[added analysis] October Steam survey: Windows 10 loses 17.3% market share, Windows 7 gains 23.7% market share

[Kamina]

So what exactly is the gripe towards W10?

 

Automatic updates?

Start menu that can be changed with classic shell?

NSA crap that is already on W7?

[Delicieuxz]

24 minutes ago, Kamina said:

So what exactly is the gripe towards W10?

 

Automatic updates?

Start menu that can be changed with classic shell?

NSA crap that is already on W7?

Bugs, lack of reliability, a convoluted, redundant, and ugly UI, privacy issues, a lack of customization options and a lack of control over OS operation (including Windows Update), tons of bloatware, settings resetting after updates, a massive amount of spying and data-theft, in-OS ads, compatibility issues with some older programs, Microsoft's dishonesty, lack of respect for, and manipulation of Windows owners. Those are some of the issues that I have with Windows 10.

 

And since Microsoft profits off of the personal data that they steal from people's PCs, by running Windows 10, a person is basically funding organized crime.

[RagnarokDel]

17 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Bugs, lack of reliability, a convoluted, redundant, and ugly UI, privacy issues, a lack of customization options and a lack of control over OS operation (including Windows Update), tons of bloatware, settings resetting after updates, a massive amount of spying and data-theft, in-OS ads, compatibility issues with some older programs, Microsoft's dishonesty, lack of respect for, and manipulation of Windows owners. Those are some of the issues that I have with Windows 10.

 

And since Microsoft profits off of the personal data that they steal from people's PCs, by running Windows 10, a person is basically funding organized crime.

1. UWP apps are more reliable then win32.

2. Ugly UI: That's like your opinion man. (you can have a more classic UI if you want)

3. You've been able to control windows updates for a few updates on Windows 10. Should have been at launch but it's better now

4. Yes, complain about spying and data theft as you are using chrome, Apple/Android

 

[Cookybiscuit]

2 hours ago, Hellion said:

For what reason?

 

There's no appreciable difference over DX11...

Some games don't support it or are locked to the Windows store, means every time I want to play Forza I have to make a new storage partition and put Botnet 10 on it.

[Dabombinable]

• Updates 1703 and 1709 broke support for some laptop configurations-even with drivers supplied by MS.
• Windows 10 as a whole broke DirectX 9 for the majority of games that use it
• Windows 10 broke ENB completely (it works perfectly under Windows 7 still)
• I'm dual booting Windows 7 and 10....but I mainly use Windows 7 as even with an early SATA 1 200GB HDD it feels just as fast as Windows 10 on an SSD (the HDD has the same access time+small file speeds as my 2TB Barracuda at the cost of seek noise+thermals)
   

When it comes to games, overall Windows 7 still provides a better experience.

Edit: Windows 7 users in China also helps the statistics.

 

On 11/5/2017 at 8:49 PM, RagnarokDel said:

1. UWP apps are more reliable then win32.

2. Ugly UI: That's like your opinion man. (you can have a more classic UI if you want)

3. You've been able to control windows updates for a few updates on Windows 10. Should have been at launch but it's better now

4. Yes, complain about spying and data theft as you are using chrome, Apple/Android

 

• UWP apps are just repackaged and sandboxed win32 apps (ever tried extracting an UWP app?)
• That's personal preference so never really a point for or against
• Right.....the image below is what is called being able to control updates-not the option to only delay them for a limited amount of time

 

Edit: Also, Windows 10 always pre-installs 3 mobile games with inbuilt micro-transactions, and at one point pre-installed the slot machine game Caesar slots. And tries to do so even if the computer is setup without an internet connection. Then there are the ads on the start menu which you have to disable.

[TheCherryKing]

It's never too late for Microsoft to change its support policy regarding updates for older Windows versions with newer CPU's. It seems unlikely though... If not the best CPU that is officially supported on Windows 7 and 8.1 is the Xeon Platinum 8180.

[kirashi]

7 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Actually no.  The nontechie people were tricked into "upgrading" in the first couple of months of the free upgrade.  It's only the tech-savvy ones who are still running Win7 at home because they managed to dodge all of Microsoft's dirty moves during that first year.

Technically it is an upgrade, as you're moving to a newer, higher version of the NT6 kernel. However, it's certainly subjective as to whether or not the upgrade is worth it, since it's kind of pointless if you never use any of the newer features. On the other hand, Windows 10 is far more optimized than Windows 8 or 7, and supports DX12 and newer hardware as well, even if these hardware lockouts are purely artificially improved. (AKA, I don't approve of software-imposed hardware lockouts, but as a consumer have little say in them.)

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

Well, why 8 and not 10 for that matter... at least 10 has a usable ui out of the box.

Agreed. Windows 8 was absolutely useless on desktop without a touchscreen. I loved it upon launch on the company Surface 3 I was given, but if you didn't have a touchscreen on your desktop is was the most frustrating thing to use. I'd rather use Windows 3.1 over 8 even. But Windows 10 is much improved - basically an improved and more optimized Windows 7. 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

While I wouldn't doubt people went away from using Windows 10, it really does seem like people in mainland China use Windows 7.

