66% Of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP?

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According to this article, almost 66% of all Windows users are still on Windows XP. I hear this statistic repeated all the time but I just don’t see this as the case among computer enthusiasts. It makes you wonder how and where this data was collected:

New market share data recently released by Net Applications puts XP’s market share at 60.03%, down from 60.89% in the month before. Windows Vista fell from 14.00% to 13.35%, while Windows 7 gained 1.25 points to 17.10%. It is interesting to see that Vista and XP lost a combined 1.51 points in September: The difference between the gain of 7 and the loss of Vista/XP represents 100% of the Windows market share loss, which was down 0.25 points to 91.08% in September.
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Just FYI, our data shows that you guys prefer the opposite. Windows XP is at 27%, Windows 7 is 61% and all other versions (including Vista) are at 11%.
 
Hehe... you said Vista. hehehehe

In all seriousness, it took me a while to adopt Windows 7 from XP. I really loved XP after SP2. Now that I'm on 7 and used to it I'll never look back.
 
While yes, the enthusiast may very well love Windows 7 (like myself) I work in a post secondary institution and for us to switch around 1800 pc's from Win XP to 7 would be/is going to be a MONUMENTAL shift in the way we do our computing....and that's not even including the man power to upgrade all those machines (even though we use imaging software like Altiris)

So for now, XP it is...except for me, I have Win7 on my workstation lol
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
Hehe... you said Vista. hehehehe

In all seriousness, it took me a while to adopt Windows 7 from XP. I really loved XP after SP2. Now that I'm on 7 and used to it I'll never look back.
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Same thing.

I stuck with XP for the longest time, as I heard so may horror stories about Vista, and I didn't think that upgrading to Vista would actually have bought me anything.

Summer of 2009, when I built a new rig I was forced to upgrade, as the Windows XP install disk didn't support my USB controller, and my new rig didn't have any PS/2 ports.

I bought Vista x64 Business and it came with a free upgrade to Windows 7 x64 Professional.

At first Vista felt a little bit more sluggish, and like it was using a lot of ram, but now that I am on 7, I would never voluntarily go back.

I - unlike most I suspect - actually have a lot of experience switching back and forth between Windows 7 and XP on the same machine. (I use my work laptop at home often, by popping a different drive in th edrive slot, and booting up in 7 instead of XP.

XP definitely feels more light weight, but it also trips up on stuff more often. Occasionally there are real slowdowns under hard drive load, and it slows dwn on certain web pages. (www.futuremark.com/hardware is one of them for some reason)

Windows 7 feels a little bit bulkier at start, but not much, but it always alao feels smooth. It appears to manage system resources better. I alos like the UI improvements. I think what I miss the most in XP after getting used to Win 7 is the "snap to" feature, allowing you to drag a window to the side and have it automatically fit to half the screen. I love this feature.
 
Considering XP is still a solid OS, that figure isn't surprising. Apart from the security implications and its lack of more modern performance and usability features, XP is damn usable. Use it at work here every day without yearning too much for Windows 7 (which I use at home). I suppose the consequence of making genuinely good operating systems is that future releases are less likely to be rapidly adopted. Given Microsoft's practical monopoly, though, I don't think that's of particularly great concern to them — XP users are going to upgrade eventually. Maybe not this year, and maybe not next year, but eventually they'll get on board.
 
28996986.jpg


Represent 3.25.
 
Also, I think people are choosing this web statistics firm over others for shock value, because it has the highest XP usage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_market_share which has 8 different web statistics firms stats, puts the median XP usage at 48%, and Windows 7 at 19%, which is damn good after only 1 year.
 
phide said:
Considering XP is still a solid OS, that figure isn't surprising. Apart from the security implications and its lack of more modern performance and usability features, XP is damn usable. Use it at work here every day without yearning too much for Windows 7 (which I use at home). I suppose the consequence of making genuinely good operating systems is that future releases are less likely to be rapidly adopted. Given Microsoft's practical monopoly, though, I don't think that's of particularly great concern to them — XP users are going to upgrade eventually. Maybe not this year, and maybe not next year, but eventually they'll get on board.
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Bullshit. These people hate everything about the pc world. I remember when people debated if Mice or GUIS would be helpful.

These people hate change, and will hold on to their Xp discs until death. And I would rather they do since the computer world isn't for them.
 
I think the vast majority of Windows versions' market share change come from new PC sales. Pretty much nobody outside of the enthusiast demographic really thinks about OS upgrades. Hell, most of them don't even run updates.

...although I did have a guy yesterday ask me how much it would be to install Win 7 on his generation 1 Celeron PC with 256 mb ram.
 
I stuck with XP until Vista SP1. I haven't passed on an upgrade since. I would rather use Vista than XP, and I am very happy with Windows 7.
 
