since I have paid for a Microsoft license. That was Windows ME - my worst and last mistake with Microsoft.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You are SO politically incorrect. You're not supposed to notice that the retarded kid is retarded, and you should NEVER notice crippled kids! You must be some kind of bigot - my progressive friends say so.
Oh - wait. I don't have an progressive friends. Forget I said anything.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The only percentage regarding Windows that I care about is what percentage of a reasonably priced SSD it will take up. Now, I realize that metric is subjective ("reasonable" being relative), but honestly, that's the worst part of the Windows tax: on a 240GB SSD, the footprint is something like 10%. Am I the only one who feels that's absurd?
Slashdot, news for fucking bastards, stuff thats fucked up the ass.
That was the original slogan but then marketing had to get involved....pfffttt marketing.
At some point a Microsoft update bricked my wife's laptop (HP Pavillion). Don't know how updating files could mess up the partition table but it did. We'd had enough of 8 so I used a spare license for 7 to upgrade it to 7 Pro. It's still Windoze but at least it's stable and doesn't have the sucky "Metro" (or whatever Microsoft is calling it now) UI.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I have no love for Win 8's UI. But Classic Shell to the rescue. My current system has the best of both worlds. Win 7 UI, Win 8 OS under the hood (which does have some nice improvements).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I think Microsoft is using Windows 8 to force the Windows Phone UI down everyone's throat. Eventually, they will give up.
Their stubbornness is going to start affecting their enterprise business, so they need to wise up soon. Fortunately, the new CEO comes from the enterprise side so he will likely understand that they're playing with fire.
Aren't windows 8 and 8.1 the same thing?
did you forget to take your meds?
Honestly, if you ignore the Metro interface, Windows 7 and 8 are the same thing. Except 8 performs better. Get rid of the tablet interface and everyone would want to move to 8.
That is going to depend heavily on who they pick as the new Chairman (it's looking like Gates is on his way out) and how interested the Board is in sticking with the whole "Devices and Services" thing. One thing is for certain: neither the new CEO nor the Chairman will have anywhere near the influence that Gates and Ballmer do, so I could easily see a scenario where the Board kind of runs rough shot over any strong long-term goals in support of trying to become the next Apple.
Keep in mind that once Gates is gone, pretty much everyone on the Board is the Silicon Valley type of guy, where the whole Devices and Services thing is pretty popular right now. Without Gates, in particular, we'll probably end up with an even less enterprise-friendly set of offerings over the next 15 years. After all, Apple has done just fine by practically abandoning their "pro" consumers, and that's the fruit MS is chasing.
Or you could buy a chromebook or one of the many android-based laptops (often tablet/laptop convertibles) or there's the dell xps developer editions which comes with linux pre-installed or Lenovo Thinkpads or failing all of that you could get a refund on the windows license if you dont want it as many people have done.
The only party with an interest in pretending Microsoft is the only game in town for pre-installed systems is Microsoft, there are in fact plenty of other options.
Well, even if that is just "two hard" in comparison to the "one hard" of using the start menu, I would still choose the option that is less hard. If a new version is worse than the old, then there is no reason to switch in my mind.
And when I see the user base at our company, which freak out if the icons on their desktop change place, I can say that for at least 75% of that user base "just start typing" is *definitely* "too hard"
You're being too kind on the Slashdot beta by just calling it "annoying". It's much, much worse than that. It's pure and total shit.
Every single aspect of it is flawed in one way or another. It wastes space. The font sizing is disproportionate. The text color and background color do not contrast enough. The layout is confusing. The story images are way too big and pointless. The discussion threads are far more difficult to read. It's harder to post comments. It feels a lot slower than the existing site.
The Slashdot beta is a failed software project in every single sense. The only sensible thing for Slashdot to do is cancel the project, throw away the code, apologize profusely to us for subjecting us to it randomly for at least a month now, and then never again do something as utterly stupid.
Of course, I don't think that'll happen. I suspect we'll see the beta site replace the existing site at some point soon, and it'll be a Digg v4-style disaster. The few remaining valuable users will flee, and Slashdot will wither more than it already has these past few years. It will be forever remembered as yet another casualty of a hipster-inspired "Web 2.0" design shitfest gone wrong, up there with Digg, GNOME 3 and Windows 8.
Windows 8 SP1 passes Windows Vista in market share.
Kicks in the ass are more popular than punches in the face.
