66% Of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP?

[brom42]

Your entire post was full of FUD but I'm replying to this because I don't have all day to argue with people like you on the internet. I dual boot the latest version of Ubuntu and Win 7 on my laptop. Here are the boot times:

Acer 1410t, SU2300 cpu, 4gig ram:

Ubuntu 10.04:
Power button to complete: 35.4s
Shutdown click to actual shutdown: 14.7s

Windows 7 Pro 64:
Power button to complete: 26.5s
Shutdown click to actual shutdown: 7.3s

2/3rds of my boot time is getting past the BIOS screen. I like OSX, but my MacBook Pro both wakes up and boots much slower than my Win7 boxes.

I deployed Windows 7 and Office 2010 to about 2/3rds of my users over the summer. The remaining people are still on XP. I do not fix XP machines any more. If an XP user has a problem with their machine, they get upgraded to Windows 7.

When I deployed it, I literally got 0 complaints about the upgrade, however people told me over and over how much more they like Windows 7 and how much faster it is. In my eyes XP is dead.

One big thing is I had to give up on going 64bit. Too many things we had only had 32bit unsigned drivers. So I ordered all the new laptops with 3gb of ram, which for the average teacher/office worker is way more than enough.

 

[Blown 89]

The thrashing is the indexing service and media streaming FYI. If you spent as much time googling it as you do bitching like a school girl about it you would have fixed the problem already.

 

[weebling1]

i believe the 66% is factual

I was really hesitant to spend $100+ to replace something that worked fine before a new hardware upgrade. I believe the common people will move to Win7 when they buy new computers and get it included.

 

[Shotglass01]

This is weird, Steam survey for Sept. shows a +1.39% gain for XP 32 bit and a loss of -1.88% for 7 64 bit. From Steam, I would have expected the opposite.

I like XP 64 bit. I like 7 64 bit. I haven't done a 32 bit in quite a while.

 

[nutzo]

Acer 1410t, SU2300 cpu, 4gig ram:

Great little laptop for the price, glad I bought one when they first came out.
Still just running 2gb on mine as I don't use it that often, and then just for email, web, and watching video.

 

[Nanan]

Upgrading the OS on a computer is about as useful as putting aftermarket Autozone mufflers on your car, ooh shiny!

By the time the OS is out of date the computer hardware is very out of date and more often then not the drivers needed to run the computer and the gear that goes with it were never updated. Dell laptop, nope, graphics and sound drivers, Eee 1000HE, nope graphics and wireless drivers... print spooler & CNC file share server at work, nope, printer and CNC machine drivers...

 

[drakken]

I finally broke down and switched full time to win 7 x64 this month even though I beta tested it for microsoft, and had copy on drive just never got around to moving over. Now that I have, I only ran into one problem so far my DVD(slashHD/BluRay) drive disappeared and I had to edit registry lines to fix, still don't know what the upper and lower filters where supposed to do but that and having to emulate any 16 bit software I have is the only downsides so far. And you can run 16 bit software in the vitual xp mode since it is a 32 bit copy of windows xp.

 

[phide]

2/3rds of my boot time is getting past the BIOS screen. I like OSX, but my MacBook Pro both wakes up and boots much slower than my Win7 boxes.

Same. However, I've found that OS X is ready to go pretty much as soon as I log in while Windows tends to be quite sluggish for up to a minute after login. OS X starts up Finder and goes through starting Spotlight services after login, so there can be a small amount of lag time there, but it's pretty insignificant in my experience. For Windows, though, it seems that in order to shorten the boot time they've merely shuffled processes around from the boot process to after user login, so it isn't an entirely fair comparison in my opinion. You can get to a desktop very quickly but not a very usable one. Ubuntu is better than both Windows and OS X in this respect.

The thrashing is the indexing service and media streaming FYI. If you spent as much time googling it as you do bitching like a school girl about it you would have fixed the problem already.

How does one "fix" the indexer without disabling it? By default, Windows 7 only indexes a handful of locations, but if many files are being indexed in those locations, you're going to get some thrashing because of it. Unless you have some sort of magic indexer fix, I don't know how you go about "fixing" it (without buying an SSD or something to that effect).

