Windows XP Holding On As Dominant OS

From the article: "...Microsoft has been aggressively encouraging users and businesses alike to switch from XP to Windows 7..."

Tell that to my software / hardware suppliers. Many aren't bothering with upgrades that will work with Windows 7. Those few which do are *still* buggy - forcing us to stick with the older XP versions, often at significant inconvenience.

yes, then after your switch, MS will push for you to swicth to Windows 8.

who got burned with windows 98, that when something works not to mess with it.

To be fair, windows 8 has a lot of good software implementations "under the hood" which allegedly are improving boot times, memory/CPU usage, and overall efficiency. Of course, this news comes from benchmarks and news articles provided by Microsoft, so who can be sure whether they're true or not in real life applications.

What has me wary is the little trend Microsoft has going:

Windows95 - Bad

Windows98 - Good!

WindowsMe - Bad...

WindowsXP - Great!

Windows Vista - No.. Why..? Bad.

Windows 7 - Also, great!

Windows 8 - ... who knows.

I forgot about 95.

98 had the maxmium memory issues.

The point is, MS would have a new release that is basically beta tested by the consumer...... after the release

I have 7, I like it, same with XP, I also didn't have any issues with 2000.

How much money does Bill Gates need?

The whole gaming mentality drives this self-perpetuating market and it is not necessary.

Kids with unlimited (Mom and Pop's) money will continue to buy new capacity for no logical reason except they've mastered the last batch of games and are looking for more thrills, which means a new operating system, too.

I'm being pulled along by the tide of "development" for development's sake, not because I need a faster computer.

I think I'm confused here. If someone was interested in gaming, why would they strongly want to upgrade? Even the latest popular games (not to me, I think they're awful) Call of Duty/Battlefield 3 can run on XP/Vista/7. If anything, upgrading your OS is a nuisance to people that use their PCs explicitly for gaming since a great deal of older (and in my opinion, better) games can't be run on anything more advanced than XP.

The real advantages to 7 (and presumably 8), in my opinion, would be the better technology to take advantage of the power of the processor, and more efficiently handle and utilize the memory. Off the top of my head, I'd say the ones that should upgrade more readily would be primarily people interested in coding (and consequently dealing with compiling), running simulations (though this can be argued that a lot of software still requires an older OS), or running a server more smoothly (could handle more concurrent users).

By the time i have found out how to operate a system they bring out a new one. Right now, W7 has me locked out. My hub needs a code to link it but 7 doesn't offer me the chance make that link. It tries to go right in and gets locked out.

3 out 4 of my PCs run XP...this laptop came with Vista...I use it for very minor stuff like e-mail, web search etc. All the "Important" stuff is run on XP. My next system, I will custom build and have LINUX as the primary boot OS.

I'm still running XP. Although Windows 7 is getting great reviews, until I can afford to install 7 professional, I'll be using XP. That's because professional has the ability to run in XP mode, which a lot of the software I run requires.