If it can explain why the amount of English users in percentage went down, it'd likely also explain that.

 

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

Surveys like this generally are pointless anyway, it's totally dependent on who gets the survey and who actually responds to it. Steam need to also include the number of people offered the survey, how many completed the survey and what the margin of error is.

Exactly what I was thinking - if their sample size was say 100,000 and then suddenly it's 125,000 and those 25,000 new devices are Win7, that's obviously going to change things. Win10 usage rates haven't dropped, just the % share of the total has..

[zberry7]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

So it seems like a lot of Windows 7 users have now joined the pool of Steam survey users. Yawn...

 

I don't get this (common) complaint about the Steam survey.

Yes they don't survey everyone but assuming a big enough sample size (which should be a realistic assumption to make) it should be accurate regardless. The risk of the survey ending up being biased against something particular are incredibly small once the number of surveyed reaches a decent number.

Well, if there are regions in the world who use different types of hardware/software, such as Asia having a high percentage of users using windows 7. And then they send the survey to a disproportionate amount of Asians, they can bias the survey against windows 10.

 

Not that I think valve had any bias in a hardware survey, but if they wanted to skew results by sending surveys to 80% of people in Asia but only 5% to North America, they could

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, zberry7 said:

Well, if there are regions in the world who use different types of hardware/software, such as Asia having a high percentage of users using windows 7. And then they send the survey to a disproportionate amount of Asians, they can bias the survey against windows 10.

 

Not that I think valve had any bias in a hardware survey, but if they wanted to skew results by sending surveys to 80% of people in Asia but only 5% to North America, they could

A regional break down in the statistics would basically address those points, would actually be rather interesting to see that.

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, laminutederire said:

Worse thing is how you get treated like an idiot if you actually enjoy w10!

 

Yep, the emotionally driven ideology on this forum can be a headache sometimes.   You don't have to read much past the first sentence of many posts though to know if the poster just has a gripe or if they are expressing real concerns.

 

 

[Hellion]

On 11/5/2017 at 7:20 PM, Tedny said:

dx12 faster and I don't have problems with Windows10, it just another windows.....like XP is different from 7 

Faster? How?

 

Look at most benchmarks that are done with both and DX12 often performs worse in the same game then DX11 with nvidia cards.

 

With ATI/AMD the difference is normally only a couple of FPS.

 

So you've either convinced yourself or this or are making faulse claims based on nothing.

 

On 11/5/2017 at 8:51 PM, Cookybiscuit said:

Some games don't support it or are locked to the Windows store, means every time I want to play Forza I have to make a new storage partition and put Botnet 10 on it.

I've never played forza as it doesn't interest me. I'm assuming this is the only game currently on the market without a previous version of Direct X support?

 

Why would anyone purchase anything from the windows store?

 

[mrchow19910319]

You guys have no idea how easy it is to get a windows 7/8/10 copy in china. 

Also most of the new users are installing the "ghost version" of windows 7. 

Easier install/reinstall and the cd key is built in or something. I havent use it for a long time. 

 

But most system builder recommend this kind of OS instead of regular windows that is distributed from microsoft. 

 

Also what kind of download speed you get when you click download win10 ISO on microsoft's official page? 20/30MB? Here in china is 100-300k. Because of , you know the firewall and such. 

 

The official channel is always crappy. So instead we have to use the "un-official" channel. 

Also I got my windows 10 key for like less than 2 dollar... and it works like a charm... 

 

Also if you download the ghost version of the OS, from chinese website your download speed is at full. While in microsoft's page you get 100-300k. 

 

So. 

[Hellion]

5 hours ago, laminutederire said:

Worse thing is how you get treated like an idiot if you actually enjoy w10! Even though it introduces pretty neat features. I personally really love the introduction of the Linux subsystems. You can easily compile a program with the console, while you use a 3d modelling program only available on Windows at the same time. You have the convenience of Linux whwre it is generally strong, while keeping the software support from windows without having to run more expensive vms or worse, to have to dual boot.

@Hellion, for instance this feature.

So a single feature that can be mitigated via the solutions you already mentioned is worth the dozens of negatives Windows 10 has?

 

Not to mention, in my experience most serious developers have seperate machines for this purpose.

[it_dont_work]

As some have said a regional break down of the survey would be really interesting, as would the accuracy of the survey and how many take it vs total user numbers. Unfortunately some of this data is probably worth a fair bit of money and sold, so dont like the chances of seeing it.

 

Also am I one of the few who've updated to 10 with zero issues with updates and has a fast snappy system ot use? Only issue I can think of is the fact the startup doesn't like speed fan.

[mr moose]

28 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

 

 

Also am I one of the few who've updated to 10 with zero issues with updates and has a fast snappy system ot use? Only issue I can think of is the fact the startup doesn't like speed fan.

I don't think it's only a few, I think it's actually quite a lot of people who don't have issues with 10 (I personally don't know anyone in real life using 7 anymore and some of my friends manage very large networks).

