Windows XP drops below 40% market share while Windows 8 passes 1% | Hacker News Reader

Windows XP drops below 40% market share while Windows 8 passes 1%

thenextweb.com

30 pointsQuekster47 comments

I am sticking with XP for my home PC as long as I can. I really don't have a good reason to move off. Why break things when they work.

Please tell us you use Chrome or FF at least :)

I have stopped pretty much all of the unnecessary services and am running a XP with 3.5 G memory (though it doesn't recognize more than 3.11 due to some hardware limitation). I was using Chrome with Themes service disabled until I realized that Chrome has a consistent bug where it wouldn't show check boxes on the web pages properly and the solution is to enable the Themes and all works fine.

With Windows default Firewall and MS Security Essential, I am pretty satisfied with lean, mean XP machine.

The thing that got me off XP quickly was how difficult it is to find applications. "All Programs" becomes an unnavigable maze unless you spend a lot of time keeping it in order, which almost no one did. Since Vista Windows has had universal search which is very nice.

Search is nice, but for organization linux tends to sort programs much better in the menus(by category rather then by company).

Install Launchy.

Problem solved.

> it doesn't recognize more than 3.11 due to some hardware limitation

Probably because it's a 32-bit OS. This isn't an issue with 8 (or 7 or Vista, for that matter), since it has a functional 64-bit version, which by itself is a great reason to upgrade.

It's not a hardware limitation. Any processor you'd want to use today supports PAE, since it was introduced with the Pentium Pro. Even if some pre-ppro box in some utility closet is still running, its motherboard probably doesn't support anywhere near 4GB, so it's irrelevant that the CPU doesn't support PAE. Linux for 32bit CPUs supported >4GB using PAE page tables for a long time before 64bit consumer processors went mainstream.

It's partially Microsoft trying to segment the market, and partially concern that a larger address space visible in a 32bit OS might/would trigger bugs in device drivers or perhaps other software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#Desi...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...

I'm one of the lead devs on the Chrome Windows sandbox, and I can assure you that what we do with Vista+ on the security front is leaps and bounds ahead of what we're stuck with on XP. DEP is unreliable and pretty worthless anyway without ASLR. You also don't have things like SEHOP or other memory mitigations that are the first line of defense between your system and the average stale pointer exploit against WebKit.

As for the sandbox itself, we run as "Untrusted" integrity level under Vista+, which buys a solid layer of defense on top the SID, rights, and job based sandboxing we do on XP. Our GPU process sandbox in particular (used for accelerated graphics) relies heavily on Vista+ integrity levels due to deficiencies in the Windows XP driver and graphics model. Then there's the fact that XP is lacking hundreds of security fixes that Microsoft has chosen not to backport.

Seriously, I've spent many weeks trying to wring every last bit of security I can out of XP, and I really do think that Chrome does the best anyone possibly could on that front. But in the end XP is just an OS that's far past its security expiration date, and running it at all means taking a big risk.

Microsoft spent how many billions of dollars and how many man hours to improve Windows since XP? My guess is that you'll get a much better PC. Sorry, I can't go into details since I'm a Mac user but for $40, I can still conclude that it's worth it for the average XP user.

My major use of my desktop is my browser and I don't really see a valid need to upgrade (even though I can upgrade any time). You throw additional memory to a decent hardware and things just work. There are people who raise security red flags on XP but I keep things tidy through my browser use (Ghostry, Adblock and occasional Spybot checks along with usual watch of firewall logs).

> Microsoft spent how many billions of dollars and how many man hours to improve Windows

Who cares how much money was spent? What matters whether they have improved something or not.

> but for $40, I can still conclude that it's worth

No, you have to judge the claimed improvements based on their merit alone, not on the price attached to them.

When you identify the merits, you can decide whether they are worth the price asked, but from knowing the price, you cannot deduce how big the merits possibly are, thats a fallacy.

As somebody who is using XP and 7 simultaneously for years now, I honestly do not see why any random end user should invest effort to upgrade to 7. They can just wait till their XP machines break and then just get whatever is preinstalled at the new machine they buy.

Drag to/from the top of the screen to maximize/restore a window. That's worth the upgrade alone. For me, the per application audio volume mixer is worth it alone as well.

