Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly 336
An anonymous reader writes: Despite support for Windows XP finally ending three months ago, the ancient OS has only now fallen below the 25 percent market share mark. To add to the bad news for Microsoft, after only nine full months of availability, its latest operating system version, Windows 8.1, has lost share for the first time.
For desktop browser share, Chrome is up, taking mostly from Internet Explorer and Firefox. For mobile browsers, Safari continues to fall while Chrome maintains strong growth.
Who has the market share? (Score:5, Informative)
I read the very short article, so you don't have to.
Windows is the bulk, at 91.68%, of that Windows 7 is 51.22%
Mac is 6.64%
And overall, Linux is 1.68%
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Informative)
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I would be curious to see how Azure is impacting Windows Server market share. They made it very easy to automatically deploy instances for those cloud services, and most people run multiple instance for load balancing.
I don't know the exact number but from what I've read Azure is gaining about 1,000 customers per day. That's a lot of Windows Servers.
AWS was first in that business but their console/dashboard is just too clunky, this scares a lot of people away. No wonder that Microsoft is making shitloads of
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I would be curious to see how Azure is impacting Windows Server market share. They made it very easy to automatically deploy instances for those cloud services, and most people run multiple instance for load balancing.
I don't know the exact number but from what I've read Azure is gaining about 1,000 customers per day. That's a lot of Windows Servers.
AWS was first in that business but their console/dashboard is just too clunky, this scares a lot of people away. No wonder that Microsoft is making shitloads of money while Amazon is almost to the point where they will ask employees to sell their blood in order to finance the price war in the cloud.
Azure also supports running Linux instances. I would be interested to see the numbers for Linux instances they run.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Informative)
No they support Linux virtual machines. It's not the same as cloud services.
On Azure one can deploy virtual machines (Windows or Linux) but also cloud services, which are basically dedicated on-the-fly instances of Windows Server on which one's web services are deployed. Cloud services are similar to managed VPS; you can remote desktop in the instance, but the patching and maintenance is built-in in the image. You don't rent a VM, you rent resources, and the instance is mostly stateless.
In addition to VM and cloud services, Azure also offers web sites, which are similar to traditional hosting. They support most web technologies (asp.net, php, python, node) and you can choose between shared or dedicated instances. What I found convenient is that you can use all those technologies within the same website, so if your app is mostly node but you need a specific web service that is written in PHP you can have both.
That's different from AWS, where only VM are available.
I have two Linux VM on my Azure account. There is a CentOS image available. It works ok but I know for a fact that they sometimes reboot without warning (I installed one and was lazy in configuring Apache, it was not registered in the startup services, and a few weeks later I noticed that Apache was not running). Never had that problem on AWS, but Azure is cheaper and easier to use. I pay about $15 per VM per month for the smallest instance.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Funny)
We'll find out next leap year when they all go down again :)
It's a joke - I don't really expect a third major leapyear fuckup from Microsoft, twice should have been enough of a wakeup call.
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I wonder about that, actually: I'm quite sure Linux users are much more likely to be running the likes of NoScript and various ad-blockers than Windows users are - and anyone who blocks whatever analytics script this survey uses will be ignored completely, skewing figures away from their platform. Maybe it's not a large proportion, but I'm sure it will be a factor there.
The scary thing is that Vista actually gained users
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It wouldn't shock me if Vista is gaining users based on XP migration. Lots of people may have been entitled to a free Vista upgrade with their system when they had XP, or be able to use Vista on their older systems. Lowest cost transition.
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I think Vista is even a bit like Windows 2000 vs XP : same OS than 7 but a bit older, more traditional user interface, will be deprecated sooner but mostly does the exact same things. If I needed Windows I'd look into running it on purpose. License stickers are even sold for cheap (though I think warez versions of Windows get all updates anyway?)
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
Microsoft will likely one day struggle to woo users off Windows 7, just like it is currently trying to do with the headache that is Windows XP.
I wonder if Microsoft is learning the wrong lessons from their "good" versions. They're having a hell of a time getting people to leave them. In the future, if people hate the version they're on, they'll be much more likely to buy a new version in the hopes that it's better. Brilliant!
