THAT'S MORE SIMPLE, TODAY ALMOST ALL THE NOTEBOOKS AND NETBOOKS CAME WITH SOME SORT OF WINDOWS 7, AND THE MARKET OF THESE MACHINES INCREASE INCREDIBLY FAST DUE TO THE REDUCED PRICES AND COMPETITIVE MARKET. THAT EXPLAIN THIS FENOMENON
- Status
maddy143ded
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- Feb 18, 2010
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EVERYTHING ELSE ASIDE , THINK ABOUT THIS AS ECONOMICS.
M$ SELLS 400MIL COPIES OF WIN7. EVEN IF M$ GETS JUST $10 PROFIT ON EACH LICENSE ACTIVATED, IT ADDS UPTO $4 BILLION AS PROFITS FOR MS. AND THATS JUST FOR W7.
I AM PRETTY SURE MS SELLS THE LICENSE AT WAY MORE THEN $10 PROFIT....
M$ SELLS 400MIL COPIES OF WIN7. EVEN IF M$ GETS JUST $10 PROFIT ON EACH LICENSE ACTIVATED, IT ADDS UPTO $4 BILLION AS PROFITS FOR MS. AND THATS JUST FOR W7.
I AM PRETTY SURE MS SELLS THE LICENSE AT WAY MORE THEN $10 PROFIT....
captaincharisma
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- Oct 13, 2004
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[citation][nom]mchuf[/nom]Since 2 gb of ram is recommended for Vista. People with only 1gb should wonder why it's so damn slow. Hell, 1 gb of ram in XP is kinda slow.[/citation]
no all the hate on vista is pure ignorance. it came from all the people who bought a copy of vista and expected it to run on there 800mhz PC's with 256-512MB of ram. the hate on vista was just plain ignorance
no all the hate on vista is pure ignorance. it came from all the people who bought a copy of vista and expected it to run on there 800mhz PC's with 256-512MB of ram. the hate on vista was just plain ignorance
70camaross396
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- Apr 26, 2010
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I think what most people forget is that a lot people hated XP when it was first launched. because it would not run thier old DOS programs or games like 9x would. lots of people "upgraded" to win 98SE. same thing with Vista. a lot of people hated it but when i ask someone why they hate it, the always say it "slow". my question is "slow" compared to what? the only 3 issues i saw with vista were 1. user account control. 2. people trying to use it on PC that did not meet the recommended specs. 3. people using the 64 bit version and trying to run thier old 16bit programs form 1994 on it. I had Vista 64 bit ultimate, on a Intel Core 2 duo 1.8 ghz, 2 GB of Ram, and a 320 GB hard drive. I never had a minutes trouble with it. I think Vista got a bad wrap because of the 3 issues that i listed above and the fact that Apple took advantage of it with "I am a Mac" ad compain to spread the propaganda that "Vista sucks". lets not forget that Server 2008 is based on the same sorce code as Vista, and i have not heard any system administrators that i talk to complain about server 2008 being "slow".
one other thing in this article that doen't add up is the math. 55 out of 100 pc sold had XP? that means 45 out of every 100 pc sold had a diffrent OS. is microsoft suppost to have a 94% market share? shouldnt this be 90 out of 100 pc had windows? take out the 5% Apple Share and the 1% linux market shared, that leaves 94 out of every 100 PC that should have winows XP licenses. Microsoft discontinued 9x right after XP launched. granted 2k was still available for downgrades of busniesses. but even then then the numbers dont add up.
one other thing in this article that doen't add up is the math. 55 out of 100 pc sold had XP? that means 45 out of every 100 pc sold had a diffrent OS. is microsoft suppost to have a 94% market share? shouldnt this be 90 out of 100 pc had windows? take out the 5% Apple Share and the 1% linux market shared, that leaves 94 out of every 100 PC that should have winows XP licenses. Microsoft discontinued 9x right after XP launched. granted 2k was still available for downgrades of busniesses. but even then then the numbers dont add up.