For what it's worth, I don't even believe the indexer is the main offender. Nor is SuperFetch, as disabling it appears to have no effect. I've tried to determine the primary source of post-login thrashing in 7 to no avail — I've just had to get used to not having a fully functional machine until quite some time after I log in.

 

[Blown 89]

Great little laptop for the price, glad I bought one when they first came out.
Still just running 2gb on mine as I don't use it that often, and then just for email, web, and watching video.

Best $375 I've ever spent.

 

[Ashbringer]

Your entire post was full of FUD but I'm replying to this because I don't have all day to argue with people like you on the internet. I dual boot the latest version of Ubuntu and Win 7 on my laptop. Here are the boot times:

Acer 1410t, SU2300 cpu, 4gig ram:

Ubuntu 10.04:
Power button to complete: 35.4s
Shutdown click to actual shutdown: 14.7s

Windows 7 Pro 64:
Power button to complete: 26.5s
Shutdown click to actual shutdown: 7.3s

My experience is different then yours. In all benchmarks I've found as well, that Ubuntu 10.04 is faster the Windows 7 in boot time.

How you have Windows 7 booting faster then Ubuntu is a mystery to me. Here's a video of a Ubuntu vs Windows 7 booting, and the Windows 7 machine has faster hardware with a raid setup, more memory, and faster CPU. Ubuntu 10.04 still boots up before Windows 7 does.


As for me, Ubuntu 10.04 boots before before my LCD screen turns on. That's pretty fast. Those numbers you give are either FUD, or you're doing something wrong. It only took the Ubuntu machine in the video 24 seconds to boot, compared to your machine with a crazy 35 seconds. That's from the moment the PC is powered, before the BIOS screen.

The thrashing is the indexing service and media streaming FYI. If you spent as much time googling it as you do bitching like a school girl about it you would have fixed the problem already.

I have disabled indexing, but the system can still trash. You don't get this problem in Ubuntu or Mac OS X. Actually, you don't get this problem with XP either.

Take it from a guy who always liked to look at the hard drive light, to see if the system is working. When I first got Vista, that light drove me NUTS! What the hell is making my machine work? A virus maybe?

Took me a while to realize that Vista just thrashes like mad. Made my hard drive light useless.

 

[ICOM]

Operating systems...

 

[rflcptr]

How you have Windows 7 booting faster then Ubuntu is a mystery to me. Here's a video of a Ubuntu vs Windows 7 booting, and the Windows 7 machine has faster hardware with a raid setup, more memory, and faster CPU. Ubuntu 10.04 still boots up before Windows 7 does.

The Windows machine has an SAS RAID card which uses a staggered spin-up, regardless of the existence of an array or the drive count. Neither faster CPU nor more RAM will change this.

 

[Snowdog]

It is really simple. Most people will use the OS the computer came with, as long as they own that computer. Most people will also use a computer until it breaks.

XP also had a very long run, so it has a HUGE installed base it will take a long time for those machines and installed OS to retire.

I am settling in to use my current desktop till it breaks. I upgraded the OS because I went to 6Gb of RAM. I figure I have one more GPU upgrade somewhere, but I plan to use this machine into the foreseeable future and the OS will stay the same throughout as well.

 

[rflcptr]

I know this is an unfair test, As the Windows machine has a raid card, but understand the Windows machine is far more powerful. Specs as follows for Windows machine.

LOL.

Funny, at a lab in my school every Precision 690 was delivered booting from a SATA drive connected to the SAS controller (why Dell did this, no idea). Needless to say, the students' only complaints were about the boot time.

 

[daglesj]

For most people a 3GHz P4 is overkill...hell, for most "enthusiasts" it's overkill too. I downgraded to a CULV when I needed a laptop and it does everything I've thrown at it just fine. Email, internet, downloading, graphics work for my business in a pinch, and even HD movies. I've kept my rig in my signature because there really isn't any point in upgrading when it plays HD movies and video games just fine. I think we're at a point where hardware has finally caught up and passed software so the need for upgrading every two years is long gone.

Erm the CULV isnt really a good comparison, mainly due to 'todays GHz' not really translating all that well to CPUs of the past.

