“As we pass the one month anniversary of the general availability of Windows 8, we are pleased to announce that to-date Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses. Tami Reller shared this news with industry and financial analysts, investors and media today at the Credit Suisse 2012 Annual Technology Conference. Windows 8 is outpacing Windows 7 in terms of upgrades.” Not bad, but there are the usual asterisks, as Ars notes.
But how many of those “licenses” were actually bought for upgrading or installing on an previous machine?
Microsoft needs to differentiate “full/upgrade” installs from PCs that come loaded with the latest OEM version of Windows with no other choice. Until then, their numbers are meaningless, as always. Obviously all the OEMs are going to go out and buy millions upon millions of licenses of the latest Windows to stick on their machines and call it a feature and claim that their system is fully up to date, but what about normal Windows users–the end user, not the middleman?
They don’t give the numbers, buy the Ars article says that Windows 8 upgrade license sales are outpacing Windows 7 upgrade license sales, with a pair of caveats:
1. Windows 8 is a bigger upgrade, but the upgrade is significantly cheaper (until January, that is).
2. It isn’t known how many people are just buying the upgrade and keeping it on a shelf, hedging against an increased upgrade cost in the future.
Why? It does not make a difference, a license is a license. The granularity or location of the sale seems irrelevant, as long as desktop and laptop PCs sell microsoft will sell tons of windows licenses since they have a near monopoly in that space.
My assumption is that windows 8 will do great in the consumer space, the touch screen is a great gimmick and gives OEMs a new “differentiation” to help push people upgrade or buy new systems. I assume business will skip this upgrade cycle, since Metro is useless in most of their applications.
I’m more interested in the Windows Phone and Surface sales. Since those are the areas of biggest growth, and microsoft lacks a monopoly to leverage there.
A [most likely] forced license with a new PC sale vs. a license that the user willfully purchased. That’s the difference, and it’s a huge one.
It is not a huge difference, it is an attempt to split hairs in order to build whatever argument based on pure appeal to emotion. I.e. nobody is forcing anyone to buy a PC running windows at gun point.
What’s the alternative? A cheaply-made yet over-priced Mac without even the ability to easily swap parts and an even more locked down OS? Those Windows 7 PCs that OEMs are already trying to send to the sidelines, as they have already made Windows 8 the default in most cases, and will eventually try to ditch completely soon enough?
Edited 2012-11-29 02:02 UTC
What’s the alternative? Well, there are vendors that sell linux machines, at pretty good prices. Or you can assemble your own computer and run whatever OS your heart desires for that configuration.
At the end of the day, 40 million licenses were sold. You may not like that fact, which is why I felt these sort of nitpicking arguments are trying to establish an appeal to emotion (Probably because Windows 8 hasn’t turned out to be the disaster some posters in this forum expected it to be) I see little difference between someone buying a new PC with Windows 8 or upgrading their existing Windows installation, at the end of the day both processes involve someone willingly purchasing a Microsoft product. And yes, I am sure Microsoft is picking whichever statistic that better fits their corporate narrative, e.g. I don’t think they have released the actual numbers of Windows phone/surface devices because those numbers probably don’t look that good. And that was expected, given how Microsoft does not have a monopoly in those markets so they tend to be SOL.
But in this day and age, if someone wants to completely avoid Microsoft products on their desktops, they actually have the choice to do so. I’m typing this message from a microsot-free machine, for what it is worth.
Edited 2012-11-29 20:35 UTC
Isn’t the same thing true with Windows 7 licenses a couple of years ago and XP licenses way back when?
That’s the point, comparing Windows 8 to previous versions. The comparison is no good if different methods are used.
The problem is, Windows sales statistics always were bullshit, and they will always work in Microsoft’s favor as long as things stay the way they have been. No new Windows release is going to stop the sales of PCs, and Microsoft has all the OEMs right in their pockets.
Traditionally all so-called “Windows sales,” for the most part, have really been PC sales and/or mass OEM purchases. Trying to use these supposed Windows sales figures as any kind of real data for comparisons to actual OS sales of Windows 7, Vista or any other version of Windows is just downright stupid. They’re all mangled to the point of complete uselessness.
Chances are, today there are more computer users and more computers in circulation than ever more, and both numbers are continuing to grow. Meanwhile, as they grow, the numbers of people buying new, replacement machines for older and/or broken ones increases. These machines will undoubtedly come with Windows 8. Are you seriously claiming that all of these were deliberate impulse buys just to get Windows 8 as an impulse buy and be an early adopter?
Of course… Drumhellar brought up some very good points, that basically the results are skewed even further from Microsoft’s heavy “upgrade” discounts, so in reality, the Windows 8 “sales” are probably even more corrupt than ever before.
It’s not a “problem” – it makes no difference; either way, Windows is successful (much more than desktop alternatives).
Did you complain similarly about OEM sales when Dell was selling netbooks with Ubuntu? (or generally few other early Linux netbooks)
“Forced”? Keep telling yourself that… People like and want Windows, it’s almost certainly pirated more than the number of desktop Linux users.
Nearby you ask “What’s the alternative?” WRT “nobody is forcing anyone to buy a PC running windows at gun point” – well… get a laptop without OS, or with Linux.
Visiting “laptops” category of ceneo.pl (possibly the most popular and well-known here catalogue of products and online shops; surely you have similar services…) quite often shows a model without Windows at the top of popularity; and generally, “no OS” & “Linux”* filters give http://www.ceneo.pl/Laptopy;017P8-250094-250095.htm few hundred results. But BTW, most of those machines end up with Windows, anyway (oh, and that’s no-crapware-included Windows) – at best a MSDNAA license.
