9 ms·

The State of Windows 8

bloaf 14y ago
Interesting, but I suspect that the reduction in crashes may simply be due to the fact that a majority of windows 8 installations are either on new computers or are clean installs. I will be curious to see how the "crashes/user" number trends over time.
- stephenfung 14y ago
  Another related factor is the difference in user demographics -- the early adopters may be more tech savvy.
- jakeonthemove 14y ago
  I'd be more worried about what's crashing - Windows 8's Explorer is at the top, which is not a good thing...
  - cail 14y ago
    This could come with the same concern. If a lot of these Windows 8 installs are new machines or clean installs there may not be as much third-party software installed so crashes that happen are more likely to occur in Windows components. That said, the explorer crashes do worry me.
    - mistermann 14y ago
      It's very sloppy, but not unusual for Microsoft, and easily fixed.
  - djpowell 14y ago
    Could some of these be caused by 3rd party in-process shell extensions? Especially ones that aren't compatible with Windows 8?
kenjackson 14y ago
If this is representative then sales of win8 are great. About 700m units of win7 sold to date. From this win8 is a bit more than 1/25th the sales of win7 So about 28m units sold so far?
- AdamTReineke 14y ago
  That matches the numbers that Ballmer of about 1 million units per day [1] and keeps them on track for 400 million by EOY 2013 [2]. 1: http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/steve-ballmer-four-million-upgrades-of-windows-8-sold-in-four-days-206076 http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/steve-ballmer-f... 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/09/07/how-microsoft-can-sell-400-million-windows-8-devices-in-2013/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/09/07/how-...
  - Someone 14y ago
    Everybody can predict that 400 million number. http://phys.org/news/2012-11-china-lenovo-consumer-pcs.html http://phys.org/news/2012-11-china-lenovo-consumer-pcs.html claims "The survey by IHS iSuppli said the total PC market in 2012 is expected to contract 1.2 percent to 348.7 million units, down from 352.8 million in 2011." I think it is safe to bet that 90% of PCs sold in 2013 will be sold with Windows 8 installed. 90% of 350M gets you a good way towards that "400M copies sold" figure. Add in some sales for tablets and two months of sales in 2012, and you probably are there already. To get anything different, the economy would have to collapse spectactularly, or people would have to stop buying Windows PCs en masse. For Windows, the more interesting figures would be how many PCs run Windows 8 (I bet many companies will overwrite Windows 8 with Windows 7 or XP), and how many standalone upgrades got sold.
blisse 14y ago
I'm confused, why is this relevant? Where did they get this data? How do they get this data? How many people are they tracking? Who is Soluto? Their site doesn't make it clear at all. And I'm not going to watch a video to figure it out. And clearly the only people using Soluto would be more tech-savvy users? Prove to me that this sample is representative of the entire population?
- AdamTReineke 14y ago
  Scroll down on the home page. Talk about hidden below the fold... // Edit: I wish they had more info. This looks like it could be REALLY slick for monitoring family computers health VS my current solution with LogMeIn.
  - natep 14y ago
    For the things it can do, yes, it is very good. It's not a general-purpose login, so of course there will be things you can't do (like uninstall things). But the things you can do cover most things: * Install/update programs via Ninite * Install Windows updates * Any screenshot they take with Soluto (F8) get automatically sent to you with system runtime information * Enable/disable/delay programs during startup (delaying them means Soluto starts them after you have a usable system) * Enable/disable web browser extensions * View hardware and driver information
- SquareWheel 14y ago
  >Where did they get this data? How do they get this data? As is says on that very page: "Statistics are based on anonymous data collected from the Soluto community." >Prove to me that this sample is representative of the entire population? Where do they claim it is?
- roee 14y ago
  Hi, please the detailed comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863
dubcanada 14y ago
This is slightly inaccurate, for starters I don't know a single person with soluto nor have I ever heard of this before. This is most likely geared towards a more tech savvy user, proving pretty much nothing as that is not the majority.
- natep 14y ago