That's the only think I can think of to fully explain Windows 8, and why even now they're refusing to admit that Metro apps are a steaming turd on top of an otherwise competent OS. The only idiots who like using those "apps" are the ones who would probably be better off with a tablet or smartphone instead of an actual desktop computer, for whom the actual power of a desktop is apparently wasted.
Ok, maybe I'm just a bitter throwback who's resentful that my desktop is being marginalized. Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic. What's wrong with gloss, gradients, transparency, and attractive animations, or even a bevel or link here and there so we can actually tell something is clickable rather than playing mystery-meat navigation? I swear, everything is going flat-shaded, blocky, ugly, and indistinguishable, all because that's now the new "hip" look.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only idiots who like using those "apps" are the ones who would probably be better off with a tablet or smartphone instead of an actual desktop computer,
I like the netflix app, that's about it.
Ok, maybe I'm just a bitter throwback who's resentful that my desktop is being marginalized.
The pendulum looks to be swinging back towards sensibility from 8 to 8.1 to what we've seen of 9.
Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic.
I don't think skeuomorphic means what you think it does.
But regardless, for those in marketing change is king, so these things are cyclical, and we'll just endlessly circle around a good UI without ever settling down and saying "nailed it". :)
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I don't think skeuomorphic means what you think it does.
Gah, you're right. I meant the move away from skeumorphic interfaces and toward... does the new flat, simple, textureless aesthetic have a name other than anti-skeumorphic? If it does, I can't think of it. Nothing like a lack of an edit function to make you look silly.
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The presence of or lack of functionality has nothing to do with skeuomorphism.
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does the new flat, simple, textureless aesthetic have a name other than anti-skeumorphic?
Fugly?
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Plain? Clear? Better?
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The only idiots who like using those "apps" are the ones ... for whom the actual power of a desktop is apparently wasted.
No, wait: I like Window 8. and I really, really like the interface formally known as Metro (ie, Metro.)
I like to see the visuals of virtual blood as it splashes across the screen as all of the Metro apps scream in digital silence and die. (ie, you can ignore the errors.) And then I install a real start menu and I'm good to go! Steps:
1: REMOVE Metro. (not disable, not hide; DIE.)
1: See here. [winaero.com]
Run PowerShell as Administrator.
Show all
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers
Kill currently-installed Metro
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Informative)
REMOVE Metro. (not disable, not hide; DIE.)
While I fully support the sentiment, completely removing components like this can cause Windows Updates to fail to install. For example if your Windows desktop PC or server doesn't have a "Tablet PC" folder in the start menu, some updates won't install [wordpress.com]. So you potentially need to keep gigabytes of Microsoft's crapware sitting on your PC on the off chance that some update checks for it and won't install if it's not present.
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1: REMOVE Metro. (not disable, not hide; DIE.)
As far I can see, your instructions only hide Modern UI. Wouldn't the Modern UI still keep running despite all Modern apps being removed?
Still, thanks for the recipe for removing all Modern apps. :)
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Thanks, that's good to know. For us, the solution was as follows:
1: System Restore to Windows 7
Done.
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Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Insightful)
Had they limited Windows 8 to touchscreens and digitizers only, it would have made things worse. Poor adoption rate is their big problem, and further limiting your user base with hardware restrictions would only exacerbate the situation. The platform doesn't move forward in practice if people don't actually upgrade. Here's the issue: Touch screens make sense for certain form factors, but not for desktops. Search the term "gorilla arm" to see why.
Even beyond that, the "metro" concept of full screen apps runs counter to what desktop users actually need for productivity. The desktop is not a "legacy" platform. It's a platform that's very specifically optimized for getting work done with a keyboard, mouse, and large form factor screen. That sort of work is not going away anytime soon, as the business world has demonstrated loud and clear by their absolute refusal to move to Windows 8. Naturally, the relevance of PCs is diminishing among home and casual users - people who didn't use the PC for production purposes, but mostly as a consumption, communications, and entertainment device. Smartphones and tablets are perfect for that. For actual production work, the desktop/laptop will remain king for the foreseeable future, albeit in much more of a specialized role than before.