*that’s often just a smokescreen of the reputable big PC maker, who can say ~”we don’t facilitate piracy, all of our machines are sold with an operating system” or such. Devil is often in the details: in one case I’ve seen, it was just a Knoppix live-DVD thrown into the box; in another, some Linux installation which didn’t and couldn’t boot into X, Linux lacked support for the GFX chip in that laptop. Few years ago, one reputable PC maker even sold laptops with “DOS2000″…
“Reller offered some other numbers to suggest that consumers were getting along with Windows 8 better than some expected: 90 percent of users manage to use the charms on their first day, 50 percent visit the Windows Store on the first day, and 85 percent launch the desktop on the first day.”
Where does this information come from? Does microsoft keep tabs on all users through some kind of phone home mechanism? Or is this an estimate based on a study group?
I wonder what other information is being collected?
This is called the Customer Experience Improvement Program or something, and is opt-in, and has been for almost a decade. It’s very well-documented.
Thom_Holwerda,
“This is called the Customer Experience Improvement Program or something, and is opt-in, and has been for almost a decade. It’s very well-documented.”
Wow really?
I’d like to know who’s included in this because I just finished installing two win7 machines and I did not get any opportunity to opt in or opt out of this. As far as I’m aware these machines are not reporting back to MS.
The pages I found explain vaguely what CEIP is, but not what products it’s included for, or when one is prompted to opt in.
http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/en-us/privacypolicy.mspx
What I found for opt out instructions are application specific. Am I right to assume CEIP is only installed with specific applications? Maybe that’s why I hadn’t seen it before. I don’t use outlook, which apparently has CEIP.
http://www.groovypost.com/howto/disable-microsoft-office-customer-e…
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693975.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd297945.aspx
Edit:
There’s a bit more information here, it looks it’s a part of window 7 too, but I haven’t seen the screen that’s pictured there. On my copy it’s disabled. I’m curious when users are supposed to be asked to opt in, is it possible OEMs just shipped it that way?
http://www.verboon.info/index.php/2011/04/the-microsoft-customer-ex…
Edited 2012-11-28 17:24 UTC
It asks on the installation if you want to participate. Most Microsoft programs ask you whether you are willing (including Visual Studio and SQL Server Manager) to send usage data back to them.
I tend to say no, but they do actually say that they send the data anonymously … it is stated quite clearly.
Considering how cheap Windows 8 costs as an upgrade, I would say 40 million is an unimpressive number. And I think it is pretty safe to say that it will be harder to convince the next 40 million to buy Windows 8 than it was for the early adopters.
I don’t plan on ever using Windows 8. Windows 7 is my last Windows.
exactly. I don’t think most people or even finantial analysts realized that Microsoft has just halved or more, their Windows revenues just to slightly keep up adoption rhythm.
Windows8 is being sold in a larger market than 2009 Windows7 launch, and at less than half of its price and at best it gets the same number of sales of Windows 7 in the first months. I don’t think this is particularly brilliant or a good omen.
(wrote the same thing yesterday: http://www.maccouch.com/2012/11/microsoft-weve-sold-40-million-wind… )
TBH I suspect this might be because they are the victim of their own success.
Windows 7 as a Desktop operating system is pretty damn solid and I am pretty sure it is going to be the next Windows XP. TBH, while I am using 8 at home, apart from the Metro UI … it is very similar on the desktop.
Edited 2012-11-28 19:35 UTC
Only in OSNews bizarro land is 40 million licenses sold a commercial failure.
Microsoft has said both that Windows 8 has sold 40 million licenses and that Windows 8 is outpacing Windows 7 in upgrades.
People undoubtedly will try to pick the numbers apart and twist them to suit their needs (Something or another about forced pre-installations, OEM sales, yada yada) but what they fail to realize is that the way that sales are counted between Windows 7 and Windows 8 has not changed.
That means that using the SAME metrics that Microsoft used for Windows 7, Windows 8 is doing well.
The Windows Store has exploded in growth in the past month doubling from 10,000 to over 20,000 apps.
I know developer friends of mine that get 12,000 downloads a day and make 300 dollars a day in ad revenue. This is the most vibrant ecosystem, and probably the modern day gold rush.
Sorry, our Metro overlords are here to stay.
Though, for how long? Apple store also had its gold rush.
And you know, the thing with gold rushes – those selling shovels and such were the only group making real money…
And I know people who have already gone with Apple instead of Windows.
Personally I’ve been a Linux users for a long time.
How many of those were “downgraded” to Win7?
How many of those were Win8->Win8 upgrades? (e.g. User didn’t like the edition that came and tried upgrading to a higher level).
In the end, how much is real sales vs. double counting?
The issue with quoting numbers from WinVista and Win7 is that there was double and triple counting of sales in there. The question is, how much of that is going on with Win8?
All-in-all, not impressed.
And, BTW, I’ll only use Win8 in a proper environment – in a virtual machine where Windows belongs.
Any proof of any of this? Probably not.
Oh good for you. Can you open source Linux guys just leave the snide remarks for once. Every thread that even mentions Microsoft you gotta mention how crap it is.
Windows 7 and 8 are perfectly good Operating systems. XP and Vista were a bit flakey until a couple of service packs, but have been pretty solid.
WinXP was hardly flaky at any point in its life. Just like Win2k, and Win7 they were all pretty solid releases. The issue with XP is the interface – its very eX-Professional – very childish.
WinVista’s biggest issue was driver support and that was primarily due to MS changing driver interfaces at the last moment – between RC2 and RTM. The other big issue was UAC – something MS had been warning developers about for a long time.
Win8’s biggest issue is the UI. I’m sure its just as stable as and better performing than Win7 – namely due to the Windws Dev process put in place since the start of Vista.
