Windows 7 nears EOL anniversary - still has over 100 million users

[pastymuncher]

I still use Windows 7 on my old laptop which has my weather station software on it. The reasons being that there are no drivers for my old laptop to use with 10 and the the fact that my weather station software simply doesn't work in windows 10.

[Saracen999]

Running W7 into 2020-21 is for fools.

Should have updated or upgraded while W8.1 was an option, it's much faster than W7.

W10 is the default option for many but just take it over W7 it's still free.

I had Win 8 when it came out, but it just doesn't run some stuff I already had. So it wasn't, and still isn't an option. Anyone that spends several grand replacing perfectly usable and not-net-connected hardware, in order to do something under W10 that they're currently doing perfectly well under W7 for free, is the fool. Win 8.1 might be faster than W7 for most things but if it won't work with equipment you already have and use, it's naff-all use, faster or not. And it's certainly not free if you have to spend thousands replacing hardware. I don't mean basic PC bits, I mean specialist peripheral hardware.

[retsil]

I'm not sure if MS didn't reach peak Windows with Win7. 8 and 8.1 were horrendous to use.

[Ryhl]

True, but even though though the one mentioned in the article is only used by 0.9% of all websites that's still 3 million sites using it so like i said they're based on more than just guesswork, like i also said yes tracking cookies can be blocked so you get double counted but the vast majority of people don't go to the bother, blocking the statscounter cookie wouldn't prevent you from being logged, it would just prevent you being tracked.

Ask any web developer, or anyone with their own site for that matter, stats on who's visiting your site are easy to come by, I'm not trying to claim they're perfect however it's more than guesswork and given there's no better way of collating things like OS usage numbers it's the best we have (that is unless you trust the actual vendor (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, etc) to report unbiased figures, not that they do that very often).

It's blooming hard as well, most hardware manufactures don't publish Win7 drivers for newer hardware and some of the workarounds are a little hacky to say the least.

I never said it was JUST guesswork, but MOSTLY guesswork. There is a difference and that is true, the results for worldwide Windows usage are based on a very small set of data in the grand scheme of things.

You also underestimate the number of people that block ads/scripts. Blog owners I have spoken to over the years put the numbers at 40%-60% of their visitors using blockers. That's a lot of internet users.

I'm guessing if the Statcounter script is blocked, nothing is sent to them in terms of data. After all, they collect the data from third-party sites and it has to be sent to them somehow.

Even though it might be one of the only methods we've got for this kind of thing, that doesn't make it any more accurate or trustworthy.

[AGTDenton]

Keeping one for MCE for now, using the rest as virtual machines.

[fend_oblivion]

Windows 10 is practically unusable on my laptop. I'm with Linux this time around - PopOS is my OS. Microsoft can have my money when they allow us to fully customize Windows 10 and remove all the BS bloat in it.

[DanceswithUnix]

My daughter wants to play the old Black & White game. I found the disk, but looks like I will be digging some old hardware out of the garage to build an XP box as the game just won't run under W10 and looks like it takes some hackery to get it running under 7.

Yay for Windows compatibility (though tbf dodgy DRM is the main problem here).

[mers]

Reading comments on this thread I sit here shaking my head and smirk a little. I stated I have 7 on one and 10 on another.Io may be a little faster on some things but using Word or Publisher as I do a lot it's neglible. Boot up speeds are of no importance really except bragging rights , surely a few seconds difference is not life changing. Gaming might be the clincher here but doesn't apply to me as I rarely venture in that side. I do some classified work and under no circumstances are allowed to do that on the Win10 pc due to security issues , OK the win 7 machine has mods done to the system. Win7 not safe,lol,you think Win10 is,get real. XP was great at the time and the staple flavour for all then came the worst " Millenium " , oh boy what a foul up that was. Then we got Vista ,better but rushed and very buggy but led to what it should have been , Win7. Win8 was again rushed and crap , quickly improved with 8.1 but to be superseded by Win10 which to me is an M/S controlled,convoluted and cofusing mess for the most part. Don't get me too wrong , I'm reasonably happy on my Win10 newish Ryzen PC now that I have it looking and feeling more like Win7 for use and kinda got use to its quirks and annoying bits.I'm just lucky running 2 PC's enjoying the best of both sides.

[rave_alan]

Still great OS, one of the best for its time.

[nar53]

We still use it on our HTPC. I would also like it on laptop but I can't find all the drivers that are needed so thats now a Chromebook.

[Saracen999]

Reading comments on this thread I sit here shaking my head and smirk a little. I stated I have 7 on one and 10 on another.Io may be a little faster on some things but using Word or Publisher as I do a lot it's neglible. Boot up speeds are of no importance really except bragging rights , surely a few seconds difference is not life changing. Gaming might be the clincher here but doesn't apply to me as I rarely venture in that side. I do some classified work and under no circumstances are allowed to do that on the Win10 pc due to security issues , OK the win 7 machine has mods done to the system. Win7 not safe,lol,you think Win10 is,get real. XP was great at the time and the staple flavour for all then came the worst " Millenium " , oh boy what a foul up that was. Then we got Vista ,better but rushed and very buggy but led to what it should have been , Win7. Win8 was again rushed and crap , quickly improved with 8.1 but to be superseded by Win10 which to me is an M/S controlled,convoluted and cofusing mess for the most part. Don't get me too wrong , I'm reasonably happy on my Win10 newish Ryzen PC now that I have it looking and feeling more like Win7 for use and kinda got use to its quirks and annoying bits.I'm just lucky running 2 PC's enjoying the best of both sides.

Firstly. I agree. Pretty much entirely.

But can I just ask for clarification? How are you defining "security"?

