Posted on 06/10/2014 1:32:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
May was the seventh full month of availability for Microsoft’s latest operating system version: Windows 8.1 continues to grow slowly while Windows 8 remains largely flat, allowing the former to finally pass the latter in market share. At the same time, Windows 7 has managed to climb back over the 50 percent mark, while Windows XP still has more than 25 percent of the pie, despite support for the ancient OS finally ending in April.
The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have gained a combined 0.40 percentage points (from 12.24 percent to 12.64 percent). More specifically, Windows 8 slipped 0.07 percentage points (from 6.36 percent to 6.29 percent), while Windows 8.1 grabbed an additional 0.47 percentage points (from 5.88 percent to 6.35 percent).
Windows 8, which saw its biggest gain in August at 2.01 percentage points and its biggest loss in November at 0.87 percentage points, continues to slip. There are still computers being sold with Windows 8, but Microsoft is encouraging the upgrade path to Windows 8.1 by making it just a free download away for Windows 8 users.
Meanwhile, Windows 7 managed to grab an additional 0.79 percentage points (from 49.27 percent to 50.06 percent). Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 usually do better combined than Windows 7 does, but some months the opposite happens, and May was one of those instances. It should surprise nobody if Microsoft ends up struggling to woo users off Windows 7 one day, just like the current headache it is experiencing with Windows XP.
Going back to earlier versions, Windows Vista managed to gain 0.01 percentage points (from 2.89 percent to 2.90 percent). Windows XP meanwhile dropped a solid 1.02 percentage points (from 26.29 percent to 25.27 percent). Unfortunately for Microsoft, that drop is nowhere near as large as it should be.
In 2013, Windows lost share every month except for March, July, and November. So far in 2014, Windows slipped in January and April, gained in February and March, and now gained 0.19 percentage points (from 90.80 percent to 90.99 percent) in May. OS X fell 0.23 percentage points (to 7.39 percent), while Linux gained 0.04 percentage points (to 1.62 percent).
Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than of page views, but if you prefer the latter, the corresponding data is available here (mobile and desktop operating systems are combined).
Wow! Thanks for that! I had no idea these were available. Been slip'ing my own since hector was a pup... : )
Guilty as charged. It’s NeXTSTEP on steroids.
Well thanks. It’s not that easy. All I have is a notebook with W7 Starter. I have a spare hard drive I bought thinking I could find a W7 somewhere and then use it.
Buy a USB can for your spare drive (turns it into a USB external drive) so you can hook it to your current machine and back your stuff off of it (oughta have backup anyhoo). Then what I said is golden. Gotta get your stuff off to do what I say, though, because if you rub it off, you'll lose anything there is on the machine.
Might want to find a geek or guru to do it for you, as if it were me, I would want to preserve the restore partition on the internal drive for when you want to sell it - then you can restore it back to factory and keep the Win7 Home Prem for some other time...
All you have to do is boot off the oem disk, format the partition that windows is currently on, and tell win to install there... Might have to go get drivers to install to get it all working, but it is all pretty painless, take about an evening to do...
Too bad y'all ain't close by... About twice a week I have one buddy or another show up with a cold pack of PBRs under his arm wanting just such a thing.
I looked on Amazon and the complaints are when people bought the upgrade it error’d out saying it was no good. What they were selling was CD’s for people who load pc’s to sell so they had the license. MS doesn’t sell the original disks anymore. If I borrowed one (which I tried) it said it wasn’t good either since somehow the hard drive is registered(?) - so what if someone bought a new hard drive? They’d be out of luck. MS is nasty.
Any computer repair shop can get you Win7. Home Prem runs about 90-125 US,,, As I recall, you are an Ozzie gal, but no doubt there is the equivalent of a back alley shop or redneck engineer thereabouts who should know how, and can order you up an OEM disk which will give you the key too... Ozzies are no different than Americans when it comes to rugged individualism, so I find it hard to believe there is no one there who knows how... Tho it might be the vegemite effecting their sensibilities :)
I don't know about 'registered HDD' - I do this kind of thing all the time, and never ran into it, unless you are talking about the hard drive being encrypted, which can still be done... Just would have to zero the drive out completely.
Lastly, look into MS 'Anytime Upgrade' - I don't know if you must upgrade to Win8 or if you can upgrade to a better Win7, but that is all done electronically.
I really don't want to suggest it tho, because I generally hate 'upgrades'.
You might note upthread that my first advice was to kype the numbers from a wrecked Win7 box.
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