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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
Well, that was the most funny bit in the article: XP is on the rise.
Windows XP meanwhile managed to regain some share after falling below the 30 percent mark at the end of 2013, increasing 0.25 percentage points (from 28.98 percent to 29.23 percent).
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
I think they did, "the duo" here seems to refer to 8 and 8.1 while the preceding sentence talked about Vista and 8.1. You could just as easily read it as Vista and 8.1 is "the duo" eating into the market share of 8 though, except it doesn't make any logical sense. Very confusingly written.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Chances are this will be from the folks who have no migration path from the software they're using, and they're unwilling to drop it because it "does what it needs to do." We're in a rather interesting era for software, for businesses XP does just fine. The software works, and does it well. So unless your machines have internet access, you're probably going to hold off as long as you can.
On the consumer side, we don't have any big software pushing development. For gaming it's the same deal. And now with Microsoft not sure what it's doing with DirectX, other API's are looking more attractive to developers. OGL and Mantle chiefly, so could this be the beginning of the end of MS desktop dominance? Very possibly. If say Mantle catches on, it could be the deathknell for it. Since it works on AMD and Nvidia cards, it works on any OS since it's handled by the drivers.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
I just added the figures myself and they add up fine. Parent needs to get a new calculator.
They are breaking down the Windows OSes as a part of the whole enchilada , not just Windows.
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.
Kicks in the ass are more popular than punches in the face.
(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.
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).
We found an easier solution. Press F9 on boot, choose system recovery. After about 40 minutes, we have Windows 7 UI, and Windows 7 OS under the hood. Don't have to mess around with the Windows Marketplace, we don't have to worry about third party tools to make the OS usable, ain't no "hot corners" or "charms bars" and it doesn't go full screen at random frakking times. The Windows 8 Pro box goes back on the shelf until some future update where perhaps Microsoft gets their collective head out of their collective ass.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The missing percentage is Windows ME... but they can't keep it running long enough to phone home and report to their database.
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.
2014: the year of XP on the PC.
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