Windows 7 surpasses Vista in global use

In less than one year, Windows 7 has surpassed Vista in global usage, however both still pale in comparison to the aged Windows XP.

Vista was released in 2007 to extremely harsh critical reviews. The operating system left many concerns of application compatibility, stringent hardware requirements, and who could forget about the UAC?.

Windows 7 was released in September 2009 to high critical review.

New NetApplications analytics show that Windows has 90.67 percent of the OS market, with XP the dominant leader at 61.87 percent. Windows 7 has now moved to 14.46 percent, just ahead of Vista at 14.34 percent.

In the United States, XP has 44.26 percent, ahead of Vista at 23.31 percent and Windows 7 catching up at 16.09 percent.

Overall Windows share fell from just over 92 percent last July, thanks to a small increase in Apple Mac sales and a large jump in mobile operating systems. Linux share fell to under 1 percent.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 3 Aug 2010 15:26

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16 comments

hikaricor

What a shock.
The tolerable OS that they made surpassed the failure OS they made...

3.8.2010 18:23 #1

DDR4life

@hikaricor
I thought Vista was OK as far as intended design rather than actual execution. On a fresh install, Vista would run smoothly for me. However, after a couple of weeks you would think that I hadn't cleaned & defragged in a year.

(For the record, I had gotten into the habit of cleaning & defragging my hard drive once a week since my old Win 98SE days nearly 10 years ago.)

3.8.2010 18:54 #2

trident77

quote: and who could forget about the UAC?.

I can't figure out why people think the UAC "user access control" was a problem whan all you had to do was type msconfig in the search box and go into tools and disable it. but all in all vista i have to say was a nightmare to use.

the amount of time to find a driver for certain devices was bad enough and no compatability towards most applications. windows 7 here still has it's flaws but works ok. xp was the best imo.

3.8.2010 19:22 #3

shaffaaf

Originally posted by trident77: quote: and who could forget about the UAC?.

I can't figure out why people think the UAC "user access control" was a problem whan all you had to do was type msconfig in the search box and go into tools and disable it. but all in all vista i have to say was a nightmare to use.

the amount of time to find a driver for certain devices was bad enough and no compatability towards most applications. windows 7 here still has it's flaws but works ok. xp was the best imo. driver are not vista's fault, its the hardware manufacturers fault. reason win7s drivers were fine is vista drivers need practically no change to win7 drivers.

3.8.2010 21:49 #4

xnonsuchx

Originally posted by hikaricor: What a shock.
The tolerable OS that they made surpassed the failure OS they made... That about sums it up...or "the shovelware OS they made."

I wish they could have at least made the "Classic" theme actually more classic...some windows look ugly as Hell w/ apparently no thought put into how things would appear NOT using Win7Alpha(Vista)/Win7's default appearance settings. They also suck at multiple disk accesses to the same drive compared to XP...though Win7 is a little improved over its unfortunate predecessor.

3.8.2010 23:51 #5

KillerBug

Originally posted by shaffaaf: driver are not vista's fault, its the hardware manufacturers fault. reason win7s drivers were fine is vista drivers need practically no change to win7 drivers. Um...when you have to use F8 to get to a boot menu to allow you to use unsigned drivers, then yes, it is Microshaft's fault. It is one thing to make it request signed drivers...it is quite another to make it require signed drivers...that is, to make it require that the drivers are sent to microsoft, where they are not tested, and then 2 months later they sign them about the time that there have been 3 new driver releases made. Often, the signed drivers have massive problems fixed by later driver releases...so the broken drivers install fine and crash the system, while the working drivers refuse to install before you make registry modifications by hand.

Originally posted by DDR4life: @hikaricor
I thought Vista was OK as far as intended design rather than actual execution. On a fresh install, Vista would run smoothly for me. However, after a couple of weeks you would think that I hadn't cleaned & defragged in a year.

(For the record, I had gotten into the habit of cleaning & defragging my hard drive once a week since my old Win 98SE days nearly 10 years ago.) Funny...vista never worked for me. By the time I would install all my drivers and a few applications, the system would already be crawling. It did look nice and all...but they were not selling an "artist's rendering" of what a good OS should be...they were selling an OS that ended up on tons of PCs, and was probably (partially) responsible for several suicides.

