Windows 7 Finally Tops Windows XP in the U.S.

And while everyone just finally settles down and gets used to their chair, a New one comes out and everyone is told to change it, despite the first chair already having the outline of your buttocks engraved in it.

About time, windows 7, is the isht, way better than that mistake called Vista.

lol, poor OS X still sits below Vista.

The report also stated that Windows 7 is the most used "desktop" operating system. If it took into account all other computing devices, XP still dominates by a massive margin.

Probably should point out that the Linux user population is hard to estimate. With OS X it's simple -- Mac sales divided by total computer sales. Microsoft generally admits the true Linux population is several percent of users, which is to say 5-10x higher than most reports indicate.

Otherwise one mostly relies on web server statistics.

Also "desktop" operating system is used to distinguish between servers and desktops. Which is to say "desktops" include traditional desktop computers as well as laptops. I'm not sure what other computing devices are out there, but I'm thinking along the lines of an iPad which I don't think runs XP. Just look at the laptops for sale, they all come with Windows 7. Even the netbooks.

My guess is the popularity of Win 7 is coming from new PC sales where customers don't have a choice to go with XP and are too lazy to downgrade themselves/start using Win 7 and find it acceptable. Fact is people are creatures of habit and if given a choice between learning something new that ostensibly doesn't do anything new we'll opt to stick with the thing we've already learned. And while we on THG consider an OS install to be beyond trivial, it's daunting for your average user.

The most popular operating system for all non-PC devices is Linux. Outside the desktop, Linux dominates the mobile phone market, embedded appliance systems, robotics, and supercomputers.

The reason OSX is so slowly making headway in the desktop market is because Apple is a far costlier computer. For instance, compatible hardware between a Mac and a PC may render similar performance results, but the Mac will invariably be twice as much in price.

The reason Linux may not have a significant share of the PC market is because Microsoft has managed to ensure that OEM manufacturers pre-install only Windows and nothing but Windows into each machine that makes it to a shelf. Consumers have never had a choice.

In the end, Linux desktop market share is irrelevant since open source has its own environment sustained by a dedicated community of developers that are not beholden to any single corporation. In other words, the best minds around the globe are ensuring that Linux will stay cutting-edge for desktops and all other devices.

I will say unequivocally that OSX and Linux have proven to be far superior than Windows for desktops and laptops. Linux runs faster, more reliablly, and without the nightmarish viral maladies that have blighted Windows users for years. Which proves that popularity does not necessarily mean quality.

Windows can continue to dominate the desktop- but who really cares? Certainly not the Mac or Linux communities.

I don't see Windows 8 overtaking Windows 7. A lot of people that had Windows Vista that either upgraded to it or bought a pc with it installed were chomping at the bits a short time later with vista's problems to upgrade to Windows 7. Tghe avg consumors only buys a new pc every 4 or 5 years, by the time Windows 7 rolled out most people that bought their pc's that came with Windows XP where ready to buy a new pc again. Since Windows 7 has been soo great for most pc users, most people won't bother upgrading to Windows 8 and most avg consumors won't do their anual upgrade cycle for another 3 or 4 years or even longer now considering pc's that came with Windows 7 are more then capable of doing typical work loads due to advancements in hardware which will hurt Windows 8 even more when it comes out. business are just now starting to upgrade to Windows 7 so they aren't going to upgrade again for another 6 or 7 years. MS should push Windows release date back another couple of years for those reasons.

Sweet. Well done Microsoft.

How many of the activations are from OEM preinstalls or from purchased copies?

Microsoft could have re-released windows ME with out changing any of it's code and it would eventually beat windows xp in market share, simply because when people go into the store to buy a prebuilt system, it will come with windows ME.

