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Windows XP is still king


Dibya

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Operating System    Total Market Share
Market Share of Windows 7 Windows 7    52.34%
Market Share of Windows 10 Windows 10    12.82%
Market Share of Windows XP Windows XP    11.24%
Market Share of Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1    9.83%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.11 Mac OS X 10.11    3.72%
Market Share of Windows 8 Windows 8    2.43%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.10 Mac OS X 10.10    2.20%
Market Share of Linux Linux    1.78%
Market Share of Windows Vista Windows Vista    1.66%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.9 Mac OS X 10.9    0.87%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.6 Mac OS X 10.6    0.34%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.8 Mac OS X 10.8    0.28%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.7 Mac OS X 10.7    0.28%
Market Share of Windows NT Windows NT    0.12%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.5 Mac OS X 10.5    0.05%
Market Share of Mac OS X 10.4 Mac OS X 10.4    0.02%

Windows 7 is loosing its market share but Windows XP is gaining again.

 

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I have some doubts about the accuracy of usage share statistics if they are populated by instances of a user downloading some script file that is embedded into a website. Correct me if I'm wrong with my assumption of how these are collected. If older computers with an old operating system are still in use, they are increasingly less likely to browse mainstream websites where these statistics counters are included, because how slow those sites are getting. Those computers either serve some other purpose, or they browse small or private websites, and not contribute to any statistics of this sort.

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This is gonna be a remarkable OS 'till the end of its days (2019 perhaps?).

We are all fighting for Windows XP and we'll keep supporting this wonderful and light OS!! :D

Most probably far beyond that date :), but you have a "wrong" perception, while XP is much less bloated than later systems it is not "light", it's installed size almost tripled (around 1500 Mb vs. 650 Mb) when compared to Windows 2000 (without providing, with the exception of bells an whistles, very few new, useful features).

To be fair, even the almost 5x size of Windows 2000 when compared to good ol' NT 4.00 (650 Mb vs. 150/180 Mb)  is hardly justified.

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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jaclaz if you compare with windows 7 17gb vs 1500mb windows xp

what which is more bloated

Windows XP is made for home users and it camed with high quality multimedia support which are lacked by previous nt clients and servers.

Biggest thing stability in household pc use which was previously absend in crappy dos base 9xseries and me.

Xp added importent features like bluetooth , wifi and modern lan networking.

During 2019 it will be patched for 19 yrs it is hardely impossible to find any bug on soarce

My grandma still run NT4.0 surely it is great system but not good in multimedia.

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The size of software always increases for one reason or another. In case of XP and Seven, most of it is due to dllcache and winsxs respectively. I always disable system file protection, so XP is still relatively lean for me.

I do find most improvements in XP over 2000 to be of little substance. It boots a little faster (improvement largely negated by overall increase of size of all components), doesn't require a reboot as often when swapping drivers. I wouldn't have thought of wifi, because I don't use it, good point. Most 3rd party control applications for network are much more bloated than the built in service.

What's left... The Fisher-Price Luna theme and themeing in general is nice to toy with for a while. I do recall that the introduction of theming brought compatibility issues, and introduced Manifests as the solution. So better they shouldn't have bothered. In the "multimedia" Windows has the Media Player, which is an insecure ripper without built-in support for modern formats, and Movie Maker, which is another toy, and shell media handler, which can crash explorer and prevent files from being deleted. Home users are better served with 3rd party "multimedia" applications.

What do you mean by "modern LAN networking" apart from Wi-Fi? The network interface is mostly implemented by its driver. Most high performance TCP functionality, such as large window sizes and TCP options was alrady present in 2000 but not configured for top performance. The next generation improvement (Compound TCP) only came with 2003.

Grandma's NT4 PC is probably not accounted in those statistics above.

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@dibya

I  think - no offence whatever intended :) - that you are not old enough to be able to comment on the evolution of old 9x or NT systems, most probably you weren't even born at the time they were "current", and you evidently miss some of the nuances in the evolution of those systems.

 

XP is 2000 with an added set of mostly useless eye candy and a very few little betterings, it was forced down the throat of unwilling home users and it was a tragedy in the very early times (for the usual reasons, mainly OEM putting it on underpowered machines).

 

You need to compare 2000 against a "gold" XP , not against a XP SP3+all the patches since 2008.

 

Bluetooth has been "natively" implemented in XP only with SP2 (2004)[*].

Wi-Fi as well was "primitive" (to say the least) until SP2.

Multimedia support (if we are talking of video playback) has been for years a nightmare (codec hell).