4.8.2010 02:55 #6

patrick_

It's actually quite shocking that people still use such an outdated OS, especially taking into account that Windows 7 is better in every way.

@Killerbug, if some company releases a driver and two months later, there have been 3 updates, you shouldn't blame Microsoft, but that company for not doing their homework (beta-testing).

4.8.2010 04:57 #7

KillerBug

I blame microsoft because they certify the broken driver without testing it; in fact, by the time it is certified, the defects are public knowledge, and microsoft still certifies the driver.

Yes, it is easy to blame ATI or nVidia for having constant driver updates, but that is just the state of the industry. It is better than Intel video drivers that never get updated in spite of massive bugs. They are constantly adding new features and adding performance increases, and sometimes they push these drivers out before they are fully tested. The trick here is to let the overclockers and the tweekers find out that these drivers are bad, and all you have to do is to wait a week after release to see if it is worth installing...

...So, a user waits a week on a new release, and finds out that the driver package causes BSODs...so the user does not upgrade. Over the next two months, 2 more driver packages come out, and they both work fine, so the user tries to upgrade, but windows vista blocks the driver. Suddenly, windows update automatically installs the broken driver from 2 months ago because it just "passed" certification...and now the user is getting BSODs...and they have to reboot into safe mode, make registry modifications, manually remove the drivers, and then try to force the new drivers to install from safe mode. This is a pain in the butt for an experienced user, and it is a trip to best buy and a $150 service fee for most users.

...Do you see now why people get pissed about microsoft driver signing?

4.8.2010 05:38 #8

DXR88

i like the term (global usage)= Pirated copys+ real copy's

4.8.2010 18:20 #9

Interestx

I bought Windows 7 (they did a superb pre-order deal, total bargain) and I will use it but I'm not doing anything with it until SP1 appears.

XP SP3 is, for now, good enough.

4.8.2010 20:07 #10

KillerBug

Windows 7 really is a good deal right now. You can get technet plus basic for $200...that gives you 10 copies of each version of Windows 7, as well as a ton of useless stuff like Office 2010 (MS Office is free to me, and I still use open office!). Yeah...$200 isn't cheap for one copy, but if you have 2 office systems, 4 home systems, and a laptop (I have all these things), then it really is a good deal. If you don't have that many systems, you could always find 9 friends to share the cost...so everyone pays just $20 to get Windows 7, Office 2010, and whatever other worthless MS crap they might want.

5.8.2010 04:23 #11

xnonsuchx

Originally posted by patrick_: It's actually quite shocking that people still use such an outdated OS, especially taking into account that Windows 7 is better in every way. People still use Vista because they were shafted by M$ for not offering free Win7 upgrades to ALL Vista users (instead of just the ones who bought it the 3-6 mos. before Win7 came out).

5.8.2010 19:43 #12

KillerBug

Yeah...they really should have offered a free upgrade to 7...in fact, they should have just set it up so that you could use Vista keys to activate windows 7...but they didn't because they are microsoft, and that makes them only a tiny bit better than apple.

5.8.2010 23:24 #13

GryphB

If windows 7 is so great, then why are they still trying to hide things from it's user? You can find most of these awesome features online if you look it up (i.e. godmode). Seriously, I have windows 7 on my laptop by default but I dual boot to Linux because I despise windows and mac platforms. Windows 7 is still Vista, just polished up to look nice and not nag so much when you try to do something.

If any company wants consumers to buy and use their products, then they'd learn to optimise it upfront for the customer in advanced, rather than making them look for it; however it is amusing to watch others suffer over such trivial stuff.

7.8.2010 20:06 #14

bluedogs

Vista... failing.... No way *cough*

Vista was rubbish and should not have been released

Vista HP 64 bit,AMD 9850 x4, 4 Gig Ram,2 x LG DVD Burners, xFx 8800 GTS 640mb, 2x80 and 2 x 120 Gig Hdd SATA, 24" LCD LG Monitor

10.8.2010 05:21 #15

elitepunk

xpsp2 for life. no bs. nuff said.

13.8.2010 21:10 #16

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