However, Windows still remains a major security whole, and one that can only be plugged properly in a virtual environment. it’s just the design of the system and its APIs. It’s yet to be seen whether the WinRT API will help resolve the security issues of Win32 – I haven’t looked at it very closely yet.
Doesn’t really matter, Gym memberships work on this very principle. Also even if you half the numbers it is still pretty impressive the number of sales.
Again it is still a purchase, it is still money going into the kitty.
Also interestingly, nobody criticises Adobe for this pricing model … Would it be soo hard to consider that they are rewarding existing customers by lowering the price for the update?
At worst count we are still talking millions of licenses sold.
Actually Windows XP was very flakey. There was piss poor support from programs at the time (most used hacks from the Windows 9x line). Some drivers just didn’t exist (OpenGL on S3 cards was just a no-no and S3 cards were fairly common or SIS cards in Laptops).
Most of the time you could use a Windows 2000 driver, but I have run into cases when you couldn’t.
Let not forget about the MS blaster worm.
Also the default display driver in Windows XP RTM does not support anything past 1024×768 … thankfully I found nlite.
I fail to see how UAC is any different to OSX and Ubuntus “sudoing” to admin.
UAC was a good thing IMHO. I know it isn’t perfect, but at least made people pay attention to the installer.
Modern problems with XP were that it was painful to install updates, Windows Vista, 7 and 8 they just happen in the background and I can still use my PC.
The Metro/Modern UI is a matter of debate, but it doesn’t mean that Windows 8 is insecure OS or that it isn’t functional in Desktop mode (tbh I really haven’t missed the start menu).
Actually Windows has been pretty damn secure since VISTA, most of the exploits require a user actually running code as Admin … no system not even OpenBSD/Linux etc can protect against that.
There aren’t many holes when it comes to the actual OS itself. It is rely on the user being dumb. The only virus that has been successful was Stuxnet, which took security experts years to decipher its inner workings.
Unlike MacOSX which still ships on Mac with the firewall turned off.
I really wish these myths from the past (which was true until Windows XP SP2) that you keep clinging onto are laid to rest.
And if you even quote the number of malware for Windows, it is because it is the most popular desktop OS, not because it is insecure … Android has had similar problems (and Nokia smart phones early 2000s … bluetooth viruses).
The same security precautions on Windows can be said about any OS.
This isn’t 2001 anymore.
Edited 2012-11-28 21:20 UTC
Especially before the first service packs, what with no firewall and plenty of completely open services that had no security whatsoever. Even after service packs XP was and still is full of holes.
Indeed, there isn’t much of a difference between UAC and how e.g. Ubuntu does things, the problem instead lies mostly with applications insisting on needing admin rights; the constant demand for admin rights just trains people to ignore UAC prompts and just click on the “yes” – thingy, something that even I do these days before I’ve even noticed it. Applications and games should really, really drop that behaviour, and even installers should only request for admin rights if the user wishes to install the app/game system-wise; the sane, more secure default would be to install these per user, thereby also not showing up the UAC prompt.
On my laptop I installed Start8, disabled Metro, disabled hot corners, and set the system to boot straight to desktop; there isn’t really any difference between that and Windows 7 except the theme, and therefore it is indeed just as functional. It may not be worth the upgrade from Windows 7, but it is plenty worth it if one is using WinXP or Vista.
1. Doesn’t it also train users who are Ubuntu users to prefix everything with Sudo in the command terminal, without actually checking the script out?
There was a blog called “ubuntard” (doesn’t exist anymore) that actually highlighting (with a lot of profanity) some commands that people were putting on ubuntu forums and saying they should run as a sudoer or root and some of them could easily destroy the OS or the entire MBR. NOT GOOD!.
2. On your second point. One thing I don’t like about unix style security is that it saves the system, but the users home directory can still be destroyed.
On a home system, what is stored in the /home or the equivalent IMO is more important than the system which can be just replaced.
I agree that the start menu is a topic of contention, but I most agree with your assessment.
I don’t particularly have a lot of love for the start menu or start screen, applications I used regularly are pinned anyway … no big deal for me.
Well, the difference is in that that actually writing something down yourself is a much more conscious effort than clicking twice. Also, a not-so-geek user wouldn’t be typing scripts down anyways.
That is something I’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, but alas, you may not have read my comments; I’ve expressed the wish that someone would come up with a new OS where all applications by default are sandboxed and only given access to their own files, and that users could grant or deny permissions to any extraneous files and/or services. By default NO APPLICATION OR GAME should have access to all of the users’ files.
Not so, a lot of users copy and paste unfortunately. In fact a lot of developers do as well.
I hear you. I probably haven’t seen it otherwise I would agree, not sure about about the sand-boxing would work via application that read the same file type, but nonetheless I agree with the principle.
On Linux forums confused newbies are routinely told to open a terminal and copy/paste strings of commands, often when the task could have been accomplished entirely from the GUI. Of course it’s usually quicker for an experienced Linux user to write the commands rather than explaining how to find and use a graphical tool.
In my experience most of those users simply copy and paste and hope for the best, without any knowledge of what they’re actually doing. I’ve seen that cause serious problems on more than one occasion.
Some are downright dangerous.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1901656
That is what backup is for, at least now you don’t need to rebuild the whole system and other home directories are still safe.
But we’re not talking about Gym memberships.
We’re talking about Microsoft boasting about its sales and its misleading practice in how those numbers are determined. Two very different things.
Yes, it is money in the kitty.
Questions is: How many would have only purchased one license for what gave them what they wanted first if they were able to? Or if they were informed properly? Or if the product level did what they wanted?
The point is that the change in how Windows licenses were structured from XP to Vista and how those licenses were counted and compared was entirely misleading.