The dual 1.3Ghz CULV in my laptop is faster than a dual core 2.8GHz P4.

However, I agree with what you say, for many the pinnacle of everyday computing needs was met around 5 years ago.

I only upgraded my rig to its current state a year ago due to the fact that Skt939 gear was selling for the same price of a modern faster rig.

I still wouldnt go back to XP as my OS of choice though.

 

[daglesj]

The thrashing is the indexing service and media streaming FYI. If you spent as much time googling it as you do bitching like a school girl about it you would have fixed the problem already.

I have switched those off too in Vista installs along with Readyboost and Superfetch and still had disk thrashing. Lets face it....Vista was just an oddball. It either worked ok if you were lucky or there was always something 'not quite right' about it.

I found that Vista Home Basic worked the best of the bunch and I have to say I couldnt find any real reason to buy the other versions.

Havent had the issue with 7 thankfully.

 

[THRESHIN]

gotta be businesses. most are reluctant to switch for cost of the software, IT costs and training the employees, and even upgrading some older computers - and i don't blame them. for most business purposes xp is just fine.

i work for ontario power and they seem to be xp all the way.

 

[TheCommander]

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).

It was probably due to the 32 bith version. Vista was an excellent OS when I used it and is similar to Windows 7. I never had a problem with any of the 64 bit versions.

 

[jiminator]

hrm, article is useless. it gives no details on how they are determining market share. what countries are tested? individual or corporate? etc.

 

[Conker]

Going to just keep using XP x64 until the next windows release. I use windows 7 everywhere else and its just the same thing practically with modded menus and looks. I can mod looks any time on xp. Some features are alright but nothing ground breaking. Not even that far from windows 8.

 

[3far4shot]

The majority are going to be content with XP for a long while, as it's still a great OS for your basic tasks as well as gaming (though you will be missing out on DX11 features etc.)

Besides the differences in GUI and more better/updated API's for developers to use, in essence it's not much of huge difference at the core of what it can do compared to XP for an average user.

 

[hity645]

I still use XP on my laptop and file server. Win 7 on my PC and notebook. So right now I'm 50/50 on XP/7.

Windows 7 has been an awesome OS. I briefly used Vista then went back to XP, right now I can't see myself using anything else.

 

[Cerulean]

I'm still sticking with Windows XP because I like it. Personal preference. Douche bags. (<-- @douchebags)

 

[Hexen525]

Didn't that stat say "total Windows users"? That would include the millions and millions of company computers that still run XP right? I know the company I work for still runs XP on it's several hundred thousand PCs it owns...almost all Dells too I might add.

Those numbers can easily be right. A lot of corporations move slowly.

 

[jwalk6]

XP is hanging around mostly because there's not a compelling reason for anyone other than the small group of people who think it's reasonable to spend $700 on ONE video card or call their PC built 6 months ago "Old"

I work in a business that still has a lot of XP, mostly embedded on WYSE terminals. We're hitting the wall with it and actually switching to ATOM based desktops now. Trouble is that Windows 7 still has a lot of quirks on a business network and it still doesn't play nice (even with a Server 2008 R2 infrastructure) when it comes to roaming proflies, Group policy and a whole slew of VOIP vendors who still haven't updated their software from the XP platform. BTW, We use Windows 7 Enterprise N, not retail.

Dont' get me wrong, I like Windows 7, it's everything Vista should have been without service packs. I want it just so I can play DIrt2 on a 64 BIt Platform (thanks to the stupid GAMES FOR WINDOWS piece of crap)

Still, it's not perfect and not compelling enough on it's own to warrant a change for the average user who's going just fine on XP other than maybe better security.

 

[HOCP4ME]

Windows 7 has drastically improved my workflow. Now when I work on an XP machine I feel like I'm on a Mac...fumbling windows back and forth, working with them one at a time and taking ten seconds to switch among them. But on 7, I'm snapping windows left and right like a pro.

But I hate how people are always switching the taskbar back to classic style.

 

[kllrnohj]

You're kidding right? When I first got Vista 64-bit, my first problem was application problems. The problems are related in that they require a driver installed. If the driver isn't 32-bit, then it won't work.

