XP.
Posted on 12/31/2020 7:14:13 AM PST by dayglored
Microsoft officially ended support for its one-time flagship operating system, Windows 7, at the start of 2020. As the year draws to a close, I ran the numbers to see how many PCs are still running this unsupported OS. Spoiler: It's a big number...
With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet.
A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in the past year.
On the eve of Microsoft's Windows 7 end-of-support milestone, I consulted some analytics experts and calculated that the owners of roughly 200 million PCs worldwide would ignore that deadline and continue running their preferred OS. That was, admittedly, a rough estimate. (If you want to do the math yourself, read my year-ago post, "It's 2020: How many PCs are still running Windows 7?")
During the holiday lull at the end of 2020, I decided to go back and run the latest version of those analytics reports. They tell a consistent story.
Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question.
At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x.
A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)
If my calculations a year ago were on the mark, that means more than 100 million Windows PC were retired, recycled, or upgraded in the past 12 months.
Other metrics tell a nearly identical story.
At NetMarketShare, for example, the numbers at the end of 2020 show Windows 10 usage up 11 points, from 63.0% to 74.0%, while Windows 7 usage dropped 9.5 points, from 31.2% to 21.7%.
Likewise, StatCounter Global Stats showed the number of PCs running Windows 10 increased more than 12 percent, from 64.7% to 76.0%, while the Windows 7 PC population dropped nearly 10 points to 17.7%.
Turning those percentages into whole numbers isn't a matter of simple division, unfortunately, because we don't know the denominator. Microsoft has told us for years that the Windows user base is 1.5 billion, but I argued a year ago that the number of Windows PCs is probably much lower than that, even with a pandemic-induced resurgence in PC sales. Even allowing for that uncertainty, it's clear that at least 100 million PCs are still running Windows 7, and that number could be significantly higher.
Some of those holdouts are paying Microsoft for the privilege of receiving security updates, although it's not clear how many are part of the Extended Security Update program. And those customers will face more pressure to upgrade in 2021 as the cost of those updates is set to double.
I not only don't want to upgrade to 10, I want Windows XP back.
I have in the past for Windows 7 but not now.
Windows 10 is adware and spyware and other reasons I will not upgrade until I get a new pc I put together. Even then I will install Windows 7 on it first. Microsoft is forcing other software companies to block Windows 7 use.
So are the ebay $30 upgrades mostly legit?
Not here, went from Vista to Win 10. Bit of a learning curve. Lost 2 programs from the Win 98 era. Worst thing of updating is 2 steps forward and three back. Did salvage hardrive from last putter and am using it for storage and system copy.
Hard to know. Personally I would not trust them. Probably some are legit, but the only way to tell is to have a SHA256 checksum of the install ISO (or disk), and compare it against a SHA256 sum of the original upgrade ISO. Without some sort of real verification like that, I wouldn't risk it. Frankly if I were upgrading now, I'd probably cough up the $120 (depending on version) for an official copy.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=windows+upgrade+from+7+to+10
Your mileage may vary.
Wow! I'll bet it was.
I can’t let go of my Windows 7. I sit upstairs in a white gown with a wedding cake desktop background...
Ok, I’m not THAT fanatical, but I’m still keeping it close until I find a cure for its inability to start. I had to move on to 8 and 10 but nothing will ever top the 7.
I would still be running XP if it could run the current applications. Started running Windows at the 3.4 release.
BTTT!!!
Sounds like my Windows 7. Nobody seems to want to fix it, so I wait and hope. Meanwhile I have an XP too, I removed the guts and buried them in a kleenex box in the attic, until the resurrection comes for old hard drives. I was maybe 10 years old when the XP croaked...then came Windows 7...but nothing has ever consoled me about the coma my Windows 7 lies in, to this day.
XP.
Primzry? Nope, secondary or. Linux mint cinnamon is my primary. But I still run w7 for all my games and digital art programs.
> Sounds like my Windows 7. Nobody seems to want to fix it, so I wait and hope.
There may be ways to get it working again, but first, back up your data if at all possible.
You can back up a hard drive that won't boot, if you use a "disk-image" backup program that boots from a CD/DVD. I've had good luck with Acronis, there are others also. Then at least you'll have your data files in case something goes wrong with any attempts at repair or reload.
Or... If you can extract the hard drive from the failing computer, and mount it as an external drive on another Windows computer, you may be able to copy your files off it and back them up.
If you still have the original Win7 install disks, there may be a "recovery mode" available if you boot from those disks. Try to backup (as above) first.
That depends on the smartphone brand you buy.
iPhones are updated for 5-7 years as best I know.
The old Motorola Droid Turbo I had stopped getting updates after 1 year and is the reason I'll not buy another Motorola smartphone.
My Samsung Galaxy S9 is just over two years old and there will be no more Android OS updates to it, though Samsung may continue Security Updates for it.
I'll hang onto my S9 as long as it works at this point. I don't believe in buying the "latest and greatest" smartphone every other year. I don't do more than text, occasional video and listening to music on it. I don't do my online banking with it or anything that has to do with my personal information on it. Text, video and music is enough for me. As long as the battery holds a charge through the day, I'm sticking with what I have.
Some of us believe, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I have an ipad and an iphone which fill my communications needs.
My old Windows 7 based HP laptop ran a dozen or two apps that I have collected over the years. When it broke I was basically without a computer. I chose to buy three old, virtually identical HP laptops and ported my old software to all three. This happened two years ago. I have little concern that any future hardware failure will greatly inconvenience me.
Recently I bought a chess database program which won’t run on my laptops due to a “missing dll”. I decided to experiment with upgrading to Windows 10. The upgrade won’t run because my Windows 7 is not up to date. The laptops won’t update completely for reasons unknown. The new software isn’t valuable enough to me to solve the problem or to buy a new laptop.
All of these upgrade issues are simply of no interest to me. If I was working with others on a project, things might be different. I have no economic incentive to move to Windows 10.
I run both Win10 and Ubuntu, and I find that stability depends a lot on what you're doing with it. Application stability is at least as important as OS stability. These days, all the major OSes are pretty good in that regard, as long as you keep them patched up to date, and get the latest bug fixes. Applications generally tend to be more buggy, in my experience anyway, because there's more pressure to add more and more features and get new releases out quickly.
I am learning to live with Apple now, but I am still using a Win 7 computer for my accounting and other similar things.
It works well for all I need it to do, but nothing lasts forever, especially not computers.
I want to build or buy a new desktop and then transfer the old Win 7 computer to it “as is”.
I have a never used copy of Win 7 still factory sealed in the box waiting for me to do this “one of these days”.
The old me would have just upgraded to 10 and soldiered on, but not now.
I didn’t leave Microsoft. Microsoft left me and now I don’t want to give whatever they have become any new business.
I don’t want to feed The Beast any more than necessary.
Yep, current is an LG V20 with replaceable battery and works fine. LG updated the phone for S. Korea but appears unwilling to update this model to Android v9, which new enterprise software requires. So If they abandon their phones after 5+ years I won't buy another LG, I guess perhaps Samsung this time.
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