Adobe doesn’t do the same thing, and hasn’t changed the pricing model and compared apples-to-oranges boasting about its sales.
I agree, UAC is very much like the sudo functionalities in other OS’s. The problem was not the introduction of it, but rather the lack of software being ready for it.
For MacOSX, there was a very clear line – the OS8/9 to OSX transition. Pre-OSX applications didn’t have to concern themselves with a UAC feature, and OSX applications by had to by the very nature of the underlying OS that Apple adopted.
However, historically MS has been sloppy in APIs which require Admin/root privileges, and those which they’ve encouraged developers to use. As a result, many applications and APIs used functionality that was only suppose to be used by an administrator. When UAC was introduced, applications simply were not ready.
Now, it’s not entirely MS’s fault – MS had been telling application developers that the change was coming for several years.
So the issue with Vista was not so UAC itself, but how often the UAC interface came up due. Most of this was fixed by Win7, but it was considered a black mark for Vista – rightly or wrongly.
SELinux has the ability to. While it is not used much by normal desktop users, Linux has security capabilities that go far beyond what Windows has.
There are still many holes; many bugs that were reported back in Win3/95/4/XP/Vista/7 that are still there in Win8. Microsoft’s policy is that they don’t fix it unless it’s being actively taken advantage of.
Now the changes in development method introduced during the development of Vista will certainly help. For example, Microsoft has had a very poor history of keeping fixes in places – it was a common occurrence that one patch would fix a bug and another would re-introduce it; and not uncommon for that to happen multiple times. With the refactoring that has been going on since the start of development for Vista that should be more under control – at least one would hope.
Most OS’s are secure by default. Thus a firewall is not necessary. On Unix systems (of which OS X is part of) what you can do is limited – you can only open a port below 1024 if you are root; and if you are not root, any damage is limited to the user the software is running as. It is the same on Linux.
The malware for Windows is only in part due to its popularity. It is also (and more importantly) due to the design of the OS and the security issues that are prevalent within it. It is furthered by OEMs taking money to pre-install software that users may not otherwise want or buy.
And, Android does not really have an issue with Malware or Viruses. Yes, there are people that write some malicious stuff for Android; however, just like any other non-Windows OS the user has to specifically install it and grant it permission to do what it wants to do. Android itself has a far better security model than Windows ever had.
[p]The same security precautions on Windows can be said about any OS. [/q]
Windows – even Windows 8 – does not have the security precautions of the other OS’s out there.
Windows was designed for a single user that, just like DOS, had full access and control of all the hardware. Security was an after thought for Windows.
Comparatively, all others OS’s on the market – Linux, Mac OSX, VXworks, etc – were designed for multiple users from the start and as such security was designed in – even if only in basic form – from the start.
Before you start spouting off on how security is not an issue for any other OS because of MS’s market size, learn a bit about the design differences between Windows and everyone else – they’re very important when it comes to security.
Well that was a lot of rubbish.
Pretty much everything you said may have been true until about 2003, which is almost 10 years ago now.
Also Windows has their equivalents to pretty much every security feature you could list of Linux.
Sorry … keeping the firewall off is still dumb.
Also NT has always been designed as a multi-user OS, it just the desktop versions of Windows only allow one person logged it at a time (well that isn’t really true anymore either).
Edited 2012-11-30 02:18 UTC
If that were true, then Windows would have an equivalent security level for government use. It does not.
Windows cannot receive the same security rating as Linux, which is in a category shared by only one other system – Trusted Solaris – and reached by the Red Hat RHEL distribution, if not SuSe as well.
Government moves much more slowly than the tech world.
That may be, but Windows still does not have the equivalent of SELinux or AppArmor; and Windows has had a lot longer time in the Security Environments used by gov’t than Linux has – yet Linux has the highest possible security of any COTS products along with only one other COTs product – Trusted Solaris.
Which means Linux can do things Windows can’t, and it can go places in gov’t that Windows can’t as well.
Actually there are direct equivalents … just browsing wikipedia listed those for Windows.
In your Government maybe .. not mine.
Anyway it is all academic, because this is not the subject of the article or anything to do with the original point. You are being a blowhard for your OS of choice, it is tiring and adds nothing to the conversation.
There are no major security problems with Windows (especially server that has a better security record than most major linux distros since it was released) … this isn’t the days of the Ms blaster worm.
Making snide comments about how you think Windows is “inherently insecure”, when it simply isn’t just shows your ignorance.
Believe it or not a lot of the time I don’t want to argue on here, but some of the stuff said is either:
* Just wrong.
* Biased.
* “I made funny one liner gag at M$ lol”.
* I hate MicroSoft, whatever they do!
* Guys that use Microsoft technologies aren’t as l33t as us!!!!
It gets real old.
Wall of text doesn’t make you right…
As it is on Windows.
Just brush aside how Android also has quite a bit of malware…
Generally, you also have to install malware yourself on Windows. You also seem to be mixing win9x with NT …one would think you’d have a clue after two decades. And VxWorks is used mostly in limited embedded stuff.
BTW, judging from the initial announcements Linus Torvalds made, Linux was meant as a toy project for him – so, one could say, not strictly “designed for multi-user from the start”.
You do know that a virtual environment does not give any security garantees ?
It is just an other layer of extra code and (security) bugs.
Not being able to use proper encryption because of bad random seeding also is a big issue in virtual environments.
If you want some security and virtualization, then I suggest QEMU/KVM but with SELinux to contain it.
Yes, virtual environments have their own issues.
However, they also mitigate many – not only do you need to penetrate the OS you’re running in, you also have to penetrate the virtual environment and its hosts – which is made a lot more difficult when the host and guest OS’s are not the same (as is my case).
