Windows 7 Trumps Vista By Reaching 20% Share 404
CWmike writes "Windows 7 cracked the 20% share mark last month, a milestone the problem-plagued Vista never reached, Web measurement vendor Net Application said over the weekend. Gregg Keizer reports that Windows 7's online usage share reached 20.9% in December, up 1.2 percentage points from the month before. Windows Vista, meanwhile, fell by half a point to 12.1%, its lowest share since July 2008. Vista peaked at 18.8% in October 2009, the same month that Microsoft launched Windows 7. The other standout finding: XP is projected to still account for 13% when it's retired in 2014."
An anonymous reader adds news that Google's Chrome browser is nearing 10% market share.
Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.
Here come the "its not better than XP" posts (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me count the ways:
1. The UAC - unfortunately users can't be bothered to run as a non-admin and just use runas, so UAC is the next best thing. Running as non-admin is easier than ever.
2. 64-bit support with easy to find 64-bit drivers. If you want MS to sign your drivers you need to provide 64-bit.
3. Protected mode - not as in memory but as in a native sandboxing technology that IE and and Adobe X use. These apps interact with the OS via a broker process. This is also why so many exploit target the add-ons (Flash, pre-X Adobe, Java) and not the browser itself.
4. Bitlocker
5. Large disk support.
6. SSD TRIM support. I have 3 SSD drives and they would be a PITA without TRIM in 7.
7. Better security architecture. A lot of things dont run as non-admin in XP so you needed to run them as admin or system to make them work, which greatly increased your attack surface.
8. Better Windows update agent. I love the option to ether use my WSUS or go to MS to get updates . As well as a decent GUI that shows me that status of the updates, last update, etc.
9. Windows Media Center done right.
10. Powershell support native.
11. A decent taskbar, finally.
12. Performance increase. I've run 7 on 256 megs of RAM on an old P4 and it flies on modern hardware.
13. Youre going to upgrade anyway from XP eventually, might as well get something good.
Re:windows 7 (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows 7 from the user experience is mostly Vista with feature tweaks and better driver support. The rest is mostly marketing.
True, but what an amazingly difference that marketing makes. It is incredible how many people around here have gushing praise for Windows 7, and yet total scorn for Vista. The main reason for this is hype, most for the downwards hype that Vista has got.
How many people skipped Vista all togather because of what everyone else was saying about it. I know I almost did. When I got my first laptop with Vista, I was ready with my XP disc in hand to wipe it when I decided to have a quick look at the OS to see how bad it really was. It wasn't bad at all (or at least nothing like the bad press that it got). That laptop is still on Vista today.
I acutally got quite angry with myself for believing the bad hype. I have long known to ignore positive spin on a product from the companies and reviewers, but Vista was the first time I had been sucked in by negative hype in the communuty. So many of the things that people said about it were just outright lies. It became obvious that a lot of people who denigrated the OS had never actually used it. That is not to say that it didn't have problems, just not as many as people said.
So sure, if you went from XP to Windows 7 then you would be much more likely to have good things to say about it. So Microsoft didn't really need to make substantial changes to Windows 7. They just needed to release an OS that had good driver support from the start and could start with a clean slate with the community.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to forget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista [wikipedia.org]
A lot of little things are no longer there, for example the ability to display activity icons for each network connection (dial-up, VPN, WiFi, LAN) in the systray so you can actually see which interfaces are being used right now. Does anybody know a third party replacement for that?