66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP 931
An anonymous reader writes "Almost one year after the introduction of Windows 7 it appears that the hype surrounding it has faded. The overall market share of Windows has turned into a slight decline again. Windows 7 is gaining share, but cannot keep pace with the loss of Windows XP and Vista. Especially Windows XP users seem to be happy with what they have and appear to be rather resistant to Microsoft's pitches that it is time to upgrade to Windows 7."
old hardware, probably (Score:5, Interesting)
That's probably the same as saying 66% of all Windows users are on older hardware which was already "good enough." They probably won't get Windows 7 until they buy a new computer. I have Win 7 x64 Pro in a VMWare image and it works relatively well in there, but I had to tweak the settings for the container, and if I run it with less than 2GB of memory allocated, it starts to get pissy. Maybe its different when running it on the physical machine, but I'm somewhat skeptical, and if I were running on an older PC, I'd probably skip the software upgrade and wait for a hardware upgrade.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:5, Interesting)
There are few reasons to upgrade hardware anymore unless you are a gamer or do ultra high end work. There hasn't been anything worthy since the introduction of the c2d. I have a 2008 unibody macbook and will most likely stick with this for the next several years.
I maintain the computers for most of my family. All are running XP and have no intention of upgrading hardware or the OS anytime soon. Most are running XP on core 2 duos or Pentium 4s.
Price (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:2, Interesting)
They probably won't get Windows 7 until they buy a new computer.
Yep.
This machine here that I'm using has had the motherboard replaced twice. The main hard drive with the XP license is still going strong. When that hardrive craps out, I'll put a new one in and make it a Linux box - I refuse to pay the retail price for Windows. Until MS drops the price down to the "MS Tax" rate for retail versions of Windows, I will not buy a retail copy - full version or upgrade.
And then there are the folks who tried the upgrade path only to have to buy the full version anyway because of installation problems and lack of XP license disk - even then, some folks still had problems. I'm not willing to chance it at the prices MS charges.
I still use XP (Score:5, Interesting)
I still use xp.
Everything I've seen suggests that Win7 is a better OS - stability, security, etc.
However we have 6 computers in the house. Two are 3.0+ GHz dual+ CPUs with 4 gigs of RAM; those are the only two that I suspect would run it well. The other 4 range from 2.7 GHz 4 gig RAM (my older gaming rig, that probably could run it) down to a 1 GHz Athlon with 1 gig of RAM.
XP runs "well enough" for everything we want/need to do. I'm uninterested in climbing another learning curve so I can admin 2 different OS's in my house. I'm uninterested in buying new hardware just to all run Win7. I'm uninterested in buying 6 licenses of Win7.
So....no Win7 here, although I readily agree it would probably be a better system on the hardware that could run it. Sorry Microsoft.
I'm not changing in Protest (Score:4, Interesting)
When MS announced that dx10(and up) would not be upgraded in XP and would only be available in win7 (vista doesn't count), I felt cheated. Something that is basically a driver standard should be included in any xp maintenance release. What MS did was strictly a marketing ploy in my mind and an attempt to get money out of my pocket. Considering that this was when xp was very much the main operating system at the time and the announcement came out before there was any new OS, it just seemed to be a pretty shabby trick especially on gamers. So I'm resisting getting win7 until I absolutely have no choice because something I need to do requires win7. Until then I have a reasonable OS on this comp, linux on my other one and see no need to spend hundreds of dollars for basically what I see as $50 worth of upgrades that apply to me. The rest is just worthless junk that in some cases is more of an impediment than anything else.
Re:I still use XP (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand your point here, but "buying new hardware to run Win 7" is only half the battle; the other half is "buying win 7 so my new hardware [drivers] will work". I've had a number of new peripherals; which really are commodities these days; that don't provide XP drivers or anything that will run on XP. It's a sad state of affairs, truly.
For what it's worth, I haven't found Win 7 to be any better than XP in terms of stability. It's no worse in that regard, although the user experience is some better. The learning curve isn't something that should throw you if you've already enough knowledge to admin XP.
Re:Good Enough (Score:4, Interesting)
MS has long been way behind when it comes to eyecandy... I ran enlightenment on my p100 in the late 90s and it looked prettier than windows ever has, but i soon found out that i actually preferred a simple, lightweight unintrusive window manager. All the fancy graphics just serve to increase confusion and reduce performance.
