Tag Archives: windows xp

Windows XP's user share nose-dives

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Maybe people are listening to Microsoft’s demand that they ditch Windows XP.
According to metrics company Net Applications, Windows XP’s user share plunged to 33.7% of all personal computers in August, a record-setting one-month fall of 3.5 percentage points.
When XP’s share of only those PCs that are powered by Windows was calculated, the decline was slightly sharper, from 40.6% of all Windows systems in July to 36.9% in August, a drop of 3.7 percentage points.
However it’s measured, XP’s plummet was dramatic. The decline easily bested XP’s previous record of a one-month slide set in December 2011, the month after ”Peak PC,” the industry’s high-water mark and when Windows 7 was quickly gaining ground at the expense of XP.
XP’s loss was made up by other Microsoft operating systems, the one-year-old Windows 8 and the four-year-old Windows 7, with the gains split 2-1 in favor of Windows 8.
Windows 7 grew its user share of Windows PCs to 50% last month, while Windows 8 boosted its share to 8.4%, a record for the struggling operating system.
Microsoft has beaten the dump-XP drum for more than two years. Last month, it did so again when a manager in its security group warned that the aged OS will become a prime target for cyber criminals once security updates end on April 8, 2014.
But those calls by Redmond have gone largely unheeded.
In the 12-month stretch from August 2012 to July 2013, for example, Windows XP lost an average of half a percentage point each month, or one-seventh of what it shed last month alone. More recently, XP’s decline had actually slowed: In the six months from February to July 2013, XP fell just four-tenths of a point per month on average, or about one-ninth its August decline.
It’s impossible to tell whether the XP slide represents actual abandonment of the OS and replacements of older PCs, since Net Applications measures only online activity. The decline, or part of it, could have been caused by fewer XP owners using the Internet, or at least the very small part that Net Applications monitors.
And since Net Applications’ methodology relies on weighting its data by country, a small decline in XP usage in China, where more than 70% of all personal computers run the operating system and the Internet population is enormous, may have had an outsized impact on the results.
“It’s impossible to tell whether the XP slide represents actual abandonment of the OS and replacements of older PCs”
Rival analytics vendor StatCounter, for example, showed no corresponding decline in XP’s usage share for August: According to the Irish firm, XP actually gained one-tenth of a percentage point last month.
StatCounter and Net Applications tally shares in different ways. StatCounter counts page views—a metric best described as “usage share”—while Net Applications examines unique visitors, a number Computerworld has often labeled “user share.”
Windows XP’s huge drop last month made shambles of earlier estimates that forecast it would still account for more than a third of the world’s personal computer operating systems at the end of April 2014. After the large decline of last month, revised projections now peg XP’s expected April 2014 user share at a lower range, between 23% and 28%, based on the latest three-month and 12-month averages, respectively.
Overall, Windows slipped by four-tenths of a percentage point to 91.2%. Linux, which gained three-tenths of a point to end August with 1.5%, and Apple’s OS X, which grew by a tenth of a point to 7.3%, took up the slack.
Within the Windows universe, however, there was plenty of movement, as XP’s decline best illustrated.
Windows 7, which has assumed the mantle as the standard in business, boosted its user share by over a percentage point, climbing to 50% of all machines running a Microsoft operating system. Windows Vista continued to lose users, falling to 4.5%.
Most of the share lost by XP, however, ended up in Windows 8’s camp: The newest OS grew by a record 2.5 percentage points to close August with 8.4% of all Windows-powered systems.
Windows XP’s last public security update is planned for April 8, 2014.
Windows XP’s slow decline this year picked up dramatically last month when it plummeted by a record 3.5 points. (Data: Net Applications.)
via Windows XP’s user share nose-dives | PCWorld.

Windows XP patches can be made after April 8th, but they will be pricey

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On April 8th, 2014, Microsoft is supposed to end its official support for Windows XP which launched nearly 12 years ago. After that date, Microsoft will not provide any more public software updates for the OS and has warned Windows XP users that will open up their PCs to “zero day” exploits that could be used by hackers.

While Windows XP patches won’t be released to the outside world, that doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t develop more updates to the OS. Computerworld reports that Microsoft offers something called “Custom Support” that will allow a very few Windows XP machines to keep getting updates. Custom Support is aimed mainly at large businesses.
A data sheet for Custom Service is quoted in the article. It states:
Legacy products or out-of-support service packs covered under Custom Support will continue to receive security hotfixes for vulnerabilities labeled as ‘Critical’ by the MSRC [Microsoft Security Response Center]. Customers with Custom Support that need security patches defined as ‘Important’ by MSRC can purchase these for an additional fee.
The report says Microsoft doesn’t publish their Custom Service fees publicly, since they are negotiated on a company-by-company basis. Some analysts have speculated that the cost to patch each PC under such a plan is around $200 for the first year, just to get the “Critical” security fixes. In other words, most Windows XP owners would be better off paying for an upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8.
Microsoft has not strayed from its message that it will end public support of Windows XP very soon. However, the fact remains that there are a lot of Windows XP users still out there in the world, and there will likely be plenty of them left after the April 8th, 2014 support deadline has come and gone. We will have to see if Microsoft sticks with its deadline or offers up some alternatives for PC owners who simply don’t want to stop using the 12 year old OS.
via Windows XP patches can be made after April 8th, but they will be pricey – Neowin.

