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Windows 7 and 8.1 Are Gaining More New Users Than Windows 10 (digitaltrends.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the stunted-growth dept.

New submitter TroII writes: After Microsoft ended its year-long "free" Windows 10 offer, new installations have slowed predictably. But in an unexpected turn, October saw more new installs of both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 than of Windows 10. Compared to September's numbers, market share increased only 0.06% for Windows 10, while new installations of Windows 7 and 8.1 were an order of magnitude higher at 0.68%. According to tracking firm NetMarketShare, Windows 7 is still by far the most popular version of the OS, installed on more than twice as many computers as Microsoft's latest offering.

9 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Not Surprising by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is not a big shock after the tactics that MS has used. They have burned a lot of bridges with win 10 and those of us stuck in the Windows ecosystem are snatching up the best, most stable version, Windows 7. Be prepared for lawsuits though, as it looks like MS is going to try and shove the crappiest parts of Windows 10 on us through bundled updates...

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    1. Re:Not Surprising by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think I'm one of the very few people who likes Windows 10. Yes, the telemetry features are not a great move, but just disable all of that crap and you're all set.
      Windows 10 uses less resources and starts up faster than my previous Windows 7. But the real improvements where on my girl's older laptop, where the update from 7 to 10 worked wonders by greatly improving startup times and no longer locking up randomly when starting or using a browser. HD video on Netflix or Amazon Prime is greatly improved. She was very sceptical about the update because she preferred the "nicer" look of 7 compared to 10's spartan look and feel, but has had zero regrets after the update.

      I have also had no incompatibility problems with applications and everything worked just as before, after updating. I was actually very surprised about how smooth the update was. I also like how 10 will explicitly ask me before performing updates and not simply decide to shut down and restart whenever it sees fit, like all previous versions of Windows seemed to do.

      I don't use Cortana and whatever other privacy invading crap there might be, and as standard Windows installation for gaming and media, I think Windows 10 is better than 7.

    2. Re:Not Surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Windows 10 uses less resources and starts up faster than my previous Windows 7

      I've heard the same claim about every Windows version since Windows 95. Every version is faster than the previous version. Let me just dig out a 386 machine, and you can prove how lightning fast Windows 10 is...

      Meanwhile, the company I work at is buying everyone new PCs, because the old ones have become too slow since upgrading to Windows 10. Except mine, my PC is still running Windows 7, and is plenty fast for a Windows PC.

    3. Re:Not Surprising by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The weird thing is that Microsoft seems to have adopted suicide as a business model. Their main competitor is Android creeping up with the 'it's all free, in exchange for all of your personal data' business model. They had a perfect opportunity for differentiating all of their products: you pay for them, but Microsoft protects your privacy and if you don't want to use their cloud offerings then they'll happily sell you the software to run the server parts for your organisation. They even ran some adverts about Hotmail not scanning your mail for targeted ads. Instead, they decided to compete directly with Google in a field in which Google is far more experienced.

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    4. Re:Not Surprising by unixisc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The weird thing is that Microsoft seems to have adopted suicide as a business model. Their main competitor is Android creeping up with the 'it's all free, in exchange for all of your personal data' business model. They had a perfect opportunity for differentiating all of their products: you pay for them, but Microsoft protects your privacy and if you don't want to use their cloud offerings then they'll happily sell you the software to run the server parts for your organisation. They even ran some adverts about Hotmail not scanning your mail for targeted ads. Instead, they decided to compete directly with Google in a field in which Google is far more experienced.

      The niche that you are talking about seems to have been partly taken by Apple. Only that their laptops are costlier. But Apple does protect your privacy, and it does provide quality software. Only thing - they don't seem to be interested in the Business sector, given the high maintenance that it is, so that is probably where Microsoft could have done what you suggest. Wonder how Satya managed to sell Bill that bill of goods about making things free and selling the data. In fact, Windows 10 is no longer free, so honestly, Microsoft has no valid reason to keep collecting our data, assuming it ever had one

  2. Unsurprising by some+old+guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a hard-core MMORPG'er, I got fed up with the wasted resources being hogged up by unwanted crap like Cortana and went back to Win 7, which amazingly enough still runs all of my work-related Rockwell and Siemens stuff just fine. Screw Windows 10.

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  3. VM's by Mike+Sheen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    About once a month I install Windows 7 on a VM to test out my application on that OS. I wonder if such activity taints the analysis. My application has "online help" which uses a web browser to deliver help when the user presses "F1" - stats from visitors to that webserver that shows unique Windows 7 declined from 31% in Oct 2015 to 10% in Oct 2016, compared to unique Windows 10 users growing from 38% to 53% in the same period.

  4. Re:surprised by fbobraga · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it's related to corporate users: corporations avoiding win10 is quite common, where security is a high concern...

  5. Is this any surprise? by ilsaloving · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did a trial of some Lenovo laptops with Windows 10 enterprise at work. When the Anniversary update came out, they all got hosed. One was completely unrecoverable so I trashed the whole thing and put Windows 7 on it. The rest managed to back out, but still lost a day of productivity in the process.

    Microsoft has demonstrated quite clearly that they do not have the ability to successfully update their own OS without causing all hell to break loose.

    And to make matters worse, Home and Pro users cannot opt out of updates and telemetry. Microsoft even disabled the group policy elements for it.

    And meanwhile, Apple *could* be raking in marketshare from Microsoft's screwups, but unfortunately they appear to have their own collectives heads shoved up their asses as well.

    So now Linux is starting to gain popularity. Between Chromebooks and machines being pre-loaded with Ubuntu, I really hope Linux tightens the screws on all these old guard companies that have lost their way.