Articles about Windows 7

While NetMarketShare’s monthly usage share figures show there to still be a fairly significant gap between Windows 7 and Windows 10 (in the older OS’s favor), rival analyst firm StatCounter has long reported the battle for the top spot to be much, much tighter.

So close is the race in fact, that in October it looked as if Windows 10 would easily pass Windows 7 at some point in the following month. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen, although the gap did narrow. It seemed all but guaranteed that Windows 10 would claim pole position in December, but incredibly it didn’t.

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NetMarketShare reports on the state of the desktop operating system market on the first day of each month, and it has long shown Windows 10 to be lagging well behind Windows 7. However, tweaks to how the analyst firm records these numbers means the gap has closed recently.

The latest figures, for the final month of 2017, show Windows 10 growing and Windows 7 declining, but the difference in usage share hasn’t altered by much.

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Despite Microsoft's aggressive pushing of Windows 10, Windows 7 remains staggeringly popular. A growing number of users are currently reporting an issue with Windows Update at the moment  -- specifically error 80248015.

The full error message reads: "Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer." Needless to say, a simple restart is not enough to fix the problem, although a workaround has been discovered that solves the issue for some people.

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While Windows 10 still lags behind Windows 7 in terms of market share, there’s one section of user that has embraced the new operating system since day one -- gamers. That’s no surprise of course, as they like to run the latest and greatest hardware and software.

Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows the state of things from the gamers’ perspective, has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until last month when -- to the surprise of many -- Windows 7 took over.

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Each month, analyst firm NetMarketShare releases numbers showing the state of the desktop operating system market, and we report on it.

This month, it showed the gap between Windows 10 and Windows 7 narrowing significantly (although the two operating systems aren’t quite as close as shown by StatCounter’s figures). That’s not the only change though -- the historical figures of the two operating systems have been adjusted as well, so what’s the story?

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When StatCounter released its operating system usage share figures last month it showed the gap between Windows 7 and Windows 10 had narrowed significantly.

It looked, based on that data, as if the new operating system would overtake the old one during November, but surprisingly that didn’t happen.

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According to the latest figures from NetMarketShare, Windows 10 is edging closer to Windows 7’s usage share, but it still has a way to go until it overtakes it.

In October, Windows 10 saw its slowest growth in months, posting a gain of just 0.17 percentage points. In November, however, it’s a very different picture.

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Microsoft has -- for the moment at least -- stopped updating its official Windows market share page, which means if you want to see how well the various flavors of Windows are doing, you have three options. StatCounter’s latest update shows Windows 10 closing in on Windows 7, while NetMarketShare’s figures have the new OS still a long way off reaching that milestone.

The third option is Steam’s monthly user survey, which shows the state of things from the gamers’ perspective. Usually Windows 10 is by far the most popular OS but in October its share tumbled, while Windows 7’s shot up. A mistake surely? But no, it seems to be correct.

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We all know that Microsoft’s focus is on Windows 10. The software giant wants users to upgrade to its new operating system, and has regularly spoken about how that OS keeps users safe.

However, according to Google Project Zero researcher Mateusz Jurczyk, by focusing on patching Windows 10, and not applying the same fixes to Windows 7 and 8.x, Microsoft is actually putting users of those two older operating systems at risk.

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Each month, NetMarketShare reports on the state of the desktop operating system market. Its numbers are often interesting, and occasionally initially wrong (this month, for example, they showed a sizeable growth for Linux, before being corrected).

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is due to begin rolling out this month (even though over a third of users still don’t have the Creators Update), and Microsoft will be hoping this big new feature release will give its operating system a major boost. But how is Windows 10 doing at the moment, and when will it finally overtake Windows 7?  Read on to find out.

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According to NetMarketShare, in July Windows 10 grew its usage share by 0.83 percentage points -- its largest increase in three months. (This, remember, is an OS that only managed to gain a grand total of five percent share in an entire year).

With a new major update to the operating system right around the corner, you might expect Windows 10 to have grown its share by a similar figure in August, but no. It's back to the glacial growth we usually see for the new OS.

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Last month I reported how, according to NetMarketShare’s figures, Windows 10 had managed to grow its usage share by just 5 percentage points in an entire year. That's a shocking state of affairs for a relatively new -- and regularly updated -- operating system, especially given that Windows 7 enjoyed a 2 percentage overall increase in the same time frame.

In July, perhaps buoyed by the news that the Windows 10 Creators Update was finally going to be offered to (nearly) all, Windows 10 posted its largest usage increase for three months, although still nothing for Microsoft to get excited about.

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According to NetMarketShare’s figures, Windows 10’s share of the desktop operating system market remains pretty uninspiring, with growth much slower than you’d expect.

In fact in a year, the new OS has grown by just over 5 percent. In comparison, Windows 7 grew by 2 percent in the same time frame.

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When Microsoft started the roll out of Windows 10 Creators Update on April 11, it seemed likely the new OS would see a boost in its market share as a result. Indeed, April’s usage figures from NetMarketShare suggested that was the case, with Windows 10’s share growing by a decent amount for the first time in months.

But the Creators Update roll out has been more of a dribble out so far, with only 15.2 percent of US Windows 10 users running it, and the boost that the operating system enjoyed in April hasn’t continued in May.

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Users of older versions of Windows aren’t having the best time of it lately. Last week it was discovered that over 98 percent of those affected by the WannaCry ransomware were running Windows 7, and now a new bug has been found which can slow down and crash systems running that OS and Windows 8.1.

The new bug is trivially easy to exploit, making just browsing the web potentially hazardous, and there’s currently no fix available.

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