So, W10 now has a higher market share than XP. Really? Do you trust NetMarketShare’s numbers? They say IE is still beating all other browsers easily. When was the last time YOU used IE?

The Federal Government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP) gives different numbers than NMS. They count differently, though. DAP lumps mobile and desktop together. NMS separates the two.

So, NMS says W7 – 52.5% (desktop), W10 – 11.5%, and XP – 11.4%. W8.x – 10.4%. Hard to swallow, because by their numbers, XP actually increased last month. Check it out:

DAP says W7 – 33.9%, W10 – 8.8%, W8.x – 7.7% and XP – 1.8%, iOS – 18.3% and Android – 17.2%.

So, Apple is really in second place when you look at overall devices.

NMS to me is less reliable. Why? Look at the browser stats when you go to their website.

So, W7 is still top dog. And XP is dying out…thank goodness.

Why does all this matter? Because MS is marketing W10 hard. Why? Because it’s a PITA to maintain all the OSs and to update them the way they’ve been doing. Easier and cheaper to go cloud and change over to a subscription model…and don’t think for a minute it’ll be free forever. It most definitely will not. W7 is already not being supported for new SkyLake CPUs. Why? Because they want W10 on all the new machines. Period. They tell you that’s because W10’s new architecture makes it harder to violate and hack. Uh huh.

So, from the stats it looks like W10 is catching on and eating away at W7’s market share. Is that because W10 is so incredible? Maybe it’s because of the “aggressive marketing” MS has been doing with W10? Maybe because of the tricky GWX notifications making it seem you have to update to W10? Maybe it’s because of the “very few, accidental downloads”?

OK…so let’s say W10 is more secure than W7. It’s possible. BUT, the updating mechanism (as I’ve written before) is a time bomb. Remember Murphy’s Law. It’s inexorable: One of these times, an update is going to seriously screw up.

When that happens, you’d better have a second machine on a different OS to read how to fix your W10 machine…and that’s just ridiculous. Really. Also, What are you going to do when MS charges you $10/month to use your machine? Me? I’ll be doing Linux. Hey Hank, wanna start teaching me Linux?

Source:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3032976/microsoft-windows/there-s-something-fishy-about-those-windows-10-market-share-numbers.html