Well, if you're on a mac, it kinda explains why you're so pro win8. MS sticking to 8 rather than rolling back to 7's UI is about the only chance apple has at becoming relevant on desktop outside US.
Steam is gaming machines. Gaming machines are about the only machines that need frequent hardware refreshing. They also generally don't come with anything less than for last couple of years. So steam tells you approximate percentage of gaming machines that got refreshed during the period that win8 was out. It has little to no relevance outside that.
(you have to dig somewhere in windows 8 to "unlock the bios", reformat the drive for a different file type, etc)
That's not Microsoft's doing, the hardware vendor shipped the computer with Secure Boot enabled, which Windows 8 supports, but 7 does not. You can't blame them for enabling a new feature. If it's hard to go back, the hardware vendor wrote the user interface, not Microsoft, so put the blame where it belongs.
... only to find out that I couldn't get all the windows 7 drivers. Even basic stuff like the ethernet did not work. I had not experienced to what extent a new PC was non functional after installing the OS. I had to restore it back to windows 8, and buy a different laptop with windows 7 installed.
Once again, the hardware vendor was the one that decided not to distribute Windows 7 drivers. I've found many cases where the driver actually works with Windows 7, but the installer is specifically coded to refuse to run on 7. It's more of the hardware vendor trying to reduce its expenses by not training tech support staff on more than one operating system than an actual flaw with Windows.
No, it's just a hilarious commentary, because everyone except few who appear to be either paid to say so, or have a vested interest in windows failing in desktop market say it's horrible.
And they're not saying it with empty words but with heavy wallets.
Might be just your machine. I've used several different flash drives to copy multi-GB images on Windows 8.
Not sure you read or understood my post. I want Microsoft to succeed as I'm a .NET developer. I am worried, however, that this misguided stubbornness with Metro is going to start eroding the stranglehold that Microsoft has enjoyed in the enterprise.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the Metro interface does not belong on a server.
You're leaving out the fact that the start screen is full screen. This has been discussed many, many times.
This isn't a case of people just not wanting change - it's a case of trying to force a square peg (tablet/phone UI) in a round hole (desktop environment).
Can't say I'm too bothered with the live tiles on a desktop machine
There are few enough live tiles and they can be deleted by hand. What you cannot delete by hand[*] is the Start Screen entries that are created by software that you install:
> dir "C:\Users\tftp\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" /s /s
[...]
Total Files Listed:
52 File(s) 77,633 bytes
77 Dir(s) 395,226,988,544 bytes free
> dir "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu"
[...]
Total Files Listed:
485 File(s) 743,447 bytes
401 Dir(s) 395,092,660,224 bytes free
How long will it take you to scroll horizontally through 537 tiles that all look alike?
[*] You can delete the tiles from the start screen; however you have to do it one by one, and instead of using the DEL button you need to use the right-click and then select from menu at the bottom. It can take quite a while before you figure out what needs to be deleted and then delete it. Worse still, some of that may be still necessary, but there is no backup. It's insane for millions of people to be forced to do such things in this day.
Windows <8 has this problem taken care of by using hierarchical start menus. MSVC may drop 50 shortcuts into the menu when you install it, but you will never see them until you need one... and if you use it often you can copy it into the next tier of access (Pin to Start, Pin to toolbar, copy to desktop, assign a hot key.) The idea of the Start Screen comes from mobile world where one application has at most one launcher. This is not how it works on a PC - a large application may have tens of sub-components that are all independent applications, and you may need to run them from time to time.
The "noise about nothing" is that Win8 is a solution in desperate search for a problem that turned into a problem in desperate search for a solution.
Win8 changed something that was useful, and now you tell us about "solutions" that allow us to emulate what we had in the first place, i.e. what was useful to us and what we wanted. We should not have to reach for solutions for problems we should not have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pretty much all the time?
My taskbar is filled with the programs that are open. My desktop is filled with the window of the program I'm currently using. Programs I plan to start are found by clicking that icon in the lower left corner of my screen, clicking on "programs" and then selecting the program I plan to launch.
Launching a program is a task that happens in a way lower frequency than switching between open applications or using a control in a program I am using. Hence that activity is not one I put on a highly frequented surface.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nobody cares about what gets shown on sign in. That is the only time that Metro is not an annoyance.
We're referring to launching apps during a work session.
It's not clear why a Mac user is lecturing Windows users on the virtues of Windows 8/Metro. It's clear that you don't use Windows for anything significant.