Windows 7 Overtakes Windows XP as Leading OS

[luciferano]

There is 1 reason, and 1 reason only that Win-7 is leading.

Direct-X10-11 support.

I can guarantee you that if XP had directx-10-11 support, nobody would really feel the need to switch.

You ignore the fact that a huge amount of upgrades are not gamers, but are professionals or something along those lines. A lot of people upgrade regardless of DX. So no, there is not only one reason for Windows 7's advantage. That it is leading is also caused by it being put on almost all new prebuilt desktop/laptop computers. This is probably the one greatest factor.

 

[luciferano]

Just FYI for all the people complaining about Windows 8. You know there is a nice, free little program by Stardock that puts the Start Button, with Windows 7 style menus back and makes it bypass the "Metro UI" right to the desktop when you boot. Oh and one other thing, windows core is the same as Windows 7 with a lot more optimization, performance and power tweaks.

Been running Windows 8 RTM on my $10K gaming rig with no issues since it's release and not have not looked back to Windows 7 since.

So you can stop you attention getting, 12 year-old rants on how bad windows 8 when you A. Haven't even used it and B. Just complaining to complain.

There's at least half a dozen programs that give you back the start menu that work in all versions of Windows 8 and several of them let you boot directly into the desktop

 

[jdwii]

I dont care what sgtgimpy says i'm not going to add 3rd party software to fix microsoft's new OS. Windows 8 will fail there's no way microsoft can convince users to buy their Tablet over a Ipad(Apple fans are mental), And most people wont like the new interface for Laptops and Desktops and i've shown lots of people who are AVERAGE and they cant even figure out how to turn off their PC. That is how average people are.

 

[John1969]

win7 is not decent, in fact i like quite few things about it. but it does not support many older (or even new) applications, mostly due to shift to 64-bit. fortunately using virtual machines one can support older products too. Microsoft worked on various versions of windows for decades so something good must come out. now if only they would learn how to implement kill task that actually really works for those occasional event when application does hang up...

 

[wlachan]

Been using 3.1, 3.11, 95, 2000, XP, Vista & 7 for years, I have to agree 7 is the most stable and versatile one. But really, 7 is virtually Vista SP3, and that's why 7 SP2 (or Vista SP4 if you like) has never existed or needed because it has been so refined.

 

[livebriand]

Windows 7 FTW!

Both of my machines run Windows 7 right now. I just ordered some more for family members (to replace old XP ones), and I am NOT downgrading those to Windows 8.

 

[tomfreak]

all thanks to 64bit + a DX10 ban, if not I will not upgrade to win7 from XP.

 

[pjmelect]

I found it interesting that according to these figures the Mac operating systems is also declining in market share. I think that the actual market share is higher as many corporate XP machines are not connected to the internet.

 

[woodnotepetard69]

Bring DX11.1 and all the optimizations to 7, and those who want the Windows 8 UI can get get Windows 8. http://goo.gl/inbnz

 

[belardo]

Alachan: But Win7 adds functionality and huge memory hole that was never fixed in Vista. Its enough of a change to be its own OS.

I wonder if MS will still count Windows-Side-grading to be counted as Win8 sales, like they did with vista?

ie: PC company ships out a notebook with XP pre-installed, but they actually paid MS for WIN and used its "downgrade" rights for the XP install. Some of the notebooks we got with XP pre-installed had Win8 stickers/key on the bottom.

 

[SpadeM]

[citation][nom]memadmax[/nom]You forgot about Vista then.....[/citation]

[citation][nom]hannibal[/nom]Not actually. Windows 7 came very fast after Vista. It was one of those most shortest "new" OS in the market cases. So no wonder that Vista is not so big. The win 8 will live longer than Vista did. The facelift version of windows 8 (win 9) will come in shedule if everything goes ok in a couple of years after Win 8. Because win 9 will have the same core and UI than win 8, it will be easier to MS to produce it to the market, so they have more time to tinker it sleeker and add some features as replasement to disk operation system. But win 7 is so popular that it will be guite high in the list at least near 2020 when the support will end, like now is happening to win XP.[/citation]

No I didn't + u see Vista didn't have the chance to "grow" on ppl cause well it was a buggy OS to start with and it didn't have tablets to run on therefor in turn, making more money for MS.
I'm by all means not a fan of Windows 8, but Microsoft will not loose revenue from this move.

 

[Teeroy32]

what I just typed a long comment, posted it and it disappeared, oh well here I'll have another shot. I have always hated windows, grew up with amiga's, begrudgingly bought XP for my first gaming rig, that was a pentium 4 prescott, old but still useful for basic tasks or older games. That is now my HTPC, did change it to opensuse then ubuntu, whilst gnome 2.3 was rocking, my little prescott flew, but with the new DE like gnome 3 and unity, its as slow as vista, I did try 7, it was nice and stable but made my P4 too slow, then win 8 rc came out, all my super geek mates where loving it so I gave it a crack, boy I hate metro for normal use, but win 8 made my old baby fly like it was on ubuntu 10.04 (loved my little Lucid Lynx), and everything worked, the missus's win 7 lappy could connect to the network easier, the P4 was my home server too, and my 360 just worked with it too. Now I have a bulldozer, and win 8 is a must have, and having a little app to get rid of metro is no big deal. people sooking about that need to grow up. Win 7 is a nice stable and quick platform if you have an intel with core something in its name or Phenom if your an AMD fanboy, I wanted an i5 but couldn't stretch the budget, and still get a gpu that suited me and my gaming, got bulldozer for the more up to date processor, should of hunted harder for a 6 core phenom but my shops only had Llano or Bulldozer, and I wasn't getting an i3 and didn't even consider llano, did too much video encoding, if it was just gaming sure I would have got the i3. Pity MS aren't going to sell a 3 licence copy so I could do all 3 of my machines, my P4, my pentium D and my bulldozer, oh well have to buy a couple of copies, but I may wait till I can buy an AMD apu system that comes pre installed with win 8 and just retire my P4 and Pentium D, put xubuntu on them and give them to my kids to destroy, then save up more and buy a mean i7 with a gtx680 with win 8 pre-installed and give the bulldozer and gtx560 to my missus for her graphic design, thebn I only need to buy win 8 for the bulldozer

