Windows XP usage finally falls below 50% mark

At the end of July 2011, Microsoft can say that Windows XP finally fell below the 50 percent mark. In other words, Redmond's decade-old operating system is now used by…

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How about some numbers about how quickly the mobile market is going in comparison to the world OS market, so we can get an idea of relative vs. absolute growth? Otherwise, saying things like "Unsurprisingly, mobile operating systems gained share" tells us nothing, at best, and implies mobile growth at the expense of desktop growth when such is not the case, at worst.

Well... Finally, Windows 8 will be called "Windows XP2"

WOW! Windows XP has enough market share for other 10 years.

I replaced my Windows 7 netbook with an Android tablet so it's happening...

Still using XP on a few machines... I've fully adopted Windows 7 on most though.

Most people I know who have bought a NEW computer (ie: a windows 7 license) have upgraded back to Windows XP SP2 (SP3 is MS sabotage). Since you can't buy new laptops without Win7/vista, one just 'takes the one given' and reinstalls.
Look at the benchmarks XP sp2 is FASTER, the only drawback is it doesn't support > 4gb of ram... Someone should fix that issue in a SP2a update . .

32 bit XP will never support > 4 GB of RAM. As for speed, my Windows 7 PC is quite speedy. While XP on the same hardware might be faster in some respects Windows 7 is a far superior OS. As for SP3 being sabotage I think your tinfoil hat fell off.

The only reason 32-bit Windows XP and above dont support >4Gb is a software restriction from MS. Have a look at Windows 2000 - 32-Bit Windows 2000 Pro with PAE enabled can access well over 4Gb RAM.

You can of source simply edit the kernel binaries to remove the restriction ;-)

I would love to install win 7 on my old laptop. Unfortunately, I can't. It does not support the chipset and graphic drivers.

Hahaha, take that Windows XP phobics.

I`m installing two new systems with XP Pro as we speak, I don`t want to but the customer REFUSES to get with the times, as do most of them sadly.
They want something instantly familiar, and oddly most seem to think that Windows 7 is too different for them to understand.

I do push 7 on them as much as I can, fighting the good fight.

I urge users to upgrade to Windows 7, because they eventually will have to anyway. Their computer running old faithful (cough) windows XP will give out eventually, and you're not going to run your new quad core on XP are you?

As for the >4GB on XP. I ran windows XP 64-bit for quite a while (certainty through the Vista age). As you can guess the 64-bit windows XP had support for over 4GB RAM, so if you're looking for a way around windows 7. The support (driver wise) is not bad either, but you do feel "special".

Accessing more than 4GB RAM with a 32-bit OS is possible with PAE support, but:

1 -- gives 64-bit addresses to the drivers, so you need different (often unavailable) drivers.
2 -- slows your system down (yes, worse than just running a 64-bit OS)

And I'm sorry, if you are running SP2, you're asking to be a part of a botnet. That tinfoil hat won't protect you from the internet, only good luck will

If you want to run an old OS, at least be smart enough to acknowledge that there might be a reason newer ones come out and updates are made (besides the obvious money-making).

Fighting the good fight? - surly that would be "Don't use Windows, use Linux or Mac"

Although i still like XP, I think Windows 7 deserves its place now.

"Windows in general is slowly slipping as well: between June and July, it fell 0.63 percentage points (from 88.29 percent to 88.76 percent)"

That looks like a gain to me.

I am using windows xp professional, I have athlon ii x4 645 (quad core), sapphire radeon hd 6850 and I see no reason to use windows 7 because my pc is running everything very very well

What? It is still Windows XP > 7, and it'll probably stay like that in the next 5 years or so.

"Windows in general is slowly slipping as well: between June and July, it fell 0.63 percentage points (from 88.29 percent to 88.76 percent)"

Looks like a typo. According to the graphic, the market share for July was 87.66%, not 88.76%. This would be drop of 0.63 percentage points from 88.29%.