Windows 10 returns to 70% market share as Windows 11 continues to sink

[WhoCaresAnymore]

It's all of the silent add-ons that MS keeps adding that I don't want. I don't want AI, I don't want more features. I buy software to do what I want. Windows needs to be just a shell.

 

[Notmare]

How many of these are folks that installed Windows 11 onto machines that aren't supported using an installation bypass? With no testing on those, I'd imagine they might be more likely have to have a bad time and revert to their previous OS.

 

[RaXelliX]

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.
in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

Exactly. I've seen this pattern repeat time after time. And most of the people who complain have not even used or tried the new version. They parrot the things they've read on the internet and usually dont have any specific downsides to bring out.

You would think MicroSludge's marketing experts would see the handwriting on the wall. Why not take version 10, add a few simple features and call it Windows 12? Sounds like a winning application, no?

I did not know number 11 was cursed. I mean they went from 7>8>10>11. They only skipped 9 numerically because in German language 9 sounds like Nein=No.

People flocked to windows 7 and even windows 10 despite the initial frustration, but it really only took them about a year to fix many people's greviences and it to start to gain popularity.
I see a large problem with windows 11 is that windows 12 is right around the corner so many people are probably asking themselves "why bother?"

That was mainly because both 7 and 10 were perceived fixes for previous versions despite Vista SP2 being pretty solid as was 8.1 but their image was permanently tainted due to launch issues by that point. I dont remember 7 having any major problems. It was solid even in beta. 10 however was a buggy mess on launch at 2015. It took years for them to stabilize it. I finally started using it in 2019 due to my new hardware not supporting 7 properly.

It is one of the least configurable windows editions. Performance on the same hardware is worse than it's predecessor and it continually uses more resources to get the same things done.

Least configurable how? I see that all configuration options that worked on previous version still work. Performance is actually better for me than 10 and resource usage is about the same.

I will keep 2 airgapped W10 boxes for retro gaming.

Why 10 for retro gaming? Would not 7 or older make more sense for that?

Windows 7 was near perfect on launch, hell I ran the beta as production for IT to test with and it was great .. 10 did take a few rounds of patches but it was also good once direct-x 12 got a few patches ..
win11 .. has not been great and were in 18 months of that os and it still regularly makes the news for breaking games, apps, printers, vlans etc ... 11 is ... meh .. but good news I have until late 2025 to adopt it.

I have bee using 11 for nearly 12 months now and my games, apps and printer have not ceased functioning.

Extremely restrictive hardware requirements

Such as having a CPU that newer than 10 years?

Holding thumbs for 12... let's hope it is the un-fkd version of 11, like 10 was of 8, and 7 was of Vista.

7 would have not existed without Vista and 10 would have not existed without 8. As bad as those initial launches of Vista and 8 were they were stepping stones for something better. Had these not existed then we could be remembering 7 and 10 as Vista and 8.

Narratives lead a life of their own. Vista wasn't anywhere near as bad as people made it out to be, nor was Windows 7 immediately a 100% improvement. You can live with Windows 11 just fine. There aren't a whole lot of compelling reasons to bother but eh.

Indeed. I used Vista for years before 7 came out. SP1 was a massive improvement for Vista and SP2 made it very solid tho 7 was snappier even in beta.

I only use Windows 9. It's great.

Nein, nein, nein.

And every time you also see the same "useful I*iots" churning out the tired old "ur all h8ters who dislike fear of change" strawman. I benchmarked W7 vs W10 vs W11 the other day (March 2024 build on 10th Gen hardware) and whilst W10 was only 1-2% faster than W11 (and W7 vs W10 was about the same, slower in some faster in others), it was LatencyMon that was way off for W11. Highest Interrupt (lower is better) was around 182 for W7, 219 for W10 but way up at 550-800 for W11. Same with DPC. Consistently over multiple runs. Right-click menu's that were snappy to open in W7-10 were now noticeably more sluggish in W11 (because the "new" context menu hasn't replaced the old one at all, just layered on top of it with twice the amount of API calls, one of which is simply discarded if you disable it). The new W11 "Start Menu" also uses 4-5x the resources of OpenShell. Idle RAM usage dropped 300MB just renaming StartMenuExperienceHost.exe alone.
So as much as it irritates the fanboys to hear, yes there are many things that are measurably objectively worse beyond ugly UI, adverts on steroids or the usual silly "fear of change" crap that does the rounds here...