Darkerson
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- Oct 28, 2009
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[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]no all the hate on vista is pure ignorance. it came from all the people who bought a copy of vista and expected it to run on there 800mhz PC's with 256-512MB of ram. the hate on vista was just plain ignorance[/citation]
There was also the whole debacle of Intel "persuading" Microsoft into allowing certain chipsets to be labeled as Vista Capable and whatnot, when they both knew they were not. So was that customer ignorance when the 2 companies were duping people into believing their hardware was capable of something it was not?
There was also the whole debacle of Intel "persuading" Microsoft into allowing certain chipsets to be labeled as Vista Capable and whatnot, when they both knew they were not. So was that customer ignorance when the 2 companies were duping people into believing their hardware was capable of something it was not?
[citation][nom]mauller07[/nom]i take all this as windows 7 being the decent upgrade from xp, while vista started implementing the features that would be improved in windows 7, it was rushed in places. this caused bad publicity and the decline in uptake of vista. i still know many tech illiterate people who hate vista on its original release even after sp2 helping alleviate many of the problems.[/citation]
I work in IT and I loved Vista when it came out. The only problem was the sound driver debacle with Creative. The thing is that I didnt try to piggy back it on a P4 with 256MB of RAM.
I work in IT and I loved Vista when it came out. The only problem was the sound driver debacle with Creative. The thing is that I didnt try to piggy back it on a P4 with 256MB of RAM.
[citation][nom]lradunovic77[/nom]Funny thing is that Windows XP will be still dominant when Windows 8 is released which means that people don't want what MS is trying to push since Windows Vista and that is bloatware OS.[/citation]
On steam:
Windows 7 64 bit - 38.57%
Windows XP 32 bit - 19.98%
Windows Vista 32 bit - 12.54%
Windows Vista 64 bit - 11.68%
Windows 7 32 bit - 10.13%
MacOS 10.6.7 64 bit - 4.43%
Windows XP 64 bit - 0.95%
On steam:
Windows 7 64 bit - 38.57%
Windows XP 32 bit - 19.98%
Windows Vista 32 bit - 12.54%
Windows Vista 64 bit - 11.68%
Windows 7 32 bit - 10.13%
MacOS 10.6.7 64 bit - 4.43%
Windows XP 64 bit - 0.95%
[citation][nom]hachem[/nom]i remember the time where i preferred the much hated windows me to xp. XP only became enjoyable/workable for me starting from service pack 2, before that, it was sh...i also learned to enjoy vista, even though it took me an hour to tweak it each time i installed it. so upgrading to windows 7 was indeed a great positive change. i consider windows 7 as the actual vista sp3.[/citation]
Sorry but ME SUCKED. Vista was a master piece in comparison.
Sorry but ME SUCKED. Vista was a master piece in comparison.
livebriand
Distinguished
- Apr 18, 2011
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[citation][nom]whysobluepandabear[/nom]NO it's not. I have over 360MB of free RAM - that's with XP running & Firefox (3 tabs). 1GB for web browsing, movie watching and pretty much anything that doesn't involve gaming is PERFECTLY fine. Then again I only have 31 processes running, but it's not my fault that I know what does and does not need to be running.[/citation]
Actually, it is. I have a friend with a desktop with 1GB DDR2 RAM and an Athlon x2 2.1GHz GPU. That thing was a dog, even after I reinstalled the OS. I added 2GB RAM to it, bringing it to 3GB, and performance was MUCH MUCH MUCH better. It was quite responsive after that. Though I bet it would be even better under Windows 7. (note: I'm talking about 32-bit Vista)
Actually, it is. I have a friend with a desktop with 1GB DDR2 RAM and an Athlon x2 2.1GHz GPU. That thing was a dog, even after I reinstalled the OS. I added 2GB RAM to it, bringing it to 3GB, and performance was MUCH MUCH MUCH better. It was quite responsive after that. Though I bet it would be even better under Windows 7. (note: I'm talking about 32-bit Vista)
walter87
Distinguished
- Jun 28, 2011
- 70
- 0
- 18,580
[citation][nom]bloodlust22[/nom]WOW, So in other words alot of OEM's have bought a great deal of keys in bulk. Again, WOW. Instead of MS showing skewed data, Why not show how many of those 400 million keys have actually been activated by a end user? I highly doubt there's 400 million users out there running Windows 7. I would guess maybe 100-150 million are actually running Windows 7 while they other 250 - 300 million are still sitting at Dell, HP, Sony, Store shelves, etc...etc...[/citation]
at the people defending vista:
my system build friend first d/l vista when it came out, me and my system admin friends were at his house and watched him install it (we already had played with the beta release).
