What Happens When Windows 7 DIES?

[stans 703]

What will happen when Windows 7 dies (M$ officially ceases support)?  Satisfied Windows 7 users will become the new generation of OS clingers.  I'm still clinging to Windows XP on my sim machine.  Windows 10 will eventually be the only supported OS from Micro$oft.  When the majority of businesses switch to Windows 10, all other OS's will be dropped.  Eventually, the Windows 7 clingers will become just like us Windows XP clingers, looking to upgrade when new software and add-ons no longer use installers compatible with older versions of Windows.

 

[vortex681 806]

On 17 March 2019 at 9:25 AM, Cruachan said:

I did say that Windows 7 is still the most popular O/S out there, if you exclude consoles, tablets and phones, and this is including the expansive gaming community.

Where are you getting your data from to support this statement? The latest Steam Survey (April 2019) puts Windows 10 usage at 67% and Windows 7 at 25%. See: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam. There are obviously non-Steam gamers out there but this is normally a good indicator of trends.

Edited May 5, 2019 by vortex681

[Cruachan 705]

@vortex681 Usage and popularity are two different things. If we are talking about which is installed on user machines then, of course, Win10 now leads the pack. This was inevitable and for all sorts of reasons.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/993868/worldwide-windows-operating-system-market-share/

However, those statistics do not equate to Win10 being the most popular. As you can see from my signature, I have both. I still prefer working with Win7 over Win10 and know many others who feel the same. In time I will have to make the move, but until that time arrives my preference remains with Win7.

There is so much unnecessary and ill-founded scare mongering, mostly centred around security vulnerabilities, from, I suspect, those whose habits while connected to the internet make them susceptible. I have not applied updates to Win7 for the best part of 18 months and have not suffered one instance of malicious attack. I simply adhere to certain basic principles and have a decent antivirus solution in place.

Windows 10 will dominate the computer scene erelong. That is certain. Whether this is, in fact, desirable is debatable. Meantime, I would argue that Windows 7 still remains the most popular amongst users like me. Many have made the switch to Win10 whether they wanted to or not and some feel the need to constantly justify the move by belittling our decision to remain on Win7. This is both pointless and unhelpful. We know we will be forced to change eventually, just not now. However, as you can see, I am preparing for the inevitable 😉

Edit: Currently Steam allows access of many game installations from both operating systems under a Dual Boot arrangement. So, no need to install twice.

Regards,

Mike

 

[vortex681 806]

6 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Usage and popularity are two different things. If we are talking about which is installed on user machines then, of course, Win10 now leads the pack. This was inevitable and for all sorts of reasons.

However, those statistics do not equate to Win10 being the most popular. As you can see from my signature, I have both. I still prefer working with Win7 over Win10 and know many others who feel the same.

My personal view is that in the PC gaming community in particular, usage does equal popularity. I also have Windows 7 on my backup machine and much prefer using Windows 10. If you look at the Steam survey, the specifications of most of the systems there imply that Windows 10 was almost certainly installed as an option and was not the delivered OS - the majority have systems with 4 physical CPU cores or less, 8GB of RAM or less and game at 1920x1080 or less.  Why would people keep an OS that they didn't like, particularly gamers (who tend to be the most critical of users)? Whilst I would never question that many of the people you know prefer Windows 7, that's hardly an indicator of the preferred version of Windows. Most of the people I know prefer Windows 10. The latest data from Steam indicates that it has over 17 million concurrent daily users which I would say is much more representative of the global gamer market.

I'm not for a moment criticising Windows 7 users, I'm just questioning the notion that it's still the most popular gaming OS.

Edited May 6, 2019 by vortex681

[Cruachan 705]

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

I'm not for a moment criticising Windows 7 users, I'm just questioning the notion that it's still the most popular gaming OS.

This is an argument that I was never likely to win...LOL! I accept that.

In the end, the preferred operating system will usually be the one that satisfies the individual user’s needs and expectations. My straw poll of users known to me suggests a preference for remaining on Win7 for as long as is practicable. Windows 10 has not impressed and, indeed, the raised levels of intrusiveness and manipulations are acting as a huge turn off.

At present Win10 offers me nothing extra in terms of reliability, speed and stability that cannot be provided by Win7. Hence there is little that compels me right now to make Win10 the default operating system in Boot Manager. That does not mean that I never boot into Win10, of course I do. However, I do so merely to become familiar with MS’s latest and to keep it up to date while finding ways of configuring it to fulfil my likely future requirements. 

Those future requirements will include the installation of Prepar3D v5 and a few select games that will not run under Win7. My heavily customised Prepar3D v4.x will have peaked in terms of development and can continue to run under Win7. I will have the best of both worlds at my finger tips for a few more years before the evolution of hardware dictates that, for me, the time for significant change has finally arrived.

We can argue about this until the cows come home, but when they do there will be the realisation that nothing really matters more than what works for you now. I suspect I am older than you and, like many of my generation, those days of chasing so-called digital progress are slowly drawing to a close. MS’s determination to mould the future, as they see it, by meddling in our lives is becoming both unwelcome and wearisome. 

Regards,

Mike