Zellio, you manage thousands of PC's and you too will see why people "will hold onto their xp discs until death".
 
According to the Steam Hardware survey The following is true: (percentages recalculated to consider PC only users)

Code: 
42.9%     Windows 7 of any kind
34.6%     Windows XP
22.1%     Vista if any kind
 1.1%     Other (Includes XP 64bit/ Windows 2003 Server)

Now I know that the market in general is different from those that play games on steam (Gamers tend to ahve more up to date hrdware and software) but it still paints a different picture...
 
Who said I don't? I'm not even refering to business users here, try going to any computer repair shop and see how resistant the average person is to change.
 
I worked in a repair shop for 4 years. It's not a resistance to change, it's a resistance to spending money.
 
It doesn't matter what the resistance is. It will weed out the change resisters the same way a mouse and GUI did years ago.
 
Zellio2010 said:
Who said I don't? I'm not even refering to business users here, try going to any computer repair shop and see how resistant the average person is to change.
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The interesting part is that I think this applies to the medium tech savvy only.

Most people who only ever buy ther computers from a big box store and use whatever OS is included on them don't really have a choice that they are aware of.

They use their 1997 era best buy PC until it dies without ever having taken the case off or upgraded it, and then replace it with a new one. They Get Vista or Windows 7 today.

its those who have enough technical skill to actually take out their old XP disk and replace the Vista or 7 on their new computer with XP that account for these numbers. (except for the business users who don't have a choice, of course)
 
AT home
i have an dying notebook on xp (its 8yrs old)

3 desktops on windows 7
1 desktop- not currently hooked to anything on xp (have to get a monitor) this is going to be rebuilt- with xp most likely(since i have 3 versions of xp i can install for free)- for my 6yr old twins.


at work we have 7 computers;
5 are on xp
2 are on vista
 
I have 5 computers one a new laptop has windows 7. I had two laptops that came with vista but I changed them to XP. I don't take to change well and have often thought of changing this laptop to XP. This Lenovo has the XP drivers and I have them downloaded. Drivers are probably one big reason people do not go back to XP.
 
A lot of the XP machines are utilized by over 65 adults who wish to hold onto their XP machines till they die so they don't have to learn a new OS. As well as businesses that have 1000's of XP machines. I have no XP machines remaining as I didn't want to stay in the dark ages in concerns to gaming graphics.
 
PornoSatan said:
The energizer bunny of OS's, the result of making something a little too good that it's detrimental to your future product sales.
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No, it's the result of a stagnating market that becomes resistant to change. XP was around for like 7 years before Vista came out. People became familiar with all it's flaws and quirks, which makes changing to something genuinely better very hard (and yes, Vista *is* better, and 7 is a lot better).

XP itself really isn't a good OS, it's rather mediocre at best.

For the inevitable car analogy, think back to your first car (for many people, XP was their first OS). Most people probably had a junker for their first car. Stuff didn't work, pieces would fall off, etc... But they still probably loved it. The flaws gave it charm. The way only the owner could make it go made it special. My first car was a POS, but dammit, it was *MY* POS and I loved it. XP is like that. It's crap, but it's familiar and beloved crap.
 
XP may be "crap" for you, but it's got A LOT of benefits for everyone else but the hardcore user. Not everyone upgrades because they can - people upgrade because they either:

a. have a need or b. have no choice.

For me, at home, I've upgraded my 4 pc's to Windows 7 the moment I could, at work I would be happy if we never changed due to the massive amounts of headaches such a upgrade will cause.
 
The problem is that people still believe Vista is a terrible OS and their sentiments are carrying over to Win7 too. I was at Fry's the other day and there was a guy telling his wife that they needed to get a Mac because they couldn't buy a computer with XP on it and that he didn't want to deal with a Vista or Windows 7 because they were so bad. Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot with Vista and the Apple adds ripping it didn't help. It's sad how many people take those I'm a Mac adds as the truth.
 
XP user here.. The only thing that really bothers me is what has already been said, I have 8 gigs of RAM but can only use 3. Maybe I should have only bought 4 and saved the rest of my cash for Win 7 since that is the only thing holding me from switching to 7.
 
For a business, there still aren't a ton of reasons to move to 7 or Vista. XP does a fine job with Office, browsing (as long as you're on IE7 or later), and most of the typical office databases and client management software programs people tend to use at work. Even the newer Adobe CS programs still work fine in XP in-spite of some handicaps.
My parent company literally has hundreds of thousands of computers and 96% of them are on XP just because it works with everything and the support guys can handle problems universally.
I had to pretty much beg for a Win7 machine for multimedia design. I had to agree that everything I do is "unsupported" (not like I care).
 
People get too overwhelmed by change...

I held onto XP for the sake of money at first, then to let it be out there for a while and see how well it was doing. When I finally took the plunge, I just bought a new drive, installed it, and never looked back.