My interpretation (and I'n not asserting it's definitive, just my definition) distinguishes between security and privacy. Granted, in some ways, they're two sides of the same coin, but nonetheless, I find it helpful to distinguish.

By "privacy", what I really mean is MS's apparently ever-increasing prediction for "dial home" snooping.

By "security", I take that as keeping unwanted external persons, whatever their motivation (which could be anythung from curiosity, to crime, to state-level espionage or sabotage) out.

On privacy, that was going on to some degree in 7, and even before, but it seems to have been Google-ised (and I don't mean done by Google, but MS waking up, perhaps a smidge late) to the massively, humously valuable world of ever more granular, and extensive) data warehousing) and really getting with the program from 8 onwards. W10 is the culmination of that.

And in that, I entirely agree, 10 is far more invasive and pervasive, than 7.

But for security, as soon as MS stopped noting and fixing security issues, the threat from security weaknesses started growing. Also, it seems to me that 10, in restricting access to lower levels of hardware control, significantly reduced (but didn't eliminate) the possible routes to a possible attack surface.

Of course, from a security perspective, there's a lot more to it than what's going on in any PCs OS, and most of the heavy lifting should be done before any intruder gets as far as a PC (i.e. firewalls, etc) but the PC is really the last line of defence, and the underlying design of 10, and the ways of hardware abstraction, etc, seem to me to be more 'hardened' than 7 ever was.

Caveats - I'm no expert. And, of course, the whole intrusion/intruder-prevention thing is a game of two dogs each trying to bite theother's tail - it's goes on and on, round and round.

But I'm interested, especially given the "classified" work, how you see that distinction between privacy and security because, for sure, there's a large degree of overlap.

[Peter Parker]

My daughter wants to play the old Black & White game. I found the disk, but looks like I will be digging some old hardware out of the garage to build an XP box as the game just won't run under W10 and looks like it takes some hackery to get it running under 7.

Yay for Windows compatibility (though tbf dodgy DRM is the main problem here).

Have you considered building a linux box or dual booting? It might run under Wine - https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManag...cation&iId=156

[mers]

In reply to Saracen999. As a whole I suppose you could say there is snooping v hacking or data gathering and being just downright nosy to blatent attacking really in mere mortal understanding. I'm a hardware guy rather than software / programming type and leave that to the peeps that have the skills / inclination to do so, ( wished I'd had the time to get into it way back ).Our top programmer / analyst stated that as far as Win10 goes the deep rooted stuff basically is not removable nomatter what , you can scratch the surface but the O/S will not run , it's embeddded. Certain things you can do if paranoid ,ie: hardware firewalls etc with other O/S's but as she put it . Win10 is a bitch in high security stakes ( wether CIa or other shady dept's have their sticky fingers in the matter again I don't know and wouldn't state anyway. I can and allowed to use our doctored Win7 (what she's done I don't know,would be beyond my understanding anyway ). Suffice to say except for certain levels I'm ok to use my Win7. As far as normal peeps using a PC other than some key words or contacts triggering an alert no cares what porn site or anything else you do , they can't watch every PC in opperation around the world and in normal life the paranoia amuses me to some extent.

[Corky34]

I never said it was JUST guesswork, but MOSTLY guesswork. There is a difference and that is true, the results for worldwide Windows usage are based on a very small set of data in the grand scheme of things.

You also underestimate the number of people that block ads/scripts. Blog owners I have spoken to over the years put the numbers at 40%-60% of their visitors using blockers. That's a lot of internet users.

I'm guessing if the Statcounter script is blocked, nothing is sent to them in terms of data. After all, they collect the data from third-party sites and it has to be sent to them somehow.

Even though it might be one of the only methods we've got for this kind of thing, that doesn't make it any more accurate or trustworthy.

So your argument is a semantical one and one that you can't prove because there's no other better data available, it seems to me the only one doing the guessing here is yourself.

Like i said whether you block the statscounter cookie or not is irrelevant as the only thing that achieves is a moderate level of protection against the tracking you from one site to another, and i say moderate because there's other ways of tracking you from one site to another without the use of cookies. Like i said if you can provide a more accurate or trustworthy source then I'm all ears, until such a time as you can you simply come across as one of those anti-information types.

[AGTDenton]

My daughter wants to play the old Black & White game. I found the disk, but looks like I will be digging some old hardware out of the garage to build an XP box as the game just won't run under W10 and looks like it takes some hackery to get it running under 7.

Yay for Windows compatibility (though tbf dodgy DRM is the main problem here).

Instead of a whole new box for XP have you considered a virtual machine?
Also while I won't post a link, abandonware apparently have the fix for 10. I'll leave it up to you on the morales

[Ryhl]

So your argument is a semantical one and one that you can't prove because there's no other better data available, it seems to me the only one doing the guessing here is yourself.

Like i said whether you block the statscounter cookie or not is irrelevant as the only thing that achieves is a moderate level of protection against the tracking you from one site to another, and i say moderate because there's other ways of tracking you from one site to another without the use of cookies. Like i said if you can provide a more accurate or trustworthy source then I'm all ears, until such a time as you can you simply come across as one of those anti-information types.

Because there might not be many other methods available, does that automatically mean this data is accurate? No, of course it doesn't and it would be stupid to believe that.

Unlike you, it seems, I did take a few minutes to have a little read a while back as to how services like Statcounter work. Statcounter works by calling a web tracking script on your website, similar to Google Analytics. If you block the script, you block the tracking, and no data is collected. Virtually everything that blocks scripts/ads will block it.

Instead of accusing me of being an anti-information type, perhaps you should go and have a read of the Statcounter "how it works" pages. It might enlighten you a little.