About 35% of all Windows PCs are still running Win7, just slightly behind Win10

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Source: NetMarketShare
[See the full post at: About 35% of all Windows PCs are still running Win7, just slightly behind Win10]

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Elly, Microfix

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WinXP + Win7 > Win10

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WinXP+Win7 = 37%
Windows 10 = 46%

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According to the figures below the graph:-

WinXP + Win7 = 41.24%

Windows 10 =  40.61%

Or am I missing something?

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The figures below the graph are not for this month. (I think they may be an average for the last year shown by the graph.)

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Seff

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b wrote:

The figures below the graph are not for this month. (I think they may be an average for the last year shown by the graph.)

They also show the percentage of Windows installs for all desktops, not just Windows desktops. (See the chart posted below by warrenrumak where he has properly generated the chart to show Windows 10 as a percentage of Windows installs.)

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b

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Alex5723 wrote:

WinXP + Win7 > Win10

This is incorrect.  Windows 10 has the absolute majority of Windows installations now.

 

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jabeattyauditor

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Is that 7, 8.1, and XP combined or does 8/8.1 have such a small market share that it’s not worth including. I have a Laptop that has a windows 8 Pro license, with Windows 7 Pro factory installed via Windows Pro version downgrade rights, and it’s getting re-imaged to Win 8 and in-place upgraded to Windows 8.1 after Windows 7’s EOL.

And that laptop’s hardware is just too old for any conversion to Windows 10 because the Laptop’s OEM has only certified the laptop for Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1.

So yes Windows 10 is now maybe in the majority but that’s mostly by attrition and the CPU makers, MS, and PC/laptop OEMs not certifying any new PC/laptop hardware for any OS but Windows 10. But for Old Laptops it’s better to stay with any OS version that the laptop was originally shipped with and maybe only have one OS version upgrade such as Win 7 going into 8/8.1 where there is little OS kernel difference between 7 and 8/8.1. Windows 10 was Introduced in July 2015 and that’s 4 years ago so taking 3+ years to surpass windows XP and 7/8.1 is mostly due to attrition and new CPU hardware only being certified for windows 10. If both AMD and Intel  along with MS had not stopped any mainstream support for windows 8.1 on new hardware then there would be more folks moving to windows 8.1 from windows 7 but that’s rather difficult without the OS certification support from MS and the OEMs.

So for any new OS, if given sufficient time, that OS is sure to win out by attrition as that’s just the inevitable consequence of any older OS versions being declared depreciated  and no longer supported. Windows 10’s update forcing and other unpopular tactics is what has made it so difficult for Windows 10’s adoption rate on any older hardware. That and Windows 10’s rapid update cadence makes it even harder for older laptop hardware to manage to run windows 10 without issues.

Windows 7 will be around until 2023 for enterprise and volume licensing customers with that paid extended Windows 7 OS support for security updates from MS until 2023 and my one laptop with a Windows 8 Pro license is getting 8 installed from the included recovery DVDs and in-place upgraded to windows 8.1 and whatever patches are required to be up to date until 8.1 goes EOL(2023) or the laptop breaks, whichever comes first.

For new PC/laptop hardware that’s Windows OS Based it’s been Windows 10 for a good few years now so that’s attrition mostly but there will be plenty of 7 and 8.1 laptops still in use until 2023 with any new laptops only coming with windows 10 any no earlier MS OS certification on the consumer side. Enterprise laptops are a different story as that’s the Enterprise’s IT department and any MS enterprise/volume licensing contracts that may offer in-house certification for whatever older versions of Windows that’s still in use. Enterprise customers usually have their own customized Windows Builds so any new laptops will get re-imaged with whatever OS that the Enterprise’s Mission Critical Software has been vetted and certified to run under.

And it’s the costs of vetting/certifying any Enterprise’s Mission Critical software that’s keeping some on windows 7/8.1 until 2023. So that’s why many Enterprises will pay for Extended Windows 7 support. The same thing happened when Windows XP went EOL and many Enterprises stayed on XP(purchased extended support) until they got their money’s worth out of the mission critical software vetting/certification costs that was incurred from adopting XP. The OS licensing(Just the OS) is a relatively minor cost compared to any mission critical enterprise software that has to be vetted/certified with a specific OS version and to work as error free as possible with as close to 100% QOS or the business can not function.

I’m not looking for any new laptop currently until the Linux OS Laptop OEMs begin Adopting AMD APUs as an option and first generation Zen APUs(2000 Series) are already replaced by  Zen+ 3000 series APUs for second generation APU offerings. Maybe by the end of this year into early 2020 there will be Zen-2 based APUs(4000 series) and the Linux OS Laptop  OEMs will have to take notice by then.

I’ll still be waiting for MS to offer some consumer Windows 10 LTSB version that’s not feature bloat encumbered and too high maintenance but it sure looks like that will take longer to offer depending on how many total windows 10 users switch to Apple or any Linux OS based PC/Laptop OEMs after the 2020-2023 time frame. I want an OS version with as little feature updates as possible and more multi-year stability with just security updates as needed.

