Windows 10 Grabs 5.21% Market Share, Passing Windows Vista and Windows 8

An anonymous reader writes: The effects of a free upgrade to Windows 10 are starting to trickle in. Available for just over a month, Windows 10 has now captured more than 5 percent market share, according to the latest figures from Net Applications. In just four weeks, Windows 10 has already been installed on over 75 million PCs. Microsoft is aiming to have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 "in two to three years," though that includes not just PCs, but smartphones, consoles, and other devices as well.

Comments

To be expected

[Dunbal]

They're giving it away free and they pushed a little "install me" button on current Win 7 and Win 8 installs. I'm actually surprised it's not higher. This 5% should be seen as a failure not a success.

Re:To be expected

[The Real Dr John]

They are using their installed base of Windows computers as an advertising base now. Free always means the ad-filled version, and the version that tracks you and sells information about your surfing habits and preferences. I really hope that this is not the end of Windows as a basic, functional, user friendly operating system. It was never a perfect OS, but Windows 7 got many things right. Windows 10 got many, many things wrong.

An interesting take on the UI of Windows from Josh Fruhlinger at IT World, with many of today's must have's in an OS came from Windows 95, including aspects of OS X.

Link: http://www.itworld.com/article...

Re:To be expected

[MyAlternateID]

I really hope that this is not the end of Windows as a basic, functional, user friendly operating system. It was never a perfect OS, but Windows 7 got many things right. Windows 10 got many, many things wrong.

I sure hope it is the end of Windows as "THE" desktop OS in the minds of so many users. Ideally we'd have at least four or five operating systems in common use with roughly similar market shares and a strong emphasis on cross-platform compatibility for application developers so that jumping ship is as easy as possible. This would also provide a disincentive against all of the phoning-home behavior and other unwanted "features" increasingly common with Windows installations. It would also make malware propagation more difficult because the Windows monoculture just makes it too easy.

Re: To be expected

[Urkki]

Make that three, m$ finally pushed me over to kubuntu as a primary OS. I still maintain winblows at work, but I do so from my linux desktop (dual boot, but win 7 is way too slow).

I recently switched to running an Ubuntu variant on my old work laptop (top-of-the line from 2013), and running Windows as VirtualBox guest for stuff like MS Office and Windows development. Works very nice, all you need is enough memory and an SSD and a decent processor.

Re:To be expected

[0123456]

Out in the real world, most people don't play games. They're more likely to be tied to Windows by tax software and the like.

Re:To be expected

[KingMotley]

There was some talk about creating a package manager / Windows Store a decade+ ago, but the idea got squashed pretty quickly for fear of more FTC/EU issues, so we don't have one. They have been taking baby steps into that direction with their Windows Store and universal apps, however, so we will see how that goes. Maybe in 5 years it'll come.

As you know, "But Linux and Macs do the same thing" apparently is no defense, because "they aren't a monopoly wielding power". So you get the shaft and can't have a package manager (or a default browser, or a music player).

Misleading title - didn't pass Windows 8

[Pulzar]

Windows 8 is at 14%, but split between 8 and 8.1.

I know Window 8 adoption is bad, but it's not *that* bad.

Re:Misleading title - didn't pass Windows 8

[SydShamino]

Following the "every other version of windows is bad" thing, I count Windows 8.1 as the most recent "good", replacing the "bad" Windows 8. That makes Windows 10 another bad version, which so far sounds accurate given the snooping problems.

Of course I used XP until support ended, still use 7, and never used Vista, 8, or 8.1, so my experience is limited.

Do they count rollbacks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran it for about 2 weeks on a laptop at home used for general browsing, but watching the logs on my firewall were crazy. I couldn't manage to track down all the different *-edge.net domains or other CDN endpoints they were using to relentlessly connect. You basically have to switch to whitelisting. My hosts block file picked up dozens of entries, but after realizing it'd be a never ending cat & mouse game I reverted back to Win7...Unless they stop this crap in a soon to be released patch we'll go back to being a Windows free home when win7 gets bothersome.

Re:Just bought my first Windows 10 box

[waspleg]

Unless you're running Enterprise, it's not disabled and still spying on literally everything, including sending sound from the mic to Microsoft. I was going to list some links but I'm at work and don't have time. A little searching will show you the truth.

The US TLAs would like to thank you for your endorsement of global privacy death.

What I read:

[ledow]

"Windows 2015 Grabs 5.21% Market Share, Passing Windows 2006 and Windows 2012 - majority of people still on Windows 2009 or maybe even Windows 2001".

Er... that's just NOT GOOD. I understand it's early days but for a FREE (in fact, in-your-fucking-face-you-will-have-this-whether-you-like-it-or-not) upgrade, that's just worrying. And nowadays volume licensing offer software assurance, and all kinds of things that make it as cheap to upgrade as to stay where you were.

And, still, it only just beats a 9 and 3 year old operating system and is DWARVED by a 6 year old operating system? It really suggests - as most of us know - that this isn't a forward step at all.

Yeah, early days, but testing etc. versions have been available for over a year. So far, our finance, banking, database and even interactive whiteboard software suppliers have notified us that we're just not supported on the new OS. We haven't even TRIED it properly, and people are already telling us we can't upgrade anyway (why they left it this late to announce that, that's another question entirely).

I work for schools and we're on SA, so we can get Windows 10 for the same price no matter what. I can't find a convincing reason to test it, going purely on what's in our email inbox, when developers have been able to test for a year now. I booted it up in a VM and tested Classic Shell still worked, that was about it.

I've had three members of staff ask me about Windows 10. The first, it broke their software. The second it was a new machine but our software wouldn't install because of the above incompatibilities (I chanced it to shut them up, but it just wouldn't go anyway). The third, it lost all their data (possible user-error but we'll never know now).

The only thing I've done about Windows 10 is block all the updates via WSUS that try to get our users to install it by popups and notifications masquerading as security updates.

Re:Just bought my first Windows 10 box

[TheDarkMaster]

As the waspleg said, the settings to disable telemetry are a placebo, they did not really work unless you are using the Enterprise edition.