Windows 7 still being sold on up to 93% of British PCs

Clive · Feb 21, 2013, 09:19:29

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/380044/windows-7-still-being-sold-on-up-to-93-of-british-pcs?utm_campaign=pcpro_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

To think I panicked into buying a new laptop in November to avoid Windows 8. I could have hung on and got it for less.

Lance · Feb 21, 2013, 09:49:16

A misleading headline considering its only based on sales of 1,459 units! I'm sure once you add in all other retailers, including the big players such as Dell, HP, Acer, Asus etc then the 93% will be significantly lower.

Ray · Feb 21, 2013, 10:03:14

I don't what all the fuss is about I've been using Win 8 since it was released and if you always work from the desktop it's hardly any different to using Win 7. There are several good free and paid for Start menu replacements available so you need never see the new UI if you don't want to.

Simon · Feb 21, 2013, 10:54:02

I was looking on the Dell site the other day, and they all seemed to come with Windows 8.

Den · Feb 21, 2013, 17:54:56

I was working in a computer shop the other day and this bloke brought his new laptop to have W8 taken off and W7 put on. I started talking to him and he said he had not even tried W8 as he did not like the sound of it in the revues he had read.

Plonker.

pctech · Feb 21, 2013, 18:09:52

If you have to support it you might think differently Den.

Simon · Feb 21, 2013, 18:50:33

People have a choice not to want it, Den. I simply don't like the look of it, and prefer the more 'standard' Windows desktop of Windows 7. Just as I wouldn't buy clothes I didn't like, or a car, or whatever, surely that doesn't make me an idiot just because other people might like them?

Gary · Feb 21, 2013, 20:19:06

Windows 8 is not a big hit though, sales have shown that and not just in this article, although pc sales are down are down as people are not buying new gear really thats not the whole reason. Uptake of 8 is slower than 7 that's for sure and you just have to search the net to see thats true, its to early to say 8 is a failure but its not making people rush out to buy it either, and I imagine the UI on 8 will not be that of 'Windows Blue' which may make a 2013 appearance, but it wont go back to the likes of 7 either. I don't mind 8 but it still feels clumsy in my own view but its a big change, its a bit schizophrenic too. Windows 8 is like a OS sandwich, but at sometime we all hit learning curves with our tech. People have a choice though and right now I think I would stay with 7 as well. See what comes next.

pctech · Feb 22, 2013, 14:50:59

There is no real need to upgrade your PC as often as you used to.

A mid range quad core CPU will do the job quite nicely and you can just augment it with a decent graphics card.

Den · Feb 22, 2013, 19:57:33

My point is that the windows standard desktop is still there (apart from the start button which you can add if you want to) but you also have the new desktop as well. It's runs much faster and also runs programmes smoothly that would not run on W7.

In one business that I have alarms in the owner will not try W8 and in an other a few miles away the guy there will not learn W7 but is stuck on XP and Vista. I am an electrician who wanted to learn other things so I started installing intruder alarms. fire alarms and CCTV. I find younger electricians in the area will install alarms but when they go wrong they send for me. If technology moves on we have to move on as well other wise we stagnate and then fall behind.

pctech · Feb 22, 2013, 20:19:04

I'm not averse to change Den (if I were I'd have been pretty stupid to enter IT as a profession as it's subject to daily change).

When the Vista beta came out I downloaded the ISO, negotiated the acquisition of an additional desktop machine for the office and spent some of my spare time tracking down drivers to make it work.

Windows 7 was what Vista should have been IMO.

I bought a Vista upgrade for my own machine at home, installed it and found it was thrashing the drive until I disabled indexing which hobbled some of the bells and whistles.

While yes indeed the desktop is still there and I could start using Win 8 the moment I got my hands on it at work (I can pick up most software and systems quickly) for a non technical user who has no interest in doing anything other than browsing the web or writing a letter but who has moved from say XP to be confronted with a start screen by default is quite a challenge.

While you could compare the change to the demise of Program Manager (remember that) I do think MS have gone a little too overboard.

Niall · Feb 23, 2013, 14:23:29

Oddly enough, my dad just bought another new laptop. The one he bought to replace the one he gave me was dropped on it's screen then down the stairs! Anyway, the first question he asked me was regarding replacing Windows 8

It says a lot if my dad who prefers simplicity wants Windows 7 on instead of 8.

pctech · Feb 23, 2013, 16:16:54

As I say its a bit of a learning curve.

Maybe if they'd allowed you to set the desktop as default it might be better.

Den · Feb 24, 2013, 12:22:27

Perhaps your Dad just does not want change not simplicity. The workings apart from the start button are still the same and you could add the start button for him.