Windows 8 would have been a fine OS had they discarded the idea of one-UI-fits-all devices, and instead focused on the coolness of Metro as a side-channel application experience. That would have meant allowing cross-platform tablet and phone apps to run on your desktop seamlessly with native or managed desktop applications, but without trying to make the whole OS touch-focused. Instead, the marketing hype overtook common sense and usability concerns, and they began touting it as the future replacement of the desktop, which is absurd. Not surprisingly, after the actual market kicked the marketing department's ass, they're starting to move in a sensible direction with Windows 9 by focusing on the benefits of cross-platform application development, and they're slowly backing off of the ridiculous notion that their desktop OS should behave like a tablet.
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How is that their big problem? They don't need high adoption. Moreover they control the supply of Windows 7 licenses they can resolve the adoption problem very easily. Today Windows 8.1 sells with downgrade rights to and Windows 7 Professional and Windows Vista Business. Tomorrow they eliminate that. If adoption was their problem the solution is trivial.
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Poor adoption rate is their big problem
How is that their big problem? They don't need high adoption. Moreover they control the supply of Windows 7 licenses they can resolve the adoption problem very easily. Today Windows 8.1 sells with downgrade rights to and Windows 7 Professional and Windows Vista Business. Tomorrow they eliminate that. If adoption was their problem the solution is trivial.
That might be too much incentive for people to finally switch to Mac or Linux. Early netbooks have shown that the power of Windows to keep users is finite:
Linux gained significant market share in the segment, until Microsoft created the ultra-cheap (or was it even free?) Starter Edition of XP.
But what actually seems to happen is that Windows 9 will bring the start menu back in some form. Problem solved for Microsoft where the desktop is considered.
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He was talking enterprises. We know home / small business are switching to Linux (Android) and iOS in huge numbers. That's part of what is driving the change. The assumption is that enterprises are tightly held and their costs of switching is high. I think the experiments in the early 2000s where companies tried switching to Linux and mostly failed showed that once a Windows culture is established the incentives to switch n
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but that is nonsense. Companies have increasingly moved to laptops, that is certainly true, but that doesn't mean what you think it does. Everyone in my office has a multi-monitor setup with a mouse and keyboard - powered by a laptop that is connected to docking station. This has pretty much become the typical setup.
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That's the only think I can think of to fully explain Windows 8, and why even now they're refusing to admit that Metro apps are a steaming turd on top of an otherwise competent OS. The only idiots who like using those "apps" are the ones who would probably be better off with a tablet or smartphone instead of an actual desktop computer, for whom the actual power of a desktop is apparently wasted.
They can afford to because they're not actually bleeding users, people either run new versions of Windows or old versions of Windows. Until there's any indication users are leaving for non-Windows platforms they're not really at any risk of losing them as customers, the convenience of continuing running Windows software is too great. Practically everybody who was lambasting Vista jumped on 7, we'd just as easily forget 8 ever happened too.
I'm not sure how exactly Microsoft could do anything about Android/iO
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> In the future, if people hate the version they're on, they'll be much more likely to buy a new version in the hopes that it's better. Brilliant!
That's the way it used to be, until Windows 2000/XP. You grabbed the next release like a drowning swimmer grabs a flotation device. Then XP became available and we could concentrate less on OS deficiencies and more on what to use a PC for. To go back to the old business model, Microsoft is in the unenviable position of needing to somehow entice people onto
Skeuomorphism vs. flat (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic. What's wrong with gloss, gradients, transparency, and attractive animations, or even a bevel or link here and there so we can actually tell something is clickable rather than playing mystery-meat navigation? I swear, everything is going flat-shaded, blocky, ugly, and indistinguishable, all because that's now the new "hip" look.
Skeumorphism [wikipedia.org] - the use of design elements that mimic real life objects with similar functions, is actually the opposite phenomenon from the flat, light-on-pastel design trend. Though I fully agree with you - both of these UI philosophies have been severely overused.
A bit of googling will turn up plenty of articles analyzing the history of the skeuomorphism-versus-flat debate particularly at Apple, which I would argue has been one of the biggest influences in UI design over the last few years. Basically, the loss of skeuomorphism advocates such as Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall led to the pendulum swinging completely in the other direction, and many gimmicky and dated interface elements such as notes apps that look like real paper and a game center that looks like a cheap felt billiard table have been stripped away. But - what to replace it with? Well, everybody wants to stay on top of the latest design trend, and Microsoft and others seem to be migrating to flat designs, so flat it is.
