4 ms·
1/3 of new PCs ship without Windows 7. What's filling the gap?
- dspillett 16y agoWell firstly the number of PCs figure is an estimate so there could be significant error there. A fair number of machines still sell with Vista (some with XP-or-Vista) and many are sold blank with the end user putting Linux on or a hooky copy of Windows. Obviously some people will be putting Linux on the new machines, even though very few ship with the alternate OS (most Linux users buy a machine with no OS and install their preferred Linux arrangement). But I suspect a massive part of the discrepancy is people reusing old Windows licenses with newer PCs, particularly in corporate environments where the company will have bought X user licenses which are valid no matter what the user uses them on: so when the new machine is bought the company standard build is installed (and the license transferred in any asset tracking system the organisation has) before the old machine is binned. Some of these reused licenses will be windows 7 ones, though the majority will be XP or Vista as many companies are sill stuck on Vista or XP for their standard desktop OS builds (one large financial company I could mention only completed their move away from NT, to XP, in 2006 - I doubt they'll be using 7 any time soon!).