Anything under a 1000 is fine. My right click menu on 11 is snappy. Problems with the new start menu mainly center around the lack of customization options, rather than performance.

 

[yRaz]

Narratives lead a life of their own. Vista wasn't anywhere near as bad as people made it out to be, nor was Windows 7 immediately a 100% improvement. You can live with Windows 11 just fine. There aren't a whole lot of compelling reasons to bother but eh.

Vista was actually a pretty nice OS if you ran it on new hardware at the time. It was a but of a resource hog but I didn't have any problems with that. The real problem with Vista was that people were putting it on machines that weren't meant to run it. They didn't have hard minimum requirements like today where it won't let you install it on a system with out X amount of ram , Y amount of storage and Z number of cores.

Then drivers for old hardware caused instability issue, but basically anything made in the 2 years running up to Vista ran fine.

But I will always think of Windows 7 as being perfect and part of a golden age of computing. I always hated Windows XP theme but liked everything else about it.

 

[RaXelliX]

Vista was actually a pretty nice OS if you ran it on new hardware at the time. It was a but of a resource hog but I didn't have any problems with that. The real problem with Vista was that people were putting it on machines that weren't meant to run it. They didn't have hard minimum requirements like today where it won't let you install it on a system with out X amount of ram , Y amount of storage and Z number of cores.

Then drivers for old hardware caused instability issue, but basically anything made in the 2 years running up to Vista ran fine.

But I will always think of Windows 7 as being perfect and part of a golden age of computing. I always hated Windows XP theme but liked everything else about it.

Same here. I had pretty powerful hardware at the time. Most people had at best 512MB of RAM, single core CPU and anemic Intel integrated graphics back then. I had 2GB of RAM, dual-core Athlon X2 plus a high end 7900GTX 512MB GPU [$499 MSRP). So it obviously ran very well on my machine and I really like the UI.

I too hated XP's default theme. It looked like a kids toy to me. Win 7 was my longest used OS clocking in at roughly ten years. Win 10 is the second longest at four years. Others are roughly two years. Win11 currently one year.

 

[zulu53]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

Your point is up for discussion. Since through successive versions MS is changing and "forcing" its WAAS option with the lure of "ad-free" vs the standalone "ad" version the whole reasons for upgrading/downgrading are changing too - so looking at what happened in the past will not be a predictor of what happens in the future.

 

[zulu53]

It's all of the silent add-ons that MS keeps adding that I don't want. I don't want AI, I don't want more features. I buy software to do what I want. Windows needs to be just a shell.

These add-ons are not features, they exist purely to manipulate the business model - they are intended to bind the user to the OS like a pretty dress on a model and propagate the business model of WAAS. Same with the upcoming ads on the start screen - they are only there to set up to drive users to the "ad-free" WAAS model compared to "ad" standalone model. At some point their intent is to drop the standalone model completely with the justification that the model is not bringing in enough ad revenue. This is "how to run a monopoly" 101 at any business school.

 

[zulu53]

Exactly. I've seen this pattern repeat time after time. And most of the people who complain have not even used or tried the new version. They parrot the things they've read on the internet and usually dont have any specific downsides to bring out.

I did not know number 11 was cursed. I mean they went from 7>8>10>11. They only skipped 9 numerically because in German language 9 sounds like Nein=No.

That was mainly because both 7 and 10 were perceived fixes for previous versions despite Vista SP2 being pretty solid as was 8.1 but their image was permanently tainted due to launch issues by that point. I dont remember 7 having any major problems. It was solid even in beta. 10 however was a buggy mess on launch at 2015. It took years for them to stabilize it. I finally started using it in 2019 due to my new hardware not supporting 7 properly.

Least configurable how? I see that all configuration options that worked on previous version still work. Performance is actually better for me than 10 and resource usage is about the same.

Why 10 for retro gaming? Would not 7 or older make more sense for that?

I have bee using 11 for nearly 12 months now and my games, apps and printer have not ceased functioning.

Such as having a CPU that newer than 10 years?

7 would have not existed without Vista and 10 would have not existed without 8. As bad as those initial launches of Vista and 8 were they were stepping stones for something better. Had these not existed then we could be remembering 7 and 10 as Vista and 8.

Indeed. I used Vista for years before 7 came out. SP1 was a massive improvement for Vista and SP2 made it very solid tho 7 was snappier even in beta.

Nein, nein, nein.