Although you could argue over who copied who, essentially what you have is Microsoft and Apple in a race to see who can flatten their interfaces and strip out any traces of skeuomorphism the fastest. Sure, it looks trendy, but it's reached the point where we are sacrificing usability and accessibility in order to have the most "modern" design. Here's where I have a problem with the whole thing: computer interface elements have been pretty consistent over the last 20+ years or so. Everything behaved as expected and usually acted pretty consistent between operating systems. This is great for users, since they can focus on the task rather than the tools needed to accomplish them, and using the interface becomes second nature. To those who *design* computers rather than *use* them, this is a problem - you want the bling to be noticed. The old way of doing this was to show off your new hardware by making the UI flashy, bright, colorful, inviting - basically by ramping up the skeuomorphic elements to 11.
The problem is, the novelty of this wears off fast, and these interfaces quickly become dated. Now, flat is in, and anything that even remotely resembles skeuomorphism is stripped out. I have a number of problems with the current trend:
1) interface elements are hidden or played down, making them hard to find. Often it's hard to tell if I'm just not looking hard enough for that feature, or if it has been removed altogether.
2) It does away with conventions that have been standard for decades. This means that every time designers go wild designing a new interface, users have to spend time and effort learning a new way to accomplish a task.
3) It's less accessible. Razor thin text is hard for some people to see. Pastel on white and white on pastel text may look "hip" but can incredibly difficult to read. Interface elements that are marginalized can be hard to hunt down if the user doesn't know where to look.
4) It's inconsistent. Some programs hide buttons and scroll bars, some do not. Some use vastly different elements for simple actions such as "close window" so that the user is left guessing at the function of a UI element.
My prediction is that in a few years, "flat" will look as equally dated as skeuomorphism does now.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a shame.
When i left Mac for windows in 1999 it was because windows had games - It wasn't hard for anyone who wanted computer games back then to make the decision - 3 aisles worth of windows games, or a shelf of mac games. I tell the mac (apple) lovers that the single biggest mistake apple did was to listen to the engineer that crapped on computer gaming.
If Open source would focus on Gaming - then the masses WILL flock over and get on board. Make a Distro that ports games automatically - make it stupidly easy to use, and the market share of Apple and Microsoft will tank.
Computer Gaming put Microsoft in the masses households. If it hadn't been for gamers, PCs would of still been a basement Nerd hobby today.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to be Windows is what will be the death of Linux. Easy to use? KDE, GNOME, and Unity are all very easy for the average user to use. Local libraries near me have Linux (an Ubuntu variant IIRC) installed on all the PC's there. Users have no issue getting online, using the card catalog, watching Youtube, etc. It all works fine. We have a small collection of native games via Steam, and it's just a matter of time before a major publisher (Blizzard, would you please release your internal WoW client to the wild?) puts out a major title that runs on Linux.
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Most games are coded against DirectX. OpenGL is considered by most game companies far worse. Linux drivers are often well behind commercial drivers. This isn't an easy to solve problem.
Then of course there is the problem that the whole theory is wrong. Most home / small business PCs are not primarily used for gaming but for home productivity and communications.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if programming for OpenGL is more difficult and requires elite skills just to be passably decent, that's a huge knock against OpenGL.
You're approaching this like a college student rather than like an engineer.
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Only because they have incompetent programmers that can't understand code closer to hardware than four levels of abstraction away, and don't understand how to write their own graphical extensions, which OpenGL supports, and will always kick DirectX's ass on.
What do you mean with these graphical extensions?
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Insightful)
Assume that's true. So what? Writing your own graphical extensions introduces costs. Testing them across video cards and supporting that introduces huge costs. Of course going low level is faster but that's not issue.
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I think GP was talking about doing low level stuff in OpenGL. And that's allowed and possible.
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I don't understand this focus on games.
Who cares about video games on their computers apart from kids?
People who use computers are looking for devices they can can use to do useful things.