Vista and 7 both require signed drivers in 64-bit, and that's a huge problem for a lot of people. Pretty much killed the modded drivers community, and other stuff.

Not entirely true. You can turn off the signed drivers requirement. You used to be able to turn it off permanently, now I think you can only turn it off per-boot which is annoying, but really only means you have to do it every time you reboot to install updates.

If you're into HTPC, this can also cause a huge problem. Windows Media Center only wants 64-bit codecs, which have to be signed by Microsoft as well. You don't go through this in the 32-bit version. I learned this when I got Windows 7 64-bit.

o.0

Codecs aren't signed... Do you have anything to back this up? A google search turns up nothing on this claim (well, actually it turns up a statement saying third party codecs *are* allowed, which would be the opposite of what you claim)

Even computer enthusiasts have good reasons to stick with XP. There's a lot more you can do in terms with drivers. Plus, if you value your Creative Sound Blaster sound card, you'll wanna stick with XP. You lose hardware sound acceleration in Vista or 7.

Just because you have the latest and greatest, doesn't make you an enthusiast. In some parts of the world, you'd be known as "early adopter". The rest call you "sucker".

Image the problems some people go through when they upgrade to Windows 7, when they need new applications as well? A lot of applications won't work in Vista or 7, so you'll have to buy upgrades. Some goes for hardware. Video capture cards and scanners are very popular, in lacking support in these newer OS's.

So a $100 Windows 7 upgrade, can end up costing you a couple hundred dollars more, for the same functionality that you had before with XP.

The benefits are what you have to pay to upgrade. If you browse the web, and play Counter Strike, then you won't notice.

People with hardware that has no drivers, would benefit not upgrading. People who don't wanna pay for new applications, would benefit not upgrading. People who don't wanna spend hours learning a new OS, would benefit.

What if you did anyway? In a few months your computer breaks, and you found out that Asus only has a 1 year limited warranty, and you've clearly had it for more then a year. The part to replace will cost more, or just as much as a new PC at Best Buy. This is mainly because the parts are proprietary. So now, you bought a copy of Windows 7 that you just wasted money on, cause your new PC already has a copy of Windows 7.

Those aren't benefits, those are simply reasons to not upgrade. That is not the same as a benefit.

BTW, there's nothing ground breaking about Windows 7 at all. It just fixed the problems that Vista had. It's not like Windows XP, where it was the first commercial OS to be crash proof, which meant it was super stable. Before XP, when an application crashed, the whole PC would also crash. I'm not including Windows 2000, cause it was meant for businesses.

Hahaha... no. When an app crashed before XP, it didn't take the PC with it. It still just crashed that app.

Also, XP is certainly not "crash proof", I've gotten plenty of BSODs with it. Vista/7 has also improved in that area greatly by not even going down most of the time when a driver crashes, which is pretty damn impressive.

Why isn't there better management for multiple cores?

What do you mean by this?

Why can Ubuntu 10.04 boot up faster then my monitor can turn on, but Windows 7 takes far longer?

If Ubuntu boots up faster than your monitor turns on, you either aren't actually booting but just resuming from suspend, or your monitor is crazy slow.

Why does Windows 7 still allow startup software to be hidden? I gotta fucking dig around in the Windows Registry to remove startup apps, and some of them can be services. Even then, I if I run the application it'll just enable the startup app again. Adobe Acrobat reader doesn't need a speed launcher app. I don't wanna be reminded to update Acrobat reader. WHY GOD WHY!

Uh, msconfig?

You don't get this crap with Ubuntu, or even Mac OS X. Yet, we call Windows 7 the next best thing to toast? If you're going to be dealing with shit, might as well be cheap shit like XP. That's why a lot of people still use XP.

No, it's just the best version of Windows. Comparing it to Ubuntu or OS X is a whole 'nother debate.

 

[Fifth Horseman]

As for me, Ubuntu 10.04 boots before before my LCD screen turns on. That's pretty fast. Those numbers you give are either FUD, or you're doing something wrong. It only took the Ubuntu machine in the video 24 seconds to boot, compared to your machine with a crazy 35 seconds. That's from the moment the PC is powered, before the BIOS screen.