Rightly so (Score:3, Interesting)
There's absolutely no reason for me to upgrade that I see. Windows XP does what I need, and Windows 7 isn't some sort of groundbreaking technology. It hardly adds anything new to the table! Now, if you're just starting out and happen to get Windows 7 on a computer that you buy, that's fine. I'm not saying I hate Windows 7, I'm just saying that there's really no groundbreaking reasons for people to upgrade (and I've seen many people claim that there are). If I do have to upgrade because of compatibility reasons eventually (like for directx), I certainly won't reward Microsoft with my money and obtain Windows 7 through other means.
Some could stay with XP even on a new machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Hope some people start a project to reduce the technical skills needed to pull this off so that non-technical people can follow this route. The rate at which the hardware is improving, the next generation of iPad or its clones would be able to run a full image of an older XP installation on emulation!
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:3, Interesting)
Would the brand new PC from a big box store include the good motherboard and the i5 or i7 CPU?
If yes, then I sense a business opportunity (buy a new PC, sell parts).
If no, then it means that you didn't need that good motherboard or the CPU anyway, so you could just buy a cheaper motherboard and CPU.
For example, my main PC uses a quite expensive dual socket motherboard (Tyan Thunder K8WE or the version from HP xw9300 workstation). When some capacitors on the motherboard failed, I knew that if I did not find anyone to replace the caps and could not do it myself (I can solder, but on simpler PCBs, like single or two layer ones) I would have to buy a new motherboard. Yes, the cost of the motherboard would be more than the cost of a lowest end PC or some used one, but those PCs would be slower than my main PC is, so there would be no point in buying them. This had a happy ending, the cost of replacing the capacitors was ~15EUR.
Re:It makes sense, though... (Score:4, Interesting)
"It's a shame that more people don't just build their own computers and save money, rather than buying a pre-built with pre-installed garbage (software and such, that is). As for Windows 7, there's simply no groundbreaking reason(s) for people to upgrade."
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. My experience has been that between the streamlining and the extra speed (on a dual core 64-bit Athlon with 6 GB of RAM, Win7 is faster than XP is), and the extra security features, Windows 7 is heads-and-shoulders above XP. It IS better.
However, at the same time, Windows XP is a good system that does what it needs to, and generally does it well. And, I can understand why somebody would keep using it rather than upgrade when they don't need to.
Aside from which, building your own system does require a decent amount of knowledge, and time. For a lot of people, buying a pre-built system is the better way to go. Uninstalling the garbage is easier than building the system from scratch.
Re:How is this news. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously. I already figured that a lot of people still used XP and whats with the "Almost one year after" part. Was it a slow news day?
There are plenty of people still using Windows 98. The Slashdot crowd represents large numbers of people that use their systems for more than word processing and basic Internet functionality ("yeah, I run OSX in a VM under Linux".) All of us here enjoy learning new things, trying out new features and capabilities, and that's because, at the core, we're geeks. Heck, to us, the novelty of some new aspect of our favorite OS is fun.That's not true in the real world, where the bulk of users have systems that are already way faster than they will ever, ever need and to whom familiarity is more important than some arbitrary set of features. They finally figured out how to make their computer do those things that they want it to do, and simply do not care about anything else. Matter of fact, they consider being forced to upgrade as an entirely unreasonable proposition, and will fight it.
Okay, I'll make a car analogy. Those of us who learned to drive, learned it once. We don't have to re-learn it every time a new generation of automobiles comes out, and in fact we'd be torqued into pretzels if we were forced to do so. Yet, for a lot of people who look at computers as just another appliance like their car or their refrigerator, they only want to learn how to use it once. Asking ordinary people to repeat what was, to them, a difficult experience just because they bought a new appliance (e.g., a new personal computer) is going to cause trouble. In the case of Microsoft Windows, I cannot say that they're necessarily wrong in feeling that way, considering how much of Microsoft's business model revolves around changing things just to sell more copies.
I have friends that had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into Windows 2000 because "the icons were all different", and I can't face the thought of trying to get them to go to Window XP, much less Windows 7. Just not worth the effort, for them or me. It's easier to just keep scrounging old parts from my junkbox (which I haven't cleaned out in ten years for just this reason) than to try and convince them to "upgrade". Eventually that won't be possible and they're going to have to go out and buy a new system with whatever OS is the latest and greatest. Now, frankly I don't want to be around when that happens. It's going to be thermonuclear, and I don't want to find myself an incised shadow on the wall.