Windows 8 uptake slows for third straight month

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Windows 8 uptake slows for third straight month
Windows 8’s uptake pace slowed in February for the third straight month, an analytics company said today.
According to Net Applications, Windows 8’s February usage share—including what the firm labeled as “touch” for Windows 8 and Windows RT—was 3% of all Windows PCs, up from January’s 2.6%.
Windows 8’s share increase in February was about four-tenths of a percentage point, smaller than January’s gain, which in turn was smaller than either December’s or November’s.
The new operating system also fell further behind the pace set by Windows Vista in 2007: In its fourth month of availability, Vista powered approximately 4% of all Windows PCs. The full percentage point gap between Windows 8 and Vista was the largest so far in the tracking Computerworld has conducted.
Windows 8 not gaining traction?
This new trend bolsters the belief by many analysts that Windows 8 will have a very difficult time gaining traction because of a pair of factors: First, that users are put off by the dual-UI (user interface) approach of the OS, and second, that PC sales have been clobbered by a shift to tablets and smartphones, the vast majority of which run rivals’ operating systems.
Windows 8’s initial uptake trajectory also makes it more likely that the new operating system will be labeled as an even bigger flop than Vista, which was largely rejected by users, who stuck with the older XP until Windows 7 arrived.

The latter’s uptake was a rocket ride compared to Windows 8’s or Vista’s: By the end of its fourth month on the market, Windows 7 had garnered a 9.7% share, more than three times Windows 8’s.
Even the inclusion of touch, and Windows 8’s ability to run on tablets, has not materially helped the OS. Net Applications’ measurement of users running Windows 8 from the “Metro” UI increased by just two-hundredths of a percentage point last month, while that for Windows RT remained flat.
Microsoft may be looking at similar data, as this week the Windows group’s director of communications, Christopher Flores, confirmed that the company would partner with OEMs to launch a second wave of promotions for Windows 8 hardware.
Last weekend, U.S. retailer Best Buy kicked off a two-week deal that discounted touch-enabled Windows 8 PCs by $100.
Stats for other versions of Windows
Net Applications also reported statistics on other editions of Windows.
Both Windows XP and Windows 7 returned to their usual trends, with XP losing half a percentage point to end February at 39% of all personal computers, or 42.6% of Windows-only machines. Meanwhile, Windows 7 gained under one-tenth of a point to climb to 44.6% of all PCs and 48.6% of all Windows PCs.

Windows XP has just over a year left in its tank. Microsoft plans to pull the support plugin April 2014, even if, as Net Applications’ data hints, the 11-year-old operating system then powers more than 30% of all personal computers.
Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking unique visitors to some 40,000 websites it monitors for clients.
Windows 8 uptake pace slowed for the third straight month, falling even further behind Vista’s and Windows 7’s early adoption.
via Windows 8 uptake slows for third straight month | PCWorld.

Windows XP countdown clock ticks under 500 days

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Windows XP has fewer than 500 days left to live, according to Microsoft and third-party countdown clocks.
The 11-year-old operating system will exit support April 8, 2014, when Microsoft serves users with their final security updates.
On Saturday, the retirement countdown clocks offered by Microsoft and others flipped from 500 to 499 days, or a shade under 17 months.
Microsoft provides a countdown gadget for Windows XP’s support demise. Ironically, the gadget runs only on Windows 7, the 2009 OS that most customers have adopted after departing XP.
U.K.-based Camwood is counting down the days on its website until Windows XP support ends.
Camwood, a U.K.-based company that specializes in helping businesses migrate their machines to newer operating systems and software, has posted a similar clock on its website. Like Microsoft’s gadget, Camwood’s also showed 499 days remaining on Saturday.
When Microsoft pulls XP’s plug, it will have maintained the operating system for 12 years and five months, or about two-and-a-half years longer than its usual practice. That’s also a record, replacing the previous Methuselah, Windows NT, which received 11 years and 5 months of support.
XP’s long life was caused in large part by the debacle that was Windows Vista, an oft-delayed operating system that was ultimately rejected by most XP users for being buggy, sluggish or lacking in driver support. Instead, those customers waited for the next iteration, Windows 7, which has been as much a success as Vista was a failure.
According to Web metrics company Net Applications, Windows XP powered 40.7 percent of the world’s desktop and notebook personal computers that went online last month. Windows 7, which passed its ancestor only in August, held a usage share of 44.7 percent in October.
Meanwhile, Windows Vista, which peaked at 19.1 percent in October 2009, the same month Windows 7 debuted, now accounts for just 5.8 percent of all systems.
Microsoft has remained adamant that XP will exit support in April 2014, and has urged customers to upgrade as soon as possible. But countdown clocks notwithstanding, analysts have predicted that XP will be used by millions well after that deadline.
Last month, for instance, Gartner analyst Michael Silver said “there’s a good chance” that between 10 percent and 15 percent of enterprise PCs will be running XP after April 2014.
Computerworld’s forecasts have been overly optimistic about XP’s decline. In mid-2011, Computerworld predicted that Windows XP would account for 38 percent in the third quarter of 2012, three percentage points lower than the eventual number.
Current estimates based on Net Applications’ data indicate that come April 2014, Windows XP will be running between 27 percent and 29 percent of the world’s computers.
“The end of XP support is a potential time bomb,” Camwood said last week. “And the clock is ticking.”
Windows XP users who want to create a countdown clock on their desktops can install one of several free utilities—including TimeLeft from Canadian developer NesterSoft—then set the countdown target at 10 a.m. PT on April 8, 2014. (Microsoft shoots for a 10 a.m. PT release for each month’s security updates.)
via Windows XP countdown clock ticks under 500 days | PCWorld.