Windows 7 has nearly caught Vista in worldwide installs

According to W3Schools.com, Windows 7 has nearly caught up to Vista in the number of installations worldwide.

Last September Vista had a worldwide high market share of 18.3%, while XP enjoyed a 65.2% share. Just last month (Feb 2010) Win7 moved up to a market share of 13.0%, while Vista dropped to 14.4%, and the biggest hit came to XP who dropped to a share of 58.4%. See the data here: OS Statistics

Another interesting fact is that XP had a high market share of 76.1% back in January of 2007... the month Vista was released.

There are many presumptions that one can make from these figures, but surely many Vista users have upgraded to 7, as well as many XP users who first upgraded to Vista then 7.

The question is what % of these XP users have finally given up on their old slow systems and gone out and purchased a new system preloaded with Win7...???

Long live Windows 7!

Darryl Licht said:

The question is what % of these XP users have finally given up on their old slow systems and gone out and purchased a new system preloaded with Win7...???

Long live Windows 7!

Click to expand...

Darryl,
For me I was an XP guy, who never liked Vista, and I was reluctant to try 7 the first month it came out. While looking at Netbooks, I bought an Xp version of the ACer Aspire, because the 11" one I liked only came with Vista, and an Atom Proc and 1GB of RAM and was horrendously slow, much much slower than the XP 10". A month later though, Acer made the 11" with 7, upgraded to Intel Core Solo proc and 2GB of RAM. I returned my 10", and bought the 11". I was so impressed that I upgraded my XP desktop at home that week. Windows 7 is the best OS I have used so far.

Hardly surprising really when you consider the press they both received.

Vista gets beat to a pulp and seven receives all the acclaim.

Even pre sp1 I never had a problem with vista.

Seven for me is way better though so..............

i agree, Vista was ok, but therein lies its problem, its only "ok" whereas 7 is, in a word, awesome, given the choice, id always choose windows 7 over any other OS, its just simple things, like super search, pinning your programs to the taskbar, aero snap, it just makes you go "well this isnt exactly radical why didnt anyone think of this before?"

Vista IMO was almost like a beta of 7, it laid the framework for what was to come, and certain features (again the search bar springs to mind as an example) just felt unfinished,

having said that, if i were forced to go back to Vista, once id adjusted to its way of doing things again, i wouldnt grumble too hard,

RST101 said:

Hardly surprising really when you consider the press they both received.

Vista gets beat to a pulp and seven receives all the acclaim.

Even pre sp1 I never had a problem with vista.

Seven for me is way better though so..............

Click to expand...

I ran Vista from 1/31/07 here for 2 1/2yrs. and know some that were reluctant to get into 7 having been satisfied with the previous version. They actually shunned XP having gone from 2000 into Vista and well received 7 so far!

With 7 even the beta builds and RCs were a strong improvement after having run the RC1 for Vista and deciding to wait for the retail version there. Where XP would have been reinstalled full 3 times with a fresh start the 7 64bit RC was literally put through the mill for a full 6 months showing the SP1 for 7 will even offer the better OS an additional edge!

Honestly, I never had any big problems with Vista. True, some driver support dropped, which happens with every new OS release. So a few old HW devices no longer worked with it. No SW issues at all, again other than my AV not being Vista compliant. So nothing that out of the norm for an OS upgrade to me. I've been upgrading OS's since DOS 5.0 days... seen em all since.

My biggest problem with Vista was UAC. If I'm the admin, on MY PC... I dont want to be asked if I want to install something when I just double clicked on an .exe. Of course I do! I, like many, hated the UAC so much I just turned it off.

I dont see as much restriction with the Win7 UAC... its much less obtrusive. So much so that I leave it on at stock seetings. I would, however, in the future like to see a "Power User" setting that would stop the occasional "Are you sure..." messages.

I also feel like Win7 is, without a doubt, the best OS MS has ever released... it's beautiful, fast, leaner... MS has definately raised the bar. But can they keep this trend going?

It will be exciting to see if MS can keep this level of quality going into future service packs and future releases of Windows 8, 9, etc.

Please no more Windows ME/Vista debacles!:roflmao:

With Vista I waited a full year following the release to see an updated driver set/application for the rv tuner card now on the discontinued list since 7 has been out. I was forced to run an XP/Vista dual boot for that and a few older programs which surprizingly work like champs on the 32bit 7!

Vista was certainly a much needed improvement over all the Blue Screens and lockups seen with XP since Vista offered an improved crash control further improved with 7 as well as being a more stable OS while plagued with the increased size everyone moaned about.

I know some business owners who were actually reluctant to move into 7 being satisfied with Vista for these reasons. They still keep Vista on! as well as now running 7. The one thing making 7 sales progressive seeing this fast of upgrade on a large scale is the obvious rapore 7 testers found as well as the word getting out once the RCs were made public! 7 has had a much better start off then previous versions.

Hi there
You can level criticisms about XP -- fair enough but it certainly wasn't a SLOW operating system.

It was relatively easy to tweak and remember you are often talking about people running this stuff on hardware nearly 10 years old in some cases -- this is "Light Years ago" in terms of hardware development so the "slowness" of XP wasn't really a valid point.

I LIKE Windows 7 -- but there are still features in XP that aren't all bad either - and some legacy programs and hardware STILL need XP to run on -- I use Virtual machines to solve that problem.

Vista was the real issue as it came out too soon and was often run on inadequate hardware - plus the real gripe of the UAC annoying users with stupid prompts everytime they wanted to do anything on their machines.

I think you'll find that even when VISTA has long vanished into "The Dustbin of History" there will STILL be a significant number of XP machines around.

W7 is certainly the Best yet -- no argument there -- but for millions of people XP was when WINDOWS finally matured into something realistic enough to be used by "the masses".

