Vista putting a dent in 98 userbase?

[TravisO]

If Vista really was taking some win-98 share, then I'd expect Vista to show up in those stats. I don't see a line-item specifically for Vista. Would Vista be identifiable here as a browser client?

You're totally correct, TheCounter hasn't added Vista to their list of OSes, yet. They always take at least 1 month to do so, but realize they can do it retroactively if they want, so maybe in a few days/weeks we'll see a Vista entry in the Feb stats.

We can only assume that Vista is currently being tagged as "unknown" or as XP.

[98 Guy]

Wouldn't there have been enough beta versions of Vista in circulation for the past few months for them to already have started showing up those stats?

Or are there more Amiga users than Vista-beta users?

[TravisO]

Wouldn't there have been enough beta versions of Vista in circulation for the past few months for them to already have started showing up those stats?

It's not a lack of users to count that's the problem, it's simply that TheCounter is lazy and always takes at least 1 month before they add stats, sometimes longer. The same thing happened with IE7, but like I said before, they can retroactively enable it for the month. Edited February 15, 2007 by travisowens

[98 Guy]

TheCounter is lazy and always takes at least 1 month before they add stats, sometimes longer.

My point is that Vista Beta has been around for more than a month, probably closer to 6 months. Probably thousands of installations of Vista Beta in use for the past 2 to 6 months. Probably enough to have been showing up in those stats for January if not December, November, etc.

Was IE7 in beta? For how long? Did the beta versions ever show up in the logs?

[98 Guy]

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/March/os.php

Ok, so now what's the reason that Vista is still not appearing in these stats?

Or maybe there are still more Amiga users than Vista users?

[RainyShadow]

Looking at the number of Linux users on that page, i doubt these statistics are correct at all.

[CoffeeFiend]

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/March/os.php

Ok, so now what's the reason that Vista is still not appearing in these stats?

Most counters haven't made the changes required to handle Vista yet, that's all. It's not automatic. They have to write some more code to handle various user-agents (IE7/Firefox/Opera/whatever, all running under Vista -- they say Windows NT 6.0 instead of Windows NT 5.x) before they can really count it. Then update their reporting tools too. No big deal. Just wait, they'll all get around to it.

Not that I care much for thecounter's statistics. Were you looking at the ones i linked to previously, you'd see Vista. Just check it out here.

Quick summary:

-Vista is at ~1% (from from ~nothing in Jan when it was first introduced).

-Win98 is at 1.5% (down from 1.63% -- it's been losing about 0.13%/month constantly for the last few months)

What to expect?

-With Vista "selling twice as fast as XP" as they put it (20M licenses sold already), 17 million PCs bought between last October and now which are entitled to free or low-priced upgrades to Vista, Windows XP being pulled off the shelves in a few months, and they say 96 million computers will be sold this year, and you know the vast majority of those will ship with Vista. The market share/percentage is going to shoot up very fast. XP just started going down (not by a lot, but it's just beginning), at some point within the next couple years Vista will likely surpass XP -- it's really only a matter of "when", not "if".

-If Win98 continues to lose users at that constant rate, there's basically going to be as many Amiga users left as Win98 users in a year...

RainyShadow: it may seem like that, but there's actually VERY FEW linux users. Yes, that little. The vast majority of Linux installations are those cheap "LAMP hosting" boxes for all those PHP forums and blogs. But people running it as a main desktop OS? Basically nobody (a very, very small but very vocal community).

[galahs]

As more new computers are sold the percentage of windows 98 users will naturally decrease. This does not mean there are less Windowes 98 users than before Vista was launched however.

If 100 computers are in use world wide and 1 of them had windows 98 on it, Windows 98 users would be 1%

If 101 computers are in use world wide and still 1 of them has Windows 98 on it, Windows 98 usage would fall below 1% but there is still the samer number of users.

[98 Guy]

What to expect?

... Windows XP being pulled off the shelves in a few months

What do you (or anyone else) know about XP availability through system-builder channels?

Our supplier has told us that MS has told them that XP will be available "through the summer" but didn't specifically say if that would be the end or not.

Many large organizations that have exclusive computer vendor contracts with Dell, HP, etc, are certainly not going to tolerate Vista being forced on them for a year or two, so I can't really see XP being totally pulled any earlier than Win-2K or Win-98 were pulled in years past. If I recall, 98 "system builder" was available for at least 2 years after XP came out.

Is MS really going to pull XP before the first year of Vista is up? Are they nuts?

[CoffeeFiend]

As more new computers are sold the percentage of windows 98 users will naturally decrease. This does not mean there are less Windowes 98 users than before Vista was launched however.