What needs to be done is compare the active licenses for purchased copies of windows XP, to purchased copies of Windows 7. Preinstalled operating systems should never be counted as there is generally no choice in the matter for many people.

while most of us here may build our own computers, overall, probably 99.9% of computer users will purchase a prebuilt computer.
Another interesting thing is that most computer users don't even know which operating system their computer is running, and a few that I provide support for who know slightly more about their computers, will generally only make it as far as the name Windows, but often, will not know which version of Windows they are running.

gathering statistics on preinstalled operating systems is a very poor way to measure the popularity of an operating system, as for the average user, when they head into a store such as Best Buy(ripoff), in almost all cases, they are stuck with a choice of either a PC or a Mac, and if they go with the PC route then they are generally forced into getting whatever the current version of Windows that Microsoft is shipping out is.

every incarnation of windows has been an improvement. Me and Vista were great.No sense tarnishing them because your software would not run on them.

I've got windows 7 also,but this will not stop me using my retail boxed edition of windows XP Pro x32bit which I think is still the king of operating systems...

Did you all out there think that this could be due to IE9 coming in to the browser market now & windows XP OS can not install IE9 & infact can only go up to IE8...

Also think about every body that has an OEM XP operating system...These OEM operating systems do not last as long as a retail boxed XP operating system does...So over the years as peoples OEM's die off & they can not load an OEM onto another motherboard,but with a retail boxed XP operating system you can load it onto another motherboard within a new pc...

One more point of view,although humoruos as it may seem comes to light & that is numerology...Up there in the article it has written "It's been 18 months since windows 7 hit retail availability"...Low & behold 18 adds up to 9,which in numerology is supposed to be a caring number,especially if you are born with it...

Another point of view to consider is again in this article they mention xp as being the 10 year old operating system & again 10 adds up to the number 1,which in numerology is masculine & classed as being top dog...So let's all hope that windows XP operating systems still will bloom in the future...

Why can't people just use mozilla's firefox & stay with XP rather then leaving XP just for the sake of being able to use microsoft's IE9...Better still buy another operating system for these uses of trying IE9 & still keep your XP running...

Windows XP may be 10 years old, but that doesn't mean it is useless. It is a light weight OS compared to windows vista and 7, it was designed to be responsive on a computer with a 300MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM (though many programs have higher requirements than this).

On a modern computer, if windows XP is properly setup and the transition effects and other crap is disabled, the OS responds instantly to almost everything.

For most people, the OS run all of their programs and works well.

For those who do not understand the use of an OS, consider this question. If when microsoft released windows 7, they locked it down in such a way that the only software that you could run was what came preinstalled through the retail disk, and no other software could be installed. Would you still use windows 7?

The OS is basically an environment that you use in order to run the software of your choice. Windows XP still meets this task, with the exception of 2-3 PC games, which aren't that good.

While windows 7 has made some improvements, for what the average user does on heir computer, they can do it with both windows 7 and XP, which is why you probably wont find them buying a copy of windows 7 to upgrade the current OS on their PC, and when they actually get windows 7 will be when they purchase a new computer that comes with it preinstalled.

Counting preinstalled copies when calculating popularity or like for an OS, is like saying that more new computer users prefer the sasser worm to adobe photoshop because more new computer users had it installed as compared to adobe photoshop. (not comparing windows 7 to a worm, i am just using this to back up my argument of why preinstalled or installed with out the user having a say, is not a good indicator of how many people actually like or want it over windows xp)

Good One razor512,keep it coming...

Hey razor512,watch out...just not long ago I gave you a positive & almost straight away someone else gave you a negative to make you have neutral for your post...

Windows XP may be 10 years old, but that doesn't mean it is useless. It is a light weight OS compared to windows vista and 7, it was designed to be responsive on a computer with a 300MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM (though many programs have higher requirements than this).

" Absolutely, nothing wrong with it at all, Fully functional, just like my Pentium 3 windows 98 Box, I still have that is loaded with tons of legacy games, gotta love it but it will be relegated!"

On a modern computer, if windows XP is properly setup and the transition effects and other crap is disabled, the OS responds instantly to almost everything.