Not including the BIOS POST procedure, Win7-64bit boots in about 15 seconds on my system (I literally timed it). That's from the moment the "starting windows" banner appears to the login prompt.

My system:

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe MB
Opteron 185 @ 2.8Ghz
4GB RAM
...and a cheap Kingston SSDNow! 64GB SSD that I picked up last year.

(hopefully by this time next week it'll be a Phenom II X6 1090 and 8GB of RAM in my system instead. ).

 

[Ashbringer]

Codecs aren't signed... Do you have anything to back this up? A google search turns up nothing on this claim (well, actually it turns up a statement saying third party codecs *are* allowed, which would be the opposite of what you claim)

When I first installed Windows 7 64-bit, I tried to setup Windows Media Center. I wanted to use my own encoder and decoder for the Live TV, and if you install either then Live TV won't work. It'll give you an error.

The reason I wanted to use a different codec, was because I got crappy results out of my cheap video capture card. After doing some research, I found that 64-bit users couldn't use anything but the Microsoft codec. Other users were trying to change the decoder to be able to play mkv files in MCE.

The best solution was to use 32-bit Win7, but I decided to use MediaPortal instead. I'm using the PureVideo decoder with it, and it gives amazing results. Plus, any PC, Mac, or Linux machine I have at home can access the live from my HTPC with XBMC. There's a plugin for it to access MediaPortal Live TV.

Hahaha... no. When an app crashed before XP, it didn't take the PC with it. It still just crashed that app.

Hahaha... yes it would take out the machine. Windows 98 didn't have restrictions in what application had access to the hardware. Some applications crashed, and the machine would run along just fine. Some applications would crash, and it was just a matter of time before the OS went down with it.

Windows XP was the first commercial OS to have a NT kernel. It's based on Windows 2000, which I believe HAL was what kept applications from crashing the OS. Why you think DOS was so restricted in Windows 2000? You never ran true DOS in XP either.

Whatever the case was, Windows XP was like Windows NT for end users. Giving them a stable OS. To me, that was a major leap in computing. Oh, and the ability to install network drivers without restarting the machine. You don't know how happy that made me.

Also, XP is certainly not "crash proof", I've gotten plenty of BSODs with it. Vista/7 has also improved in that area greatly by not even going down most of the time when a driver crashes, which is pretty damn impressive.

Not saying that XP itself is crash proof, but it won't crash went an application does. It can certainly BSOD on it's own.

If Ubuntu boots up faster than your monitor turns on, you either aren't actually booting but just resuming from suspend, or your monitor is crazy slow.

My monitor is crazy slow, but that doesn't change the fact that Ubuntu boots faster. There are plenty of benchmarks out there that show that Ubuntu 10.04 is usually 10 seconds faster. This shouldn't be a debate.

Uh, msconfig?

You want end users to type msconfig to stop startup apps? Whatever happened to the startup folder under programs? Why aren't software developers using that? Oh I know, because people could easily stop these nonsense apps from starting up.

Not including the BIOS POST procedure, Win7-64bit boots in about 15 seconds on my system (I literally timed it). That's from the moment the "starting windows" banner appears to the login prompt.

My system:

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe MB
Opteron 185 @ 2.8Ghz
4GB RAM
...and a cheap Kingston SSDNow! 64GB SSD that I picked up last year.

(hopefully by this time next week it'll be a Phenom II X6 1090 and 8GB of RAM in my system instead. ).

Dude, you have a Opteron with a SSD. Yea, you're going to boot fast.

 

[greenfrogman]

the codex issue is that you need to use an 3rd party program to tell windows to use the new codex filters that's all (i had the same issue with windows only using there own codex not the ones i installed)

i post later on what the app is as it was an friend that sent it me

--
again most users do not give squat about the OS they are running and are running with that they got with the PC so untill them PC's Die and they replace them, XP be around for an bit (and company's replace 2000 or XP with Win7 Sp1) its when around Win8 comes out we mite see decline of XP systems as XP mite be old enough to make the hardware fail due to age maybe and XP updates stop around 2014

 

[PCMusicGuy]

Still use XP here. I'll try Win7 when I build a new computer.