 

[assasin32]

I suspect that Win7 will be hard to kill because all everyone knows and seems to care about Win8 is the new Metro interface and people don't like change especially when they know what they are doing and view it as being effecient. Change will just cause confusion and annoy them, so I fully suspect a LOT of people to purposely avoid win8 and will try to keep win7 as long as possible.

 

[lradunovic77]

Windows 8 and Metro needs to fail so MS releases real Windows not some bullshit called Win 8.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]DroKing[/nom]Probably because of the fact that people are snatching windows 7 up due to the windows 8 going to suck major balls.[/citation]

Can you explain objectively how Windows 8 sucks, without whining about Metro?

Checkmate.

[citation][nom]edogawa[/nom]Windows 7 is solid as a rock, fantastic OS. Windows 8 will probably do as bad as vista, I hope Microsoft learns that no one wants a tablet UI on a desktop.[/citation]

How does most people think win8 suck? Not everything people say here can be dilated to fit the mass market. People here think they know about computers, about IT... really we are just the outside looking in.

Microsoft doesn't give a damn that a bunch of whiny children by the name of "hardcore pc gamerz mlg pro yayayaya" wont buy Win8, because most of the market will.

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]leongrado[/nom]It's funny to see that Windows users are always complaining about new OS's coming out and Mac users don't seem to have an opinion. Why is that?[/citation]

whats a mac?

 

[knowom]

[citation][nom]MisterD70[/nom]There is 1 reason, and 1 reason only that Win-7 is leading.Direct-X10-11 support.I can guarantee you that if XP had directx-10-11 support, nobody would really feel the need to switch.[/citation] In the general sense I agree it's not the only reason, but probably the biggest people switch.

The other big one and the reason I switched from XP to 7 finally despite liking XP for obvious reasons is due to SSD TRIM support which XP lacks.

 

[clownbaby]

considering that many corporations are just now switching from XP to 7 because XP's official support is finally being dropped, this isn't surprising. The user % of 7 will only rise over the next few months.

 

[Stevemeister]

The reason 7 has overtaken XP is because the latter is not being sold anymore. I like Windows 7 and have used it since the initial beta release and love its features but on the whole I would say XP 64 ran faster and used a lot less memory. Both systems are extremely stable compared to Win2000 and 95. The ease of setting up networking in Windows 7 is much better the XP but apart from that there's not a lot of real "must have" features for me.

 

[the_brute]

[citation][nom]gm0n3y[/nom]I work as a software developer for a tech firm and all of our computers are still running xp / server 2k3. Its getting really old as most of the newer dev tools I'm using don't work well on XP. Supposedly they are planning on upgrading in the next 6 months or so, but I doubt it. I'm guessing that most other corporate computers are running XP.[/citation]
Win 2k. with Server 2k, along with several systems that have died painful deaths back in the 1980s. Yes we still have 2 systems running on 24 year old OS. (one is still on an old IBM mainframe processer)

 

[tomfreak]

for windows 8/ the future windows 9 to get biggest adoption Microsoft need to be silly to ban DirectX12 to win7 users.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

[citation][nom]sgtgimpy[/nom]Just FYI for all the people complaining about Windows 8. You know there is a nice, free little program by Stardock that puts the Start Button, with Windows 7 style menus back and makes it bypass the "Metro UI" right to the desktop when you boot. Oh and one other thing, windows core is the same as Windows 7 with a lot more optimization, performance and power tweaks. Been running Windows 8 RTM on my $10K gaming rig with no issues since it's release and not have not looked back to Windows 7 since. So you can stop you attention getting, 12 year-old rants on how bad windows 8 when you A. Haven't even used it and B. Just complaining to complain.[/citation]
I shouldn't have to add software to make the UI not suck!

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]leongrado[/nom]It's funny to see that Windows users are always complaining about new OS's coming out and Mac users don't seem to have an opinion. Why is that?[/citation]

because it just works?
thats what they were sold as, most people who know nothing about computers gravitate to macs.
that also said, i dont believe macs change everything from one os to another.

everything 95-xp were about the same, upgrades to the core, and upgrades to the os itself, but the same ui
didnt use vista ever
7 comes along and changes damn near everything around for change sake, not because the os needs it, but they want to make it look different. there is still functionality i miss haveing in win 7 that was there in xp.

win 7 isnt bad, but instead of a step in the right direction, its a step to the left and forward

win 8, however is a step backwards to the left and instead of moveing forward, they are going backwards.

 

[Guest]

Windows lost me at limiting ram on win 7+ for no other reason then trying to force everyone to buy professional versions. Apple and *nix do not do this.

 

[Guest]

memadmax: +1 on the Heston reference. I used it on the Samsung 840/830 article. Agree, win7 is the new XP. will not die for another ten years!