Atlas Forum Operating System Market Share

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I was on one of those web safaris and wound up on a page about Operating System Market Share and found out something hilarious.

Windows XP actually rebounded after crashing in October and November and almost reached 20% in January. It has eased back off again but remains in second place. At this point an XP holdout is probably in Asia, an ATM, a Nostalgia Nut, someone who wants to stick it to Micro$..T or some combination of the four. But aside from reveling in the fact that the XPerience continues to ousthine three of its four successors, more then a year after being sent adrift by its creators, I got curious as to how the forum looks on this question.

Naturally I expect the numbers to be much different. Far less Windows overall and more Mac for one.
 

[Spamage]

Clicked 8, meant to click 8.1

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The four horsemen have not yet become visible on the horizon of my beautiful grassy hill desktop background. And even if they were, they would be stymied by my impenetrable wall of icons and files.

And I also have three saved back up images.

IE 8 doesn't work on many sites, including the one Griffin uses as RG in Atlasia so I downloaded Chrome for that. I still use IE 8 generally though. Other than that, my computer headaches have all been hardware related stemming from the January 12th, 2013 incident.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Other: Win 8.1 and a mobile device. This survey should have allowed us to pick multiple OSes.

[homelycooking]

I use an 8-year-old Gateway laptop that runs Windows Vista.

[TNF]

Windows 7

[tik 🪀✨]

The "XP-erience" is pretty awful, but when you're unable to afford (or don't know the first thing about upgrading to) better hardware or a new system, it's pretty stable and works alright for a lot of normal PC usage.

Windows 7 is the new XP. I'm on 8.1, looking forward to 10, and even though 8 is kind of irritating I don't really care because the start menu is rarely ventured into and all of the development programs I want to use work very well on the system I've built.

I am still going to keep an older PC around with XP (and other OS's) though for retro gaming and fun because I'm a dork, but 8 isn't as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. Kind of like your mom.

Boom.

[Хahar 🤔]

Please explain the order of these poll options.

[Murica!]

8.1, though hopefully that once I finally build a new rig that I'll get 10.

[The Dowager Mod]

Pentium II 266 running Windows95 Y0.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Vista.

[Mr. Smith]

Chrome OS (too poor for a good computer, so I'm stuck with a glorified tablet)

Not sure if that's Linux or Other though.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Chrome OS (too poor for a good computer, so I'm stuck with a glorified tablet)

Not sure if that's Linux or Other though.

Chrome OS is a modified Linux.

[Indy Texas]

OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) on a 15" MacBook Pro (primary computer)

I've got the beta release of Windows 10 running on a virtual machine but haven't really played around with it much.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Please explain the order of these poll options.

If I was going to exhibit bias, I would have put XP number one.

No, the order is based on current level of market share as determined by site I linked about.

Granted there are other sites, with different stardards.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The "XP-erience" is pretty awful, but when you're unable to afford (or don't know the first thing about upgrading to) better hardware or a new system, it's pretty stable and works alright for a lot of normal PC usage.

Windows 7 is the new XP. I'm on 8.1, looking forward to 10, and even though 8 is kind of irritating I don't really care because the start menu is rarely ventured into and all of the development programs I want to use work very well on the system I've built.

I am still going to keep an older PC around with XP (and other OS's) though for retro gaming and fun because I'm a dork, but 8 isn't as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. Kind of like your mom.

Boom.

I have a Windows Seven machine. It may be a lot of things, but it is not XP. 

I suppose I should give some background. You mention poverty, I spent the nineties with mostly Atari 800 and 400s. Whenever we got a machine with Windows 95 it didn't last because of money. When we finally got and kept a Windows computer, it was a Compaq with Windows 98. Then we bought a new HP with Windows XP in 2002 and it was a piece of crap. I hated XP and loved 95 for much of the early 2000s. I got my hands on a Gateway with Windows 98 that I used for "retro-gaming" though keeping it running was always a challenge. Largely because of mthe meddling of my relatives. 

I came out of this with two experiences, stability and functionality are more important than the latest thing running some feature I have no use for. By 2005 when I got this computer, Window XP had been through the ringer and SP 2 was leagues better than SP 1 or straight up XP in 2002. Even better, XP SP 3 is in my view the best Windows ever made. Especially when compared to Vista released the year prior. I have never had to reinstall Windows in nine years. This install has survived two hard drive migrations and runs better now than it did two years ago (Now if only I could get the hardware bs sorted out so that I can play my mid to late 2000's games like The Godfather and Company of Heroes).