 

[Bigbacon]

Vista 4 evar!

 

[invisbob]

1 machine running 7 (primary beast)
1 running vista (gf's laptop)
6 running xp (Terminals for customers)
1 running win98 (DVR box surveillance)

Vista is the only one that doesn't play nice on the network

 

[kllrnohj]

Hahaha... yes it would take out the machine. Windows 98 didn't have restrictions in what application had access to the hardware. Some applications crashed, and the machine would run along just fine. Some applications would crash, and it was just a matter of time before the OS went down with it.

Windows XP was the first commercial OS to have a NT kernel. It's based on Windows 2000, which I believe HAL was what kept applications from crashing the OS. Why you think DOS was so restricted in Windows 2000? You never ran true DOS in XP either.

Any app that was 32-bit never got direct access to the hardware. I don't know about 16-bit apps, but they might have. It is actually the CPU itself that protects this. If you've ever heard the term ring0 and ring3, that is referring to CPU protection levels that are a part of protected mode. XP was just when MS finally dropped legacy support for 16-bit apps and could thus switch entirely to protected mode. Honestly they should have done that with Windows 98.

You want end users to type msconfig to stop startup apps? Whatever happened to the startup folder under programs? Why aren't software developers using that? Oh I know, because people could easily stop these nonsense apps from starting up.

No, I was pointing out that there is a GUI alternative to digging through the registry. Most end users don't care that a billion apps are auto-starting.

 

[Team Obi Juan]

If you include the corporate environment, I believe it completely. 90%+ of my company is on XP with a very slow rollout of 7 going on.

 

[SticKx911]

lol, all my misc builds (media/music/etc) are XP or ubuntu. my primary is win 7 and my laptop is ubuntu (just works).

not that anyone cares. lol

I still sell the merits of xp as a low power OS. but 7 is a good contender if the client has the money.

 

[JarrettTX]

XP user / was considering going with Vista but put it off and put it off until 7 was right around the corner. Now I'm considering whether to go with 7 ... or if I should put that off until its successor is right around the corner.

Hope that when it does happen I will have the $$$ for the new build by then (will likely require a 16-core CPU, DDR6 or 7 memory, 3-D VGA with Smellovision, etc.).

 

[Morbo66]

Didn't that stat say "total Windows users"? That would include the millions and millions of company computers that still run XP right? I know the company I work for still runs XP on it's several hundred thousand PCs it owns...almost all Dells too I might add.

Those numbers can easily be right. A lot of corporations move slowly.

They move slowly for good reason. The average medium to large global corporation has THOUSANDS of different applications that end users interface with. Everything from payroll to financials to operations/manufacturing, etc etc etc. All of those apps have UI's and some of those apps might not be cloud/database centralized and might need local installs on user machines.

The amount of unit testing, integration testing, UAT, etc that has to happen in order to fully support Win7 takes a long time. Not to mention the high likely hood that at least 50% of the PC's in most corporations are more than a year old, running on hardware that can't run Win7, and you can understand why corporations move slowly.

We're not taking about a [H] user who uses their machine for gaming and surfing for porn. If the [H] user's win7 upgrade goes down the toilet, he can go a couple days without a PC or pull out an old laptop sitting in the closet. Try doing that with a giant company and tell your Financial reporting department that "oops, sorry, you can't close out quarter end, we have to figure out why your financial apps don't work right because of Windows 7"

 

[/dev/null]

Yep, as was said, businesses are the ones using WinXP still. I'm sure quite a few of you work in larger enterprises, and it wasn't until recently (last 2 months) that Cisco officially released a 64-bit VPN client. That's some pretty deal-breaking software right there.

My Linux laptop has had a cisco vpn client for quite a while....built into ubuntu.

 

[/dev/null]

Boy how times have changed. Back when I was in college, all our machines were DEC Alphas running FreeBSD.

For e-mail we had to use PINE. For the fancy people, they had ELM!

I miss elm!!! We had Dec ALPHAS also....Don't remember the OS. I think it was Tru something...

We also had a vax. And I was one of those elite elm users (never liked pine)...