Windows 7's market share climbed almost 40% in the week following its release, according to research outfit Net Applications. During the week after October 22, market share of Microsoft's latest operating system jumped more than 39% from 1.91% to an average of 2.66%. That growth doesn’t appear to be slowing either, rising another 82% to a peak share of 3.48% on October 31. For the entire month, Windows 7 finished with a market share of 2.15%, a 41% increase over the 1.52% for September.

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After Vista, and many XP users (An OS that had a lot more than 10 years), it was just about time Microsoft released a good OS as W7.

Other than a lot of hard disk space difference the requirements are pretty standard to cheap and actual computers, even netbooks with stock ram (1gb) can run it (I know, I'm using it =) ).

That's awesome - I really hope I'll feel comfortable with W7. On my machine (X2 4000+ Brisbane@2.4GHz/2GB ram) Vista works like a charm, but it simply doesn't feel as natural as Windows XP. With XP, it's just like lying in your small pool in the backyard, and Vista feels like taking a bath in a small bath tube with your socks on...

It's good to finally see some positive news about a Microsoft OS. With all the Vista bashing that has been going on 3 years now I am sure Redmond is breathing a sigh of relief. I am moving to Win 7 from Vista Ultimate in December after I purchase my new 5850 video card.

I'm using 7 and I love it! It really is what Vista should have been.

Windows 7 is exactly what people to need to regain their faith in microsoft. However the problem is that many people lost their faith with vista and are still using xp. The biggest downside to this in my eyes is that you have to wipe your hard drive and lose all your data, unlike a simple Vista upgrade. Hopefully 7 only gets better as time passes with updates and the like.

Well seems , that Windows 7 is gaining ground . That's good personally to me . I always have friends that have some problem with Vista or XP , and always ask me to fix it :D. But in overall , Windows 7 will continue to grow thankfully. Its time for a change :) . But i always have something in my head that Microsoft will find some way to screw up again, hope that dosen't happen though :/ .

Interestingly, upgrading to Windows 7 freed up about 8GB from my existing Vista installation.

Well, considering that 7 is the, general use, best OS out right now I'd say it deserves it. Like others have said, it really is what Vista could have, and should have been.

Not surprising i'm sure Windows 7 will continue to expand as businesses are picking it up.

I have to say, that Microsoft's marketing for Windows 7 is pretty damn good at the moment. This combined with a OS that is actually good and the share climbs are no surprise. I think I haven't heard one bad word about Win 7 so far.

I rekon this probably has a lot to do with the all the marketing deals they are offering, the student deal (£40) and they windows party thing (free ultimate). Especially since most students were shifting to apple.

I really like windows 7, the disk space and memory usage (though I still have many of the options turned on) are a bit of an issue, though my PC is pretty dated now...Still, lots of nice features, really liking the libraries, even though most of them link to single folders, it gives me shortcuts while keeping my desktop nice and tidy.

I beg to differ:
Hosting your Windows 7 Party

Ok yes, that's cheesy, but it's building up a fuss and getting the word out there, and it seems to have worked.

I put Windows 7 on a 2 yr old computer, I checked Device Manager and not one device needed drivers. My printer didn't even need drivers. Windows 7 looks a nice as Vista, runs quick as XP and has better security than both. UAC isn't even a problem now. And the new tweaks here and there really add up. Some of them have me wondering how I've lived this long without them. Like being able to drag to a position in the timeline while watching a video or a recorded TV show - that just seems like a no brain'er, but Vista couldn't do that.

About the only complaint that I have for Win 7 is the default wall papers are just "Meh." Seriously, there's that little to complain about. Win 7 just rocks!

Sorry to derail, but it just annoys me when people down-play Vista the way they do. I don't mean to burst your bubbles, but Vista was a very good OS. The problem it faced was that the components you needed to be able to run it well enough were more towards the higher end of the spectrum.

The only reason that Windows 7 is receiving as good a reception as it is now is because the standards for PCs have changed. Instead of most people running single-core computers, and a gig or two of RAM, now people are running dual cores and several gigs of DDR2 800 and above. Did you forget? Those were the requirements Vista had. They just released Vista too soon.

Windows 7 pretty much IS Vista. Again, sorry to burst your bubble. But the truth is the truth. 7 is Vista just SLIGHTLY tweaked. Not even by much. The interfaces are practically the same, the inner workings are mostly the same. The system requirements are virtually the same just minimized a little bit.

Had Vista been released a little bit later on.......say...now?...then it would be doing just as well as 7 is. I personally liked both operating systems. I'm running 7 at the moment because it's where the market is moving and I wanted to try it for myself. It's good to see their stock going up too I suppose. There's really only one thing that's been said that I agree with. And that is that 7 rocks.

Their driver support isn't quite yet what it should be though in terms of modern components. For instance, my Creative SoundBlaster Audigy SE soundcard found very little in the way of support from Windows 7. I had to go online to find a work-around that had been made to get the OS to play nice with it. I still experience problems with it despite the work-around. In many cases I have to, strangely, switch from 7.1 to 2.1 or to Headphones settings in order for things to sound best.

Vista may have come out to soon but not for the people waiting for a 64 bit OS. I did like Vista but I love W7. Any good numbers W7 puts up won't surprize me.

Alot people see success in Win 7 becuase they actually did it right and they know people(XP, Vista) users are going to go out and buy themselves a copy to. I persoanlly have Win 7 and say it feels alot lighter and less cluttered than vista, def upgrade!

Windows 7 is great. At this rate, it'll overtake the Mac's market share in a couple of more weeks.

Im using it and i love it. fast and looks good