Windows 7 finally overtakes Windows XP’s desktop OS market share

From Ubergizmo:

By George Wong 04/08/2011, 4:32 pm PT



According to the latest results of the desktop OS market share in the US for April 2011 collected by StatCounter, it looks like people are finally leaving Windows XP behind and getting an upgrade to Windows 7. For the first time since it became the most popular operating system around, Windows XP’s market share has been trumped by Windows 7. Windows 7 is now used on 31.71% of desktops in the US, while Windows XP has dropped to 31.56%. Now the lead isn’t a lot but it does show that Windows XP has finally peaked and is on its way out now. Windows Vista is at third place with 19.07%, Mac OS X at fourth with 14.87%, Linux is last with 0.70% and Other/miscellaneous operating systems make up 2.09% of the chart. It makes you wonder if there are users still on Windows 3.1 out there. How many of you are still haven’t made the upgrade to Windows 7 from XP or Vista?

SOURCE

I was expecting Vista to be used less by now. Makes you wonder just how much longer Vista is going to hang around.

Do these writer's not have editors? I tend to question the legitimacy of articles with bad grammar.

THANK THE MAKER.

@CC:

Even world-class outfits like the NYT or the WSJ go to press with errors from time to time. We're only human.

Didn't take long, did it?
Every bit of 18 months.

Cat

The art of journalism has suffered a lot these past few decades. What amazes me is how many people with graduate degrees have poor composition and grammar skills.

It is a sign of the times for sure. I just hope we never reach the point where the printed word is similar to what's used in texting... then it will truly be time for me to be "beamed up" or abducted by friendly aliens! LOL!

I'm also surprised at the percentage of Vista users in the US. Most were offered an upgrade to 7 Home Premium for only $49.99, I had the same offer from MS in the summer of '09.

Personally, the only one that I knew of that still ran Vista was my sister, but she no longer does, I bought an OEM version of Win 7 Pro x64 from Newegg last Christmas for her, and installed it. Actually, it was a surprise, she wanted me to install a couple of games for her kids, I found it a convenient time to install 7 for her, while it was here. How she lived with Vista for 4 years, I'll never know, especially with only 2GB RAM. I fixed that too, increasing it to 4GB. It was fast after that, and they all were happy.

Had 7 not arrived on the scene, I'd have became a full time Mint user, as Vista was miserably slow, and XP was becoming a PITA for me, especially the last year that I used it exclusively.

But once 7 was released, and it was popular from it's onset, I knew myself that 7's usage would surpass XP's, it was never a question of if, but when it was going to happen. I projected the end of last year, was just a little over 3 months off.

Cat

Well XP still not a PITA for me. I still use both equally in fact I find 7 can still be annoying. As a for instance ( not looking for a fix here) 7 will sometimes hang on the splash screen, a restart tells me it wants to do a repair, I let it chug along there for ages before it finally comes back and tells me it cant fix anything, I reboot again if I have the time and patience and 7 will load and run fine as if nothing ever happened this just happens randomly from time to time. XP on the other hand is good ole reliable. boots and runs, no dramas.

I think some of my "PITA's" had more to do with my dead notebook, rather than the OS itself. The last month of it's life, nothing would run on it, especially after running TuneUp Utilities that another member here suggested was good.

I still run XP sometimes within Windows Virtual PC, and VirtualBox in Mint, it's OK.

As far as 7 goes, it's been the best OS that MS has ever produced (for me). Everyone's hardware & software combos are different, so it's hard for me to say why 7 is giving you problems. My PC is much weaker than a lot of the ones that members has listed specs of, but 7 has ran good for me on what I have.

I do believe that Win 7 usage will continue to climb, especially since SP1 was released. Also, computers costs less than ever, it's often cheaper to buy a new one over fixing an old one. Especially with notebooks and low end desktops, these aren't worth pouring a lot of money in. This alone is probably boosting sales a lot.

As far as business/corporate usage goes, the US economy is in a serious tailspin, and I honestly don't know if the release of SP1 will be of much help there. Employers are cutting costs, many workers are on reduced time, and credit is tight, so a lot of businesses will just hang on to what they have, as long as possible.

Mike, I hope that you get 7 to working right for you, I remember when you were having issues with it. That's been a while back, or so it seems.

Have you tried a reinstall of 7 just to see if it would help? I know you've done some things, but wonder if you've tried that.

Cat

Hi Cat, no never bothered with a re-install as the first month or so it worked just fine. It's still faster loading and running then XP is, just this occasional boot up issue it now seems to have.
Another annoying habit it has occasionaly is I load a program and after a moment it will crash and tells me Windows will try to fix the problem . It never does but I could load the same program again and it will work fine. Happens with different programs, not the same one. All just random.
I simply lack the time and patience to muck around with it when I know I can just boot into XP and get done what I want to do without problems.
Considering all my hardware is new and my drivers up to date then I reckon if the O/S still wants to play funny buggers then it can sit there and not get used whilst I do my stuff productively on it's predecessor.
I still generally boot into 7 first as it's much faster but if it plays up I put it back in it's box till another day and go back to XP.

That reinstall may be what you need. It looks as though you've done everything else to solve the issue. Your hardware looks plenty good enough to run anything you want.

Around last Christmas, I installed 7 on my sister's 4 year old desktop that had Vista on it, it's running good.

A reinstall may get you going.

Cat