So for me – you would have to penetrate Windows, VMware On Linux, and then the Linux OS; and if you wanted to do anything beyond what my Linux user could do, you’d have to do a root penetration as well – this all assuming I don’t suspend/shutdown the guest OS while you’re trying to do it.
There is also much less software installed in that environment that could lead to a penetration to start with.
Now you’re assuming I need encryption within the virtual environment. While some may, I don’t.
Even so, you can install hardware encryption technology into the VM if you needed it. So that is not really an issue. VMware, VirtualBox, QEMU, KVM, and others are also smart enough to use the underlying OS for things that require such functionality as well.
Agreed.
My primary purpose is software development and testing, not every day use. The most those systems use the Internet is for updating the tools using Windows Update.
Owning one of the OS within a VM setup can still give a lot of leeway…
But this is the best part – you said it yourself, you hardly use Windows in the first place.
Edited 2012-12-04 13:42 UTC
XP was a massive pain pre-SP2. Win2k was from the blissful days of pre-internet security mindset.
Security-wise, there’s nothing wrong with Windows itself since Vista; it’s just unsafe practices of devs and users, to which any OS would be susceptible.
According to tech research firm StatCounter, about 1 percent of the world’s 1.5 billion or so personal computers – making a total of around 15 million – are actually running Windows 8.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-microsoft-windows-idUS…
The number given by Microsoft does include OEM-sales and the likes, and since those computers aren’t actually in use yet they obviously do not show on StatCounter.
That’s my whole point.
Edited 2012-11-28 18:35 UTC
Also Stats counter is hardly reliable anyway.
I hate to be “that guy”, but what is your basis for this? I’m not being snarky, I really don’t know anything about StatCounter so I don’t know how reliable they are (your opinion aside). I did a little research and have so far only found neutral to positive articles about them.
Just curious if you can give some off hand examples of unreliability.
It is unreliable by the very way they are gathering the data. For example typically Internet Explorer usage peeks at weekends.
Well that was a non-answer. Never mind, dude.
How?
It is counting user agent string on a number of sites … nothing more it is hardly reliable.
Oh well.
Well I was hoping for a cited article or some actual stats. Then again, you’re not obligated to even acknowledge me, so…
Well, I would point out that Statcounter likely focuses on & reflects more the EN/international sites. You can certainly see some differences with ranking.pl, my local stats:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-PL-monthly-200807-201212
http://ranking.pl/en/rankings/operating-systems.html
The direction of the differences even kinda makes sense, WRT Statcounter & EN/international sites hypothesis – people from PL who visit them are expected to be somewhat more EN-capable, tech-savvy, or wealthy; hence more likely to use Win7 or OSX.
Much clearer differences for browsers in Belarus:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-200807-201212
http://www.ranking.by/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html
or Ukraine:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-200807-201212
http://www.ranking.com.ua/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html
Of course, that doesn’t really say which of those two are more reliable – but does point to some inherent overall unreliability in both of them.
Waiting for Netstat or any other internet statistics site to report their real Windows 8 market share. Also looking forward lets say 6-12 month on the market numbers to see how well W8 really does.
In my personal experience, which may or may not differ from yours, rarely anyone ever buys Windows. Most people buy a PC with Windows pre-installed.
A lot of people don’t even know what version of Windows they are using even if it has been Windows XP for the last decade. I doubt these users will suddenly feel an urge to buy a new version of it.
It is interesting to me is the marketshare of XP, Vista and 7. Vista has the smallest, probably because it wasn’t very good at the start (it did improve). If Windows 8 also turns out to be not very popular it may also end up with a small share as customers and companies will stick with Windows 7.
Vista is unfairly picked on. There were only 1 major bug (the file copying), the rest was unpowered machines being sold with it and bad drivers.
Also Windows 2000 and XP were bloody awful at release.
Windows Vista 64bit, used the same kernel as Windows Server 2008 R1 and was damn solid.
Yes, but given a choice between XP, Vista and 7, would there by any reason to pick Vista? If the hardware can handle Vista then it should also run 7. XP will run fine on hardware where Vista and 7 don’t run well on.
If 8 is added to the list, does it really improve on 7? I don’t like the split between Metro and classic. It should be either, not both.
Even if 8 is fine, I’m not sure it currently is a must-have upgrade to 7.
Windows 7 is great and I would have liked Microsoft to have improved upon it and not started the Metro experiment.
It depends, Windows XP runs like a dog on Dual Core machines. Vista, 7 and 8 run much better. 8 is miles faster than 7.
Speed wise Windows 8 > 7 > Vista.
The main problem is RAM, because of the aggressive pre-fetching, however it does scale itself back properly.
I personally don’t find it a problem.
I agree. I am using 8 and I just use the classic part for most things. I like the Metro Apps but I just don’t really use them except for mail and skype.
I would have liked an Arm powered laptop with 8 that was running VS … could have been an awesome machine.
Edited 2012-11-28 20:36 UTC
Why doesn’t XP run well on multi core PCs and isn’t there a fix?
We recently bought new PCs at work, Windows 7. Our old PCs, duo cores, ran XP and they were pretty awfull. But Linux flies on them and Windows 7 is also very decent.
I think the kernel isn’t designed for it. Vista’s is slightly better, but isn’t brilliant.
There is an actual blog post on how they designed the Windows 7 kernel to work well with Multi-core processor … but I can’t find it now.
Vista also used 300 MBs just for the Window Manager … which IMHO was a bit shitty.
EDIT: I believe it was the idle time being adjusted that made the difference.
Edited 2012-11-28 20:47 UTC
Meanwhile I found this:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/545980-optimize-xp-for-dual-core/
Interesting, however I think there is still a fundamental problem with the fact that the kernel just doesn’t know how to use it properly.