  It started out as targeted towards very tech savvy users (i.e. most HN users, including me), but recently they added a feature where you can manage the computers of your friends and family through their web site, which I am doing for my parents and brother. Just yesterday I got an email saying my mom installed the "AOL Toolbar" Firefox extension. I asked her if this was intentional, she said no, and with 1 click, I disabled it. I'm not affiliated with it in any way, just a happy user (although 90% of the time, I don't think about it)
account_taken 14y ago
I find it really hard to believe average crashes is 7.1/month on Windows 7. I run Windows 24/7. It's never crashed. I have an overclocked 4.5Ghz i5 and have many VMware sessions running. Maybe it's because I have quality hardware? Same experience with OS X. Both are rock solid.
- stevenwei 14y ago
  It's not entirely clear whether that statistic is referring to operating system crashes (i.e. BSOD) or third-party application crashes, especially since it's listed together with the "most common crashing apps". Edit - Nevermind, blue screens are listed in a separate section below. So I'm going to conclude that these are application-level crashes.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  I'm not sure about this, but I don't think that these are kernel-level crashes - just plain old user-mode application crashes (ie not something that crashes the whole computer). It's interesting that windows explorer under windows 8 is crashing that much. I guess there's a lot of new code in it.
  - ygra 14y ago
    It could also just be it being unresponsive and people click “close this application” instead of “wait until it responds again”, which I believe gets classified as an application crash by the system as well (but I'm not sure). In any case, such unresponsiveness can be caused by a non-available network connection already.
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      And that makes the crash ok? Applications shouldn't be non-responsive period, even if the network becomes unavailable they should at least fail gracefully. Whenever I shutdown/restart Windows 8 for my monthly update (or whenever my machine gets too slow), most of my applications crash out (meaning, they can't shutdown in time for Windows to complain about it and ask you to crash the apps explicitly). This is with decent network.
timc3 14y ago
Stats aside, that is a great looking and at the sametime readable site.
damian2000 14y ago
Blown away by the stat about 7% of all Chinese PC users on Windows 8 already. Wonder how many are purchased as opposed to trial/beta versions though.
- ygra 14y ago
  7 % of Chinese PC users who installed Soluto. I guess the large portion who uses a pirated, unpatched, malware-ridden XP probably doesn't have Soluto either.
bobsy 14y ago
The issue here is data relevancy. How high tech is this audience? How big are the numbers which they are using to pull this information together? You would hope its 6/7/8 figure numbers but as it isn't specified it could be based on a 1000 users which I feel is of limited value. I recently upgraded to Windows8 and I was pleasantly surprised. I like it. It has some issues with consistency. ( Getting IE10 Metro to run requires IE to be your default browser which I don't like. / There are like 3 ways to shut down your PC / Navigation can be slightly awkward between metro app and desktop and back again. ) That said I feel it is a step forward and I hope to see more positive numbers like this in the future.
- roee 14y ago
  Hi, Roee from Soluto here, please see my full comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863
gokhan 14y ago
There are hundreds of windows 7 & 8 users around me, including myself. Haven't seen a bluescreen for a long long time.
- roee 14y ago
  Hi, Roee from Soluto here. When you deal with big numbers you see lots of BSODs, both in W7 and W8. The people surrounding you may be taking better care of their machines then the average. I personally encountered one BSOD on my shiny W8 machine.
  - Ergomane 14y ago
    What is the distribution of BSODs? Are they evenly spread over the population or are some users/machines responsible for the majority of cases?
    - roee 14y ago
      We will improve the visibility of this, thanks.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "The people surrounding you may be taking better care of their machines then the average." Selection bias works both ways, people who install such "utility" software may be taking worse care of their systems and installing more bloatware.
    - roee 14y ago
      Just to clarify, the vast majority of our audience currently arrives through sites like LifeHacker, MakeUseOf and HowToGeek. "Bloatware" is uncalled for in this case, it usually refers to shit that's trying to make money of you without providing value. Please read my full comment that includes our bias analysis: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863
      - 14y ago
aluhut 14y ago
My home PCs XP runs for years now. No crashes, no stuck "Apps", no demand for a change. My laptops 7 is a constant crash, constantly overloaded, reinstalled several times but I have to work on it. Did not even think about installing 8...
