StatCounter’s trend lines for Windows version market share. Click here to embiggen
Posted on 02/05/2018 7:36:21 PM PST by dayglored
OS-detection services disagree on which Windows reigns
Web analytics outfit StatCounter last week trumpeted news that Windows 10’s market share overtook Windows 7’s for the first time in January 2018. But other ratings services didn’t find the same result.
StatCounter’s assessment of Windows version market share for January 2018 suggested that Windows 10 scored 42.78 per cent of Windows’ market share, as measured by worldwide internet. That compared to 41.86 per cent for Windows 7.
Here’s a pretty graph showing the trend.
StatCounter’s trend lines for Windows version market share. Click here to embiggen
Before you figure out how to start selling champagne to Microsoft offices, consider that StatCounter has a rival named Netmarketshare and that its January 2018 data has Windows 10 on 34.29 per cent market share, well behind Windows 7’s 42.39 per cent.
Both sites compile their data by watching traffic to real live websites. Netmarketshare says that it considers “100 million valid sessions per month, widely distributed over thousands of websites.” StatCounter says its methodology sees it work “on the basis of more than 10 billion page views per month, by people from all over the world onto our 2 million+ member sites.”
Which is more accurate? That’s hard to say as both are ultimately black boxes.
What we can say with some certainty is that if StatCounter is right, Microsoft has taken two-and-a-half years since Windows 10’s July 2015 launch to beat a product launched in July 2009.
Perhaps that champagne business wasn’t such a good idea after all. ®
> Microsoft is trying to force me to save all my documents in Windows/10 - Word/10, by making it impossible to save docs in Windows 7 or Word 7. But then when I send those docs to anyone else they can not open Windows 10 or Word 10.
First of all, I haven’t bought a program in years (I’m retired and don’t really need to do anything except eat, drink, and seek shelter). I suppose some people need to, but for most purposes there are plenty of free programs that will save data in generic form.
I haven’t checked Word lately — in the last decade or two — but unless you’re using some complex features there’s probably an option to save the document in a generic form (rtf?) that other programs will be able to read (unless you have complex formatting — I suppose that could be a problem).
Note: Just checked Wikipedia. I see that “New features in Word 2010 and later versions will not save properly to the RTF format.” So compatibility will depend on whether you use those new features.
You can schedule those updates to only install at certain times when you’re not likely to be using the computer - like in the middle of the night.
Agreed, but MS has been crippling Windows 7 for some time.
It is OK as long as you don’t run VM’s or do video editing or play games:
My Win7 laptop had a bad HHD problem recently and I had to install a new one. I thought about updating it to Win8 or Win10, but they want too much $ for Win10. I could probably live with Win8, but much prefer Win7. Windows 10 has some nice features, but in some ways it almost seems like a downgrade.
Dread it...........
Just fyi that is a good choice.
I like Linux, you probably will also. Just found that Windows 10 had everything I need.
That said, there is a advantage to Linux, in that you never have to worry about re-installing. Ever. Even if your disk is completely erased, you can always just make a new copy and reinstall. It is also backward compatible.
You just download it, and install. Make as many copies as you ever need.
It is good in that way. It is also very efficient, so you won’t run out of disk space, or anything like that.
Good system I thought.
But Windows 10 is also good.
I have to agree. W10 is fine for home users but in an enterprise setting it is problematic. My “regular” job oversees approx 1000 users. 90% of which are on W7 64 bit. 80% of the issues come from the 10% of W10 machines.
Same for my side gig. Six users. 3 are W10. All my IT support calls come from the W10 users.
I would imagine the best of both worlds would be a stable Linux environment with Windows running on Virtual machine for the needed Windows apps.
I made the mistake of upgrading to W10. Now I have to pay $100 per year for Office 365 if I want to have Word. P!$$es me off.
$100 for Word on an annual basis is robbery.
If you use Word for mostly standard stuff, you might want to check out LibreOffice, the free Office suite. Runs fine on Win10, and is 99% compatible with MS-Office Word docs. The only things I've found that aren't directly compatible are the latest-and-greatest features that Microsoft put in the newer releases of MS-Office to intentionally make it incompatible. Most users never use those advanced features.
LibreOffice can load and save Word docs in any of the MS-Office formats, in case you trade docs with other people. It also has an Excel-compatible spreadsheet program, and a PowerPoint-compatible presentation program.
You can download LibreOffice for free here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ and try it out, see if it does what you need. Nothing to lose, might save $100 a year.
LibreOffice came installed on my Zorin download plus many games. Never again will I have M$ on my puter.
You accumulate problems? Oh my. I try to avoid them.
Currently using Mint 17.3 and 18. Have used Fedora, slackware, and others over the past decade or so. I recommend Mint for beginners.
> but over the years I’ve accumulated probably 70 or 80 freeware problems written for Windows [GJones2]
> You accumulate problems? Oh my. I try to avoid them.
Oops. :-)
Thanks for catching that. Of course, I meant “programs”. Freud might have suggested that subconsciously I regard them as problems. I don’t see why, though. On the whole I’ve been pleased with them.
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