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Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ten years ago when I was younger and a lot more naive, I would've totally agreed with you. Heck, if Apple did this 10, 15 and 20 years ago, maybe things would be different now - but as it stands, Windows has a lot more to offer than just games.
Fact is, because there's so many installs of Windows out there, there's a HEAP of help on the internet for problems you stumble across, it supports virtually all the hardware out there conceivably able to be plugged into a machine and more importantly, for me - i
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I'm talking data de-duplication searching tools,
Son, [opengroup.org] are [opengroup.org] you [opengroup.org] kidding [opengroup.org] me? [opengroup.org]
multi-monitor window managers,
What? [i3wm.org]
downloading / p2p tools,
Excuse [wikipedia.org] me? [wikipedia.org]
media players,
You [videolan.org] fail [www.tvdr.de] it [musicpd.org]
media encoders
Wrong [ffmpeg.org]
etc.
Are you even trying? [tldp.org]
In unrelated news, slashdot doesn't let me post this reply as-is, because it consists of too short lines, on average. Wtf. Fooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, business as usual. Windows dominates the desktop, Mac remains the desktop fashion accessory for those who care about style over function and linux on desktop remains mainly a marginal toy for the techies like us.
This is also a pretty good reference point of where we're going with mobile I think. There linux is currently headed for that 90ish percentile of all phones (well, android, but you get the picture), with IOS sinking towards that 5-7% market share and others taking the rest.
And hilariously enough, "others" is formed mainly by windows phone, which sits pretty much where linux is on desktop. It certainly shows how market works for operating systems on consumer devices.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, with ~2 billion computers in the world, that means there is somewhere in the ballpark of 33.6 million Desktop Linux users. That is nothing to sneeze at. And there is somewhere in the ballpark of 132.8 million OSX users.
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Well of course people already don't take Windows Phone seriously.
Re:Who has the market share? (Score:5, Informative)
"Mac remains the desktop fashion accessory for those who care about style over function"
This is a very myopic view of the Mac. In some fields, particularly scientific fields, Macs are a better solution than Linux and have gained considerable support. It isn't because it is a fashion accessory, it is because it is a fully fledged UNIX with all the same open source tools as Linux, plus a bunch of commercial software that Linux lacks, all on hardware that is well specified, long lasting and well designed. I've had my share of PC hardware cobbled together to get Linux on my desktop but in the end a Mac is more cost effective and a better solution. Our site's Linux fanboy admin even bought a MacBook Air for his own use and now won't spec anything non-Apple for our users regardless of the OS they choose because we've had such bad experience of poorly made PCs.
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Re: Who has the market share? (Score:5, Funny)
I feel good knowing I'm part of the 1%.
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Because mobile use is qualitatively different (Score:2)
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It makes no difference if the read is viewing the webpage with or without the SWF components,
It does if the user chooses on which device to view a particular site in the first place depending on whether SWF support is essential to comprehension. Newgrounds and Kongregate and Dagobah and Albino Blacksheep and Animutation Portal all require SWF.
Tables have a "view desktop version" simply because their screens have more pixels than most PCs.
If you can't use those pixels without a magnifying glass, what good are they? A PC screen will usually occupy more degrees of the visual field than a phone screen.
laptop is just a tablet without touch support
A laptop has a hardware keyboard and a reasonably precise trackpad. A tablet usually does not. I
What it take? Stick in heart? (Score:2)
Windows XP is basically going to cling to the bitter end. I expect we'll see small amounts of XP attrition up until July 2015 (when MSE stops support).
After that we'll probably see a freefall.
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Microsoft just needs to make an OS that delivers what end-users actually want, with a solid XP emulator so people can continue to run their mission-critical stuff that still requires it.
8 and 8.1 were arrogant attempts at pushing on to end-users a GUI that Microsoft thought they should want, for reasons that did not benefit the end-users at all but did benefit Microsoft quite a lot (in theory, that is).
Microsoft can win by viewing end-users as its clients (heresy, I know), getting back in touch with what th
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Microsoft just needs to make an OS that delivers what end-users actually want, with a solid XP emulator so people can continue to run their mission-critical stuff that still requires it.
They could call it something like "Windows 7 with Windows Virtual PC".
