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Posted on November 18th, 2008 by Barry Collins
10 random facts about Windows
Here are ten entirely random, but interesting, facts I learnt during my week with Microsoft at its recent Professional Developers Conference.
1. Just under a fifth of new PCs sold in the US are now running 64-bit Windows
2. 95% of Windows users change their desktop background
3. “Techy” users are twice as likely to use a solid Windows background colour (19.4% vs 8.1%)
4. 70% of Windows users have between eight and 15 windows open at any one time
5. Vista has 23% fewer Blue Screens of Death than XP Service Pack 2
6. About 30% of people customise the colour of the Vista glass
7. About 1,000 developers work on the Windows operating system – although if everyone who used Windows sent an email to a member of the development team, each inbox would be stuffed with a million mails per person
8. Only 1.5% of new Windows PCs are bought purely to browse the internet
9. 18% of application compatibility problems are caused by faulty installations
10. Windows Live accounts for 11% of all minutes spent online
13 Responses to “ 10 random facts about Windows ”
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November 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Quick question, if you have drivers for any connected hardware, is there any other reason not to have 64bit windows?
I can’t think of any.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Cost?
November 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
As far as I know many software programmes do not have 64bit versions, so if you use some of them you might have problems.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Ok, this proves that either Ms cant count or they are VERY deceiving
“Windows Live accounts for 11% of all minutes spent online “
November 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
64bit OS’s can run 32bit programs no problem.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
“10. Windows Live accounts for 11% of all minutes spent online ”
Maybe for Steve Ballmer, not the average computer user.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
What cost Matt Hall?
For the past 3 years everyone has been buying 64bit processors. The 64bit version of Windows is the same price as the 32bit version. It’s just convincing people. My next PC will be running 64bit Windows
November 18th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
3 is true for most of the techy users I know, including myself.
Probably stems from the days when having an image was painful when minimising windows and the machine took several seconds to redraw the desktop.
OS X and Linux never suffered from this problem.
Interesting fact about OS X : you can’t choose any colour for a solid background (it offers half a dozen or so presets), but if you want your own colour, you need to create a new graphics image (1 pixel by 1 pixel is fine) with the colour you want, then select that colour!
November 18th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Given than Office and Windows are MS’ two biggest products I was very surprised to see only 1,000 developers work on Windows. Given that Microsoft has 89,000 employees and so many versions of windows. – Do you mean 1,000 developers worked on Vista? Because surely the WHS, Windows 2008 Server, Azure teams (which are all windows teams) have separate teams?
November 18th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
By Windows live do they mean IM? If so, I use it all the time – through trilian and a non-MSN address.
On the 64 bit point, there are thousands of pieces of software that are perfectly functional but not 64 bit – Office 2007, for example.
9 is surely Microsoft’s fault for allowing that install method in the first place! If the system managed software installs, all the apps files went into it’s own second level directory with four folders which, when deleted removed the program entirely from the PC, there would be 17% fewer problems. The same goes for drivers. HP, we are looking at you. 175mb for a printer driver?
November 18th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
C’mon Adobe put yer 64bit boots on. Flash Player is still waaaay overdue.
Not a problem for 64bit Linux users.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Actually I think 1000 developers is a hell of a lot. In our company we have 10 and it is a nightmare getting source safe to keep us all on the right version and learning new bits that have benen put in the system. 1000 coders would scare the hell out of me
November 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Well, here we’ve 6 and it is a bit like herding cats. Personally, I like my real cat, and she’s my wallpaper.
Windows 7 though, is dreadful.