66 Percent of Windows Users Are Still Running XP

[Marco925]

Windows 7 turns a year old this month, and 12 months after a successful launch, nearly everyone agrees that it is a huge improvement over Vista. However, despite this, the majority of Windows users are still running XP and have yet to upgrade to Windows 7.

Maybe windows 7 isn't all it is cracked up to be.

 

[masterasia]

I still have Windows XP on my old hardware. It works flawlessly. Why does an install of Windows 7 have to take up 20GB of space? Xp only took up 2GB at the most. With a 60GB SSD, it would take up almost half if not half of the available space.

 

[shurcooL]

I'm an power user and I prefer XP over 7. It gives me more control over what I wanna do.

 

[abhinav_mall]

Given a choice between a working Windows OS & a shiny new updated Windows OS, I'll always choose the former.

Reason: To avoid the pain of moving all settings & wasting a day or two.
Plus updating all software.

I have been running Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition smoothly & able to play all latest game, including Battlefield Bad Company 2 at highest settings, thanks to 4GB DDR2, 512 MB Nvidia 8800GT, & intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz.

Since 32 bit cant be upgraded to 64 bit, i will not upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit, no matter how efficient it be.

 

[jeffdeath48]

LOL.... Quit Trolling!

[citation][nom]kukluxklan[/nom]Well, i think i'm comfortable with my old Windows 98. I'm still using this computer with a pentium celeron chip and 256 MB of RAM(Upgraded).I dualboot Windows 98 with Windows 2000 Professional. I dont like Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 is because they all have ugly look. I love the Windows classic look, of old 95/98/ME/2000. It is a cool GUI and sexy looking than XP/Vista/7.Ofcourse, All these windows versions have an option to change look and feel to old Windows classic style, but it is still ugly with icons, and i can't get the old 98 look in anyway...So i need to breathe some fresh air with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 being the ever best operating systems... and XP/Vista/7 is shit![/citation]

 

[gbean02]

" nearly everyone agrees that it is a huge improvement over Vista." Really really? Who is included in everyone, and where are the numbers backing such a claim. Vista had growing pains, so did XP, and also version 7.
Everone(lol) that I know that has Windows 7 consistently pisses and moans about it. Try and talk your elderly parent through the process of loading the outlook express style mail client after they looked for hours for it. The same parent who has been using windoze since 3.1, and is not a stranger to microsoft products.

 

[omnimodis78]

[citation][nom]anonymuos[/nom]Don't upgrade to Windows 7...Tons of removed features and stuff gone completely for no reason at all. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ [...] _Windows_7 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ [...] ows_Vista. The same problem is happening to IE9, Live Essentials 2011, Windows Media Player 12, Virtual PC. Microsoft products are getting severely dumbed down and all the customizability and power being taken away from users. All it's about eye-candy and minimalism now.[/citation]
You make it sound like eye-candy and minimalism is a bad thing. If you want a totally customizable OS then go something open-source. Plus, I don't need Wikipedia to argue that Windows 7 is a stellar OS and I've never thought it was lacking anything. There's no such thing as the absolutely perfect OS, hence why we have options... If it's not right for you, then fine, but don't be telling people not to upgrade to it.

 

[decrypted]

I'm still an XP user. My system is old, like real old, it was built almost 9 years ago as a cutting edge workstation. For the time it was extremely fast, but still functional today. I mostly just use it to surf the internet, and watch some online videos. However, I am doing a complete new build which will have Win 7 once it's finished. But like most, XP just works, so why update it for little benefit.

 

[razor512]

[citation][nom]roguekitsune[/nom]Windows 7 is a huge upgrade over windows XP. Yes it does take time to get use to the UI changes, but once you are comfortable with it you will never look back. But what about the hardware requirements? If you have a computer that was produced in the last 5 years it should be able to run windows 7, maybe not without all the bells and whistles but it will run. On average i have noticed that 7 only uses maybe 10-20% more resources than XP, which is about 10-20% less than vista used(That's just for my computer yours maybe different). For the individual user there is no reason to stick with XP. For companies and schools I understand them not upgrading as it is hard to convince the higher-ups to spend money on something that works for now.[/citation]


Windows XP minimum requirements:
* Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
* At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
* At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
* CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
* Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
* Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
* Sound card
* Speakers or headphones



Windows 7 minimum requirements:


*

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
*

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
*

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
*

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

_++__+_++__++__+_++_+__++__+

Also while windows 7 can run fast on modern hardware, windows xp runs faster, it uses less resources on it's self. it boots faster, uses much less memory, (a properly tweaked install uses about 40MB of memory at startup)

If windows xp handles everything you need to do, why would you get windows xp just to do the same thing, the same way but slower?

You can put engine of a bugatti veyron inside of a minivan and it will run fast but if you were to put that same engine inside of a bugatti veyron, it will be even faster.


Compared to any other OS release, Windows xp has held it's place because and had the fastest adoption rate. Compared to older versions of windows, windows xp added support for new hardware and features that directly improved performance. and within a few months of the OS coming out, We had hardware taking advantage of the new performance improving features.

Most people skipped windows me and 2000, and got new systems running windows xp. Right now, windows 7 has nothing in terms of performance that appeals to the average user.

The only reason I have the OS is to run games that require dx 10 and higher, other than that, I use windows xp. the OS loads faster and is more responsive.