he formatted his primo athlon 64 system after burning the vista install to dvd. started installing while we all watched with merriment in our eyes and groans on our lips. after 4 blue screen crashes on his machine it vista finally installed successfully (or so it seemed) he loaded his drivers which more then half failed completely (despite saying they were vista ready).
the correct size of his hdd did not register full amount of drive, most of his programs despite vista ready claims would not run or crashed continuously. NONE of the games would run ,company of heros, remember that gem, that i can specifically remember when he smashed his keyboard in anger and disgust over it. his brand new printer and scanner he bought just because they were vista certified wouldn't work, couldn't print out help articles from microsoft.
turns out most of the drivers made did not work for vista, games didn't work, and the OS wouldn't finish an install with out blue screening a few times.
the screams of lag and bloating didn't come until later when the drivers were all fixed. he repeated this same grueling procedure on his dual core and core2 duo machines with pretty much the same result before loading XP back onto all of his machines.
his anger was such that none dared laugh or crack a smile after his finding out what we beta testers already knew: vista was only fit for garbage cans.
my system build friend first d/l vista when it came out, me and my system admin friends were at his house and watched him install it (we already had played with the beta release).
he formatted his primo athlon 64 system after burning the vista install to dvd. started installing while we all watched with merriment in our eyes and groans on our lips. after 4 blue screen crashes on his machine it vista finally installed successfully (or so it seemed) he loaded his drivers which more then half failed completely (despite saying they were vista ready).
the correct size of his hdd did not register full amount of drive, most of his programs despite vista ready claims would not run or crashed continuously. NONE of the games would run ,company of heros, remember that gem, that i can specifically remember when he smashed his keyboard in anger and disgust over it. his brand new printer and scanner he bought just because they were vista certified wouldn't work, couldn't print out help articles from microsoft.
turns out most of the drivers made did not work for vista, games didn't work, and the OS wouldn't finish an install with out blue screening a few times.
the screams of lag and bloating didn't come until later when the drivers were all fixed. he repeated this same grueling procedure on his dual core and core2 duo machines with pretty much the same result before loading XP back onto all of his machines.
his anger was such that none dared laugh or crack a smile after his finding out what we beta testers already knew: vista was only fit for garbage cans.
tacoslave
Distinguished
- Apr 3, 2009
- 281
- 0
- 18,940
i actually like vista i thought it looked great and was pretty speedy for me and back in the day all i had was an overclocked pentium dual core e2180 @3.2 ghz with 2 gb of ram and an 8600gt and to me Vista didn't run as slow as people would complain about.
razor512
Distinguished
- Jun 16, 2007
- 501
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- 18,940
Running windows xp 32 bit here.
at bootup, I have 11 running processes with around 40MB memory usage
http
/i.imgur.com/stBdk.jpg
On my PC
Phenom II x4 965 overclocked to 3.8GHz
4GB ddr3 1600 memory
1TB 7200RPM hard drive
GTS 250
windows xp boots in about 13 seconds (thats to be at a point when no additional loading happens)
just about every option in the OS opens instantly (the same is not the case for windows 7)
(My 3dmark 06 score in higher) (cant run a higher end 3dmark since they dropped windows xp pretty quickly
I use windows xp for most of what I do and windows 7 is just for certain games like just cause 2 which will not run on windows xp
If you are a user who mostly uses their computer for basic things which do not really need the windows 7 specific features like dx 10 and 11
what do you gain by using a OS that uses more resources on it's self, thus taking resources away from the programs you want to run?