 

At the time of the release there was nothing, really nothing exception made for the themes, looks, etc. making XP in any way "better" or even "different" from 2000, but obviously in later years Microsoft updated it while leaving the 2000 largely unchanged.

 

jaclaz

 

[*]Please note how with the same SP2 the good MS guys introduced the infamous 4 Gb RAM limitation patch

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As far as I know, XP wasn't really liked until SP2 came out. I had the chance to live on the then current days of even 3.1, let alone NT 4.0 and 2000. 

There's a reason why MS marketed XP as NT 5.1 and not 6.0, like Vista did. It was exactly like 2000 with just some extra eye-candy stuff.

 

As for myself, I never really got to use XP as my main OS, as I preferred using its server counterpart, Server 2003, much more.

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This is gonna be a remarkable OS 'till the end of its days (2019 perhaps?).

We are all fighting for Windows XP and we'll keep supporting this wonderful and light OS!! :D

Most probably far beyond that date :), but you have a "wrong" perception, while XP is much less bloated than later systems it is not "light", it's installed size almost tripled (around 1500 Mb vs. 650 Mb) when compared to Windows 2000 (without providing, with the exception of bells an whistles, very few new, useful features).

To be fair, even the almost 5x size of Windows 2000 when compared to good ol' NT 4.00 (650 Mb vs. 150/180 Mb)  is hardly justified.

 

jaclaz

 

I know, everyone seems to forget how much of a pig we all thought that XP was back then.  People who loved XP's RTM release back then are like the same people who embrace 10 now.  They hated convention just as much and embraced everything new as well.

 

I could run Windows 2000 on a PII 350 MHz Dell Optiplex with 128 MB.  To run XP SP2 in a similar way (with the classic desktop and no visual styles), I found a P4 1.4 GHz with 256 MB of RAM did the trick, so double the RAM, and way more than double the CPU.

 

As an aside, I've setup an HP Pavillion with the RTM version of XP that had a PII 866 MHz CPU, and 512 MB of RAM, and it ran nice.  SP2 DEFINITELY slowed down the system.

Edited by JodyT
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I know, everyone seems to forget how much of a pig we all thought that XP was back then.  People who loved XP's RTM release back then are like the same people who embrace 10 now.  They hated convention just as much and embraced everything new as well.

 

 

 

 

I could run Windows 2000 on a PII 350 MHz Dell Optiplex with 128 MB.  To run XP SP2 in a similar way (with the classic desktop and no visual styles), I found a P4 1.4 GHz with 256 MB of RAM did the trick, so double the RAM, and way more than double the CPU.

 

As an aside, I've setup an HP Pavillion with the RTM version of XP that had a PII 866 MHz CPU, and 512 MB of RAM, and it ran nice.  SP2 DEFINITELY slowed down the system.

 

Yeah, 2000 and 7 actually got liked at the time of their release, unlike XP and Vista... well, XP got to have 80% market share in computers around 2006-07 though, which is something that won't be beat anytime soon. Windows 7 is still on around 53-56%, and it has fallen a bit, due to people upgrading to 10 and 8.1.

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@jaclaz... JodyT

I still remember running XP smoothly with 128 MB of RAM and an old monocore. To be fair, I never really used 2000, 'cause I moved from 98 to Windows XP; that may be the reason why I appreciated it so much. (And, by the way, I used to run 98 with as little as 64 MB of RAM. Anyway, XP was a pretty fine OS when it came out, but SP2 brought a lot of stuff. Still, if we take a fresh XP SP2 install, it's able to run in just 256 MB of RAM. As to the SP3, instead, it uses quite more RAM, but it's still light compared to Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1. I like XP because it's the right "compromise" between "nice" and "practice". I mean, it's fine for eyes, with a minimal GUI (without animations I mean) and light (such a GUI doesn't use much resources). When they introduced Vista, it brought a new heavy GUI, with the sidebar, so heavy for stuff like the weather etc running in background every single time. As to Windows 7, it's basically Vista without bugs and with other improvements, but it's one of my favourite OS, together with Windows Server 2008 R2, which introduced some big changes over its former rival Windows Server 2003. For instance, it was easier to set up a failover clustering solution, 'cause having two identical machines wasn't mandatory anymore. When 8 came out, instead, they released Metro. While the idea of running apps meant for tablet in a desktop OS was great, what wasn't great at all was the concept behind Metro itself. I mean, an UI that runs in background together with the OS that has the same GUI of Windows 7 while using the Desktop window? No way. It was (and still is) a pain for the RAM. Windows 8.1 was just an upgrade with some bugfix of the former OS.