 

[smfrazz]

One of the things these reports don't take into account since they are grabbing data from web access to sites is the numbers of pirated copies of XP vs. paid versions. This is important since technology changes and MS's changes to activation and their own efforts to thwart piracy of current versions. SO in my mind older versions will always stay high when reported by web access. I'd like to see numbers from MS that show current actual true licensed copy usage. That would be more damaging if it showed a similar percentage...thus we may never see those numbers. 🙂

 

[Gin Fushicho]

It really is, time to upgrade. I don't like feeling lonely in being the only one with Windows 7.

 

[etrnl_frost]

I know it's anecdotal, but there seem to be far more people with problems that are running Windows 7 that I know than people running Vista SP1.

 

[Guest]

windows 3.11 forever!!! run fast on today systems hahahaha

 

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]tleavit[/nom]We have 200 PC's on our network, 10ish now are Windows 7. At this point (since the economy dumped) our average pc is 3 years old and runs Win XP perfectly. Win XP does everything we need it to in a fast moving business. Those PC's will continue to run XP until they die (5 to 10 years life). Any new PC we buy has Windows7. Windows 7 doesn't do anything we need different then XP but it runs well (like XP). We are like every other company out there. WinXp will be around for a long long time.[/citation]

The biggest problem though is that XP is EOL to MS. That means that they wont provide support for XP nor will they provide patches. And soon hardware/software vendors will stop supporting XP.

This same thing happened when XP came out. It took a while before at was fully adopted and even then we had those who wanted to stick with 98 & 2K.

I would expect a business enviroment to move to the newer OS sooner too since security is a major factor and comparitivley, Windows 7 is more secure than XP when it first hit. Even after SP2, 7 is still more secure.

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]noe[/nom]windows 3.11 forever!!! run fast on today systems hahahaha[/citation]

I think the GUI is for noobs. MS-DOS 8 all the way!

It makes my i7 @ 4.00GHz with 6GB of RAM runs faster!

 

[Guest]

Still have xp on the half a dozen computers i own.

Why pay 100 each to 'upgrade' them when the 'upgrade' does exactly NOTHING for me... They are rock solid, everything works, why upgrade?

 

[oneblackened]

Why am I still using XP? It just plain works. Besides that, I don't have my license keys for a lot of software that I use-and that would require a reinstall.

 

[dark_lord69]

And what percentage of that are corporate computers? I don't know about you but the company I work for is still getting ready to launch Windows 7. Currently we are ALL still on XP.

 

[lradunovic77]

Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional x64 are two best OS MS ever released.

 

[lradunovic77]

Next mistake Microsoft is going to make is that they will push Windows 8 before XP loses its market which will make user stay with XP.
XP handles modern hardware just as good as Windows 7. I am talking about XP Professional x64 Edition which everyone overlooked and it works great.
Windows 7 would not even get half of its current market share if MS released DX10/11 version for XP. I would be a first person to go back to XP x64.

 

[eddieroolz]

Even my university has upgraded many of the lab machines to Windows 7 Professional, with rest being Ubuntu 10.04 and a few OS X Snow Leopard.

At this point, people can't blame Microsoft for stagnating the entire software industry, because they're trying everything to get XP dead. It is the stubborn consumers and businesses that just won't upgrade from a relic of an OS.

 

[skyhide]

Hey Guys... Im not trying to be stupid here but I had windows XP SP3 along with AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.21 GHz, 2GB RAM,1GB Geforce 9500GT and I could not play new released games smooth..some couldn`t even run but after I Upgraded to Windows 7 Professional 32bit I could play all those games that wasn`t able to play.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]Eccentric909[/nom]The fortune 50 company I work at is upgrading all of it's workstations this year. We actually set the standard for large corporations to upgrade their entire installed base in one fell swoop back in 1996, of which large corporations like GM modeled their upgrade practices after. We're going from 7 year old IBM Thinkpads (T60) running XP (standard configs are: Pentium-M 1.3GHz, 256MB RAM, though mine has 1GB of RAM) to brand new Lenovo Thinkpads (T510, Core i5 2.6Ghz, 4GB RAM) running Win7. Our current install base is 75,000, so there has been intense testing over the past year to make sure everything is compatible or have a viable alternative.I have to say that while this Thinkpad has served me well over the last 7 years, it just can't handle the stress of how much I multitask nowadays. Photoshop, Visualstudio, Expressions Web and whatever other application I need open, will sometimes grind it to a standstill. While it has been so faithful to me, never once needing a format/re-install or as they call it here a "re-stage". Though it helps that I am a technical oriented user, since everyone around me has had their's re-staged multiple times.However, my point being, businesses will not just upgrade their OS for the most part, at least big businesses like mine. They'll wait for their current hardware to become mostly obsolete, then replace their machines with current hardware and software. While I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, for the most part that is standard practice. So I would assume over the next 2-3 years as more businesses swap out their aging configurations, the Win7 market share will grow by leaps and bounds.This is actually the longest we've ever went between upgrades. At one point we upgraded our whole installed base every 3 years starting in 96, but after the economy decided to take a nose dive, this will be our first new roll-out since 2003... and boy do we ever need it. Not so much because of XP though, just the aging hardware.[/citation]
About time too.
75,000 down, just a few million to go...

 

[sandmanwn]

My company is still in testing. Waiting on software compliance testing and our test/control group. Supposedly next year we will move 17,000 comps to Windows 7.

 

[Guest]

I still use XP. I would upgrade only if I had really good hardware though. I don't think my system could handle any sort of intense application while running Windows Vista or 7.