Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Saturday October 08 2016, @07:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the numbers-to-argue-about dept.

El Reg reports

Microsoft may have used its Ignite conference to trumpet Windows 10 now running on 400 million devices, but the operating system's market share went backwards in September according to two of three traffic-watchers we track each month.

StatCounter Global Stats has Windows 10 at 24.42 per cent desktop OS market share for September, down just .01 per cent from its August share. Netmarketshare recorded a sharper dip, from August's 22.99 per cent to a September reading of 22.53 per cent.

[...] StatCounter has recently recorded a surge in "Unknown" desktop operating systems, [...] suggesting tracking and/or methodological issues.

We therefore checked out another useful source of data, [USA.gov]. When we crunched those numbers, we found Windows 10 accounted for 31.98 per cent of visits to US government sites in August and 32.48 per cent in September, which hardly suggests Microsoft's latest OS is rocketing up the charts.

[...] Our analysis of this data last month suggested Windows 10 has done very well at home, but is yet to crack the business market.

[Continues...]

Some things that occurred to me (with most being mentioned in the comments there):

  • Windows 10 is no longer gratis and folks find another instance of payware undesirable
  • With the forced upgrades no longer happening, reverting to the desired earlier version will finally not be auto-overwritten (Fingers crossed for luck)
  • Many enterprises haven't even allowed upgrades to Windows 8
  • More folks have learned how to spoof the user agent, and as such, the data is skewed toward the less-informed
  • NetMarketShare, et al. use JavaScript to gather their numbers and more folks are blocking JavaScript, again, skewing toward the less-informed
  • Folks have discovered that Free Software can accomplish the tasks that they do (without a EULA which allows a vendor free rein over their systems)

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Saturday October 08 2016, @10:18PM

    by Francis (5544) on Saturday October 08 2016, @10:18PM (#411849)

    Even at $0 and no effort put into getting the update it was still too expensive and too much work to justify. I tried it for a few days, saw it was complete garbage and upgraded back to 7 for my Windows install.

    It's amazing to me that people are still willing to give MS money for such incompetently designed products.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Sunday October 09 2016, @01:09AM

    by Marand (1081) on Sunday October 09 2016, @01:09AM (#411882) Journal

    I would have gone back to 7 on that partition if I'd been able to but between 7 being half busted already, and then W10 destroying my Windows partition during the update process, I ended up stuck. Heh. Considering how rarely I use it, though, it's mostly irrelevant.

    In fairness to MS, there actually is some good to Windows 10. I noticed MS actually got around to fixing some dumb shit that I found annoying in 7, such as some problems with font rendering, multiple displays, a dumb visual glitch with one of their mouse cursor icon sets, etc. I didn't even mind the style of the W10 start menu, though I know some people dislike it.

    Too bad they fucked it up with the GWX harassment, the telemetry, the broken-as-fuck update process, lack of control over updates, lack of control over installed applications, tendency to add shit onto your system without asking, advertisements in the notification bar, advertisements replacing the lock screen, and so on.... They did a good job of making me feel smug about deciding years ago to use Linux as my primary OS.