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The answer to your question is clearly displayed in the chart I posted.  Windows 10 has more than 50% of all Windows usage now — that’s literally the dictionary definition of “absolute majority”.

Take a minute with Statcounter or Netmarketshare to explore the numbers for yourself.

Steam’s hardware survey also has Windows 10 usage among gamers to be above 70%, with Windows 7 at 25% and Windows 8.x at 5%.  Their numbers show that Non-Win10 usage is dropping at a rate of about 1%  month.

 

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Sure windows 10 and its, at the time, requirement for gamers if they wanted DX12 capability to have to install Windows 10 to get DX12. But gamers are not a representative metric for overall Windows OS version popularity. There are many Windows 7 users that are more interested in OS Stability  over a longer term period without any feature bloat causing OS instability.

Windows 10 is not popular and only gains market share by attrition and MS could not even give 10 away for free choosing at first to go as far as achieving its goals via some Get Windows 10 “Optional” update where end users of 7/8.1 had that update foisted upon them via nefarious trickery(1).

I’m not really doubting the reality that Windows 10’s attrition rates will eventually see the Windows 7 fall even lower than its current install base percentages. There still will be larger numbers of 7 users remaining come Jan 2020 than there was for XP when it reached its EOL. And any Windows 8.1 OEM licenses still in the retail channels are going to see a mini surge in popularity as I’ll be looking for that myself for at least one other laptop than the one that already came with a Windows 8 Pro license(But has never ran Windows 8 Pro as the laptop came factory pre-downgraded to 7 Pro by its OEM).

I literally Ran the 4 or so blocks from the bus stop to Microcenter in the summer of 2014 just to purchase that HP Probook because it came with a Pro Windows 8 license that HP factory pre-dowgraded to Windows 7 Pro. So I did not have to worry about ever dealing with 8, and that was a good while before MS came out with 8.1 to fix most of the more egregious errors in 8’s UI.

I’ve got until 2023 on the Probook once I install the windows 8 recovery DVDs and immediately upgrade in place to 8.1 and install a third party Shell/UI program to hide all that remains of TIFKAM in 8.1’s UI. So that’s more latitude for me to wait it out to see how Stable MS can make Windows 10. But rally I want a System-76 Linux laptop that’s using an AMD Zen+/Vega 3000 series APU or even a Zen-2 4000 series APU in 2020. Blender 2.8 is not likely to work on any of my current laptop hardware as the GPUs/Graphics is too old and Apple depreciating OpenGL/OpenCL is really making it hard for any Blender 3D usage on Apple’s newer hardware and OS versions. So Linux is really the only option for the oldest of my aged collection of laptops.

I’m sure that by the time 2020 gets here that MS will never have as large a percentage of the OS market as it had with Windows 7. There are just too many alternatives out there now and Chromebooks and Android and other options. I choose laptops based on the software that I use most often being supported on the OS so Apple and it’s Blender 3D support currently is not there while Blender 3D 2.7b and earlier does have Linux support.

Gamers do not care about anything but games support so they will go with whatever MS will require.

“The answer to your question is clearly displayed in the chart I posted.”

I see that Windows 8.1 has fallen behind Apple’s OSX/MacOS versions in popularity but that may change come 2020 on any Laptops that have 8/8.1 license stickers on their bottoms because that’s going to become temporarily more popular after Jan 2020. That and any remaining 8.1 OEM licenses still in the retail channels. I’m curious as to how the used laptop market will work out if any of the Laptop’s with Windows 8/8.1 license stickers have had windows 10 installed and then are sold to someone who sees the Windows 8/8.1 license and actually wants to reinstall 8.1 on the used laptop. Will the laptop’s previous owner have a legal responsibility to inform any potential second hand customer that that license is no longer valid before the laptop is sold. Because there will be folks wanting to avoid windows 10 via some used hardware purchase where the laptop came with a windows 8/8.1 license sticker but any Windows 10 install how will that affect the downgrade rights on the used laptop market where the laptop has a legal Windows 8/8.1 license sticker on the bottom.

(1)

“Criticism of Windows 10”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_10

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WinXP + Win7 > Win10

So true. Plus many Windows XP Pro with pay support have been update to show as new OS by default. MS made updates to get IE11 to run on XP to get what the clients needed.

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WinXP + Win7 > Win10

There is also other OS that are still being used online by businesses and governments since many DOS and 32bit programs do not run on newer OS:

Windows 95+Windows 98+Windows 2000+Windows Me+Windows Nt, Xp, XP Pro with support until 2025, Vista, 7 > Windows 10

Windows 10 is too unstable to be used.

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[krzemien]

Check this out as well:

https://reports.adduplex.com/#/r/2019-06

Windows 10 May 2019 Update (1903) has gained around 5% since last month and is now on 6.3% of close to 100,000 PCs surveyed.