Never used Vista, but Win 7 has been fantastic and, honestly, is far easier to use and far more intuitive than XP by a long-shot.

I do have to keep a small system with XP on it for proggies that aren't supported by Win 7, but I don't use them often, so it's not a problem.

I honestly love everything about Win 7, though at first didn't know if I'd ever switch until forced, but when I finally did, it was more than worth the switch.
 
My work is mostly still XP, I am upgrading people as we replace their old computer with new ones. Actually had a few people get windows 7 on newer personal computers, loved it and wanted to know when i was going to be upgrading their office computer as they think windows 7 is a lot better than XP.
 
Betaboy1983 said:
XP user here.. The only thing that really bothers me is what has already been said, I have 8 gigs of RAM but can only use 3. Maybe I should have only bought 4 and saved the rest of my cash for Win 7 since that is the only thing holding me from switching to 7.
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Even if you bought Win7, you'd still have 3GB. UNLESS you bought the 64bit version of Win7, which in this case you can also use XP64bit.
 
Dr.LaRd said:
heh, considering we have a hard enough time with people understanding Windows XP....:eek:
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The general users in my office are on XP & Office 2003. It would be a waste of time to upgrade the old P4 systems to Windows 7, and the users would be lost with the new GUI on Office. Not looking forward to the day I finally have to upgrade them.

As for the more technical users (programers, support, consultants, etc), most are already running Windows 7 64 bit & Office 2007. Only question is weither they need 4GB or 8GB or memory. Every new system (other than servers) I've bought this year has come Windows 7 64 bit.

To sum it up:
Older 32 bit systems = Windows XP
Newer 64 bit capable systems - Windows 7 64 bit.

Same with servers:
Older 32 bit systems = Windows 2003
Newer 64 bit capable systems - Windows 2008 64 bit.
 
Vista is a terrible OS, it annoys every time I service one unless the hdd's is in raid 0 so it can handle the disk load (system restore/trustedinstaller/shadow copy service and superfetch) turning superfetch and system restore off resolves most of them issues

xp or Win7 works very nice and predictable speeds where as vista has It's go slow moments above
 
Man, c'mon. I understand holding out because of Vista and being spooked but really: Move forward to Windows 7 guys and never look back. It's worth it.
 
the-one1 said:
Even if you bought Win7, you'd still have 3GB. UNLESS you bought the 64bit version of Win7, which in this case you can also use XP64bit.
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You don't have to 'buy' the 64-bit version of Windows 7, Windows 7 comes with both the 32-bit and 64-bit disc.
 
Blown 89 said:
The problem is that people still believe Vista is a terrible OS and their sentiments are carrying over to Win7 too.
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Vista WAS a terrible OS. I had to downgrade several laptops to XP due to the problems/slowness.

I still have a few people in the office using Vista, and will be glad once I've finally upgraded them to Windows 7. It's amazing how much better the same Laptop (2Ghz dual core/4GB ram) runs under Windows 7 64 bit as compared to Vista (32 bit).
 
kllrnohj said:
No, it's the result of a stagnating market that becomes resistant to change. XP was around for like 7 years before Vista came out. People became familiar with all it's flaws and quirks, which makes changing to something genuinely better very hard (and yes, Vista *is* better, and 7 is a lot better).

XP itself really isn't a good OS, it's rather mediocre at best.

For the inevitable car analogy, think back to your first car (for many people, XP was their first OS). Most people probably had a junker for their first car. Stuff didn't work, pieces would fall off, etc... But they still probably loved it. The flaws gave it charm. The way only the owner could make it go made it special. My first car was a POS, but dammit, it was *MY* POS and I loved it. XP is like that. It's crap, but it's familiar and beloved crap.
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Most people, and I'm including techy people don't even know how an OS works at the technical level. Or what has been changed at that level when they call an OS "better", or even how to identify a potential area for improvement in the first place. How it manages memory better, how the IO management is better, and so on. These aren't what people talk about when they say an OS is "better", if it was it would be discussed alot more. All people care about is a more sleak user interface, more initial hardware support, and even less configuration for plug and play devices. Satisfy those three, and people will flock to it regardless.
 
nutzo said:
Vista WAS a terrible OS. I had to downgrade several laptops to XP due to the problems/slowness.

I still have a few people in the office using Vista, and will be glad once I've finally upgraded them to Windows 7. It's amazing how much better the same Laptop (2Ghz dual core/4GB ram) runs under Windows 7 64 bit as compared to Vista (32 bit).
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Vista performed better for me than XP, and was actually stable under conditions that XP just crumbled/crashed under. Granted at the time I was pushing my hardware much more than your average person (8GB when most were at 2GB, and yet it was still being completely used by the applications I was using)
 
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