Some interesting OS stats
Monday, November 26, 2001 by JcRabbit | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
In the last month we at Winstep have noticed a steep increment in the number of NT technology users (NT/2000/XP) vs Win9x users (I think Brad will be able to vouch for this too).
Not long ago only about 15-20% of users were running NT or Win 2000. With the release of XP, this percentage has climbed up to 40% (vs 46% of Win9x users - the remaining 14% are either unknown or using a non-Windows OS).
This is very good news - it means that most Windows users out there are quickly leaving the Win9x code base for the rock solid NT code base (therefore leaving behind resource and instability problems for good!).
For us, who develop Windows customization solutions, this is even better news.
Because of the graphical nature of our programs, it was very easy to run out of resources under Win9x if you loaded a lot of skinnable applications at the same time (and then it would be the applications themselves that got blamed, not the OS and its limitations). The unification of Windows into a single, stable, code base like XP also makes our life easier and our programs smaller - once the migration is complete, we will no longer have to support obsolete ways of doing things because the different code bases handled things quite differently.
As if by magic, our applications will apparently be a lot stable too - because external applications can no longer interfere with our programs in very subtle ways.
So, apart from the XP activation debate, I personally welcome this OS with open arms - and applaud the upcoming death of the Win9x code base. In the end this will benefit all of us - developers and users alike. Specially when users realize they don't have to reboot their OS's every 3 days anymore, just to keep their systems stable.
Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 2.80 - A user interface you can actually use!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet
Not long ago only about 15-20% of users were running NT or Win 2000. With the release of XP, this percentage has climbed up to 40% (vs 46% of Win9x users - the remaining 14% are either unknown or using a non-Windows OS).
This is very good news - it means that most Windows users out there are quickly leaving the Win9x code base for the rock solid NT code base (therefore leaving behind resource and instability problems for good!).
For us, who develop Windows customization solutions, this is even better news.
Because of the graphical nature of our programs, it was very easy to run out of resources under Win9x if you loaded a lot of skinnable applications at the same time (and then it would be the applications themselves that got blamed, not the OS and its limitations). The unification of Windows into a single, stable, code base like XP also makes our life easier and our programs smaller - once the migration is complete, we will no longer have to support obsolete ways of doing things because the different code bases handled things quite differently.
As if by magic, our applications will apparently be a lot stable too - because external applications can no longer interfere with our programs in very subtle ways.
So, apart from the XP activation debate, I personally welcome this OS with open arms - and applaud the upcoming death of the Win9x code base. In the end this will benefit all of us - developers and users alike. Specially when users realize they don't have to reboot their OS's every 3 days anymore, just to keep their systems stable.
Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 2.80 - A user interface you can actually use!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet
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MobiusCo
Reply #22 Friday, November 30, 2001 6:45 PM
Reply #22 Friday, November 30, 2001 6:45 PM
the one thing we have to look at is, that there is a giant number of computer users that are still on the win 3.x platforms. Look at the industrial, banking, medical, and etc industry. They are all in the process of moving into the 19th century with new computers, but unfortunatly the computers they are installing are mostly win 98 machines, so soon I can see a boost of win 98 machines. As the home users convert to win2k/xp, the commercial users will move to win98. It seems a lot of software the manufacturing industry uses is still not even win 95 compatible.
This is a very scary thought that the average home user is a decade above the commercial world. But yes the win2k/xp platforms will overtake the home users with the exception of people with machines that cannot handle it, and hopefully the gaming community will start to develop win2k compatible games
This is a very scary thought that the average home user is a decade above the commercial world. But yes the win2k/xp platforms will overtake the home users with the exception of people with machines that cannot handle it, and hopefully the gaming community will start to develop win2k compatible games
JcRabbit
Reply #23 Saturday, December 1, 2001 12:05 AM
Reply #23 Saturday, December 1, 2001 12:05 AM
Mobius, if you call 1.6% a giant number of users, well...
Anyway, you must surelly agree that comercial users are the last ones interested in customizing their Windows PC - so, for us, those 1.6% of users still running Win 3.x are, unfortunately, completely irrelevant.
Anyway, you must surelly agree that comercial users are the last ones interested in customizing their Windows PC - so, for us, those 1.6% of users still running Win 3.x are, unfortunately, completely irrelevant.
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Reply #21 Friday, November 30, 2001 6:36 PM
Actually, Feline, XP/Win2k users are only 6% away from becoming the majority (read the stats above), and catching up fast. Once this happens, more and more software will be developed that runs on Win2k/XP only (or has important features that only work on these two OSs). This, in turn, will accelerate the rapid decline of the Win9x codebase.
It may take years before the Win9x user base becomes meaningless, true - some people are still running Windows 3.x, after all! - but it will eventually get to a point where most applications will abandon support for Win9x. This is what happened when Win95 came out and replaced Windows 3.x.