Re:My Motto (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsofts Real customers (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I would expect any less from this crowd (myself and virtually every one I know included), it seems that every family, sometimes it rolls over to aunts/uncles, grandparents, cousins, too, has an computer person in their family who has almost complete power over what computer they will be using because thy do not know anything about it. Perhaps instead of marketing to the individual with the 'i created windows' shit, they should have aimed towards the family IT guys with something that makes their lives easier. Myself and my cousin told our families that we would not support them if they used windows, so now all of our family members use macs and the only issues I have are helping them figure out how to use MS office. Like previous commenters have said that they did not want to support multiple operating systems, I certain was not going to learn the quirks of 7 just for my family.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:5, Interesting)
Couldn't disagree with you more.
Search works fine. Works great. Of course, you have to know how to use it...
I'm an advance user, and a software devleoper. I live in Windows every day. Windows 7 is so vastly superior to XP that I don't even know where to start. Everything I do is faster and easer in Windows 7. There are more "power-user" short-cuts and keystrokes and features in Windows 7 than XP ever even dreamed of.
It's actually painful for me to go back to XP. I can't find anything. It's annoying as hell.
For advanced users, Windows 7 just plain WORKS BETTER than XP, on pretty much every level. I'm not sure how you can possibly say otherwise.
It's a hidden folder (Score:3, Interesting)
CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA
And on my English copy of Windows XP Home Edition, this resolves to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data. So why does Windows mark this folder hidden so that the end user can't easily back up the files inside to removable media or send them to other people over the Internet?
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:3, Interesting)
+1... I'm still running a Thinkpad X41T as my main machine, and for day to day work it's perfectly fine. I also have a 15.4" WSXGA+ machine with a Core2Duo for heavy(ish... Cubase, Handbrake, Photoshop, occasional WiFi module compilation for Android... nothing very taxing really) lifting, but when I don't need the screen real-estate, I usually just RDP in from the couch...
Re:Integrated peripherals (Score:3, Interesting)
And then you have to decide:
1. Spend no money and do without sound on the laptop.
2. Spend $x for an external sound card. You will need to carry it with your laptop if you want sound.
3. Spend $y (y >> x) for a new laptop.
And that depends entirely on what you value more. Personally, I'd rather carry the external sound card if I want sound (which is not always) and save $(y-x). After all, instead of buying a new (and expensive) laptop battery (current one lasts ~30minutes) I either look for an outlet or if I want to work where there is no electricity, I take a 12V 7Ah sealed lead-acid battery (or two of them, depending on how long I plan to use the laptop) and a 12V->19V converter.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:5, Interesting)
Which demonstrates the real issue quite nicely: it's not about OS's or apps anymore. Desktops are seen as overly thick web clients with a word processor.
Re:My Motto (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I'm not changing in Protest (Score:2, Interesting)
Well I can't argue with you on the technical claims you make regarding the redesign depth. But I do take umbrage with you saying it isn't the kind of thing you want to push out in a service pack. MS has done major kernel changes that they have pushed out over XP's life. In fact the whole idea of Dx was to handle the different API's so you can and that includes replacing an API completely. I really don't see this to be much different.
My nvidia card only needed it's driver updated for 3D I certainly don't need dx10 just to obtain 3D. The 3D is working fine on my card as far as I see, although I've done nothing more than test function after installing it. I never even mentioned 3d in relation to dx10 and in fact didn't know dx10 was for 3d at all. I seem to remember as far as PC's were concerned it had more todo with new realistic texturing methods. I don't own an xbox so could care less about the problems there with 3D.
Dx10 is nothing different than going from dx8 to 9 in my mind. I'd like a far better explanation than it was 'hand in glove with the drivers'. Isn't that exactly what x10 is supposed to do just like dx9 was meant to do. An interface standard between the drivers.
In fact this is all wiki says about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX [wikipedia.org]
"""Direct3D 9Ex, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 are only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 because each of these new versions were built to depend upon the new Windows Display Driver Model that was introduced for Windows Vista. The new Vista/WDDM graphics architecture includes a new video memory manager that supports virtualizing graphics hardware to multiple applications and services such as the Desktop Window Manager.""""