There are a couple legitimately useful new features in the NT6 line. From my POV: the new WDDM driver model prevents a large class of crashes caused by faulty graphics drivers. ASLR and DEP. Moving all the window drawing and compositing to the GPU to free up some CPU time. Compatibility with newer DirectX software. IE9+, or even if you don't use IE, a modern trident for all apps that embed mshtml. The new task manager in Windows 8 is legitimately useful. GetTickCount64() is guaranteed to exist. The wonderful Consolas font.

None of which, by themselves, are a particularly compelling reason to upgrade. But Windows 7 is absolutely a worthy successor if you ever do decide to rebuild your system in the future, and with ~3G of ram the performance implications will be negligible (they're negligible on much weaker hardware than yours).

> the new WDDM driver model prevents a large class of crashes caused by faulty graphics drivers

True. However, the current AMD driver offers something similar for WinXP. It has prevented one restart already.

And my other computer with 7 just froze because of a problem with the video card, so Win7 WDDM driver model is not fail-proof.

I just went back to XP from Seven last month in my home computer (4GB Ram). I'm with you.

- Things I got back with XP:

  Sound 3D acceleration in video games.

  I can force v-sync in my AMD video card.

  The keyboard multimedia keys work again.

  Great performance for more software.

- Things I had to add to make XP usable:

  Launchy

  RocketDock

  Some tool to make the Win+left and Win-right keys work like Win7.

- Things I miss:

  The launch lists.

  The percentage completion indicator in the taskbar.

I still have a Win7 machine with 8GB Ram at work, so I can compare both every day. My next machine will be Win7 too. But with much beefier hardware, to make it worth it.

Windows 8 shines on a touch screen laptop. I was in the market for one over the black Friday and not many were available at a decent price. If that picture changes then I am sure the adoption will accelerate.

The best device for Win8 is what Microsoft calls the "convertible". A device that's a laptop one second and a tablet the next. I particularly like the Surface, and those ultrabooks that bend backwards, so you can use the base of the unit to keep it stood up!

Win8's hybrid interface is exactly designed for these hybrid devices that can change use-cases in a second. Surface tablets are just a variation on the tablet/laptop convertible idea. The first convertibles had screens that swiveled 180 degrees, and the back of the screen latched against the keyboard.

Many ideas have been tried out, some having an always-forward screen and a keyboard that "slide-and-rotate" out from underneath. Others have a screen which rotates vertically inside a frame, allowing it to flip over and cover the keyboard.

Surface basically takes the motherboard & battery and fits them behind the screen, instead of under the keyboard. The keyboard itself can become just a detachable accessory. This arrangement isn't new -- it's been used in many mobile devices for more than 10 years.

Does anyone think that iOS and Android tablets should be included in these reports?

I think it is only a matter of time before for some people, a tablet will be their primary computing device.

It's mentioned in the article though not really on topic but...any idea why Chrome has been losing users for 3 months in a row? Where are they going to? Firefox? Why? What is Chrome doing wrong/others doing right?

The thing about statistics is that it can be different depending on who measures it. According to StatCounter[1] Chrome's share has been rising from 34.21% to 35.72% in the last 3 months.

[1]http://gs.statcounter.com/

I realised that both crash (possibly because of plugins) BUT it is easier to kill one Firefox process in the task manager then x Chrome processes.

Adblock works with ff better also.

I use Opera as secondery browser.

I don't use Windows, but Chrome's Adblock Plus works great (perfectly if you disable the "allow not-so-bad ads" preference) and I've never had all my Chrome processes go rogue, usually just one, and I can kill it by closing the tab itself or by using Chrome's process manager.

I've seen Ads in Chrome I haven't seen in years. Nasty popups also. I am not the only one with the experience so I guess we two are just not surfing the same pages but belive me: it is not as good as the one for FireFox. Even if I don't understand why...

I'm a Firefox user. Extensions are a big deal for me. I'd love to move to Chrome, but:

1) I use tree-style tabs (tabs arranged in a column at the left) in Firefox since I usually have 10-some tabs open. Chrome used to have this but they disabled it, and no extensions for this work.

2) Firefox uses less memory (older versions of FF used to be notorious for leakage, but the benchmarks I looked at showed Firefox outperformed Chrome in memory usage).

Granted, Chrome probably has slightly faster page loading.