 

Ironically though (because they would have you believe otherwise), there are a vocal minority who can't help themselves but shit on win 10 any chance they get.  Hell you only have to look at this thread to see the number of people quoting those who said they had a good experience only to tell them why it's still bad.  It's almost like some people can't handle the idea that others don't have problems with it.

[ApolloFury]

10 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

The article suggests that the shift could be due to the large numbers of players in China using Windows 7. But, I don't know if that means gamers in China are suddenly switching to Windows 7, or if there is suddenly a massive number of gamers in China signing up for Steam. If it's the latter, then I'm curious which products their signing up to play.

CSGO is now "legally" allowed to be played in China but they are not allowed to play with the rest of the world, only within the Chinese version of CSGO dubbed "Perfect World". 

http://counterstrike.wikia.com/wiki/Counter-Strike:_Global_Offensive_Perfect_World 

With this, Valve can milk more money from the Chinese, yea....

[mr moose]

33 minutes ago, ApolloFury said:

CSGO is now "legally" allowed to be played in China but they are not allowed to play with the rest of the world, only within the Chinese version of CSGO dubbed "Perfect World". 

http://counterstrike.wikia.com/wiki/Counter-Strike:_Global_Offensive_Perfect_World 

With this, Valve can milk more money from the Chinese, yea....

I wonder what changes they made to it?

[RagnarokDel]

4 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

• UWP apps are just repackaged and sandboxed win32 apps (ever tried extracting an UWP app?)
• That's personal preference so never really a point for or against
• Right.....the image below is what is called being able to control updates-not the option to only delay them for a limited amount of time

 

Edit: Also, Windows 10 always pre-installs 3 mobile games with inbuilt micro-transactions, and at one point pre-installed the slot machine game Caesar slots. And tries to do so even if the computer is setup without an internet connection. Then there are the ads on the start menu which you have to disable.

You can delay non security updates by 365 days and security updates by 30 days. Pardon the literal french.

 

You can also disable windows update if you dont want it to run at all but honestly that's a mistake.

[Dabombinable]

On 11/6/2017 at 2:24 AM, RagnarokDel said:

You can delay non security updates by 365 days and security updates by 30 days. Pardon the literal french.

 

You can also disable windows update if you dont want it to run at all but honestly that's a mistake.

Far less information about each update shown, update size not show, can't set it to notify but not download or install, can't set it to download but not install.

On 11/6/2017 at 2:29 AM, RagnarokDel said:

That's cause Nvidia cards support Dx12 features via software instead of hardware.

That's only one feature and even then its only software based scheduling on Maxwell and older. The GPU still maintain proper DX 12.1 support.

[RagnarokDel]

2 hours ago, Hellion said:

Faster? How?

 

Look at most benchmarks that are done with both and DX12 often performs worse in the same game then DX11 with nvidia cards.

 

With ATI/AMD the difference is normally only a couple of FPS.

 

So you've either convinced yourself or this or are making faulse claims based on nothing.

That's cause Nvidia cards only support some Dx12 features via software instead of hardware.

[AlTech]

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

• UWP apps are just repackaged and sandboxed win32 apps (ever tried extracting an UWP app?)

Some might be but the majority are not.

[laminutederire]

4 hours ago, Hellion said:

So a single feature that can be mitigated via the solutions you already mentioned is worth the dozens of negatives Windows 10 has?

 

Not to mention, in my experience most serious developers have seperate machines for this purpose.

Well they can if they want. It remains convenient to use git easily like that with the console. Or to compile something in less than 30 seconds just to look how well a specific function works, or how fast etc.

Serious developers just want something fast, and this is certainly faster than separate machines in many cases where you have to experiment since you can be done by the time needed to transfer the files from one computer to the other.

 

Well you're the one having an issue with it. W10 has worked flawlessly in all machines I own since the beginning. The upgrade processes are fine, and they just get faster each update. I' not worried about being spied on since I live in a real country where there are laws and organizations protecting me. The UI is fine and I do the same things faster than I did previously.

I don't like cortana, so I just disabled it. And finally, it's the first time my parent's computers are finally up to date, which is the intended purpose of upgrades: to be installed.

So I could get back to you and ask: are those real negatives or are they just negative in you opinion?

[suicidalfranco]

4 hours ago, Hellion said:

Why would anyone purchase anything from the windows store?

because there are two kinds of people in this world:

1. Sadists

2. Masochists

[Cookybiscuit]

4 hours ago, Hellion said:

I've never played forza as it doesn't interest me. I'm assuming this is the only game currently on the market without a previous version of Direct X support?

I think it's one of only a few, Forza Horizon 3, Forza 7 and Gears of War 4 are the only important ones I can think of. Other non-microshit games that use DX12 for example Hitman and stuff usually have DX11 compatibility.

 

4 hours ago, Hellion said:

Why would anyone purchase anything from the windows store?

I agree it's a piece of shit, but if you want to play the games on there you have little choice. I seriously can't believe the Windows store has 50GB+ files and zero ability to cap your download speed, want to download something and still be able to use your internet? Fuck you, Windows store doesn't care what you want.