

Windows 8 now up to 3.31% market share as Vista finally falls below the 5% mark - Avalaxy
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/01/windows-8-now-up-to-3-31-market-share-as-vista-finally-falls-below-the-5-mark/

======
davidroberts
In a few hours, I'm going to a client's site to downgrade his newly purchased
notebook to Windows 7. He's an average user, director of a small nonprofit who
uses his computer mainly for email, Web browsing, and word processing. He used
Windows 8 for a week and this is what he wrote :

 _I need your assistance. I did go ahead an buy a new laptop. I like the
machine but am suffering on account of Windows 8!_

Still, he'll still show up as Windows 8 in the market share statistics.

~~~
Mahn
I always imagine this as the average case for everyone buying a new laptop
now. I don't know, I really don't want to hate, but I have yet to hear of
someone happy with W8 as their main OS.

~~~
tomku
Many of us are hesitant to join in discussions like this, because the
narrative is dominated by people who have clearly either never used Win8 or
had decided that they would hate it based on ideological grounds (ZOMG MS
TURNING MAH PC INTO A TABLET) before they ever tried it. On other forums, even
suggesting that you like Win8 is a sure-fire way to get accused of being an
"M$ shill".

Anyways, I like it, so I'll try to explain why. First off, most of my
interaction with it is identical to Windows 7. I live in my desktop, just like
always. All of my most frequently-used apps are pinned to my taskbar, just
like always. The window borders and decorations look a bit different, but the
reaction to them is so completely over-the-top that it's hard to believe. The
rumors that it's a little snappier than Win7 seem to be true, at least on my
machines.

Yes, all the built-in apps have ribbon toolbars. No, this really isn't some
kind of existential threat to your ability to use your computer. I hated the
shit out of ribbons when they were introduced in Office. They work really well
in Explorer, though. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but they manage
to keep common actions more accessible than the old menu/toolbar combination
did. There are also some small things that I really appreciate, like having a
toggle for hidden items on the View ribbon and having both Command Prompt Here
and Powershell Here accessible easily via menu and shortcut.

Next, the dreaded Start screen, target of much derision and hatred. My
experience with Start menus over the years was that they turned into garbage
dumps. Multiple columns of crap in a hierarchical menu where most of the
entries were completely useless. MS introduced pinning in XP, and "type to
search" in Vista (I think?) to solve that. If you use those, Win8's Start
screen is a huge upgrade. If you prefer to hunt through your menus to find
apps, you'll be disappointed. I personally don't miss the start menu at all -
I have programs pinned on the start screen, sorted left to right by how often
I think I'll need them. I can run anything else by typing a few letters of its
name, and I honestly don't end up doing that very often.

Metro apps are a mixed bag in terms of usefulness. Part of that is that I have
a tablet for the kinds of things that Metro apps are good at, and part is that
they just aren't there yet in terms of polish. There are several that I really
do like, though. The Netflix app, for some reason, works MUCH better on my
laptop than the website. Games are generally a good experience as well - I've
played a shameful amount of Jetpack Joyride. The stock Calendar app isn't bad,
and it syncs with Google Calendar and pops up notifications for that, which is
really cool. I use the stock News, Sports and Weather apps occasionally as
well. Metro as a whole needs some more work, but I think it'll get it over the
next few years.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that Win8 is probably the most keyboard-friendly
OS I've used. My most frequently-used PC is a laptop, and I've always been a
heavy keyboard shortcut user to avoid having to use the touchpad. There's
keyboard shortcuts for almost everything in Win8. That includes things like
managing/resizing Metro apps, moving around the UI on the Start screen,
activating buttons on ribbons. If you press Alt in Explorer, the ribbon lights
up with hotkeys. They've also added the somewhat famous Win-X shortcut, which
pops up a menu with direct access to a lot of tweaking/admin tools. I miss it
whenever I'm on an XP/Vista/7 box.

In short, the people who say that it's "unusable" or "crippled" are full of
shit. It's a solid evolutionary step up from Win7, with a bunch of superficial
changes that are being blown way out of proportion.

~~~
scholia
Excellent post!

------
melling
What's really worth celebrating is that IE10 is around 4%.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
daily-20130302...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
daily-20130302-20130331)

Now get everyone on Windows 7 to upgrade to IE10 then we've practically got an
"HTML5" ready web.

------
mtgx
I'm missing the point of these articles. Are we supposed to "celebrate" _every
single_ percentage increase in Windows 8 market share?

The number still seems incredibly small to me. I doubt Windows 8 will even
reach 20% by the time Windows 9 comes out in 2 and a half years.

