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Windows 7 already used on 1% of PCs

By Barry Collins

Posted on 1 Sep 2009 at 18:04

Windows 7 is already installed on more than 1% of the world's PCs, even though it hasn't been officially launched.

The figures come from net metrics company NetApplications, which shows that the forthcoming Windows OS broke through the 1% barrier for the first time in August.

It's already the world's fourth most popular operating system behind Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X 10.5.

Microsoft's decision to open the Windows 7 beta to anyone who wanted it has clearly paid dividends for the software giant. On the assumption that the majority go on to purchase the software, the company will already have tens of millions of customers hooked before the October launch.

Browser battle

The latest NetApplications stats aren't all good news for Microsoft, however. Internet Explorer's demise appears to be accelerating despite the release of the much improved Internet Explorer 8.

The various versions of Internet Explorer commanded 66.97% of the browser market in August, down from 67.68% in July and more than 8% down on the same month last year.

Firefox, by comparison, continues to climb steadily. It claimed 22.98% of the market in August, a marginal improvement on July, and a 3.8% increase since last August.

Safari's market share remained absolutely flat at 4.07% in August, while Google's Chrome edged up to 2.84% of the market.

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User comments

1% is exactly how many?

So only 1% are 'brave?' enough to have it installed on a test machine - 'cos they're just using the beta - they must be the techies? The recession is not exactly over and most IT departments are not even thinking of upgrading at this moment - though I'm sure the marketing pushers are pushing it so hard that sooner or later (around March next year) people will give in and buy the damn thing just to stop the harassment from M$ sales reps bombarding them relentlessly one way or another.

Still only 1% - I cant believe there are so few techies that are willing to give it a go - though it does go to show that their departments are not taking it too seriously.
XP will stay a lot longer.

M$ should think of re-releasing XP as XP Gold - they'd make more money for sure.

By nicomo on 1 Sep 2009

Do your research nicomo!

1% is up to 12,211,797 (over 12 million) which is based on a total user base of 1,221,179,721 (over 1 billion) - source gartners (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8224517.stm
). So thats a huge amount of users and not just "techies"...

By edit_nibbles_dot_bas on 1 Sep 2009

You sound like a bitter applehead, ashamed that this beta OS is already on its way to surpassing the mighty OSX.

Not sure why you'd expect IT departments to install a beta OS en masse, that's just moronic conjecture.

By Phoomeister on 2 Sep 2009

Who wouldn't?

I'm running the RC on two PC's and I've pre-ordered the full version for my main PC.
Anything to take the taste of Vista out of my mouth.
Even my wife says "Why does Vista spend so much time starting up?" as superfetch does its "waste your memory" disk-grinding thing...

On the business side, we still use XP on some machines, but Vista 64 on the rest. Because we use Virtual PC's for everything, we need loads of RAM, so 64bit is needed and XP 64 is too poorly supported.
I expect to have ALL office machines running Windows 7 by Christmas.

By cheysuli on 2 Sep 2009

Prices

Still not got the prices sorted out though have they! Upgrade £10 more expensive than standalone on amazon?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_4_4?url=search
-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=windows+7+upgrade&spre
fix=wind

By MrPink99 on 2 Sep 2009

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