for windows xp, it is extremely light and does what a OS is suppose to do, which is get out of the way so you can you run your programs.
if you have been running windows 7 for a while, try installing windows xp as a dual boot.
you will feel that windows xp is much more snappy because to use any of it's build in functions, less hard drive IO's are needed. When loading from a hard drive, it will always be faster to load less than it is to load more.
Microsoft needs to learn a lesson from professional application companies.
Look at programs like maya, adobe aftereffects,adobe premier pro and many others, you will see that new versions are faster than the old versions, even when requirements go up, generally you will notice that the there is a shift in resources, the main app uses less resources so that the more time critical components will have more resources, thus increasing speed.
For a professional program, time is money and people wont buy a program that will cause time to be wasted by taking longer to get the same job done.
at bootup, I have 11 running processes with around 40MB memory usage
http
/i.imgur.com/stBdk.jpgOn my PC
Phenom II x4 965 overclocked to 3.8GHz
4GB ddr3 1600 memory
1TB 7200RPM hard drive
GTS 250
windows xp boots in about 13 seconds (thats to be at a point when no additional loading happens)
just about every option in the OS opens instantly (the same is not the case for windows 7)
(My 3dmark 06 score in higher) (cant run a higher end 3dmark since they dropped windows xp pretty quickly
I use windows xp for most of what I do and windows 7 is just for certain games like just cause 2 which will not run on windows xp
If you are a user who mostly uses their computer for basic things which do not really need the windows 7 specific features like dx 10 and 11
what do you gain by using a OS that uses more resources on it's self, thus taking resources away from the programs you want to run?
for windows xp, it is extremely light and does what a OS is suppose to do, which is get out of the way so you can you run your programs.
if you have been running windows 7 for a while, try installing windows xp as a dual boot.
you will feel that windows xp is much more snappy because to use any of it's build in functions, less hard drive IO's are needed. When loading from a hard drive, it will always be faster to load less than it is to load more.
Microsoft needs to learn a lesson from professional application companies.
Look at programs like maya, adobe aftereffects,adobe premier pro and many others, you will see that new versions are faster than the old versions, even when requirements go up, generally you will notice that the there is a shift in resources, the main app uses less resources so that the more time critical components will have more resources, thus increasing speed.
For a professional program, time is money and people wont buy a program that will cause time to be wasted by taking longer to get the same job done.
belardo
Distinguished
- Nov 23, 2008
- 1,143
- 0
- 19,230
[citation][nom]tommysch[/nom]On steam:Windows 7 64 bit - 38.57%Windows XP 32 bit - 19.98%Windows Vista 32 bit - 12.54%Windows Vista 64 bit - 11.68%Windows 7 32 bit - 10.13%MacOS 10.6.7 64 bit - 4.43%Windows XP 64 bit - 0.95%[/citation]
That is gamer stats, which is pretty useful info. But it doesn't reflect the entire world... in which MOST PCs are NOT used for playing games. My desktop has STEAM, my ThinkPad and iPad do not.
In the big scheme of things, Win7 has passed XP for license installs. Vista never made it past 25% install rate (which I predicted). There are still millions of pirated XP in use as well.
[citation][nom]tommysch[/nom]I work in IT and I loved Vista when it came out. The only problem was the sound driver debacle with Creative. The thing is that I didnt try to piggy back it on a P4 with 256MB of RAM.[/citation]
There were video driver issues, and many people had issues with Vista with 1~2GB of RAM installed. Vista didn't offer any user experience improvement over XP. Oh, for fun - I've installed Win7 on a P4 with 256mb of RAM... still ran better than Vista with 1GB.