Niall · Feb 24, 2013, 13:28:32

Far too much trouble as he lives in Leicester

Technical Ben · Feb 24, 2013, 14:21:44

It's still the Vista to the Win7 IMO. I'll try out the revision or replacement to 8 I guess. But 8 just has too many "niggles" for my liking.

(It's like a VW Fox IMO, when I drove one, it had a change box right by my knees that I kept hitting.

Windows 8 has those little snags I don't like).

Niall · Feb 24, 2013, 15:47:49

The laptop I have in front of me is running on Vista. I dunno what all the fuss was with it, it seems to be fine as it was on my previous PC. Obviously I'd only buy something with a more modern O/S on it, but for free I'm not complaining

Lona · Feb 24, 2013, 18:29:56

I still have Vista, Niall and like you it does fine by me. The only problem I found was downloading service pack 2. Everytime, I lost my internet connection so removed it.

I definitely didn't care for windows 8 and returned the pc I got for xmas and got my money back.

pctech · Feb 24, 2013, 20:17:12

I'd suspect its network drivers Lona.

You really ought to look at loading SP2 as any security updates released now will be based on it.

If you look in Device Manager under network adapters and tell me what you see there I'll try and track down the correct driver for you.

Vista wasn't very polished when it was first released and there was wasn't many drivers about for existing hardware, I had the problem myself when I installed the upgrade and couldn't get my printer working and even some of the smaller PC builders complained about the lack of drivers for hardware they wanted to include as options on their new systems.

There were no magic workarounds as MS had fundamentally changed the way drivers interact with the OS so if you attempted to install an XP driver it would just stop dead while it was copying the files and trying to register with the system, I know, I tried it despite what I'd read!

Lona · Feb 25, 2013, 19:56:02

Here's what it says under network adapters

802.11 n/g/b wireless lan usb adapter

intel (r)
82562V-2 10 100 network connection

Niall · Feb 25, 2013, 20:29:55

Actually, I take back my positive comments about Vista

I decided today whilst watching telly to fiddle about with it. For some reasons, even though this laptop is 64bit, they installed 32bit Vista on it so I can't use any of my Windows upgrade disks for it.

Anyway, I decided to start rummaging around to remove things I don't need/want. I've done it before but only to clean all rubbish off and make sure it was secure. There are files on here supposedly installed from Xerox (my dad had one of their awful printers for a month or so) and it's left files on there that show in the network properties, yet are nowhere to be located on the disk. Oddly, only when I had given up I turned off sharing on the network, and suddenly I can delete the files in the folder, but not the folder itself, which still appears in the networking properties, and is still as yet, undiscovered on my laptop.

I think I'll be wiping the drive, getting rid of the partition and installing a 64bit O/S on it at some point.

Niall · Feb 25, 2013, 20:32:29

Quote from: Lona on Feb 25, 2013, 19:56:02
Here's what it says under network adapters

802.11 n/g/b wireless lan usb adapter

intel (r)
82562V-2 10 100 network connection

Have you tried selecting update driver from that menu? It worked fine on this 32bit Vista laptop I have. Also, if you're willing to pay for it, you can get a program that I've bought twice, called Updatestar drivers. It finds all the latest drivers for your system, and is very upto date. Sometimes the server doesn't respond forcing you to rescan your PC, which is annoying, but otherwise it's saved me god only knows how many hours.

Polchraine · Feb 27, 2013, 13:22:17

Quote from: Simon on Feb 21, 2013, 10:54:02
I was looking on the Dell site the other day, and they all seemed to come with Windows 8.

No way ...

They are still providing Win7 on their higher spec machines such as Latitudes.

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/ships-fast-latitude

Technical Ben · Feb 27, 2013, 14:47:45

Quote from: Niall on Feb 24, 2013, 15:47:49
The laptop I have in front of me is running on Vista. I dunno what all the fuss was with it, it seems to be fine as it was on my previous PC. Obviously I'd only buy something with a more modern O/S on it, but for free I'm not complaining

It's fine now. Be even then has a lot of settings out of the box that are counter intuitive. Window 7 and Vista with updates are quite close usability wise. But then I also got XP after SP2, and many considered it poor pre SP1, so again, a mixed bag.

pctech · Feb 27, 2013, 15:02:00

AMD and Intel CPUs have been capable of 64-bit addressing for some time (In Intel's case since the Pentium 4) but system builders only started to preinstall 64-bit versions of the OS once they wanted to install above 2GB of RAM as the maximum amount of RAM that can be addressed in 32-bit is 3GB.