MS=one more item to simply try to force an upgrade. Nothing to do with a technical challenge that made it impossible. In fact there have been some dx10 emulators for XP
http://www.google.ca/search?q=umbridge+definition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&expIds=25657,26714,26781&xhr=t&q=dx10+for+xp&cp=5&pf=p&sclient=psy&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=dx10+definition&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=45594ad3fad1e662 [google.ca]
I can't quote on how well they work but it certainly seems to demonstrate that dx10 was nothing more than a marketing ploy. Nothing more.
Sorry Chaos but I'm not buying into it. But that's my opinion.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:2, Interesting)
For advanced users, Windows 7 just plain WORKS BETTER than XP, on pretty much every level. I'm not sure how you can possibly say otherwise.
OK here's just a few examples:
1) In my original post, I gave an example of a problem I had with Windows 7 search. Care to show how to get Windows 7 search to work in that case?
Here is the problem again: say you have a directory called ABC. In that directory there are many text files. A few of them contain the word ABC. The rest don't. Using the Windows 7 search how do you find those few files that contain the word ABC while excluding the files that don't?
Worse, even in less problematic cases, the index often gets out of date, so it finds a file that doesn't have the word ABC in it, or it only finds some of them not all... It basically cannot be relied on.
2) In Windows XP I can set things up so that I can launch/do different things with just a few key strokes. I need more key strokes to do that with Windows 7. How I do it on XP? I switch to classic mode. Then create folders in the start menu and name them stuff like
"1 Explore" ...
"2 Tools"
"3 Launch"
"4 Command Prompt"
"7 Connect to"
So to explore the my desktop I would press winkey, 1, 1. To Explore My Documents I would press winkey, 1, 3. winkey, 1, c for C drive. winkey, 1, F for F drive.
To launch the windows calculator, I would press winkey, 2, c.
To launch an app I would press winkey, 3,
To connect to my home server I would press winkey, 7, 1. To connect to my firewall I would press winkey, 7, 6.
To set this up on a new XP system, I just copy the relevant folders over, and voila it works (the app paths may have to be tweaked of course).
In comparison, the Windows 7 start menu search often requires me to type winkey, ENTIRE FIRST WORD of the app I need to launch - partial match doesn't always work. Furthermore the Windows 7 taskbar pinning thing only allows you to quick launch a max of 10 (or is it 9?) different items (winkey+number).
3) On Win XP I can just right click on a task button I want to close and press C. You need more steps/keys to do a similar thing on Windows 7- the fancy way even requires you to wait for the GUI to pop stuff up first, the alternative is left click on taskbutton, alt+f4 (but that's more keys, a greater stretch and slower :) ).
So Windows 7 is slower for me and I see no way of getting it to do stuff at the same speed as I have on XP.
I would be very happy if you can actually show me how to get windows 7 to do things faster or better than I do on XP.
Most new Windows 7 users are unaware that many of the short cuts already exist for Windows XP. Windows XP also has a lot of short cuts and key strokes, and as my "2)" example shows, you can make your own customized short cuts.
For quick switching amongst more than two different tasks/windows I use my own program (LinkKey http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ [sourceforge.net] ) whether on XP or Win7.
alt-tab works fine for switching between two windows. Not so well if you need to quickly switch amongst four or more.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people are willing to repair their systems to a point, but I've ended up with a lot of working systems I built out of non-working systems people gave to me.
Just yesterday, I donated two desktops to my local library. They were built from spare parts I acquired from people who were waiting for their computer to fail so they'd have an excuse to buy a new one. Once it went, they just gave the old system to me. One system just needed a new hard drive and the other just needed a new PSU. I even told them it was an easy repair and offered to do it but like I said, they were looking for an excuse to trade up.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:3, Interesting)
The other place that I saved a bunch on energy costs by buying a new computer was my TV. I switched to a HULU/Netflix/XBMC setup for TV and canceled my satellite. I figured the $90 a month savings alone was worth it. Once I started setting it up, I tested with a Kill-A-Watt, and found that the DishNetwork equipment that ran 24/7 was pulling ~90 watts. The PCs that have replaced it is a Acer Revo that pulls 20watts, and doubles as a file server for the house, and a Gateway that pulls 50 watts. The key being that the Gateway goes into a 2watt sleep mode for 90% of the time.