- boyter 14y ago
  Maybe the problem lies with the laptop? I never have issues with 7, but my experience is just as anecdotal as yours. Have you tried XP on it to be sure?
  - aluhut 14y ago
    Not XP (my private licence) but I have Ubuntu running parallel for my private stuff. Never had any problems with it.
    - boyter 14y ago
      Going to go on a hunch and suggest its a dodgy driver then, or some piece of hardware windows is picking up that Ubuntu isn't. Its annoying that bad drivers still crash windows but the same thing happens on Linux systems.
      - aluhut 14y ago
        That would explain the crash but why is it so horrible slow? I don't feel the speed difference between an Ubuntu/XP is as big as in between Ubuntu/win7 (talking about the old-desktop here).
        boyter 14y ago
        Going to go with drivers again. The sad truth is closed source drivers can be as hit or miss as open source. By any measure I have tried, Windows 7 is considerably faster then XP for the gear I run, but only when proper drivers are installed (not the included Windows 7 ones). It is annoying when you get something that's slower or doesn't work though. I was burnt by Creative with my Live! Drive and as such will never buy their hardware or software again, but I don't blame Microsoft.
oemera 14y ago
I don't use Windows and I also don't use Google Drive but why on earth does it crash so often?
- dagw 14y ago
  I honestly have no idea, but I can confirm it. I uninstalled Google Drive on my Windows 7 machine and never bothered to install it on my Windows 8 machine since it was basically unusable. It worked fine for several month and then one day it just started crashing within minutes of me logging in.
- bravoyankee 14y ago
  Google Drive does crash a lot, but Firefox crashes more (for me anyway).
robomartin 14y ago
I am not sure how good this data might be, being that it originates from software that might not be widely deployed. That said, it is always prudent to look for other sources and compare: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.... http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php The most surprising bit of information for me has to do with Vista. I didn't realize that it lost out so much ground to W7. We are still running Vista 64 bit on a number of machines because upgrading to W7 would also require upgrading a number of engineering packages that don't play well with W7 unless upgraded. That would cost tens of thousands of dollars and it simply isn't necessary. Aside from a few "features" Vista 64 has been rock-solid as a platform. Some of these workstations see heavy FEA work 18 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week.
- bluedanieru 14y ago
  Vista got better right around the time W7 was released anyway, right? Both in terms of the OS itself as well as better support from third parties. I've always thought that W7, while a great operating system in its own right, also benefited from Vista acting as a sort of beta test for all the new shit they added like UAC and better separation of concerns. FWIW I had a Vista machine from a few months after release until W7 came out and I liked it well enough to consider it at least an improvement on XP.
  - hfs 14y ago
    Microsoft's every other OS is a good one. The ones in between are almost always poop.
  - DoubleMalt 14y ago
    XP got good with SP2. W7 ist SP2 of Vista ;)
- wslh 14y ago
riffraff 14y ago
is the map half-user-localized ? I get data for USA, Australia, China, Hungary and Romania, which seems like an example of "find the odd one" unless they detect my position somehow between HU and RO
nnq 14y ago
...uhm, is it just me or is this just a very successful way for them to promote their products via publishing more or less relevant statistics to have something under a link bait title? (dunno how much traffic this brought to their product site but I think this little scheme really worked for them :) )
- nivla 14y ago
  Given that a good majority of the posts by startups here on Hacker News is aimed at attracting new customers, I see nothing wrong with this one. They analyzed their data and talked out the results. At no point did I feel pressured to learn more about their product, although out of curiosity I did checkout their main page.
josteink 14y ago
Interesting to see how vendor-provided files, drivers and utilities seems to be causing most problems across the line. Also it seems that Windows 8 has a lot going for it stability-wise. The figures reported (if reliable) seems to indicate that Windows 8 is about 2-3 times more stable than Windows 7, which I already would consider pretty good. That's a remarkable improvement. As for Windows 8 itself, I had a chance to fool around with it on a MS Surface tablet. Not saying I'm buying the tablet myself (I already have an Asus Transformer), but Windows 8 suddenly feels like it makes a lot more sense, once you are using it on a touch-enabled device.