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On Steam and for gamers, XP is dead. Under 5% share between x32 and x64. [steampowered.com] With Win8 gaining market share around 27%.
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That would be because of DX10 and 11 not being released for XP. It was the reason I upgraded my machine as well.
If DX11 was available for XP, my new machine would still be running XP. As a gamer, I appreciate the fact that XP is far more lightweight and consumes much less overhead than 7.
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Considering the number of titles that use DX11 are very few, that's kinda moot. And there are ways to get DX10 to run under XP. And really, if you haven't given 8 a try you should. It runs anywhere between 250-500mb lighter in memory overhead, and isn't nearly so bad as XP or 7 was in terms of game compatibility. Even older titles like Klingon Academy work under 8, where they wouldn't work for me under XP or 7.
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As a gamer, I appreciate the fact that XP is far more lightweight and consumes much less overhead than 7.
Not really. Windows 7 is essentially as lightweight as XP.
Try a lightweight Linux distribution (Score:4, Insightful)
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> consider trying Xubuntu or Lubuntu
On which none of the business critical, no longer available or extremely expensive to upgrade applications will run. I do a great deal with Linux, but old fiscal and CAD software is notorious for failing upgrades.
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False count (Score:5, Funny)
You want to count use in many cases (Score:2)
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People hear "Windows 8" and run away (Score:4, Funny)
Re:People hear "Windows 8" and run away (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because they put a slightly different shade of lipstick on the pig that was 8, doesn't make it any more suitable for being a human being.
Re:People hear "Windows 8" and run away (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought a laptop soon after 8 came out. Of course, I hated the tiles... and installed classic shell and told it to boot to the desktop. After that, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. When I finally, after over 10 years, rebuilt my desktop a couple of months ago, and XP was retired (I had XP Pro), I got 8.1 Pro... installed classic shell, and don't understand what all the complaining is about.
Sure, 95% of the time I'm using Linux anyway, but I installed 8.1, the software I use to do work when I have to write stuff for Windows, and I don't understand what all the complaining is about.
My experience... again, after installing classic shell, is much like 7, only smoother and a few different ways to access certain things (like control panel) that you rarely use anyway... and it's not worse, it's just different.
So the only complaint really is that you need to install something like classic shell, but since I need to spend time customizing out of the box linux distributions, too, I fail to see the problem.
I'm serious... I really want someone to explain to me why they think Windows 8/8.1 is so bad (once you get rid of the tiles/apps paradigm by using classic shell and going straight to desktop). I'm not a Windows fanboy, I'm writing this on Linux, and mainly use Linux out of choice... but it seems to me people are just jumping on the hate bandwagon for anything new. I get that desktop and tablet experiences are different, and companies (not just MS) should stop trying to force feed us a single UI paradigm for all platforms... it doesn't work, but like the last few versions of Ubuntu, if you don't like it, you can tweak it to where it works for you.
Please refrain from feigning pity for "Joe User" that can't figure these things out for themselves... that's not who any of us here are, and most of us have little sympathy for Joe User otherwise.
Re:People hear "Windows 8" and run away (Score:5, Informative)
If you piss around with Windows 8 for a while, you can basically simulate Windows 7. But for a long time, you'll still bump into horrible garbage - like "you wanted a weird, functionless fullscreen app to view an image file, right"? Very few things are real showstoppers, but lots of stuff is just a little worse - like they abandoned all the little refinements they've made to progressive versions over the years. Little stuff, like the behavior of the "run" dialog. It used to autocomplete well, and seemed to usually know what you wanted. Now it doesn't.
My job has me doing development on a Windows 8 machine - and it's gotten down to very few times a day I say "oh God, really?", but it's taken a lot of tweaking and adapting to get there. And there's literally nothing I actually prefer about 8. Lots of it just evidences horrible testing/design. Like your default start screen has a tile for the "math input editor" or something. That's a very narrow niche app for a desktop, non-touchscreen computer, and it doesn't work the way anyone expects. Many times I've been asked "what the heck does this do?" - and it actually took me a while to figure out. Obviously that doesn't hurt anyone much to have a stupid, useless app - but the same lack of design pervades the whole product.
It's just a half-baked mess, and I think it's earned it's poor reputation very well.