[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]no all the hate on vista is pure ignorance. it came from all the people who bought a copy of vista and expected it to run on there 800mhz PC's with 256-512MB of ram. the hate on vista was just plain ignorance[/citation]
Thats your fantasy. Even an MS executive sent out the email about his $3000 POS Vista system. An ex-GF grandma's HP with Celeron 300mhz XP box died when Vista was a few months old... since she only does a bit of wordprocessing and Solitaire - a $450 HP with P4-Class Celeron at 3ghz /512mb should do (it was 8:50pm and she didn't leave us much options). The HP computer is NEW, in a box... it was horrible horrible slow. IT was sooo much slower than her dead computer. I even added a free stick of 1GB I had laying around, still ran like crap. It damn computer was TOO slow for a 75 year old WOMAN! I disabled the things not needed (She didn't need internet)
She call me every other week... computer slow, Solitaire crashed, the PC wouldn;t shut down, wouldn't boot up. After 2 months, she bought XP-OEM for $100 and I wiped her PC and installed it for her. Never EVER a peep from her again about the computer.
Truth: Vista is slow at a lot of things, unless you throw a lot of horse power at it... Why the hell should someone require a $400+ quad core CPU and 8GB of RAM to check their email? (back then) Even Toms did an article comparing the memory management between Win7 and Vista. Each open window ate resources out the butt.
And before I murdered Vista off that HP, I DL the XP drivers (hidden on HPs FTP servers) and Vista reports it will take 4~5 minutes to unpack a 40mb audio driver ZIP file?! I stopped it, copied the drivers to my key in ZIP form. Killed vista, install XP which unpacked the same 40mb ZIP file in about 15 seconds. Yeah, Vista is faster.... not!
Hey, Win7 still a bit slow on unzipping file. 🙁 When I had 1GB on my ThinkPad (bottom end Core2 CPU), I can do most of my work and still have about 200~300mb free (XP it would be closer to 600mb).
[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]I agree with the principle, even if the number might be a bit off.Think about every computer sitting in a box in BestBuy or Staples. Think about every physical copy of Windows 7 (Home, Pro, Ultimate) sitting on the shelves. [/citation]
A) Shelves are restocked.
B) Most of those boxes are EMPTY, you buy the software and the actual box is given to you afterwards (Costco / Frys, Sams, etc)
[citation][nom]mchuf[/nom]Since 2 gb of ram is recommended for Vista. People with only 1gb should wonder why it's so damn slow. Hell, 1 gb of ram in XP is kinda slow.[/citation]
XP for office and general use is fine at 1GB. I ran Win7 with 1GB for a year on my ThinkPad with barely an issue. I've seen Vista run like crap with 2GB... optimal vista is 64bit with 6~8GB of RAM for general use. Why? Vista memory system is shit. It offered pretty much nothing over XP, the GUI wasn't nothing more than a skin job.
That is gamer stats, which is pretty useful info. But it doesn't reflect the entire world... in which MOST PCs are NOT used for playing games. My desktop has STEAM, my ThinkPad and iPad do not.
In the big scheme of things, Win7 has passed XP for license installs. Vista never made it past 25% install rate (which I predicted). There are still millions of pirated XP in use as well.
[citation][nom]tommysch[/nom]I work in IT and I loved Vista when it came out. The only problem was the sound driver debacle with Creative. The thing is that I didnt try to piggy back it on a P4 with 256MB of RAM.[/citation]
There were video driver issues, and many people had issues with Vista with 1~2GB of RAM installed. Vista didn't offer any user experience improvement over XP. Oh, for fun - I've installed Win7 on a P4 with 256mb of RAM... still ran better than Vista with 1GB.
