alphanumeric said:

I'm thinking most Pirated too?

Bingo

My son and my grandson are still using XP at home on their network, but my granddaughter has Win7 on her netbook. I have been advising him for 3 years to get "Sevened-Up" before it's too late. Even the information that his Internet Security will not work properly after next April, will move him. He does not want to understand that AV programmes cannot work without Microsoft input to the supplying companies.

XP lasted because it was functional and supported games. Vista was hated and 7 really didn't offer enough, beyond maybe the 64-bit version allowing more RAM, to warrant most upgrading. Even many newer games left in support for XP because game publishers knew it was still used.

Maybe if 7 had been better backwards compatible with older games, rather than relying on sloppy methods like virtualization or DOSbox which require some knowledge to work, some may have adopted to it easier. I didn't upgrade by choice, I upgraded as my old Compaq was having some hardware issues and it was time to buy a new PC at the time, and yet I'm still happy to own a second PC that has XP on it.

"Windows XP is the most used OS in eight countries, including China"

Take out the 9 out of 10 versions in China that are pirated, that drops dramatically.
Also that stat only proves that in 192 other (UN recognised) countries another OS is more popular; W7 per chance? And if I worked for MS I would be touting that stat to prove that XP was at end of life.

Here's another set of stats around OS usage:

Operating system market share

And I'm thinking that other people could post differing stats depending on how the data is collated.

I think we all agree that M$ are at a turning point here with XP and the future of how there next gen windows OS's will fare in the market place against greater competition from Linux Distros; The Smartphone market and the decline in the traditional desktop approach from the average home user.