Yes, very probable.
Can’t wait to try this and see if it makes a noticable difference. We have 3 lucky users we didn’t give a new PC and are still working with XP. I won’t be in the office until Monday though.
Must try it on my dual Pentium II machine (should be similar with win2k). Or I’ll just finally slap BeOS on it :p
I couldn’t wait and remote booted a XP PC at work. When I tried to install the patch it refused saying something new already had been installed.
The registry and boot things I could do. But it’s hard to tell any change in performance when using some remote login tool. So I guess I still have to go there in person.
Removing McAfee would probably be a more noticeable performance boost!
Hm, your Avatar avatar is still blurry… ;p
It’s the Avatar Aura.
Does that suggest the aura is stronger on old (blurry…) CRT screens? (I suppose your collection includes those) Making the game… different, depending even on display setting? ;p
I guess blurriness does help fight blockiness due to low resolution pixel graphics.
Isn’t blockiness part of the charm?
Though seriously, sure, it can be seen as a sort of hardware anti-aliasing… PS1 games definitely looked better “live” than on magazine screenshots (kinda opposite to 3D PC games of the era; the era of first 3D accelerators, and of low-res textures turned into soap)
Screenshots of ACE (Commodore 64) looked very nice, but when playing the game it was a different story.
The graphics were still the same, but enemy planes ignored the rules of well, reality. Their animations were bad, but what made it worse is that they could fly in squares in a very restricted area. It was more like they were jumping all over the place, the computer picking an almost random picture of them and displaying that.
So the movement of ACE planes was kinda as if it was not a C64 game, but… Game & Watch? (or for me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_%26_Watch#Clones_and_unoffici… & http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elektronika_IM & http://digigames.7u.cz/ – I’ve never even seen a Nintendo unit)
PS. A bit creepy, you mentioning ACE withing a minute of me mentioning Jupiter Ace in http://www.osnews.com/thread?543969 ;P
Edited 2012-12-04 11:19 UTC
The kernel simply wasn’t designed for multi-core systems as at the time such systems were first and foremost high-end devices and the situation was not anticipated to change. If you think back to those times people and companies were entirely focused on megahertz – race — including Intel and AMD — and people just assumed we’d be running into hundreds of gigahertz on a single core.
There are various kinds of fixes to make XP run slightly better on dual-core systems, but even these do not really fully fix the situation and XP’s kernel still suffers a serious penalty on three cores or more.
XP was definitively designed with multiprocessing in mind. The NT kernel already supported natively SMP, MMP, and (cc)NUMA years before XP for that matter.
The scheduler and some subsystems have been tweaked through the years, so the newer kernels do appear to behave “faster” for most interactive tasks. Computers keep also getting faster as well.
There were some artificial limitations in the number of cores supported between the “home” (only 1 socket supported) and “pro” versions of XP. But I have used a 16 core workstation using XP, and it ran SMP workloads like a champ.
Edited 2012-11-28 23:50 UTC
Edit: those were threads not cores, d’oh.
There were several “fixes”. For example, there’s a dual-core optimizer program that AMD wrote and gave to gaming companies to fix XP for their Athlon64 X2 CPUs.
I’m not quite sure what it does, actually, but it seems to help.
There were quite a lot of video drivers that updated to optimize dual-core and hyperthread support for XP. I believe they forced various driver threads onto specific cores so the XP thread scheduler wouldn’t get involved.
Some of those tweaks are less optimal now that CPUs have four/eight cores/threads and the Windows 7 and 8 thread schedulers.
People keep claiming this, but I just am not seeing such. I have Windows 8 on my laptop and while it is faster to boot the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 boot times is about 2 seconds, and while running there is absolutely no difference in speeds whatsoever.
I believe that there were some latency improvements in Win8. Things seem to happen more quickly after you click.
Some of that is related to the removal of the Aero effects.
All in all it gives an impression of more speed. I don’t think things are actually faster. But making them seem faster is a worthy thing in its own right.
Believe it or not, this is a lot of being a Front End Web developer.
I made out website load twice as quick … do you know how I did that? I moved the JavaScript from the <head> to the just before the closing <body> tag. That isn’t as easy as you think when you have many inline scripts that expect certain script … cough cough jquery .. to exist in the <head>.
Everything took exactly the same amount of time to load as before for the most part (I did compress, combine and minify scripts, I got from 33 JS files to 13 … still more optimisation to come … but I didn’t think it made a huge difference overall).
But it seemed faster because the page was displayed almost instantly. Next is ajax loading large images, and spriting the website CSS background images.
Perceived performance is almost as good as real performance in a lot of cases.
However I don’t agree it is just the Aero effects, I am seeing less memory being used in Task manager generally … but my finding are obviously anecdotal.
Edited 2012-11-28 21:42 UTC
Same here, although it’s definitely not any slower
Perhaps in your experience, but in mine and thousands more across support forums over the first three years of its release, it had serious issues with WiFi connectivity. Regardless of the chipset, driver, manufacturer or interface, wireless connections with Vista were notoriously unreliable and difficult to diagnose.
It wasn’t until the second service pack that these issues were cleared up; apparently there was a nasty bug in the networking stack (I’ve heard more than one network expert refer to it as “a broken mess”). I ran into this bug again just yesterday, reinstalling Vista Business on a client’s laptop. It simply refused to connect via wireless to three different networks, until I connected a hard line and finished all of the Windows updates. Two reboots later, it finally connected successfully to my router and my phone’s WiFi tethering.
Vista can be a decent OS once it’s set up properly, but with support dropping soon after XP goes to the pasture, it makes no sense to continue using it today. I’d rather someone use Windows 8 than Vista at this point.