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Systems without a touchscreen or a digitizer shouldn't exist.
Wait, what? I feel like I must be misunderstanding, but why the hell shouldn't a non-touchscreen computer exist? How suddenly did the mouse&keyboard become such inferior tech... I think I have never seen a touchscreen laptop used practically. A tablet is one thing, the device is already in your hands. A device with a raised screen and dedicated input devices, the touchscreen is at best an option and at worst a distracting pain to interact with.
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"I'm serious... I really want someone to explain to me why they think Windows 8/8.1 is so bad (once you get rid of the tiles/apps paradigm"
You nailed the problem, and you're asking why? Modern OS's are all about tweaking performance or conversely, making it worse. So you really can't design, a gee whiz, that's fantastic new GUI that's going to blow the pants off everyone and then expect it to be usable for day-to-day work. Take your pick, OS X style or Win 95 style. Desktop UI design was already perfected b
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installed classic shell, and don't understand what all the complaining is about.
The complaining is that you have to install classic shell in order to get Windows 8 (or 8.1) to get out of your way
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I got 8.1 Pro... installed classic shell, and don't understand what all the complaining is about.
You dislike the UI so much that you replace/hide it, but you somehow can't understand why other people don't like it?
Were you dropped on your head as a child?
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1. Unlike previous versions, in this OS, you have to have a hotmail/live/outlook.com account to do the first step - logging in. Something that wasn't required in Windows 7. I had a Nokia Lumia Phone previously and had no issues w/ that, but the requirements are different. In Windows Phone 8, having that profile enabled me to just transfer everything to a new phone if needed.
No. You don't. There's any number of ways to configure it not to require a Microsoft Login.
Here's the steps with screenshots:
http://www [hanselman.com]
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XP lives again for me! (Score:2)
My old home desktop computer's PSU blow up last night after getting home. I thought it killed my hardwares like HDDs. :/ They were fine today after the smelly dead PSU was replaced. See http://aqfl.net/node/11092 [aqfl.net] for the details.
IE at 60%? (Score:2)
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Looks like dodgy statistics to me, they also have Apple at 6% when a much better known market research company says Apple' sales market share is 13.7% (source: http://www.gartner.com/newsroo... [gartner.com]).
*BSD is dead, Netcraft confirms it! (Score:2)
Ooops, sorry, wrong OS.
Microsoft is dead, Netcraft confirms it!
Re:XP losing Market share is not bad news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. 7 is supported until 2020, and from previews, it looks like 9 is going to be just like 8 in all the aspects that people hate. It's more of the "hey, phone's touch interface on on desktop can be made to work (and we want to use it to stop our phone strategy from being a trainwreck that it is)".
I suspect that 7 is the new XP in that it's currently the most functional desktop OS in windows family, matched only by XP in usability and functionality. So in a way, it is a good news for microsoft, as it means that it's desktop domination and income from "microsoft tax" isn't going anywhere.
It's bad news for microsoft because it continues to show that their design paradigms, with which they are sticking for 9 btw, are an abysmal failure. And while they have five more years to produce replacement for 7, it's not looking like they have the people who want to. Instead they are still focusing on leveraging desktop dominance to push for marketshare in mobile by destroying the desktop windows.
And as long as 7, the last actual version of windows designed for desktop exists, any such attempts will likely fail just like 8 did. Because there will always be a much better alternative to whatever "mobile OS interface on desktop" version of windows microsoft will continue to try to peddle. As we have seen with 8, even forcing OEMs not to offer 7 at all in favour of the newer OS doesn't fix the problem.
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Yeah, I think you're correct. Windows 9 is just Windows 8.3 released as a new OS, since MS seems desperate to wash the taste of Windows 8 out of their mouths.
Unfortunately, it appears to be just Windows 8 with most of the glaring problems removed, but probably not compelling enough to make it anything of a must-buy, except for Windows 8 users. They're still too firmly focused their app store as a means to prop up their phone and tablet sales, rather than making actual improvements for their core users. I
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Spoken like somebody who has no fucking clue what "improvements for their core users" MS put in Windows 8 (that's 8.0 RTM, build 9200, though they've made significant improvements since then too).