- meaty 14y ago
  Well it does until you fire up office, which appears to be glued on the side, badly.
- bruceboughton 14y ago
  I would be slightly hesitant to put the improvement in stability purely down to Windows 8. On average, the Windows 8 installs will be newer and fresher than the XP and W7 ones, and Windows has a bit of a reputation of detioriating with use. Finally, early adopters are far more likely to buy highly specced machines, rather than cheaper machines that are not up to the job.
chris_wot 14y ago
Windows Explorer is still crashing?!?!
roee 14y ago
Hi all, Roee from Soluto here (providers of the W8 data). I'll try to respond to the questions and comments here. But first, a bit of background to the size and quality of our userbase. I warn you this is going to sound defensive, but it's important to establish that we're not a bunch of kids who sampled 50 Win8 VMs. So - Soluto's agent has been downloaded on over 3M machines in over 150 countries. We had one of the first applications running on the developer preview of Windows 8 over a year ago, and our first metro app was in the first batch released to the public in February together with the launch of the first consumer preview. We are a 2012 Microsoft Partners of the Year (in the startups category), we share investors with the likes of Skype, Dropbox & LinkedIn and most importantly - we're building a service that helps techie folks to provide tech support for their friends and family remotely without the need for remote desktop (free for supporting up to 5 PCs). Our hundreds of servers now deal with over 50 million data points every day, and we're big data junkies. Use Google to verify all that :) And now a couple of points I hope will answer some of the questions- 1. The data used for the Windows 8 part is only based on RTM versions and later, i.e. it does not include developer preview or consumer preview. 2. Our users are outright techies, but on the other hand the machines we manage are a mix, since our users support their friends, parents and grandmas, leading to some really non-techie level usage types (IE6, 5 toolbars, etc). That being said, Windows 8 is more prominent on the supporter side in our userbase (i.e. we see more techies using it then non-techies). 3. The sample size for Windows 8 is still way smaller than that of Windows 7, naturally. But that page is automatically updating, so check it out once in a while, and with time the data will become more accurate, as big numbers tend to become. We still think it's valuable that way, even if not everything is perfectly significant. iTunes crashes more and Google Drive crashes less, that probably won't change without an update from these vendors. 4. To those who say there are no BSODs in the world since Win7 - I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong. I see the data on a daily basis. The situation is much better then XP and Vista, but part of the population still suffers from BSODs, mostly because of 3rd party drivers. I personally had a BSOD on W8 (the sad smiley modern BSOD, but still a BSOD). 5. I'm not the OP of this post and I don't know vinothshankaran. 6. As our page gets refreshed with data, we'll also be adding more components and clarifications. If there's anything specific you'd like to see added to the page, by all means please share it here. As the lead product manager at Soluto and a long time HN enthusiast, crowdsourcing our requirements to this community sounds like a dream :) And if you have specific questions or comments do feel free to contact me at roee@soluto.com One last point- if you're the kind of person who receives phone calls for PC tech support from your friends and family members - give Soluto a try :) Roee
JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
No offence, but understanding the effect of Windows 8 based on a tool that speeds up boot times...is moronic considering Win8 has some of the fastest PC boot times I've ever seen on the PC market. Edit: I know, it does more than that, but I've always known Soluto from when it was a startup analyzer.
- ygra 14y ago
  Since you do know it does more than that (including monitoring system health and crashing applications – which it did for a long time, too) why do you still consider it moronic?
  - JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
    Just saying, a fresh install is a "healthy" install. I don't know anyone who gets a new PC and says "Boy, you know what this brand new machine needs? Some system maintenance software."
    - ygra 14y ago
      You never bought a computer with Windows already installed, did you? :)
      - JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
        Haha! I see your point! Actually, my Dell came with minimal bloat.
sproketboy 14y ago
This is just an Ad to get people to use their service which monitors everything you do on your machine. Nope.

