Tam blogs about Microsoft's dumb move in axing Windows XP. She reports only 3% of a sample of 100 viewers of her blog were using Windows Vista, its putative replacement.
I was curious, so I took a similar snapshot of this blog's readers this afternoon.
I guess my viewers are even less enthusiastic about Vista than Tam's - not one of them was using it! Intrigued, I logged in to Google Analytics to check all my readers using one or other version of Windows. (Click the picture for a readable view.)
This showed more Vista viewers, but only 12% compared to 81% using XP and the rest using other Windows versions.
I long ago took a decision that I wouldn't upgrade either my desktop or my notebook to Vista. It's slow, buggy, a resource hog, and lacks drivers for many common hardware and software accessories. I'm monumentally unimpressed by it. Sure, it runs fine on a brand-new piece of hardware when set up by the manufacturer with all the necessary drivers, but that's not good enough.
Seems to me Microsoft's claims as to Vista's market penetration are so much hooey. Blog readers tend to be a bit further up the technological curve than the average home computer user, and many of them read blogs from work. If Windows XP remains in such predominance on their systems then Microsoft will make a great many users - including yours truly - very unhappy when they withdraw it from sale.
Once upon a time I was an IBM systems engineer, so I understand operating systems pretty well. Even with that background, unless Vista improves exponentially from its present state, I won't be upgrading to it at all. When the time comes to buy a new computer I'll look at Linux or even Mac OS 10 (or its successor) before considering Windows. I don't need software bloat and compatibility hassles in my life, and most of the software I need now has open-source equivalents or can be replaced by Web-based applications.
Peter
5 comments:
There is a petition I will need to look back up (saw it off a blog on CNN) that is asking Microshaft to extend, yet again, the 30 June death date for XP.
They ain't moving.
However, you should know (as well as everyone else) that you can "Downgrade" to XP from Vista even after the 30 June deadline. You just have to pay for Vista and then tell them to DOWNGRADE you to XP...which as I know XP is better, I find kinda funny...heh
Something is amiss. I visit your blog quite often and I use Vista. Why isn't it showing up?
I really like it. It is a lot more user friendly than my old computer with XP and it solves any stability problems (which are few)on its own.
The only issue I have is it can get buggy after resuming from sleep mode. I don't use that mode often, so not a problem for me.
I had reservations when I bought the computer and considered loading a copy of XP pro on it when the computer was brand new. My wife convinced me to give the preloaded Vista a shot so I did.
I like it.
When I bought my computer for school, they specifically said that Vista was not compatible with some of the software we'd need and that they would not support it if we bought it anyway. Not having used it myself, I can't really comment beyond letting it run a while before trying it. Let them work out some bugs first.
By the way, service pack 1 was just released for Vista. It freed up 10 GB on my hard drive. That's counter intuitive, but they must have streamlined the hell out of it.
Wait...I'm on Ubuntu (Firefox 3.05beta) and I check your block almost daily :). So if it's not reporting Linux users, something is wrong with the reporting tool...
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