I still use Chrome on my OSX MBA, but on my Ubuntu desktop I switched back to firefox because I found Chrome to be buggy. Also, the flashplayer implementation on Chrome is terrible.

I just reinstalled Windows XP after some years of using Windows 7.

I will use Windows 7 again, just not in my current computer, but on a new one.

I wonder where those 40 million copies went (no hate here, just interested whether OEMs (or users) buy such incredible volumes in advance).

Think Black Friday and Cyber Monday... presents that won't be opened till December 24/25.

Nowhere. OEM's bought the licenses in bulk, and now they won't be able to get rid of them fast enough.

So for every 7 Macs out there, there is one Windows 8 pc? Am I reading that right?

Windows 8 hasn't been out on the market for more than a few months. Why is that surprising?

Not interested in taking sides, but it seems like OS X seems to migrate users on major version upgrades much faster than Windows.

Actually, every OS I can think of seems to have faster upticks in major versions than Windows. I can think of lots of reasons why that may be though.

OS X tends to break older apps IIRC. On the other hand, Windows has excellent backwards compatibility. And there's always the very long support period.

"OS X tends to break older apps"

[citation needed]

New versions of OS X don't break older apps. The opposite is true: new apps are often coded to take advantage of APIs in newer versions of OS X, those will not work on older versions of OS X.

My 2004 PowerPC notebook can't run the most current OS X, and few new apps work on PowerPC Macs. That's why I still use Adobe CS3 on that computer.

My 2009 Intel desktop Mac can run all apps ever released for OS X, even the ones compiled for PowerPC.

About Microsoft: Lots of drivers needed to be rewritten for Vista in order for peripherals to work. Internet Explorer 9 doesn't work on Windows XP and older. Internet Explorer 10 doesn't work on Vista and older. Modern UI apps don't work on Windows 7 and older.

> New versions of OS X don't break older apps.

A minor QuickTime version update halfway into Tiger's lifespan completely broke RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 for a while. It wasn't an OS update, granted, but still irksome. Also, Mountain Lion throws a hissy fit if you try to run a Flash-based app with Gatekeeper enabled (even if you do the right-click->open workaround).

> My 2009 Intel desktop Mac can run all apps ever released for OS X, even the ones compiled for PowerPC.

Are you still running Snow Leopard, by any chance? http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/26/mac_os_x_lion_drop...

> A minor QuickTime version update halfway into Tiger's lifespan completely broke RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 for a while.

Any insight into how that happened?

>"OS X tends to break older apps" >[citation needed]

Apps that dig deep into the OS are always at risk, VMWare Fusion is probably the best example of this. At my previous job there were issues with versions of Adobe CS (3 or 4, I can't really remember) and Snow Leopard.

Apple removed Rosetta from Lion, no PowerPC apps will run on anything after that.

Apple has a horrible backwards compatibility track record, Microsoft is significantly better in this respect.

For one, it costs $20 to upgrade your OS X. Windows 8 costs three times as much.

But to compensate for that a new version of OSX is released three times as often as a new version of Windows is.

my surprise (and the way I took hexasquids) was that widows 8 had already reached 1/7 of the amount of users of osx.

So far, but by this time next year that ratio will be very different.

Your distortion field is so concentrated! You realize the Mac OSX has been out for quite some time, while Windows 8 has barely a few months in the market, right?

I think it's time you clean out your fanboy lense.

Please don't call people "fanboy"s, or any other name for that matter, on Hacker News.

It can be hard to tell when you're immersed in the tech community, but OS X only has around 7.3% of the overall desktop OS market share[0]. So if Windows 8 took 1% of the market share, it would have 1/7th the share of OS X.

0: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....

By the end of the first month Windows 7 passed 5% of the market, so Windows 8 sales are 5x slower than for Windows 7. This is pretty bad for Microsoft and I don't think it will get much better from here. In fact, they were supposed to get a boost in the launch quarter, and so far they haven't as PC sales have fallen by 21% compared to a year ago.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/30/windows-8-hard-sales-numb...

And by the way, this shows Net Apps' data is not to be trusted yet again. NPD has already said the sales numbers are 58% for Windows 8 for new PC's sold this month, while Net Apps says it's 68%. I for one trust NPD more, because they actually measure sales, not traffic data through weird methods.

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