I’ll add another one, CPU scalability:
http://betanews.com/2009/11/17/pdc-2009-scuttling-huge-chunks-of-vi…
I often wondered why MS didn’t bundle their non-performing Phones with Windows.
Sure, it will be an inevitable lawsuit, but they always resolve way too late anyway.
They should bundle the phone as a loss-leader, at a drastically reduced price. Like $50 or something.
This would give them massive market share in the phone space, and would provide them with potential repeat buyers.
Windows Phone sales have quadrupled Year over Year. Nokia has taken something like almost 3 million pre orders for the Lumia 920. They’ve come a long way.
Windows 8 is having a definite halo effect. In fact, since Windows 8 launched my Windows Phone app has exploded in downloads, there is definitely some real movement happening there.
I don’t know if it’s pure coincidence, but some of your posts include talking points straight from Microsoft’s own PR releases.
What press releases? Arstechnica reported on Windows Phone sales quadrupling Year over Year, my app download counts is a statistic of my own, and the Windows 8 halo effect comes from the fact that the timing is coincidentally following the launch of Windows 8.
It therefore isn’t a stretch to conclude that Windows 8 produced a lift in uptake for Windows Phone.
I’m not sure I understand the point of your comment.
Well, you picked the part of the article where Ars technica was simply relaying a PR release by Microsoft. But there was more to that piece; the author commented how Microsoft didn’t release actual numbers, making the “quadrupling” claim kind of useless/misleading since we lack the actual number that it’s being quadrupled according to Redmond.
Furthermore, since we have no idea what your app is, or how many downloads it generated. I can’t take that “halo” claim at face value. E.g. Why would a desktop operating system lead to an increase of sales of a random mobile app?
I assume you’re either employed by Microsoft or Nokia, or you have a vested interest in the windows phone platform doing well if your app depends on its adoption rates. So I’ll have to take what you say with a grain of salt, which I guess that was my point.
Anyhow. The new lumias seem to have had a relatively strong initial sales launch according to some analysts. Hopefully that brings some good news for Nokia, that stock needs all the help it can get after a 4 year nose dive.
Edited 2012-12-01 03:31 UTC
Of course MS sold millions of licenses of Windows 8, due to the unjust copyright laws in software. If anyone thinks copyright is necessary they really need to read a history book and see how copyright (and patents) slows down technological growth. Nothing can be more evident in the PC desktop.
Microsoft is a monopoly because of copyright law.
Copyright is bloody important … stop talking rubbish.
Software Patents which are bullshit are the problem.
Hmm. Personally, I believe copyrights are also a problem. You know how nowadays things can have copyright on them for hundreds of years, long after the original creator has deceased, and how fair use – rights are being stomped on ever harder and so on? Copyright should really be reworked to much, much shorter copyright terms and to distinguish between completed works and ongoing works like e.g. Linux is an ongoing work, whereas Elvis Presley’s albums are completed works.
That said, copyright is not the issue on this particular topic and on that I agree with you.
While there are some shitty things about Copyright, it is pretty important to protect the author of the work from being ripped off.
Idiotic responses like the OP saying it needs to be abolished is just nonsense.
Perhaps giving copyright protection should also require placing the source code to works in some kind of escrow.
We have the “source code” to books – because, luckily, the “source code” to a book is the text, the consumed work itself.
Not so with films, music, or closed-source software – even when it’s out of copyright, they can’t be mashed up as easily as a book. But if, after copyright lapses, we’d get pre-mixed tracks of audiovisual media, or the code to formerly closed source software…
For a completely different view on copyright, you should also have a look at other industries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0
Anyway it depends on how copyrights are used.
How copyright is used for the Linux kernel or for books is usually fine.
How proprietary software vendors only sell you a license to use their software with lots and lots of exception and a right to retract that permission, I don’t like so much.
Lennie,
“How proprietary software vendors only sell you a license to use their software with lots and lots of exception and a right to retract that permission, I don’t like so much.”
Actually that’s an excellent point. My knee jerk reaction was that the OP was ignorant of how copyright laws are important for the software industry. However in a very real sense corporations including microsoft have overstepped the boundaries of what copyrights are for. A prime example is not being able to take a windows license from one computer and install it on a new computer when the first is damaged or decommissioned. Copyright law is not supposed to enable Microsoft to force customers to buy the same thing over and over again, but that’s essentially microsoft’s core windows business model. A significant number of windows copies are being “oversold” this way: a new computer has the same OS as the old computer which is broken down, and yet the owner is required to buy windows again. Other commercial software vendors don’t get that benefit. Take, for example halflife 3, photoshop, winzip, etc, your expectation is that you can continue to use them on brand new hardware when the old hardware dies. The software only needs to be replaced if you want to upgrade it. It’s very reasonable for consumers to reuse the software license for an OS as well. Bundled software should not be an exceptional case for copy rights.
I would support an amendment to copyright law to explicitly give consumers the right to continue using old software licenses on new machines.
Also I’d like to see copyright law be reduced again, instead of extended.
We are now at 75-years after the dead of the author, instead of the original plan, which was: 8 years.
Copyright, like patents, is meant to improve the rate of innovation.
Instead of we have Disney lobbying* the US government to keep extending the copyright laws so they can keep the copyright on Mickey Mouse.
* I wouldn’t be surprised if they also “fund things”
Her argument is flawed.
She even alludes to it, there is a shoe that has a patented heel technology or making things too complicated to copy.
Edited 2012-11-30 02:46 UTC
I don’t agree on that, I think her point is:
copyright can stall innovation.
copyright was meant to give a someone for a limited time (8 years originally) the right to copy. Not the current 75-years after the death (!) of the author.
This gives no incentice for innovation.
