# What Percentage of Personal Computers Use Windows?



## 2048Megabytes

What is the estimated percentage of personal computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system?  I was reading an old article in 2008 that claims about 89 percent of personal computers are using Windows, about 9 percent are Macintosh and the remaining two percent are Linux.


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## mep916

Aggregated, about 91% according to this site. I'm sure the numbers vary between 85% to 90ish%


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## 2048Megabytes

Interesting information you posted.  I can't believe even an estimated 0.17 percent of computers are using Windows NT.  It was the worst operating system Microsoft ever released from what I read.

I like using Linux Ubuntu 9.04 for the Internet to resist malicious software.  But I am also dual-booting with Windows Vista 32-bit.


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## bomberboysk

2048Megabytes said:


> Interesting information you posted.  I can't believe even an estimated 0.17 percent of computers are using Windows NT.  It was the worst operating system Microsoft ever released from what I read.
> 
> I like using Linux Ubuntu 9.04 for the Internet to resist malicious software.  But I am also dual-booting with Windows Vista 32-bit.



Well, to be fair, everything from windows 2000 & XP up to windows 7 is based off of NT.


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## Ayrton

I thought many more people then that used Linux... Guess im wrong


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## tlarkin

mep916 said:


> Aggregated, about 91% according to this site. I'm sure the numbers vary between 85% to 90ish%



That is estimated world market share, not consumer market share.  The OP stated personal computers, which puts apple in about the 24% range for house hold computers.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-9831586-17.html

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/04/01/analyst-apples-us-consumer-market-share-now-21-percent/

http://community.winsupersite.com/b...u-s-consumer-market-share-now-21-percent.aspx

You got to realize though that the consumer market share only makes up a portion of the total market share.


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## 2048Megabytes

bomberboysk said:


> Well, to be fair, everything from windows 2000 & XP up to windows 7 is based off of NT.



I know Windows 2000 was was an improvement on Windows NT but Windows NT was still a horrible operating system full of problems.  Instead of fixing it Microsoft released Windows 2000.


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## tlarkin

2048Megabytes said:


> I know Windows 2000 was was an improvement on Windows NT but Windows NT was still a horrible operating system full of problems.  Instead of fixing it Microsoft released Windows 2000.



Windows 9x was horrible, windows 2000 had near no multimedia support and wasn't solid until SP6.  XP was pretty good but not solid until SP2, and Vista was just an outright joke, and 7 is Vista 2.0.

Microsoft has lost sight of what their product should be in my opinion.


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## Ayrton

tlarkin said:


> Windows 9x was horrible, windows 2000 had near no multimedia support and wasn't solid until SP6.  XP was pretty good but not solid until SP2, and Vista was just an outright joke, and 7 is Vista 2.0.
> 
> Microsoft has lost sight of what their product should be in my opinion.



Microsoft are just making things look flashy. They told XP users to upgrade to Vista because WOW ITS TRANSPARENT AND NEW LOOKING BUY IT NOW IT EVEN HAS GADGETS!!! And users fell for it but when they got vista they realised how much Microsoft is slipping. Also Vista was a no no for many users as it uses much more RAM on idle and on load forcing you to upgrade.


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## tlarkin

Ayrton said:


> Microsoft are just making things look flashy. They told XP users to upgrade to Vista because WOW ITS TRANSPARENT AND NEW LOOKING BUY IT NOW IT EVEN HAS GADGETS!!! And users fell for it but when they got vista they realised how much Microsoft is slipping. Also Vista was a no no for many users as it uses much more RAM on idle and on load forcing you to upgrade.



Actually, MS added a lot of under-the-hood tech that involved security that end users won't see or use.  They also added more powerful and robust diagnostics apps, allowing users to figure out better why their computer crashes, but the bulk of their features added the end users would use are rip off of OS X.  While, I am not an elitist and don't care who made what technology first, MS just copied it, they did not innovate with it in any way shape or form to improve it from their competition.

Windows 7 still eats up more RAM than any other OS, well besides Vista that is.


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## Ayrton

tlarkin said:


> Actually, MS added a lot of under-the-hood tech that involved security that end users won't see or use.  They also added more powerful and robust diagnostics apps, allowing users to figure out better why their computer crashes, but the bulk of their features added the end users would use are rip off of OS X.  While, I am not an elitist and don't care who made what technology first, MS just copied it, they did not innovate with it in any way shape or form to improve it from their competition.
> 
> Windows 7 still eats up more RAM than any other OS, well besides Vista that is.



