PC upgraders chose Windows 7 over Windows 8.X during March

by Mark Tyson on 2 April 2014, 11:05

Tags: Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 8, PC

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With the official end of support for Windows XP just under a week away the OS still holds over 27 per cent - over a quarter - of the market according to the latest Net Applications data (via TNW). During the last full month of XP's support it dropped in market share by just 1.84 per cent compared to February.

The latest data also shows us that more people are choosing to jump over to Windows 7 rather than Windows 8.X. In March Windows 7 gained 1.46 per cent to catch 48.77 per cent of the market. For the three previous months Windows 8.X had won over more converts but the impending Xpcopalypse seems to have favoured Windows 7.

Windows 8 was basically a non-mover on the chart but Windows 8.1 gained 0.59 per cent. In aggregate the Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 share now stands at 11.30 per cent.

It seems like a recent initiative by Microsoft which attempted to attract Windows XP machine upgraders with $100 off a new Windows 8.X device has had all the impact of a gnat, as was expected. That offer only started mid-month but applies to only North America (and Puerto Rico) based customers with access to the trade-in facility at their local Microsoft Store. Additionally this $100 trade-in discount requires the purchase of a new machine which costs at least US$599. (This offer continues until 15th June).

A related report in the Telegraph makes the use of Windows XP in UK organisations sound even more prevalent. It cites a report which claims that "a staggering 77 per cent of UK organisations are still running the 12 year-old operating system somewhere in their IT estate". You must read that headline grabbing Telegraph quote carefully, as a more meaningful statistic from the same AppSense report informs us that the average percentage of XP machines in the organisations surveyed is just under 13 per cent.



HEXUS Forums :: 21 Comments

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And the worrying thing is that a large percentage of the Business XP machines still around are the Cash Machines run by the banks. Banks who have no interest in upgrading their Cash Machines until they are proven to be so unsecure as to be easily hacked with a smartphone, as that would cut into their profits.
Seems we have a news story about this every week…..corporate environments move slowly, bespoke applications and costs cause people to keep to their older and working software. Windows 8 isn't ready for the corporate environment and end users are silly (building a new PC and putting a slower, older OS on it).

What exactly has changed in 10 years?
zaph0d
And the worrying thing is that a large percentage of the Business XP machines still around are the Cash Machines run by the banks.
IIRC Banks that are still running XP on ATM's past the EOL of XP are going to pay for extended support.
shaithis
Windows 8 isn't ready for the corporate environment and end users are silly (building a new PC and putting a slower, older OS on it).

What exactly has changed in 10 years?
Nothing. Newer OS's are not faster, depending on what benchmarks are used both the old and new can be shown to be slower or faster than the other.
zaph0d
And the worrying thing is that a large percentage of the Business XP machines still around are the Cash Machines run by the banks. Banks who have no interest in upgrading their Cash Machines until they are proven to be so unsecure as to be easily hacked with a smartphone, as that would cut into their profits.

So how would your smartphone connect to said cash machine in order to hack it?

If you go surfing for pr0n with an unsupported OS then sure you will get owned, but an embedded box like that will be stripped down and just running the one control application on a private network. I think the attack vectors are different enough that you can ignore them here.
Corky34
Nothing. Newer OS's are not faster, depending on what benchmarks are used both the old and new can be shown to be slower or faster than the other.

Of course, except when they actually put stuff in that is faster…like Windows 8/8.1 did with DX11.2 codepaths….and better fastboot support..and…