[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]no all the hate on vista is pure ignorance. it came from all the people who bought a copy of vista and expected it to run on there 800mhz PC's with 256-512MB of ram. the hate on vista was just plain ignorance[/citation]
Thats your fantasy. Even an MS executive sent out the email about his $3000 POS Vista system. An ex-GF grandma's HP with Celeron 300mhz XP box died when Vista was a few months old... since she only does a bit of wordprocessing and Solitaire - a $450 HP with P4-Class Celeron at 3ghz /512mb should do (it was 8:50pm and she didn't leave us much options). The HP computer is NEW, in a box... it was horrible horrible slow. IT was sooo much slower than her dead computer. I even added a free stick of 1GB I had laying around, still ran like crap. It damn computer was TOO slow for a 75 year old WOMAN! I disabled the things not needed (She didn't need internet)
She call me every other week... computer slow, Solitaire crashed, the PC wouldn;t shut down, wouldn't boot up. After 2 months, she bought XP-OEM for $100 and I wiped her PC and installed it for her. Never EVER a peep from her again about the computer.
Truth: Vista is slow at a lot of things, unless you throw a lot of horse power at it... Why the hell should someone require a $400+ quad core CPU and 8GB of RAM to check their email? (back then) Even Toms did an article comparing the memory management between Win7 and Vista. Each open window ate resources out the butt.
And before I murdered Vista off that HP, I DL the XP drivers (hidden on HPs FTP servers) and Vista reports it will take 4~5 minutes to unpack a 40mb audio driver ZIP file?! I stopped it, copied the drivers to my key in ZIP form. Killed vista, install XP which unpacked the same 40mb ZIP file in about 15 seconds. Yeah, Vista is faster.... not!
Hey, Win7 still a bit slow on unzipping file. 🙁 When I had 1GB on my ThinkPad (bottom end Core2 CPU), I can do most of my work and still have about 200~300mb free (XP it would be closer to 600mb).
[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]I agree with the principle, even if the number might be a bit off.Think about every computer sitting in a box in BestBuy or Staples. Think about every physical copy of Windows 7 (Home, Pro, Ultimate) sitting on the shelves. [/citation]
A) Shelves are restocked.
B) Most of those boxes are EMPTY, you buy the software and the actual box is given to you afterwards (Costco / Frys, Sams, etc)
[citation][nom]mchuf[/nom]Since 2 gb of ram is recommended for Vista. People with only 1gb should wonder why it's so damn slow. Hell, 1 gb of ram in XP is kinda slow.[/citation]
XP for office and general use is fine at 1GB. I ran Win7 with 1GB for a year on my ThinkPad with barely an issue. I've seen Vista run like crap with 2GB... optimal vista is 64bit with 6~8GB of RAM for general use. Why? Vista memory system is shit. It offered pretty much nothing over XP, the GUI wasn't nothing more than a skin job.
belardo
Distinguished
- Nov 23, 2008
- 1,143
- 0
- 19,230
[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]i actually like vista i thought it looked great and was pretty speedy for me and back in the day all i had was an overclocked pentium dual core e2180 @3.2 ghz with 2 gb of ram and an 8600gt and to me Vista didn't run as slow as people would complain about.[/citation]
Yep... fairly bottom end CPU there. With XP or even Win7 installed as comparison, you'd then KNOW how slow Vista was.
Yep... fairly bottom end CPU there. With XP or even Win7 installed as comparison, you'd then KNOW how slow Vista was.
The fact of Wikipedia info thats no longer there right? Is probably fairly useful. If i read that coreectly. XP did have probably along Vista lower sales, Given i think even with Vista many interest or some might have still been with ME or Media Center?
Since DVDs i think were kinda cool for the time, maybe not. But with a smaller OS to say for DX10 and Blu-ray, having many WN 7 releases within computer sales probably is going to be fairly high. Get more processing and the storage for it, or just storage. At this rate, they will probably sale another 400mil before yrs end, right?