Actually patents also are meant to improve the rate of innovation, but we know many, many examples especially in IT where this is not working and has the opposite affect.
So in that sense copyright and patents really are kind of in the same boot.
I disagree.
I believe software patents can stifle innovation.
Copyright cannot, not in the Software Engineering industry anyway.
Also if it wasn’t for Copyright many open source projects would be swallowed by large software companies and you would never see it again.
I’m just saying 75 years after the death of the author is to much, even ridiculous 🙂
That is no incentive for Disney to come up with a new Mickey Mouse. Thus no innovation.
Edited 2012-11-30 17:50 UTC
I think 75 years is silly for copyright yes.
However I don’t know what Mickey Mouse has got to do with the law protecting my hard-work when creating a software program.
Creating Software is non-trivial, while I work for a gambling company … if I worked for myself, I would like to think there are protections in my own country that stop a rival just de-compiling/stealing and redistributing something if I am selling licenses.
If you think Mickey Mouse has nothing to do with software programs than I suggest you lobby for seperate laws around copyright of software.
I do think they are different. But copyright being around for 75 years doesn’t really affect innovation in the software industry.
Software patents do.
Copyright protects the code. Patents protect the idea.
There is nothing stopping me creating a Google Maps clone tomorrow (in fact there are many), or an iTunes clone or a Internet Explorer clone if the code is my own or I have modified code with a permissive license.
What might stop me from creating something new is a patent on “one click” payment system (amazon) or the arrangement of particular elements in a user interface.
While I think that Software Patents should be allowed for software algorithms that are significantly complex or ingenious.
I think the “user zooms in using two fingers while thinking about Beyonce” patents are bad.
What is even worse is that there are a lot of people that have very polarised views on each subject.
I have no answers that would solve it this, but there has to be a balance between pragmatism and idealogy at some point.
Edited 2012-11-30 18:33 UTC
Actually, Google Maps is a clone from a project in Switserland 🙂
lucas_maximus,
Not for nothing, but that argument only speaks to one angle of our reality and overlooks the recent uses of copyright. Unfortunately today’s copyright laws have a much broader scope due to DMCA laws, which obviously do affect innovation in the software industry. Extending the copyright of DRMed works to 75 years has a chilling effect on competing platforms who want to play DRMed media but cannot do so in a legal way until the copyrights expire.
The broadcast flag is an example of a legally mandated hardware standard used to protect copyrights, but it actively interferes with independent developers from producing innovative software products and consumers from using them. Even products from big brand names like Tivo have been forced to implement flags like automatic timed program deletion. ReplayTV went bankrupt for defending it’s own DVR innovations in court.
Although it’s not what you were thinking, DMCA style copyrights do strangle many software innovations.
NOT EVERYONE LIVES IN AMERICA.
And GPL is a copyright license…
MS largely brought us inexpensive & powerful machines (suitable for nice *nix workstation), thankfully killed the mess with 80s micros. If anything, the scales of Wintel PCs brought tremendous rates of technological growth.
Microsoft is a monopoly because the market naturally gravitated to such state via economies of scale, and because other options were worse ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?522221 ).
Oh, and also because people like and pirate Windows on a big scale ( http://www.osnews.com/permalink?543832 )
It’s kinda pathetic if you see 300+ Million in US alone, 7+ Billion in the world. They sold what? 40 Mil…lol.
Now think of it this way: Most of what those 7 Billion do have is either a home phone, cell phone or a combo. So it’s not like people don’t need things, they do. Just not Windows, if given the choice.
Also, even at just $40 it’s struggling. A lot of people have said they wouldn’t accept it if it was free!. And also there is the case of people who really know nothing about computers, and Intel and Microsoft is all they believe exist, that’s sad.
When has 40 million sales in the first month been considered “struggling”?
I wish I could sell 40 million of something just for £25 each.
Edited 2012-11-29 12:26 UTC
You win the bobby price for the post with the largest lack of self awareness of the day:
Basically, you need to get out more. Over half of earth’s 7 billion human population lives in abject poverty (making less than $2 a day), with over 2 billion people not having access to proper clean water or food supplies, and 1 billion suffering from hunger (which is one of the worst forms of violence). So for over 3 billion people a cell phone (smart of dumb) is not only an unreachable luxury, but the least of their worries.
Of the 3 billion people who do not live in abject poverty, a significant fraction live in developing countries, where only a relatively small percentage make enough money to be able to afford a non-vital commodity like a really fancy smart phone.
Your life as a middle class Western kid is far from being a representative of the human experience on this planet. You know what the average human is? A 29 yr old right handed Chinese male, whose life experience, interests, and concerns are likely to be completely foreign to you.
As per the 40 million Windows licenses, that number is larger than the population of many industrialized nations of earth (E.g. Canada, Poland, Australia, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark…). So it is a rather significant volume.
Edited 2012-11-29 22:03 UTC
Though there is something like 6 billion mobile subscribers by now; evidently the impoverished also see value in having a mobile phone (of course, most likely one which can be had for 15€ or so)
Yes, quite a few of those 6 billion subscribers is because of people having more than one mobile. But apparently there’s also an opposite dynamic at work: in some places, it is customary for a family or even village to share one mobile phone.
Those two possibly largely balance each other out…
Edited 2012-12-01 09:47 UTC
That’s already more than desktop Linux… and will likely quickly surpass all versions of OSX combined (just like the “failure” Vista did)
Windows is on most of the ~1.3 billion PCs out there, utilised by most of the ~2 billion PC users; also pirated ( http://www.osnews.com/permalink?543832 ), people want it. BTW, “home phones” are available to minority of human population; PCs (whatever the OS) similarly available only to a minority.
Edited 2012-12-04 13:06 UTC