These are just my thoughts, you are all free to agree or disagree. Have your say! :)

Edited by FranceBB
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Another reason Windows 7 usage figures might be suspect and that Windows XP usage may be higher and probably is higher ... could be with people using Proxomitron.

 

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

 

I have been using it since Windows 98SE and since 2012 with XP ... works just great ... may also work with Windows 7 ... I have read it does.

 

I am using the filter set by Sidki which was set up to tell a site that the computer has Windows 7 installed. So everywhere I go ... Windows 7 gets all the "credit" instead of XP, unless I place Proxomitron on Bypass ... which I have to do every so often to get a web page to open properly, but not often.

 

I use K-Meleon v1.8.24 ... when I have Proxomitron working as normal ... this information is seen:

 

What Browser am I using?

 

You appear to be using:

 

Firefox 31.0.9.9

 

on Windows 7

 

When I have Proxomitron on Bypass ... this information is seen.

 

What Browser am I using?

 

You appear to be using:

 

Firefox 31.0

 

on Windows XP

 

http://www.thismachine.info/

 

So if there are many people using Proxomitron with XP ... then the XP usuage figures could be much higher or somewhat higher anyway.

 

If anyone has never heard of Proxomitron and would be interested in checking it out ... here's some information.

 

Once you get to know this program you may like it ... it's always working when I'm online ... sometimes I have to put it on by-pass. You will learn as you use it. It may be of some help when online.

 

The Proxomitron by Scott R. Lemmon

 

http://www.proxomitron.info/

 

The Author:

 

Scott R. Lemmon originally developed the Proxomitron for his own use. He then decided to release it to the public and made himself available to users via email and in several Proxomitron user-discussion groups. His support, like his program, was always free.

 

With the release of Naoko 4.5, Scott discontinued all further development and support of his program and pulled the official home of Proxomitron off the Web. We respected his decision to move on and wished him all the best -- which is, after all, what he consistently gave to us.

 

Sadly, one year later, Scott died -- but his brilliance of mind and spirit lives on. Simply put, Proxomitron is a reflection of its creator: To know Scott's program . . . is to know Scott Lemmon.

 

The Un-Official Proxomitron Forum

 

http://www.prxbx.com/forums/

 

There is a filter set by Sidki that many people use ... it replaces nothing that Scott Lemmon placed into Proxomitron ... it adds to it.

 

sidki-config: Oct 23 2010

 

http://www.prxbx.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=44

 

The program may be of some use with various browsers. Just experiment and see how it might work on your computer.

 

Just to add ... he has a Google filter set and Sidki has added to it ... really a big difference in using the Google search site with Proxomitron installed ... that alone makes the program worthwhile.

 

With the Sidki filter set ... ads are gone and the page is a dark blue ... there is also a gray color setting but the blue page is great. I have not mastered all the settings but there is help at the Sidki forum ... if you want or need additional settings.

 

*** Just to add, I always have to put Proxomitron on Bypass when I go to the MS Update site so MS will read that I actually have XP installed ... then I can get any current updates. It's always been this way ... I have IE 8 installed for that. Of course, I'm only getting MS Office 2007 updates these days for Office 2000.

...

Edited by monroe
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@dibya

I  think - no offence whatever intended :) - that you are not old enough to be able to comment on the evolution of old 9x or NT systems, most probably you weren't even born at the time they were "current", and you evidently miss some of the nuances in the evolution of those systems.

 

XP is 2000 with an added set of mostly useless eye candy and a very few little betterings, it was forced down the throat of unwilling home users and it was a tragedy in the very early times (for the usual reasons, mainly OEM putting it on underpowered machines).

 

You need to compare 2000 against a "gold" XP , not against a XP SP3+all the patches since 2008.

 

Bluetooth has been "natively" implemented in XP only with SP2 (2004)[*].

Wi-Fi as well was "primitive" (to say the least) until SP2.

Multimedia support (if we are talking of video playback) has been for years a nightmare (codec hell).

 

At the time of the release there was nothing, really nothing exception made for the themes, looks, etc. making XP in any way "better" or even "different" from 2000, but obviously in later years Microsoft updated it while leaving the 2000 largely unchanged.

 

jaclaz

 

[*]Please note how with the same SP2 the good MS guys introduced the infamous 4 Gb RAM limitation patch

 

Are you talking about windows xp vanila (without sp)?

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