Windows XP Market Share Finally Falls Below 50% 425
An anonymous reader writes "At the end of July 2011, Microsoft can say that Windows XP finally fell below the 50 percent mark. In other words, Redmond's decade-old operating system is now used by less than half of all Internet users."
Re:just sayin' (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't really seem like a logical upgrade path for an XP user. It makes a lot more sense for an XP user to move to Win7.
Windows 7 is the new XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows 7 is the new XP
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I never get any support from MS anyway. I used win2k for years after MS dropped support.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Support include security updates, which are important.
Re:No change here (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly if you don't want or need the new features and have adequately secured your install ... Its fine to run older software as long as you aren't being limited by it or are OK with those limitations.
That's exactly what I think. My parents (in their sixties) use Windows XP that I installed, keep as up to date as it can be in terms of patches and the like, set them up with a lovely user account that limits what can be done. For the word processing that mum does, and the occasional bit of surfing that they do, there is totally no need for them to upgrade - and trying to teach them how to make things work ("How do I shut it down now? The button used to be there and look like this...") really isn't worth the neglidgable benefit to them.
It is exactly like the old phones that they have - okay, color screens and the like, but no smartphone, no web surfing. They use it for making calls and the (very) occasional text message. Why on earth would they want to "upgrade" to a new shiny smartphone that they have to learn all over again for the simple features and would never use the additional stuff?
Re:Would switch if it weren't stupid-expensive... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows Has All But Disappeared Around Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Half the people I know with macs have installed Windows 7 on them. About half of those people have stopped using OSX all together, and intend on never buying Apple products again. Aren't anecdotes fun.
Re:just sayin' (Score:4, Insightful)
Why upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes, security concerns and all... but since when does Joe Randomuser care?
WinXP is the first Windows OS that has everything the user wants, even when the next system (actually, the two next systems) is out. When 98 came out, it was a definite upgrade to 95, not to mention that quite a few games soon required 98SE. 2k was a big leap ahead from 98 and NT, combining the versatility of the 9x line with the stability of the NT line, adding out of the box USB support to both. XP again brought new bells and whistles and WiFi support, more stability and more user friendliness.
No, I didn't forget ME. I decided to ignore regressions in development.
But Vista/7? What's the big benefit compared to XP?
DirectX10? So what? Few games really require it, you can do without. Aero? Please, let's talk about something useful, shall we? Now, I am probably not an expert on Windows, but that's pretty much all where I can see Vista/7 sing "everything you do I can do better".
There is simply no reason for people to jump onto Vista/7. I do assume that the "drop" in XP is simply due to people getting new computers with a new system, which is pretty much by default not XP but probably Win7 if they decide for a Windows OS.
tl;dr version: Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I'm finding that you westerners are really paranoid about security holes and what-not. Here in the third world we have multitudes of computers running unpatched (often pirated) versions of windows, yet somehow our civilisation is still progressing, there's no imminent danger of us having an information technology meltdown just yet.
What do you think drives the botnets around the world?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)