My history with Windows Seven only served to confirm my previous opinions. Out of the box, that system made me itch to just throw it back in the box and turn on the XP machine. It spent the nine of the first twelve months that I had it crashed and still to this day has Windows system errors that are unresolved. It doesn't help that it is now woefully short of ram and thus is slower than the XP machine.

Operating Systems age like fine wine. The older they are, the more ironed out they are. And with Micro$h#t back crapping out junk every other year just like before XP, I highly doubt it will match it again. Windows Seven might, but Micro$oft will never repeat allow a repeat of the XPerience because that was potential disaster to the bottomline to let an OS mature that much and become great. Seven will be dead well short of that benchmark.

[dead0man]

Win 7 is actually really stable.  Really, all the NT based MS OSes (2k,XP,Vista,7,8,10) are stable.  It's my second favorite OS ever behind Win2k.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Win 7 is actually really stable.  Really, all the NT based MS OSes (2k,XP,Vista,7,8,10) are stable.  It's my second favorite OS ever behind Win2k.

Overal in relative comparison to 9x, yes. But that doesn't change the fact that XP out of the box in 2002 and Windows Seven in 2009/2010 (full disclosure I got mine in Jan 2012, but it was unoppened 2009 production), both loved to shower you with the BSODs.

My Windows Seven machine is getting better, hence my point. With updates and patches, it is getting better. However, therein lies the point. Seven is already in its extended support phase with mainstream support having ended. It probably should get another SP, but it probably won't now, not with them peddling 10.

[Prince of Salem]

Windows 7

[dead0man]

Win 7 is actually really stable.  Really, all the NT based MS OSes (2k,XP,Vista,7,8,10) are stable.  It's my second favorite OS ever behind Win2k.

Overal in relative comparison to 9x, yes. But that doesn't change the fact that XP out of the box in 2002 and Windows Seven in 2009/2010 (full disclosure I got mine in Jan 2012, but it was unoppened 2009 production), both loved to shower you with the BSODs.

My Windows Seven machine is getting better, hence my point. With updates and patches, it is getting better. However, therein lies the point. Seven is already in its extended support phase with mainstream support having ended. It probably should get another SP, but it probably won't now, not with them peddling 10.

You might have just had some bad luck (or bad hardware), 7 ran good for most people from word go (Vista did had some early problems though).


But I do agree with your larger point.  The most stable OSes are the older ones that have been patched to hell and back and MS loves to stop supporting the old, stable ones so they can sell you a knew one that might have cool new toys, but isn't as stable (and doesn't feel "right") as the old one.

[Dancing with Myself]

I have Windows 8 but I loath it. I miss the thing you could click and being able to look at pictures/pdf's without waiting ages for a screen on the side to work. 7 was awesome in hindsight. It was classic windows but developed too.

I can't wait to try 10 out here soon, I just hope it isn't such a pain the behind to play old games on it.

[Samantha]

I do everything exclusively off of an iPhone (iOS 7), I haven't owned a real computer in three years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Win 7 is actually really stable.  Really, all the NT based MS OSes (2k,XP,Vista,7,8,10) are stable.  It's my second favorite OS ever behind Win2k.

Overal in relative comparison to 9x, yes. But that doesn't change the fact that XP out of the box in 2002 and Windows Seven in 2009/2010 (full disclosure I got mine in Jan 2012, but it was unoppened 2009 production), both loved to shower you with the BSODs.

My Windows Seven machine is getting better, hence my point. With updates and patches, it is getting better. However, therein lies the point. Seven is already in its extended support phase with mainstream support having ended. It probably should get another SP, but it probably won't now, not with them peddling 10.

You might have just had some bad luck (or bad hardware), 7 ran good for most people from word go (Vista did had some early problems though).


But I do agree with your larger point.  The most stable OSes are the older ones that have been patched to hell and back and MS loves to stop supporting the old, stable ones so they can sell you a knew one that might have cool new toys, but isn't as stable (and doesn't feel "right") as the old one.

Bad luck with hardware? Do you know how many hard drives I have been through?  Six in the last ten years, four in this machine, two in an old gateway.

The point though is Windows XP is far more durable. I have littearly cloned it off a dying hard drive and still got it to work. I doubt seven would withstand the same pressure. The trend has been to replace not repair and that has only gotten worse.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Windows 7, but I have an old computer that runs on XP.