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One Year Later: Windows 10 Now Runs On Over 21% of All Desktops (winbeta.org)
An anonymous reader writes: On June 29, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 350 million devices -- 50 million more devices than the previous milestone announced by Microsoft on May 5. While the company is expected to update the number of devices running the latest OS when it releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2nd, NetMarketShare has decided to conduct some research on its own. According to its report, Windows 10 currently runs on a 21.13% desktop OS share. Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to dominate the market with a 47.01% share, with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 representing less than 10% of the PC market, and Windows XP representing 10.34%. While the market share of Windows 10 is all but certain to rise, it likely won't rise as fast as it did between May and June or June and July for example, as Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft has even backtracked on its original statement that Windows 10 will hit one billion devices by mid-2018, saying last month that Windows 10 likely won't in fact make that deadline.
There's a little known 32-bit release of it that's supported by Microsoft through to 2019.
It's called Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. It's basically an updated version of Windows XP (I guess you could call it SP4?). It still receives security patches weekly via Windows Update. It doesn't require activation and it's not too hard to find on the internet. It comes as a DVD ISO with an updated installer that lets you partition the disks through the GUI and load additional storage drivers graphically (rather than via the text mode setup phase). A full installation is just over 900mb.
I'm running it on my aging T60p, and it works great. It's extremely small and very fast.
if i recall correctly, october is when microsoft will quit allowing factory downgrade options from major oems like toshiba, hp, dell, lenovo. the customer, or even you as a var, can still do it yourself as permitted by the oem/dsp eula, but the systems will have to ship from the manufacturer with win 10 pro installed. i know at dell it's already slim-pickings for downgrades to 8.1 or 7 pro.
A new MS operating system "offering" a free upgrade from its predecessors, so every single user of a previous OS pretty much had to go out of their way to NOT get it, reaches 20% penetration (and I chose that word deliberately, for the way it tried to "convince" you to install it) after a year.
That is pretty much a declaration of bankruptcy.
The amount of "computer savvy" people isn't that high to warrant this number. It's not just "paranoid geeks" that saw the wiring under the board and didn't want to be infected. This number pretty much means that four out of five people using Win7 or Win8.1 fought tooth and nail to NOT upgrade.
And four out of five people aren't paranoid computer geeks. These are "normal" computer users. My hope is that this is the beginning of people getting a clue about their privacy being at stake.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As a first time user of linux Mint I had it installed, patched and up and running in 20 minutes On the first attempt. Everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite. Compare that to a typical Windows install.
how are they managing that, MS no longer license win 7 Pro!
That is wrong. It is even mentioned in the f..ing article that Windows 7 Pro is available to OEMs until October 31, 2016.
I'm wondering whether this will actually happen. Every business supplier we work with still assumes 7 by default for work machines, and that makes sense because almost everyone I know in business still wants 7. If MS try to strong-arm the likes of Dell and HP into not selling what their customers actually want, I don't know who's going to win, but sign me up for a ring-side seat.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.