Since DVDs i think were kinda cool for the time, maybe not. But with a smaller OS to say for DX10 and Blu-ray, having many WN 7 releases within computer sales probably is going to be fairly high. Get more processing and the storage for it, or just storage. At this rate, they will probably sale another 400mil before yrs end, right?
Selling licenses is one thing, but you can't simply measure success using raw license sales numbers and it makes little sense to try to compare past rates of sales with present rates of sales.
Too many things are different today - the size of the PC market is larger, the cost of PCs are significantly lower enabling many more new buyers, the US and Europe are no longer fueling most of the growth in the PC market. Remember that each license is not necessarily equivalent in value. A Windows 7 Home Premium license may be the typical license sold to the US consumer today, but I've been finding that the typical license sold with a new laptop PC in many developing nations is actually Windows 7 Starter or Home Basic, which are both, quite frankly, crippled OSes when compared to the XP that people have grown accustomed to using. Since developing countries account for more than two-thirds of the global population and are currently the only regions enabling positive growth in the global PC sector, I would want to see just how many of those 400 million licenses are for Starter and Home Basic before I start congratulating Microsoft.
In any case Microsoft has PC manufacturers to thank for the brisk rise of Windows 7. Windows 7 has taken off in many emerging markets simply because new laptop hardware have finally become affordable enough for many more consumers to purchase. And XP usage is actually falling fairly quickly in some of these places. China, which accounts for 21% of all Internet users, is the big exception. For instance, if you look at South America as a whole, you'll see that Windows 7 usage jumped nearly 10% in the last 6 months (from 30% in January to 40% in the last month) mostly at the expense of XP. But most of that adoption came in the form of sales of dirt cheap machines running Windows Starter and Basic editions.
The question I have is this - Are the raw numbers all that important if you're now in a position where you can't gain traction in emerging markets without selling them licenses for a crippled version of the OS to replace the full versions in use before? The emerging market is where the next billion new PC users are going to come from, so obviously Microsoft is going to need to make full Windows affordable to everyone if they don't want the next billion new users of Windows to base their opinion of Windows on the crippled versions.
Too many things are different today - the size of the PC market is larger, the cost of PCs are significantly lower enabling many more new buyers, the US and Europe are no longer fueling most of the growth in the PC market. Remember that each license is not necessarily equivalent in value. A Windows 7 Home Premium license may be the typical license sold to the US consumer today, but I've been finding that the typical license sold with a new laptop PC in many developing nations is actually Windows 7 Starter or Home Basic, which are both, quite frankly, crippled OSes when compared to the XP that people have grown accustomed to using. Since developing countries account for more than two-thirds of the global population and are currently the only regions enabling positive growth in the global PC sector, I would want to see just how many of those 400 million licenses are for Starter and Home Basic before I start congratulating Microsoft.
In any case Microsoft has PC manufacturers to thank for the brisk rise of Windows 7. Windows 7 has taken off in many emerging markets simply because new laptop hardware have finally become affordable enough for many more consumers to purchase. And XP usage is actually falling fairly quickly in some of these places. China, which accounts for 21% of all Internet users, is the big exception. For instance, if you look at South America as a whole, you'll see that Windows 7 usage jumped nearly 10% in the last 6 months (from 30% in January to 40% in the last month) mostly at the expense of XP. But most of that adoption came in the form of sales of dirt cheap machines running Windows Starter and Basic editions.
The question I have is this - Are the raw numbers all that important if you're now in a position where you can't gain traction in emerging markets without selling them licenses for a crippled version of the OS to replace the full versions in use before? The emerging market is where the next billion new PC users are going to come from, so obviously Microsoft is going to need to make full Windows affordable to everyone if they don't want the next billion new users of Windows to base their opinion of Windows on the crippled versions.
- Sep 6, 2008
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Windows 7 deserves its success for all I know. It has been the most stable and pleasant OS to work with by far. I cannot even imagine going back to XP or even Vista (which I greatly loved) just because Windows 7 plays so nicely with everything.
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