Anything under a 1000 is fine. My right click menu on 11 is snappy. Problems with the new start menu mainly center around the lack of customization options, rather than performance.

I think that you are missing the point - windows 11 is "snappy" only because you are using new hardware. The point is that the code of Windows 11 is far less efficient than previous versions since MS coders just add layers to pre-existing code - what the tests show. The difficulty for users when coders do this is that every layer puts more stress on the layers beneath leading to more bugs - bugs that the IT departments for users have to deal with NOT the MS coders. In the BG era MS at least tried to address this problem by "re-doing the code" for WIN NT; though they did not get as far as many of many of the employees wanted to and many of coding issues from the DOS layer still existed without being fixed. Steve Gibson - an expert and efficient coder of the time was very very critical of the competency of the MS coders of the time. If anything however, the MS coders of today are even more incompetent and MS only gets though with by "brute forcing" the code of Win 11 with 1000 coders vs what could be achived with 10 semi-competant coders of the past.

 

[DAOWAce]

My father's laptop force updated to Windows 11.

He asked me to look at his computer because he said the shutdown button was gone and couldn't figure out how to do it.

M$ was supposed to be making this easier for normies, and they only do the opposite while at the same time punching power users in the face.

If we could go back to the days of XP or even Vista (yes Vista, not 7), I'd be happy.

 

[zulu53]

How many of these are folks that installed Windows 11 onto machines that aren't supported using an installation bypass? With no testing on those, I'd imagine they might be more likely have to have a bad time and revert to their previous OS.

Or upgrade their hardware - which was the point of the embedded code: purely included in Windows 11 to "force" users to buy new hardware without technical benefit. You can see it as well with the complete "scare tactic" used - security. Never mind that the security of the intel cpu's had been dealt with under previous versions of Windows.

 

[zulu53]

Actually the most disappointing thing to me about the whole "There will be no Windows after Win 10" to the Win 11 era is the fact that many technical writers in many of the supposedly best publications (like Techspot and PCMag, PCWorld etc) have been totally corrupted by MS and effectively become "shills" for MS. They wax eloquent about the "flash" of Win 11 but say nothing about the lack of "dash"; while at the same time stating that they are using their technical expertise to represent the users. They are not - they are just (contracted?) members of the MS Marketing Department. Hopefully the trend highlighted in the headline will continue: will Win 11 decline signal the start of the end of the MS monopoly rather than the anti-trust laws?

 

[MaXtor]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

True, but with the direction Microsoft is headed; I think gradually more tech savvy people will stop bending over and accepting "the future" and just switch to Linux.

 

[amghwk]

**Linux user munching popcorns while watching with amusement over Windows users fretting out**

Seriously, though, I do have Windows 11 installed (upgraded from Win10) in one of my drives in my PC and in one partition in my laptop. I don't boot to Windows often though. Just once in a month, to keep it up to date.

I don't know...don't notice anything much different from Windows 10 and 11, other than Microsoft's blatant copying of MacOS's centre aligned launcher icons, as default in Win11. Both are equally forgettable though. Yawn inducing. Not a fan of forced upgrades and artificial limiting of capabilities to run future applications and games, just so that they can keep selling newer version of their OS.

My favorites are still Windows XP, and Windows 7. I also like Windows 95 and 98, mainly because of nostalgia, when I had the shiny new Pentium 133 with CD-ROM drive and installed Windows 9x in that machine.

Now, I mostly use Linux and play games in Linux using either WINE or Steam or Heroic Game Launcher with Proton.

There are some games and apps that have difficulty to run under WINE without a lot of workarounds, and hence still keeping Windows for these.

I like the extreme speed and security in Linux.

 

[Squid Surprise]

True, but with the direction Microsoft is headed; I think gradually more tech savvy people will stop bending over and accepting "the future" and just switch to Linux.

Alas, while that would be great, the average person tends to be getting dumber, not smarter… Windows will be king for the foreseeable future…

 

[toooooot]

Free market idea for MS: release a paid downgrade that seamlessly rolls back to Windows 10 without losing apps and settings. A lot of people would gladly, well maybe not gladly, but pay for it.

 

[user478318]

**Linux user munching popcorns while watching with amusement over Windows users fretting out**

Seriously, though, I do have Windows 11 installed (upgraded from Win10) in one of my drives in my PC and in one partition in my laptop. I don't boot to Windows often though. Just once in a month, to keep it up to date.