If 100 computers are in use world wide and 1 of them had windows 98 on it, Windows 98 users would be 1%

If 101 computers are in use world wide and still 1 of them has Windows 98 on it, Windows 98 usage would fall below 1% but there is still the samer number of users.

You keep thinking that. Yes, people are buying new PCs, but mainly to replace their old ones. Most Win9x installs are darn old boxes (like P2's), and it's not like people keep them when they get a new one instead. They don't keep every single PC they've had, so the Win9x users definitely does go down a lot. And people just buying new and faster PCs "just because" is only part of it, there's the old PCs breaking down too, and people switching platforms and all that (countless Win9x boxes are being replaced everyday). Again, there is lots of evidence to support this too. Don't like percentage statistics? Alright, just check total hit couters:

January 2 711 151 hits.

February 2 274 397 hits.

That's about half a million less hits - in a single month, or about 20% of their user base -- again, in a single month. If they keep losing users at such a fast pace (which has actually been consistent in the last few months), the number of users would theorically become a negative number within 6 months. Perhaps thehitcounter's stats suck, but use anyone else's (w3schools', OneStat's, your own websites, ...) and you'll basically see the same thing.

Doesn't matter which way you look at it, which numbers or who's stats. The Win9x numbers are decreasing a lot, and consistently. The win9x user base is anything but "not shrinking" like you seem to think. And it's not exactly surprising (for many reasons like I've mentioned before, like software/hardware compatibility and what not). It's been a few years since I've even seen a Win9x box.

What to expect?

... Windows XP being pulled off the shelves in a few months

What do you (or anyone else) know about XP availability through system-builder channels?

It'll be available to system builders for 24 months following Vista's release. But it doesn't really matter, most are already shipping Vista instead of XP on most their products (most people actually want the latest version of Windows on their new shiny PCs). Just go to Dell's "Home & Home Office", and pick either line of PCs: every single model I've looked at ships with Vista Home (basic or premium). And I don't see this trend reversing anytime soon. And I don't really see it being a problem (XP not being for sale anymore, that is). Vista should run just fine on all new PCs.

When I said within a year, I meant off the retail shelves. And for all practical purposes, within a year it'll likely be equally hard to buy a new PC with WinXP instead of Vista too. Oh, and even companies are soon going to want Vista on their new PCs. There's no point in buying WinXP boxes in the last few months of its availability: last month should be January 2009 (if my math is OK), which is also the month when WinXP falls into extended support (and god knows companies like support).

[BenoitRen]

Yes, people are buying new PCs, but mainly to replace their old ones. Most Win9x installs are darn old boxes (like P2's), and it's not like people keep them when they get a new one instead.

Which is sad, as most people just surf the web and send e-mail, which Win9x machines of that calibre are perfectly capable to do well.

Vista should run just fine on all new PCs.

Yeah, right... My brother bought a new laptop a month back. To my dismay, it came with Vista Home Basic, there was no XP laptop from Acer left. It has 1 GB of RAM, and M$' recommended system is at least 512 MB for that edition.

It ran like a dog. It took ages to install (though that could just be Acer's recovery stuff), ages to boot, too long to shut down. After a week of suffering we finally managed to put XP SP2 on it. It runs MUCH better now!

[CoffeeFiend]

Yes, people are buying new PCs, but mainly to replace their old ones. Most Win9x installs are darn old boxes (like P2's), and it's not like people keep them when they get a new one instead.

Which is sad, as most people just surf the web and send e-mail, which Win9x machines of that calibre are perfectly capable to do well.

I disagree for 2 main reasons:

1) I wouldn't live without tabbed browsing and also a modern browser (no IE7 on Win9x, and no FF soon either)

2) Nowadays' internet isn't 1995's. Youtube, google video. Embedded flash and quicktime video. Countless flash animations. That's when they're not also using music (like myspace users seem to all do -- not that I go there), or those CPU-eating javascript-based animations (like snowflakes falling down - I hate it!) Combine all this with more complex and heavier designs, loads of javascript for everything, AJAX this and that... All of it is becoming much more CPU intensive.

Browsing the web is sometimes slow-ish on a 3GHz PC loaded with RAM. On a P2? No way.

I'm sure it's capable enough for webmail or use with older email clients though (not like you'll use Outlook 2007 on there, and Thunderbird would be painfully slow too). But that's hardly a reason by itself to keep an old box lying around... Your new PC can check mail too

[RainyShadow]

1) I wouldn't live without tabbed browsing and also a modern browser (no IE7 on Win9x, and no FF soon either)

2) Nowadays' internet isn't 1995's. Youtube, google video. Embedded flash and quicktime video. Countless flash animations. That's when they're not also using music (like myspace users seem to all do -- not that I go there), or those CPU-eating javascript-based animations (like snowflakes falling down - I hate it!) Combine all this with more complex and heavier designs, loads of javascript for everything, AJAX this and that... All of it is becoming much more CPU intensive.