This puts it on par with the pace of 1809 one month after its re-release. And this is, probably, not a good sign as we’ve seen how this ended (just over 30% install base before the next release went out).

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by krzemien.

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I am speculating that the gain in Windows 10 versus Windows 7 as each month goes by is almost entirely the result of new pc purchases where the newly purchased machine with Windows 10 pre-installed by the merchant replaces a machine being retired or cannibalized by the purchaser which had Windows 7 running on it with a license tied to that machine id. Three of my four machines are running Windows 7; and none of them have SSD drives. The fourth machine has Windows 10 installed on an SSD drive only because the merchant sold it with Windows 10 already installed. As the Patch Lady wrote some time ago, Windows 10 seems to run better and with fewer issues when installed on an SSD drive rather than a spinning fixed disk drive. I experimented with various versions of Windows 10 on each of my Windows 7 machines with Winchester spinning disk drives and abandoned 10 on each machine after finding that Windows 10 was writing or creating bad blocks on the hard drive which simply did not exist before the Windows 10 install nor after returning them back to the original Windows 7 x64 sp1 installation. But I have no such problem with Windows 10 installed on my new laptop with an SSD drive for the OS and a regular hard drive for data.

 

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The vast majority of Windows users, retail or commercial, get a version of Windows with a new machine and do not upgrade to a new version until they replace the machine. OS upgrades on the same machine have always been a small part of Microsoft’s business.

--Joe

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As a user of multiple major releases it seems to me the actual best OS for serious work is still Windows 8.1, unless you have a brand spankin’ new high-end system with lots of cores, at which point Win 10 can be a more or less viable replacement. Win 8.1 on 6 year old workstation hardware runs for me, doing fairly intense software engineering work, every bit as quickly and smoothly as Win 10 on circa 2019 hardware. Both systems cost about $6K when purchased.

Nowhere in these usage figures do we see that 8.1 is the gem that it really was. And it’s one that has a few years of extended support left in it.

-Noel

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Charlie, AlexEiffel, PerthMike

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I agree 100% with what you said, Noel. Problem is, about the only place you can get Windows 8.1 if you don’t already have it is by buying a refurbished computer. Fortunately, there are a lot of those out there.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Noel Carboni, Elly, Steve

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Never give up, never surrender! 😉

No matter where you go, there you are.

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Resist Assimilation by WIN 10!

Seriously, as I remember, when 98 went out, some private firms stepped in and started providing some support. Even if assimilation occurs at 1% a month, 26% in January is nothing to sneeze at in terms of a market. ($$$$) Someone who knows what they’re doing just may step into the gap.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Greenhorn
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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I wonder just how many would have happily stayed on 7, if it wasn’t for MS dodgy tactics (GWX, forcing OEMs to offer 10 only, dropping support of updates for new processers, etc)

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Charlie

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MS’s first dodgy tactic – GWX, only made me more determined to stay with Win 7.  If lots of other people out there felt like me, then MS shot themselves in the foot.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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there’s the KB3184143 update for Windows 7, which is supposed to remove some of the GWX stuff from MS.

I don’t run or use Win7 w/out that update installed on some older PCs with Win7

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For those of us that want to look beyond ‘who has the most’, to ask what the biggest and fastest computers in the world are using… (and it isn’t Windows!):

Linux Runs all of the Top 500 Supercomputers, Again!

Over the last 20 years, supercomputers have moved from Unix (a closed, proprietary system), to Linux, (which is open source). Being able to have end user control and choice seems to be important in being able to customize them, and optimize performance… world-wide!

 

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Charlie, Ascaris

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Elly wrote:

Being able to have end user control and choice seems to be important in being able to customize them, and optimize performance… world-wide!

No one runs Windows OS/Server on a mission critical systems.

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[jabeattyauditor]

Alex5723 wrote:

Elly wrote:

Being able to have end user control and choice seems to be important in being able to customize them, and optimize performance… world-wide!

No one runs Windows OS/Server on a mission critical systems.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s not a valid statement.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by jabeattyauditor.

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Alex5723 wrote:

No one runs Windows OS/Server on a mission critical systems.

Please provide facts to validate your opinion.

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Take a look at Microsoft’s 2018 annual report – they are earning lots of money on server products. Companies ARE running Windows OS/Server on mission critical systems.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/annualreports/ar2018/annualreport

I work part-time at a small credit union, and they run Windows OS/Server on the desktop and on the servers.

They don’t have an Exchange server; they have Office 365 subscriptions instead.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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No one runs Windows OS/Server on a mission critical systems.

True. Any mission critical systems runs Linux or Unix Server. Windows OS/Server is too insecure and unstable to be used for anything that needs to be secure and stable. Windows 10 has the worse remote hack that MS has to patch yet and just needs a user email to bypass the security and log in. Do not use email as your log in and you are much safer.

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anonymous wrote:

Windows 10 has the worse remote hack that MS has to patch yet and just needs a user email to bypass the security and log in. Do not use email as your log in and you are much safer.

Details please.

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MrJimPhelps, jabeattyauditor

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