How Many People Still Use Vista?

Barbara from New Jersey writes:

How many still have horrible VISTA as an operating system?  What’s the gossip on it?

Barbara, I may be the only person on the planet who didn’t think Vista was so bad.  According to NetMarketShare, Vista is currently found on 3.07% of PCs accessing the Internet. It’s still more popular than Linux systems, which combined account for 1.64% of the market.

Surprisingly, considering all of the buzz surrounding Mac computers, they account for just a little more than 6% of  desktop and laptop users.  The reigning champ is Windows 7 with 52.71% of systems followed by the unsafe to use Windows XP at just under 24% and Windows 8 & 8.1 systems at just over 12%.

Part of the reason Vista was unpopular was that it was such a radical departure from Windows XP. Microsoft quickly moved to tweak Vista and came up with Windows 7, which is pretty well-liked. Windows 8 and 8.1 are shaping up to be the Windows Vista of this decade.  The system was a radical departure from Windows 7 and a lot of people hate it, even though I contend that it a very good operating system.

Now Microsoft is trying to blend the best features of 8.1 and 7 together in Windows 10. If Microsoft is lucky, Windows 10 will turn out to be as popular as Windows 7. I call it the Deborah Norville Effect. If you aren’t familiar with Deborah Norville, many years ago Jane Pauley was an extremely popular host on the Today show. When NBC decided it was time to show Jane the door, they replaced her with a younger co-host Deborah Norville who was extremely unpopular and received terrible press. Not so much because she was horrible at her job, but she just wasn’t what people were used to.  NBC pushed Norville out after a short time and replaced her with the extremely popular Katie Couric.

I don’t know if Windows 10 will be a perky success like Couric, but I have been exploring the trial version of the system and it looks pretty good so far.

~ Cynthia