Browsing the web is sometimes slow-ish on a 3GHz PC loaded with RAM. On a P2? No way.

I'm sure it's capable enough for webmail or use with older email clients though (not like you'll use Outlook 2007 on there, and Thunderbird would be painfully slow too). But that's hardly a reason by itself to keep an old box lying around... Your new PC can check mail too

Looks like all you need is Opera.

It does all of this and much more.

And works perfectly on my Win98 box

[Eck]

This stuff is interesting. I normally have had 98SE as one of the OS's on my computer, whether installed to the real hard drive or running it in VMWare in XP.

Recently, during my Linux education, a Linux Kernel update pushed as a security update messed up my quadruple boot configuration of 98SE, XP, Vista, and OpenSUSE Linux (that was on a 2nd hard drive all by itself).

I couldn't get back access to the Windows hard drive as something had messed up the partition table. So I went ahead and, not having much patience to install all those operating systems again, just installed Vista on one and Linux on the other.

After getting the WinHlp32.exe update for Vista, installing MediaPlayerClassic in a way that renames it as mplayer2.exe and ran from the Windows folder, installing both the older QuickTime 2.12.59 and the latest one, I found that I could get mostly all of my 98 era games to install and play. Having the Audigy 2 ZS latest Vista driver which activates a soundfont (even if there's no software to work with them yet) helped as well. The standard Vista Audio that uses the built in Roland hadn't worked in games. But setting the QuickTime Control Panel to use General Midi and the latest Creative driver seems to have worked. A bit of playing with the Compatibility Mode for 98/Me and running them as administrator, turning off Aero using the Compatiblity tab, etc was necessary but surprisingly they all wound up working! And of course Dosbox works perfectly.

I had also purchased and installed the Indeo Video 5.2XP package. That probably helped as well.

So with a bit of playing around with things Vista was running anything I threw at it. All my emulators work too, NES, SuperNES, N64, etc.

Besides nostalgia, at least so far, I can't see why I would need 9x anymore. I might install it again, but unlike in the past where it was because some stuff just wouldn't run if I didn't have 98SE, I'm finding that it is now possible to get many things to work just fine with Vista.

My hardware is not new. The most advanced I have are Socket A Via boards like in my signature. My one big dislike about Vista is that so many of its processes keep the hard drive churning quite often and for long periods. However I have not noticed slowdowns in gaming or problems using multimedia, DVD's etc. So it's busy a lot, which probably cuts down the lifespan of hard drives with the constant churning.

But, for Windows, it is the most secure OS available and if just about all the software I have can work with it then it is likely the best choice to use.

Perhaps the topic heading does apply because here is one user who has found that if I can get my things to work I'd rather be using the latest version of Windows with the pretty effects, updated security stuff, etc than to just have 98SE there only for nostalgia.

One fun thing! I installed my old C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes folder as well as that Lose Your Marbles game. I also copied over the Windows\Media folder's files and the Web\Wallpaper and the bitmaps to the Windows folder.

I have an Original Desktop theme that I had saved while in 98SE. That's the original 98SE settings just saved to a Theme with the Plus! 98 Theme manager while I had 98SE running. I really wanted to see what would happen, so I went into Vista's Theme panel and there were all the themes I had put into that Plus!/Themes folder. I selected Original Desktop.

Wow! My whole Vista desktop, sounds, etc switched to the exact Windows 98 look, including the taskbar! The start menu was the Vista start menu but the look of it was not the Vista Classic look, but rather it looked just like 98.

Well, there's a little nostalgia for me if I want to revisit the past. Most of the old 9x themes work fine. And going back to Vista Aero also worked fine (sigh of relief there).

I'm really mostly using Linux at the moment but I just wanted to speak out a bit on this subject. It seems to me that the 9x user base is getting smaller as the years go by and the new Microsoft operating system will probably get some more converts. Folks will be replacing old pc's finally. And if they aren't too old they may just decide to buy Vista retail and perhaps dual boot for a while. From my experience the dual boot might be found to be redundant if just about all things can be usable just on Vista, with a bit of extra work like I did.

[CoffeeFiend]

Looks like all you need is Opera.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Besides, in all honesty, if web browsing and email (and perhaps playing mp3s) is all I'd do with a PC, it likely wouldn't even run windows in the first place (much less Win9x)

Mind you, no matter what the OS is, there's no way I'd keep something even remotely as ancient as a P2. I've gotten rid of anything under 2GHz (and 1GB RAM) like a couple years ago. I don't need a high-end overclocked Core 2 Duo or Quad Xeon (gimme a P4 or Athlon XP anyday), but a P2 is quite the other extreme.