Multi-monitor support: Taskbar across multiple monitors, with the option of app icons appearing on the taskbar of the monitor their window is on. Per-monitor DPI settings. Wallpaper spanning.
Performance: Page-combining for substantial reductions in RAM usage. Ludicrously fast boot time (and that's *actual* boot, no
Re:XP losing Market share is not bad news. (Score:4, Insightful)
If something does what its user needs it to do, then how is it outdated?
I'm typing this on a nine-year-old Dell Latitude D410 running Windows XP. I've got a current version of Firefox, current versions of all of the plugins I use on a regular basis, and just about the only thing the laptop won't do well is full-screen flash video at high res, but that seems to be more a function of the poor implementation of flash than of the computer itself, and even with only 2GB RAM it's still faster than the four-years-newer Atom-based Ideapad S10-2 with Windows 7 that we got free with my wife's then-new computer. In some ways it's superior in that when my fancy Linux box's graphics broke I was able to use the serial port on the docking station to TTY in to the Linux box to work on it with just a null-modem cable, didn't need anything else.
For web surfing this old thing does just about everything that I need it to do, with the licensed OS that came with it, even with the original amount of RAM and the original hard disk drive. So, why should I change this? Because Microsoft wrote shitty code full of holes and now refuses to fix those holes?
This machine doesn't go out of the house, and at home it's behind a firewall. I've got noscript, flashblock, adblock, and https everywhere installed, so it'll be very difficult to infect it through the web browser. without a compelling reason to change it, why would I spend my hard-earned money on something that won't be used for more than I use this thing for now? It's for when I'm lounging on the couch being lazy.
Re:XP losing Market share is not bad news. (Score:4, Insightful)
If something does what its user needs it to do, then how is it outdated?
The user wants the operating system to work. In order for it to do that, it has to not be vulnerable to common threats, and it has to be compatible with common technologies. The former fades quickly, the latter typically a bit more slowly but it's still an issue. If you wanted filesystems over 2GB or USB support you had to "upgrade" to NT4. If you were otherwise happy with 3.51 you know how distressing that move was. Stability went way down in NT4. Not when using it as a desktop, but definitely when using it as a server.
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Win 8.1 is a solid OS. Metro is a steaming turd.
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Because does what it needs is not the antonym for outdated. Stovetop percolators make good coffee, I think better coffee than the drip coffee makers used today, that doesn't change the fact they are outdated. Windows XP doesn't fit current software and presents all sorts of problems that Windows 7/8 would not. Does it run the application you want / need? Sure. Does it run the current applications? No. QED.
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Back to XP, the reason I'm glad it disappears - and that explains my parent post - is that I'm writing web applications, and supporting IE < 8 is and has
Re:XP losing Market share is not bad news. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm typing this on a nine-year-old Dell Latitude D410 running Windows XP. I've got a current version of Firefox, current versions of all of the plugins I use on a regular basis
Your fully patched browser and plugins still make heavy use of operating system DLLs, and those DLLs are no longer getting security updates. This puts you at risk.
Continuing to use old hardware is fine, as long as the OS is updated and secure. I have a similarly old machine that I put Linux on.
I'm afraid your highly modded comment might make non-technical people think using XP to browse the web is still OK. It's not. Even with a fully updated and patched browser.
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I don't see how Chrome is gaining share on mobile...
chrome on the desktop, chrome on the phone, chrome OS.
One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them
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>if you do not see chrome gaining share when the stats show something else, then you are just denying reality (no matter how cruel it might be).
B.S.
The stats are B.S. Therefore so is your argument.
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Safari percentage is a function of how many mac users switch to Chrome. I did.
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Correction (Score:2)
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Of course it would be awesome for Microsoft's customers. So what? The customers who want XP buy and large want it because they are cheap and don't want to update their hardware and OSes. That is they don't want to pay Microsoft. Sure they would be thrilled if Microsoft assisted them in spending very little on Microsoft. The same way Exxon's customers would be happier if Exxon sold gas below their cost of oil.
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People were not so "resistant to change" when MS came out with Win3, or Win95. People were lining up around the block for it.
People were not so "resistant to change" when Apple came out with the iPhone.
People are "resistant to change" when the new product is substantially worse then the old product.