Indeed they did as it was once articled that vista/7 had a security barrier in their operating systems to protect against certain malware and viruses that usually in XP, regardless of a Anti-Virus, would absorb them. It was just a shame on how Microsoft executed vista. It would of been a brilliant OS if it didn't have as many problems as it did. And the automatic driver installer in Windows 7 was a brilliant feature as you do not have to rummage for them all driver CDs, just a shame that in order to get that you have to have such a RAM eater along with it.


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## tlarkin

Ayrton said:


> Indeed they did as it was once articled that vista/7 had a security barrier in their operating systems to protect against certain malware and viruses that usually in XP, regardless of a Anti-Virus, would absorb them. It was just a shame on how Microsoft executed vista. It would of been a brilliant OS if it didn't have as many problems as it did. And the automatic driver installer in Windows 7 was a brilliant feature as you do not have to rummage for them all driver CDs, just a shame that in order to get that you have to have such a RAM eater along with it.



Well they need to drop their legacy support for one.  It bloats the OS.  They need to also get rid of a single point of failure, aka the registry.   They still allow kernel hooks though via driver access in Windows vista and 7, which is a HUGE security risk.

However, in Vista they shifted all the user data to \Users and each user now has their home folder in there.  So they are slowly changing their OS to a more Unix-like approach I think.  They are just taking baby steps to migrate their product.


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## Ayrton

tlarkin said:


> Well they need to drop their legacy support for one.  It bloats the OS.  They need to also get rid of a single point of failure, aka the registry.   They still allow kernel hooks though via driver access in Windows vista and 7, which is a HUGE security risk.
> 
> However, in Vista they shifted all the user data to \Users and each user now has their home folder in there.  So they are slowly changing their OS to a more Unix-like approach I think.  They are just taking baby steps to migrate their product.



I think Microsoft are taking ideas from other OS and incorporating them in a way they think best. And the registry is a accident waiting to happen especially with the amount of errors and problems that stem from it. Just hopefully they will learn from the mistakes and defiantly need to drop some of the old and outdated things in their OS.


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## 2048Megabytes

Ayrton said:


> It was just a shame on how Microsoft executed vista. It would of been a brilliant operating system if it didn't have as many problems as it did.



One of the biggest problems Vista had in my experience was the operating system would fragment on a hard disk drive and slow it down.  The disk defragmenter Microsoft had for Vista was just awful.  An easy fix is to download "Auslogics Disk Defragmenter" and use it once a day.  It only takes about two to six minutes and the operating system runs much better.


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## tlarkin

2048Megabytes said:


> One of the biggest problems Vista had in my experience was the operating system would fragment on a hard disk drive and slow it down.  The disk defragmenter Microsoft had for Vista was just awful.  An easy fix is to download "Auslogics Disk Defragmenter" and use it once a day.  It only takes about two to six minutes and the operating system runs much better.



NTFS is not suppose to fragment and it is also suppose to 'self heal' on the fly.   I am still running vista on one of my boxes and I don't really have a disk fragmentation problem and I have 2TB of drive space in it, with 1.3 TB full.


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## 2048Megabytes

What processor are you using on the system with Windows Vista?  You should try defragmenting it Auslogics.  Vista always runs better after I defragment it.

Maybe my hard drive is slower than yours.  The hard drive is a 232 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda Model ST3250310AS.

The specifications for the hard drive are here:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822148261


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## tlarkin

2048Megabytes said:


> What processor are you using on the system with Windows Vista?  You should try defragmenting it Auslogics.  Vista always runs better after I defragment it.
> 
> Maybe my hard drive is slower than yours.  The hard drive is a 232 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda Model ST3250310AS.
> 
> The specifications for the hard drive are here:
> http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822148261



Intel Q9650 and I got 2x 500gig Seagates and 1x 1TB Samsung, nothing special


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## linkin

Either way, a defrag can't hurt.


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## 2048Megabytes

Ayrton said:


> I thought many more people then that used Linux... Guess I'm wrong



You are also not taking into account what servers are using Linux.  There are a lot of servers using some type of Linux Operating System.  What estimated percentage of servers are using Linux I'm not sure.


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## tlarkin

2048Megabytes said:


> You are also not taking into account what servers are using Linux.  There are a lot of servers using some type of Linux Operating System.  What estimated percentage of servers are using Linux I'm not sure.



Linux and Unix run all the DNS systems servers and Internet provider servers.   If you are talking about domain controller servers for a business Microsoft still runs that market.


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