Windows 2000 was certainly an excellent system but there again at the time it needed better hardware than was generally cheaply available - hence the horror that was Windows 98 (and even worse Windows Millenium). However a lot of the really good design points in Windows 2000 are still incorporated into Windows 7 so it's an evolving process.

How MS will "Trump" W7 with their next Windows will certainly be interesting -- it will have to be much more than a "mild facelift" to give it the wow factor that W7 received at launch.

Cheers
jimbo

Vista was a good OS but when it was released people didn't have the required hardware and software vendors did not have compatible software yet

jimbo45 said:

Windows 2000 was certainly an excellent system but there again at the time it needed better hardware than was generally cheaply available - hence the horror that was Windows 98 (and even worse Windows Millenium). However a lot of the really good design points in Windows 2000 are still incorporated into Windows 7 so it's an evolving process.

Click to expand...

Windows 98 a horror? Hmmmm I dont agree. 98 was stable as hell on HW of that era...

Plus Win98 came out after NT4.0 and before Win2000. Not vice-a-versa as you stated. Hence the names Win98 vs Win2000...???

In many admins and power users minds Win 98 was really an update of Win95... Many of us saw 98 as little more than a service pack. Very similar to where we are today... Win7 is an update of Vista, same core components, same kernel, etc...

W98 lasted a long time for many and surprizingly is still being run on many old systems even now with 7 out. Once the newer hardwares and boards alike no longer supported it the move into a newer version if not already in use became a necessity. While XP had a degree note of Legacy support it certainly lacks the dos shell for running the real dos/9x programs being NT cored and run natively on NTFS while still capable of being installed on Fat primaries.

Vista being the newer feature loaded, background service, more secure and stable OS was a large hammer dropped on older systems resulting in large volumes of complaints for being the "Larger" OS running slower on all those older set ups! MS wasn't looking at the home user performance value but simply offering more features on an improved OS as far as the things noted there. It never saw all the BSODs the previous is noted for while sadly lacking 3rd party driver support in many cases as nviddmkm pointed out.

7 was the big turn around as far as the home consumer is concerned and why it has seen a great send off once launched. MS had to step back and take a serious look at what is a sellable OS in the present market! They had to realize "getting too big" in the OS dept. simply wasn't going to work! That's what actually hurt Vista there. 7 turned out to be the turning point in the right direction as we now know.

Just installed 7 on my desktop and notebook (desktop running Vista, Notebook running XP SP2.) Desktop is 2.5 years old, notebook is almost 4 years old. Bought 7 at release, but didn't install it. I bought the Home Premium Family Pack because it was a limited offer. Was hesitant to install 7 (I did try soon after I got it, but took it off because I didn't like the interface - I didn't understand it.)

Started having issues with Vista and incompatibilities with some of my software, and realized that it was time to re-install the OS, as I have discoverd becomes necessary with Windows as it matures on the system.

Decided to try 7 - figured I could always go back to Vista. Used the Easy Transfer program, and it sure made the swap easier. I love 7. It is what Vista should have been, and I liked Vista. No problems installing, no driver issues, just a much better OS.

Decided to install on my notebook. Only problem there was the audio driver, but I found the driver, and the system is running beautifully. I was finally able to add my printers to the laptop (love HomeGroup) and share files. Couldn't do that with Vista. Both systems were running XP Professional, so had to do a Custom Install. Didn't need Professional anymore. Also didn't install the 64-bit version.

I think this version is going to be as successful as XP, and may be the most successful OS since Windows 95.

BTW both of my systems are HP Pavilion systems configured by me.

The MS success was seen a little earlier then 95 with 3.1 and 3.11 prior to NT 3.1, 4.0. You can read up a little on the early stuff in the article quoted in another thread. http://www.sevenforums.com/chillout-room/70570-birth-windows-vaporware-reality.html

Someone adked about removing 7 on a new laptop to replace it with XP since the customer was still a die hard XP fan or simply someone hesitate to update. Apparently that person didn't like the looks of 7 and the person making the inquiry was asking about bringing back the Classic Windows look to 7 if XP wouldn't go on.

That was a circumstance where the first response had to be making sure XP support was seen for any too new model laptop that may have only been out long enough to see Vista as a choice besides 7. 7 has already proven itself to be a champ here having just restored the system image created with the tools in 7 with all going well. Seen with Vista Ultimate but not Home Premium most 7 editions now offer this feature which can save the day over the previous versions as another consideration for the typical novice user.

I don't know how accurate that data is - That's just based off of the visitors to their website, if I'm not mistaking.

-Bill

I don't believe that is anywhere near accurate.

I have seen similar figures based on website visits with 7 at about 5% and Vista at about 17%.

Nevertheless, it is a good start for 7.

This is mainly to do with the release of 7 in time for the holiday season - when a lot of new machines are bought, and an upturn in the economy resulting in a surge of laptop sales due to pent up demand from people holding off buying machines for the last couple of years.

They got the timing wrong with Vista release so it didn't take off so fast.

7 market share is absolutely guaranteed to grow. The average buyer has no choice. Unless they go for a Mac, ( or build their own ) their next machine will come with 7 on it.

I haven't heard anymore from the person asking how to remove 7 from a new laptop for one of his own customers to stick XP on. I can't see going backwards at this point especially with 7 being a sucess story in comparison to not just one previous version but the entire line going back to the 1.0-3.0, 3.1 days.

Vista wasn't seen too soon but too late due to delays when considering those but was geared for systems you now see available. OS wise it was late while hardwise it was early. MS got caught in a sort of catch 22 there!

The initial reactions plus the expanded public availability of the beta and RC builds to try out gave 7 the best word of mouth advertising any version has seen! It should actually surpass Vista sales in the same amount of time once that point is reached.