Personally, I hated Windows Vista within about 5 minutes of using it: Microsoft couldn’t have done a worse job on this bloated, memory hogging operating system if they’d tried. I’m not an out and out fan of anything that gets released by the Redmond beast but I have been very impressed with Windows 7 (fast booting with lots of bells and whistles). And it looks like I’m not the only person that’s happy with the new OS: MS have announced that, since the launch back in Oct 09, the latest version of the Windows dynasty has racked up a very impressive sales of 90 million licenses.
Going by those figures, Windows 7 has, in only 4 months, become the fastest selling operating system ever produced by Microsoft. Figures are expected to get an even bigger boost as corporate clients factor the deployment of Windows 7 into their enterprise environments. No doubt Ballmer and co will be doing a jig right now but it’s not quite as simple as you think: a lot of these licenses will be OEM i.e. you don’t get a choice of Windows OS when you buy your new laptop/PC. Sure, some people have bought their own copy just to finally kill off Vista (I did) but, in the main, the majority of sales will come from preinstalled units.
Even with those figures, there’s no doubt a lot of companies and individuals will be holding onto their XP installation for some time to come - I’ve seen a few of my clients still running NT4 because “…it’s running bespoke, legacy software that is essential to the business and can’t be upgraded” - read “We’re too tight fisted to pay for a serious rewrite of the code so we’ll get along just fine!”. Sigh.
Well, from a technical perspective at least, Windows 7 has shown that Microsoft produce some quality software. Windows 8 is expected to hit the campaign train sometime in 2012 and, if it’s only as good as Windows 7, Google may well find that their Chrome OS will need pull out all the stops to make any serious headway against MS.
Popularity: 76% [?]
February 15th, 2011 at 1:14 am
It’s been a historical fact that Microsoft’s OSes are only needful and usable every 3rd POPULAR version.
The FIRST version is the experimental version that’s so buggy to be unreliable OR is so close to the last version as to be nearly identical. It’s NOT worth upgrading at this point. These are only bought and ENDURED by Microsoft-ophiles and those who THINK they’re on the cutting edge by buying v1.0 or upgrading EVERY time.
“Microsoft Mouse w Windows”
“Win 3.11″
“Win 95 OSR2″
“Win 2000″
“Win Vista”
The 2nd version is a good try but fails in various areas which makes it tempting but disappointing. Often, this is a software vs hardware disconnect. The software is too bloated or buggy, & hardware is too slow.
“Windows 2″
“Windows for Workgroups”
“Win 98″
“Win ME”
The 3rd version finally succeeds at what had been promised this entire time: the software is pared down and the hardware has sped up.
1992 “Win 3.1″
1995 “Win 95″
1999 “Win 98SE”
2001 “Win XP”
“Win 7″? I’m not buying yet. I’ll reserve judgement. Win7 sales may be more revenge against Vista than because it actually has any real virtue. In the release order of the OSes, this is a 2nd version. Either Microsoft kept a version back because of other problems OR the 1st version was sent out as a re-release of XP thus making Vista the 2nd version.
History of Windows
Another interesting correlation is the decade long gaps between SIGNIFICANT OSes. Win 3.1 (1992) was the first popular windowing OS thus relegating the command-line to permanent “behind the scenes” status. Win XP (2001) fulfilled all the promises that Microsoft had been promising since Win95 but had never truly been able to fulfill. Win 98 was closer & SR2 was almost usable, but it wasn’t until XP that it became “child’s play”. We now have 64-bit OSes on the market and Vista and Win 7 are trying to grow up in this new world, but there isn’t a significant improvement in the technology or interface yet.
Thus Chrome has the opportunity to make the “game changer” OS that Microsoft refuses to acknowledge like it did w the Mac System 7 back in 1991 (interface change) and even more significantly with OS X in 2001: (Unix OS w Mac OE). As an avid netbook user (Right Now!) Chrome OS like smartphones w iPhone and Android realize that the OS is less important than the applications that you use. Thus both Mac and Google are using the strongest and most powerful OS on the planet (Unix) while using their skills at developing a better user experience (OE). Microsoft seems bent of ruining themselves by trying the more firmly entrench the OS with the OE. Microsoft sold us on the eXPerience of their system :), but we’re becoming less enamored with the OS the experience depends on