~~~
scholia
There are some Windows 8 haters out there who are desperately trying to make
it fail. And it's not just pointlessly stupid Linux fanboys. It includes real
Windows users are are digging in their heels and vowing never to upgrade from
Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7 or whatever. (You can easily recognise them
by their intemperate language.)

Having a group that abandons logic to promote something's failure naturally
creates a counter-movement and therefore a market for blog posts that confirm
or deny its success or failure. This has publishers laughing all the way to
the bank.

It looks unlikely to develop into the sort of mass conflict that helped
publishers make pots of money from Windows vs OS/2, PS3 vs Xbox 360 and
similar battles, but it will do.

Obviously whether someone uses Windows 7 or Windows 8 is much more important
than rape in India, mass starvation in Africa, war in the Middle East or the
fact that the whole planet is melting down. One has to maintain a sense of
priorities.

~~~
pixl97
WTF does anything going on outside of the computer industry have to with
Windows? Lets setup some straw men and light them on fire.

The biggest issue with 8 is that there is enough interface change that people
feel they have to relearn it. In business this takes time and money to teach
the employees, or for them to learn themselves. Most people don't want to
spend time learning something new when there is little to no benefit from
doing so. Real computer users want to get a task done, not to spend half their
life learning interface changes.

From the tone of your reply, I'm going to assume you are one of those
designers that says "My interface is right, and you are too dumb to understand
it's awesomeness", and then are shocked and amazed when no one uses it.

~~~
scholia
> WTF does anything going on outside of the > computer industry have to with
> Windows?

If you restrict your attention only to what's going on in the computer
industry you are likely to lose your sense of proportion, as well as leading
an impoverished life.

Otherwise, my view is that if you don't like Windows 8, carry on using Windows
7, or else install a Stardock or other program that makes it work the way you
like. Windows 7 will be around for the rest of the decade at least.

However, people _are_ capable of learning new interfaces, the real issue is
the size of the benefits.

With Windows 8, the long term benefits are that the new UI works well with
touch screens, it provides access to a new category of WinRT apps, and it
gives you much the same UI across mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and
desktops (as well as common files and common services). In the long run, this
means having to cope with fewer new interfaces, and it reduces your total
learning time.

This is obviously a work in progress, and it's a long-term play. None of us
knows how it's going to turn out. It's far too soon to say whether it's right
or not.

------
Ologn
Net Applications clearly marks this as desktop data, but TNW obscures this.
With desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablets being so fluid nowadays, TNW
should at least mention somewhere that this is desktop only market share.

Wikipedia, the 6th most popular web site in the world (according to Alexa),
has Windows as less than 58% of the clients hitting it for February 2013 (
[http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...](http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm)
). Mac/iPhone/iPad is over 30%, Linux (Android, Ubuntu etc.) is over 7%.

The rise of iOS and Android is the real breaking news story in my book.
Windows controls its form factor niche, but that becomes more irrelevant every
day. Boasting of Windows 90+% share of the desktop would be like DEC boasting
of its market share of minicomputers in the 1970s/1980s.

------
abind
yawn

------
recoiledsnake
Stats from Steam show Windows 8 to be close to 11%:

Windows 7 64 bit 55.11% -0.37%

Windows 7 13.40% -0.43%

Windows 8 64 bit 9.92% +1.03%

Windows XP 32 bit 8.35% -0.62%

Windows Vista 64 bit 3.87% +0.57%

Windows Vista 32 bit 2.72% +0.18%

MacOS 10.8.2 64 bit 1.68% -0.03%

MacOS 10.7.5 64 bit 0.82% +0.08%

Windows 8 0.75% +0.01%

MacOS 10.6.8 64 bit 0.64% +0.02%

<http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey>

~~~
Zr40
I can't believe XP is still being used as primary gaming OS by 8.35% of Steam
users.

Are so many gamers still using ancient hardware incapable of running Windows 7
or 8? Or are they unwilling or afraid to upgrade?

At least, XP usage has dropped by 0.62 percentage points since the month
before. Since this rate will likely decrease, XP will not be gone in less than
14 months.

~~~
astrodust
XP is perfectly fine for most games. The advantages of Windows 7 are pretty
minor and you can still get current drivers for XP.

I'm sure there's a lot of people that run Boot Camp and boot into XP just for
games and see no reason to pay for an upgrade to Windows 7.

