Windows 7 most popular with home users
Windows 7 is proving most popular at weekends, suggesting it’s being tried by home rather than business users. It comes alongside a small but symbolic shift back to Windows in the operating system market battles with Apple.
Newly-released figures from Net Applications show that, as you’d expect, the Windows 7 share rose notably in early January when it became publicly available as a beta release. The rise leveled off towards the end of the month and now averages around the 0.2 percent mark.
There’s no way to conclude hard numbers for the number of people using the system from this, but for comparison purposes it’s about a quarter as many as are using Linux-based systems. It’s notable that there was no notable downward trend for Windows 7 after the beta availability ended a couple of weeks back, suggesting there aren’t many people who’ve tried it but reverted back to an old system.
Another notable and consistent pattern is that use of Windows 7 peaks at weekends. That likely means most people using it are doing so at home, suggesting businesses are (understandably) cautious about trying beta software.
Net Applications notes that Vista follows a similar pattern, while with XP it’s weekdays that have the highest usage. That’s another indication that Vista take-up by businesses its much lower than Microsoft would want.
Meanwhile the overall figure for all versions of Windows continues to hover around 89 percent after dropping below 90 percent for the first time in November. While Microsoft will be pleased with the figure rising slightly for the past couple of months, the difference is so small that factors such as the ratio of weekdays to weekends during a calendar month could influence the variations.
Microsoft bosses will probably take more comfort from the fact that the Mac share didn’t, as looked possible, crack the 10 percent barrier in February. Topping that figure would make no real difference to the overall market, but it would be seen as a milestone in Apple’s drive to become a mainstream alternative to Windows.
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