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

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.

Comments

Not Surprising

[LeftCoastThinker]

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...

Re:Not Surprising

[Opportunist]

You know what's funny? That there will almost certainly be someone who is willing and able to develop a tool to get rid of it. Maybe for a price, but people are willing and able to pay that price for their privacy.

MS could have had that money. And far more easily than whoever will develop that anti-spy tool.

Re:Not Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable that crap? In Windows 10 Home (that about 80% to 90% of people have) I would love to see how you do that, and auto-update of course, because that "resets"anything to "Microsoft Standard".

Disabling really all crap is only possible in the "enterprise" edition, that is not available for the normal user. Even Windows 10 Pro does not give you the same amount of control you had in Windows 7 or even Windows 8.1. So - no downgrade to Windows 10 for me!

Re:Not Surprising

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Not Surprising

[butzwonker]

The problem is that once a sufficiently large number of people use such a tool, Microsoft will circumvent it, and they have the leverage. They'll just encrypt information vital to the working of the OS (e.g. updates, activation data) together with telemetry.

As much as I hate to say it, this is an issue that requires a juridical, not a technical solution.

Re:Not Surprising

[StormReaver]

Yes, the telemetry features are not a great move, but just disable all of that crap and you're all set.

Just because you think you've disabled it does not mean you've actually disabled it. Microsoft has the sole discretion to completely ignore you, sneak its spyware in through other vectors, or automatically re-enable its spyware at any time it damn well pleases.

Re:Not Surprising

[unixisc]

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

Re:Not Surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

Just because you think you've disabled it does not mean you've actually disabled it. Microsoft has the sole discretion to completely ignore you, sneak its spyware in through other vectors, or automatically re-enable its spyware at any time it damn well pleases.

I had several delayed updates on Windows 10 that re-enabled auto updates and re-enabled every one of their spyware settings. And broken things like webcams, audio devices, and ethernet devices. Computer works one day, then the next its pooched. I even got an infinite reboot feature one time.

And a day with Wireshark will show us that W10 appears to ignore the telemetry settings.

I have this weird requirement for my computers. Whatever else they do, they are required to work reliably. Windows 10 fails miserably in that regard. Windows 8 is administrative whack-a-mole. Windows 7? It works.

I have one Windows 10 setup that works. It is a network that isn't connected to the internet - airgapped by maybe 5 miles. No updates.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

VM's

[Mike Sheen]

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.

All MS has is an operting system

[jenningsthecat]

Clearly, Microsoft isn't really interested in satisfying their desktop users. Instead, they're desperately trying to get into the 'customer as a product' business model, because they sense, (probably correctly), that they're doomed if they don't. That's why they did what they did with Win10 - they want a captive user base whose data they can control and exploit. Bing has been pretty much a failure, and their foray into the mobile market has been a total disaster. They're losing a lot of server business to *nix. They see the likes of Google and Facebook dominating the Web. They see leveraging their desktop presence as the only possible path to the kind of success that others are enjoying, because they no longer posses the imagination to strike out in a truly new direction, and because they're iron-bound by the artery-hardened internal bureaucracy that all big corporations eventually succumb to. Windows 10 was the desperate plan of a dinosaur in its death throes.

Re:surprised

[EnsilZah]

I'm quite fond of the feature where the OS doesn't decide to reboot at arbitrary times without asking permission after installing an update I didn't approve.

Re:surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important "feature" is the UI. And the UI of Windows 8 and 10 is a horrendous clusterfuck of bad design. There are a couple of third party programs that fix some of the problems, but why bother? Why not just use the version that is good right out the box and isn't constantly trying to fuck you.

Re:surprised

[butzwonker]

Well, I strongly prefer an UI like in Windows 7 and want to be in full control of updates. The last point is the most important, because various Windows 7 updates in the past would have destroyed my installation if I hadn't checked before (not) installing them. I'm especially worried about "accidental" problems with dual boot systems, which happened two times in the past.

Apart from that, yes, of course, an OS is good if you don't need to know or care what it is actually doing. It should mainly provide a link to the library programmer and the application programmer, not to the end user. If Windows 10 didn't force updates and had the ordinary look and feel you'd expect from a desktop OS, or allow me to configure it in that way, then I'd be happy using it. A good OS should give you the same desktop experience all the time, with only minimal changes where they make sense, not force you to learn new ways of performing the same tasks every 3-4 years.

No improvement

[sjbe]

Considering that Windows 10 was designed as a "one size fits all" solution that is intended to run on machine with limited power, it's not surprising that in this case the performance is an improvement.

I've run Windows10 and Windows7 on some machines I've upgraded for work. There was no user discernible difference in speed or performance. Maybe there was some minor benchmark difference but it certainly wasn't enough to matter. The boot up times are not meaningfully different, the interfaces didn't speed up, and none of the applications run any better. There might be some under the hood improvements but they certainly aren't obvious.

Also they did away with the flashy Windows 7 UI and replaced it with rectangles - another performance improvement that I don't mind. I like minimal, simple things.

Windows 10 is many things but "minimal" and "simple" are not among them. The rectangle thing isn't easier or simpler, particularly if you are talking about Windows 8... shudder.

Re: Which Windows will help me get nubile girls?

[Type44Q]

Look at the Microsoft shills: so desperate to derail the topic, and so lacking in their ability to actually do so, that this is their chosen strategy. Priceless!

Re:Which Windows will help me get nubile girls?

[stealth_finger]

There is a large number of scientific studies ...

Quotation needed.

There is a large number of scientific studies ...

There you go.

Is this any surprise?

[ilsaloving]

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.

Re:2017 may be "The year of the linux desktop"!

[PRMan]

Well, Linux did just hit a recent high of 2%.

Re:surprised

[EnsilZah]

How about when it informs me that it scheduled an update in an hour and I'm not at the computer, so I don't get to see the popup and I lose my open documents?

How about when I want to reboot because my Wacom driver has stopped working and I don't have 40 minutes to sit through an update install I wasn't aware of because I'm in the middle of actually trying to do some work?

How about when I've delayed the update install a couple of times and now Windows decided I don't get a choice when to reboot and just shuts off?

So now I have the update service disabled and I'm not getting any updates installed instead of installing them at a convenient time like I do on 7.

Re:surprised

[Darinbob]

According to Microsoft, you job is not to use your computer for work, instead your job is to look at the advertisements so that Microsoft makes more money.