" On a Modern Computer, with a DEFAULT Windows 7 Setup and all the Aero Affects enabled, the OS responds instantly to almost everything!"

For most people, the OS run all of their programs and works well.For those who do not understand the use of an OS, consider this question. If when microsoft released windows 7, they locked it down in such a way that the only software that you could run was what came preinstalled through the retail disk, and no other software could be installed. Would you still use windows 7?

"What exactly do you mean, Ive found absolutely nothing locked down, purchase the corrrect version for your needs, how is that different to XP Home, XP Pro OEM or Retail!, More choice is Always Better!"

The OS is basically an environment that you use in order to run the software of your choice. Windows XP still meets this task, with the exception of 2-3 PC games, which aren't that good.While windows 7 has made some improvements, for what the average user does on heir computer, they can do it with both windows 7 and XP, which is why you probably wont find them buying a copy of windows 7 to upgrade the current OS on their PC, and when they actually get windows 7 will be when they purchase a new computer that comes with it preinstalled.

" I Upgrade many many a user from XP and Vista to Windows 7 because people do want the latest OS to run, especially if they have seen it working or use it on a friends PC or a new Office PC, they simply recognize it is far superior to XP"

Counting preinstalled copies when calculating popularity or like for an OS, is like saying that more new computer users prefer the sasser worm to adobe photoshop because more new computer users had it installed as compared to adobe photoshop. (not comparing windows 7 to a worm, i am just using this to back up my argument of why preinstalled or installed with out the user having a say, is not a good indicator of how many people actually like or want it over windows xp)

" You can count pre-installed, how would you like to buy a new car all spiffy looking, and find out it has a 10 year old engine in it!

Windows 7 is simply the very best OS Microsoft has released, second only to Windows 95 which was a Gamechanger!

I believe Windows 8 will be a massive step forward as well and cannot wait to see it released.

Is there still people saying annoying stuff like "XP is the best and it's responding better"????
What kind of hardware do you have?
Stick with your precious XP, i'll stick with my "not responsive enough" SSD + Windows 7.

The big story here is that Linux only has 0.7% in the USA
That is staggeringly awful for an OS that claims to be able to do so much and is free.

If that percentage was applied to any other statistic anywhere it would have to come close to extinction or being an endangered species.

I'm amazed at all the XP love! I mean, do you people really still live in the stone age beck when nothing would network and you needed virus protection to stand even 5 feet away from an ethernet cable? And driver discs! Good lord I dont miss those! Every install of win7 so far has installed all of the nessessary drivers automatically for me so I dont have to install all the 3rd party junk allong with the functional driver that I need.
And to the "XP was meant to be responsive on a 300MHz computer" comment, you obviously have not run XPsp2. For fun I installed the win7RC2 on an old 800MHz P3 and (with the pretty Aero effects off) win7 was much more responsive than the XP that was on the machine. And even with all the pretty effects turned off it still looked cleaner and is easier to find things than in XP.
Lets sum up: Win7 is more secure, it networks much better (especially with wireless!), it has an excellent compatibility mode for old software, the OEM of win7 is cheaper, it runs faster (provided you know what you are doing, which most of you do), and the interface is cleaner and less obtrusive than XP.

On a side note: Why do they separate out XP, Vista, and win7 but then go and lump all of osX together as if they are all the same OS? Granted that OSX users tend to upgrade every year (and still claim that OSX is cheaper $50/yr than windows at $100 every 2-4 years lol). But I am sure there are a lot of old G4 and G5 systems still in the wild using very old versions of OSX

Just hang in there a little longer until 8 comes out!
When 8 comes out XP will most likely be forgotten, especially if 8 would be trimmed down a lot from 7, and run on ARM!

People still use that garbage XP OS? MS just needs to kill all support for it already, this is getting ridiculous. Reminds me when people were stubbornly holding on to Win98. Just let it go people, just let it go.

Windows 8 = Windows 7 with better smartphone/tablet functionality and power management.