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:4, Interesting)
It is? I managed to save quite a bit of money (a few hundred) building my own computer rather than buying a pre-built one with nearly the same specs.
Really. Especially if you cruise online suppliers looking for a good combo deal, they show up now and then. In my case, I got a nice Micro-ATX motherboard with a 64-bit Athlon 3000+ CPU for fifty bucks off Newegg last year. Even with case, RAM and DVD player it was under two hundred. I wasn't sure of the motherboard video (reviews said it didn't handle 1920x1080 well) so I added another $35 for an ATI slimline video card with HDMI out. This machine sits in living room connected to my TV, but it's otherwise a pretty decent PC. Looks slick too: people think it's just a DVD player.
Re:My Motto (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Motto (Score:3, Interesting)
The easiest way is to left click the network icon in the lower right cornder and select "Open Network and sharing center" then click the "Local Area Connection" link and the dialog pops up. That's 3 clicks, which is actually shorter than XP. XP requires at least 4 (right click Network dialog click properties, right click interface, choose properties)
Everyone likes to think that 7 buries stuff deeper, but in reality, almost everything is 2 or 3 clicks away from the desktop.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:old hardware, probably (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you telling me you manually number everything in your start menu you could ever possibly want to launch?
No just the common ones. And it's easy to add to or extend. Just drag a shortcut you want to "2 Tools" or whatever and rename it accordingly (if necessary). It's basically organizing the stuff I commonly use in the start menu in a hierarchical manner.
The other benefit is if you forget the shortcut sequence you can still find it by using the start menu, and traversing the relevant categories.
IMO the Win9x UI designers were actually quite clever ( with the Win9x/NT/2K/XP/Vista/7 UI you can even add shortcuts to the SendTo menu so that you can open any file with whatever program you choose - e.g. hexeditor. Just place/make your app shortcut in the SendTo folder. Quick and easy ).
Whereas the recent UI (and other) changes haven't really improved things much, kinda disappointing - they spent billions and that's what we get?
If you need to switch between two or four Windows, and alt-tabbing is "too slow", hit win-tab and click on the window you want. Or use the winkey+number shortcuts to switch to that program on your taskbar - they're shipping your linkkey program with Windows, so be happy.
win-tab doesn't work well when I have lots of windows open. I already mentioned winkey+number in my previous post, so I'm well aware of what it does and how it works (along with ctrl+winkey+number). And it's not the same thing as what my linkkey program does, which allows you to _quickly_ associate alt+number with a particular window. Or bind the "last 9 most recently used windows" with alt/win 1-9.
So if I have 30 windows open I can choose to quickly work with a subset of them. Then switch to work with another subset.
Why would I have so many windows open? I don't see the point of opening and closing stuff if I'll be using it again soon, esp since I don't have an SSD yet. That'll actually work out slower since I'd have to do winkey, type first few letters of shortcut, launch/open the program/document etc, rather than just click on the relevant taskbutton or "alt+number" (if I have the window bound).
The number of windows starts to add up: a few explorer windows open for common locations: e.g. "my documents", code tree private, code tree "published", network share #1, network share #2. Emails, Editor windows. browser windows for work related stuff (references, man pages etc). browser windows for misc stuff (e.g. slashdot). ssh connections to various machines. IM windows - colleagues, friends etc.
In theory I could use "screen" (the CLI program) like a friend who uses OSX. But I think it's funny to use a GUI and then actually resort to using screen for "window"/task management.
I don't get your #3 complaint - you already used the mouse to right-click on the program. Why don't you just move it 20 pixels up and click it again?
Uh, it's faster? Basically when I'm finally done with a working set of windows (out of the dozens), I can close them rapidly, by just right clicking on the relevant ones and pressing C.
What would be even faster is if I could quickly bind winkey+ to a particular "tab" in a window. Then I wouldn't need to resort to opening stuff in a new window just to make them fast to switch amongst (via alt tab etc). In which case I would have a working set of tabs, and closing the working set would be just a matter of closing the window containing those tabs, or a branch of tabs ( I use Treestyle Tabs in firefox).
All that time saved allows me to waste it on Slashdot or wherever ;).