I don't know...don't notice anything much different from Windows 10 and 11, other than Microsoft's blatant copying of MacOS's centre aligned launcher icons, as default in Win11. Both are equally forgettable though. Yawn inducing. Not a fan of forced upgrades and artificial limiting of capabilities to run future applications and games, just so that they can keep selling newer version of their OS.

My favorites are still Windows XP, and Windows 7. I also like Windows 95 and 98, mainly because of nostalgia, when I had the shiny new Pentium 133 with CD-ROM drive and installed Windows 9x in that machine.

Now, I mostly use Linux and play games in Linux using either WINE or Steam or Heroic Game Launcher with Proton.

There are some games and apps that have difficulty to run under WINE without a lot of workarounds, and hence still keeping Windows for these.

I like the extreme speed and security in Linux.

What security of linux!? It's a Swiss cheese!!

Heck even the built in firewall is disabled by default!!

By using Wine you doomed yourself, opening up to all windows exploits, do linux users know the heck they doing?

 

[amghwk]

What security of linux!? It's a Swiss cheese!!

Heck even the built in firewall is disabled by default!!

By using Wine you doomed yourself, opening up to all windows exploits, do linux users know the heck they doing?

**Slow claps**

Really??

**Continues munching**

 

[Jerry in WA]

Most of our PCs are running 11 since it's release and it's fine. I remember Windows Millenium (shudders), Windows Vista and Windows 8; Those had pretty significant growing pains upon release. Windows 11 is a complete dream by comparison. There are things I like better about 10 but there are also things I miss from 11 when I use 10.

 

[user478318]

Most of our PCs are running 11 since it's release and it's fine. I remember Windows Millenium (shudders), Windows Vista and Windows 8; Those had pretty significant growing pains upon release. Windows 11 is a complete dream by comparison. There are things I like better about 10 but there are also things I miss from 11 when I use 10.

What I've been saying the whole time, there have been bad Windows releases in the past, but 11 is not one of them, and the same people who refuse to upgrade from 10, are those who think linux is a virus-spyware free alternative

 

[toooooot]

Most of our PCs are running 11 since it's release and it's fine. I remember Windows Millenium (shudders), Windows Vista and Windows 8; Those had pretty significant growing pains upon release. Windows 11 is a complete dream by comparison. There are things I like better about 10 but there are also things I miss from 11 when I use 10.

I feel like the biggest problem with 11 is security features which as MS honestly admitted were designed for newer computers, and which is why a lot of people who upgraded older pcs should have stayed on 10.

 

[p51d007]

All windows is anymore is a data gathering & advertising engine.
You have to do a lot of "hacking" to turn off the garbage, make the UI more like you want
it to be, and kill the bloat.
If Linux would be able to run the windows programs I have to run, I'd probably dump windows.

 

[yazooo]

Unpopular opinion, but have used W11 since launch, and has been rock solid for me. Admittedly I use StartAllBack to modify the UI, but otherwise performance has been good, no slowdowns over time, better handling of multiple task loads etc. I can't remember the last crash or unrecoverable program hang.

 

[Dimitrios]

Windows 12 requirements :

1.) 24 AI cores
2.) DEI classes
3.) Orange man bad.
4.) Give Zelensky 1/3 of your income.

 

[OortCloud]

Ever since Microsoft adopted a 'free' service model they have, unfortunately, used their OS as vehicle for monetizing (horrible US marketing term) customers. The new features they add to the OS are very rarely anything people want but almost always just some way to scrape more data from them or try to hoodwink them into using their search engine etc etc
Unless they go back to earning their money by selling a good product I can't see Windows doing anything but get even more shambolic. The latest AI fad highlights this perfectly. I don't know anybody who wants their AI PC's but they know they will get a huge amount of data from customers who make AI queries and can once again try to railroad them into Bing.

 

[Northy]

Quite the opposite, Windows 10 was a nightmare for any admin, as every update did a reset on all settings, and reinstalled bloatware, with windows 10 microsoft was the boss of your machine

No. I administrate hundreds of computers. W11 is exactly the same but worse. It has major problems with Samba and other cross platform protocols, adverts and "click to run" are being rammed down the throat of even enterprise versions, now it's the wonders of AI being forced on all W11 installs.

Really though, I can tame and unfk every update no matter which version, but explorer failing to engage properly with file servers that aren't MS is whats stopping it going live in my environment. It's the first OS I've ever seen struggle with that. Junkware.