Win7 share declining slowly, Edge still in the doldrums

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According to NetMarketShare, Win10 share usage is up from 52% in September to 54% in October. Win7 share went from 29% to 27%. Statcounter says that C
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[jabeattyauditor]

Windows 7 actually declined from 38.89% to 26.90% in the chart you posted – that’s a pretty significant decrease for a single month.

[Disregard – I need more coffee this morning!]

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by jabeattyauditor.

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It’s called attrition as there is been no new Windows OS based hardware that not been only Windows 10 for years now. And look at 8.1 holding its own even though those 2 charts are scaled differently. But Windows 7 is shortly going to be EOL and I’d like there to be some XP stats at its EOL compared to 7 just like there is about to be Windows 7’s EOL stats compared to Windows 10.

Windows 7 for the SMB/Enterprise/Volume Licensing customers will have paid support until 2023 and many of those customers getting their money’s worth out of 7 the same way that happened with XP in the Enterprise/Volume licensing market.

It’s about 5 years into Windows 10 if one counts all the preview testing and Windows 10 on new hardware for a good part of those years  with all new hardware in the retail channels having 10 installed. There where some older unsold PCs/Laptops that came with Windows 8/8.1 that were re-imaged to windows 10 by the retailers and that’s too bad as I would have been a customer had the PC/Laptops had retained 8.1 instead of being loaded with 10.

Windows 7’s staying power is really the best when one considers that Windows 7 was never offered for free while Windows 10 was a free, and even GWX surreptitiously foisted on the unwilling,  and still it took years with the help of Attrition for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7. It’s not hard for one OS product that’s no longer being offered for years to see its numbers decline in the face of the latest OS that the only option on most new PCs/Laptops. And that’s a testament to 7’s  overall popularity even today, where 7 has not been offered as an option for years.

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I’d like there to be some XP stats at its EOL compared to 7 just like there is about to be Windows 7’s EOL stats compared to Windows 10

The rate of decline in usage of Windows 7 over the last three years, is roughly same as it was for Windows XP from early 2011 (release of Windows 7 SP1) to early 2014 (end of XP extended support).

Windows XP, July 2011: ~50%
Windows XP, April 2014: ~27%

Windows 7, September 2016: ~47%
Windows 7, October 2019: ~27%

Statcounterhas some slightly different numbers, but the overall trend is the same.  You can look at the graph for the last 10 years here: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-201910

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Warrenrumak: Thanks for taking the time to find and post those statistics in order to compare the relative declines of XP and Win 7 towards and after their respective EOLs. I imagine it would also be interesting and worthwhile to know (although the data for that are probably a lot more difficult to gather) what are the corresponding absolute numbers of PCs involved, then and now. Because I think the actual numbers, being most likely much larger for Win 7 users than ever were for XP ones, are needed to get a full picture of what all this means. For example, such absolute numbers for Win 7 should determine the likelihood of application developers continuing to support Win 7, as well as of further security patches becoming available from trustworthy sources (including for a price).

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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With Windows 7 getting the Enterprise/SMB/Volume licensing customers optional extended until 2023 paid support offered by MS, I’d expect that a lot of security software makers may just have reason to continue supporting Windows 7. And do not forget that Windows 8/8.1 support is not ending until 2023 as well and many things that run on 7 also run on 8.1 as well so that gives room for thought about application software that will not have problems running on 7 and 8.1 until 2023.

Windows 8.1 Retail OEM license Keys are still available for purchase at very reasonable pricing for older Windows 7 hardware that will likely have less issues running 8.1 than making the larger transition to Windows 10 without issues.

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OscarCP

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As W7 boxes are retired and replaced the market share of W7 should be dropping but the issue for MS is the share is still well above 20% of the computers online and possibly more for the computers in overall use.

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Not sure I trust these numbers.

Personally I have been using a user switching addon for more than a year now. Most sites think I’m a google bot. Easiest way to get to get rid some of popups.

Windows 7 till it no longer works then on to Linux.

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woody wrote:

Win10 share usage is up from 52% in September to 54% in October. Win7 share went from 29% to 27%

Why not ask Microsoft to revel the real usage numbers ? After all, Microsoft hasn’t installed Telemetry for nothing.

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The frightening thing is who the 27% (or whatever it is) still using Win 7 or Win XP actually are.

In the UK, they are the National Health Service, probably many police forces and other emergency services, and huge swathes of local and regional government.

I haven’t seen a Win 10 interface at any of these, and I’m sure they are not applying Classic Shell or the like because they don’t like Win 10.

Sleep well, and don’t have bad dreams over it.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Our county just bought  new voting machines with W7.

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I thought I recalled a discussion of Microsoft maintaining voting machines. Searched and found your reply to Woody’s blog article on 20 September.
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/microsoft-announces-that-us-voting-systems-running-win7-will-get-free-updates-through-the-2020-elections/#post-1959047

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[Geo]

Yep, shows W7 is still viable and being sold.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Geo.

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ScotchJohn and Geo: I find your news very interesting for two reasons:

(1) It is too early to say if they are good or bad. So there is as much reason to feel optimistic as there is to feel pessimistic because: who knows which attitude will be the right one, in the end?

(2) The news may very well be good, if they give developers more reasons to continue providing updates for their applications so they run well on Windows 7.

Already MS is offering to continue supporting Win 7 for single users (home, home office and small business) for another year after its official end of life in January, for an affordable price, and may do that for even longer. And at least one company is already offering to provide micro patches for Win 7 to help protect those who chose to subscribe to their service, from the security threats that may come out after EOL.

So Win 7’s “end” of life is getting a little bit blurrier as the clock continues to wind down, one second at the time, towards EOL day.

There are reasons why Win 7 days are numbered, but their number might be considerably larger than that of the days between now and January 14.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I stopped patching W 7 in April this year and after using DISM my 64 bit W 7 install is now down to 12 GB which works well because on the same SSD I am dual booting with Linux.

So far I have installed Linux on 4 machines and the oldest desktop is from 2006 but runs well and has Microcode updates.

With the information available I think the practical EOL for Windows 7 is now 2023 but it should run safely to 2025.

Linux does the job for me and there is a learning curve but it is not too steep.

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