bloaf 14y ago

Interesting, but I suspect that the reduction in crashes may simply be due to the fact that a majority of windows 8 installations are either on new computers or are clean installs. I will be curious to see how the "crashes/user" number trends over time.

stephenfung 14y ago
Another related factor is the difference in user demographics -- the early adopters may be more tech savvy.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
I'd be more worried about what's crashing - Windows 8's Explorer is at the top, which is not a good thing...
- cail 14y ago
  This could come with the same concern. If a lot of these Windows 8 installs are new machines or clean installs there may not be as much third-party software installed so crashes that happen are more likely to occur in Windows components. That said, the explorer crashes do worry me.
  - mistermann 14y ago
    It's very sloppy, but not unusual for Microsoft, and easily fixed.
- djpowell 14y ago
  Could some of these be caused by 3rd party in-process shell extensions? Especially ones that aren't compatible with Windows 8?

kenjackson 14y ago

If this is representative then sales of win8 are great. About 700m units of win7 sold to date. From this win8 is a bit more than 1/25th the sales of win7 So about 28m units sold so far?

AdamTReineke 14y ago
That matches the numbers that Ballmer of about 1 million units per day [1] and keeps them on track for 400 million by EOY 2013 [2]. 1: http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/steve-ballmer-four-million-upgrades-of-windows-8-sold-in-four-days-206076 http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/steve-ballmer-f... 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/09/07/how-microsoft-can-sell-400-million-windows-8-devices-in-2013/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/09/07/how-...
- Someone 14y ago
  Everybody can predict that 400 million number. http://phys.org/news/2012-11-china-lenovo-consumer-pcs.html http://phys.org/news/2012-11-china-lenovo-consumer-pcs.html claims "The survey by IHS iSuppli said the total PC market in 2012 is expected to contract 1.2 percent to 348.7 million units, down from 352.8 million in 2011." I think it is safe to bet that 90% of PCs sold in 2013 will be sold with Windows 8 installed. 90% of 350M gets you a good way towards that "400M copies sold" figure. Add in some sales for tablets and two months of sales in 2012, and you probably are there already. To get anything different, the economy would have to collapse spectactularly, or people would have to stop buying Windows PCs en masse. For Windows, the more interesting figures would be how many PCs run Windows 8 (I bet many companies will overwrite Windows 8 with Windows 7 or XP), and how many standalone upgrades got sold.

blisse 14y ago

I'm confused, why is this relevant? Where did they get this data? How do they get this data? How many people are they tracking? Who is Soluto? Their site doesn't make it clear at all. And I'm not going to watch a video to figure it out. And clearly the only people using Soluto would be more tech-savvy users? Prove to me that this sample is representative of the entire population?

AdamTReineke 14y ago
Scroll down on the home page. Talk about hidden below the fold... // Edit: I wish they had more info. This looks like it could be REALLY slick for monitoring family computers health VS my current solution with LogMeIn.
- natep 14y ago
  For the things it can do, yes, it is very good. It's not a general-purpose login, so of course there will be things you can't do (like uninstall things). But the things you can do cover most things: * Install/update programs via Ninite * Install Windows updates * Any screenshot they take with Soluto (F8) get automatically sent to you with system runtime information * Enable/disable/delay programs during startup (delaying them means Soluto starts them after you have a usable system) * Enable/disable web browser extensions * View hardware and driver information
SquareWheel 14y ago
>Where did they get this data? How do they get this data? As is says on that very page: "Statistics are based on anonymous data collected from the Soluto community." >Prove to me that this sample is representative of the entire population? Where do they claim it is?
roee 14y ago
Hi, please the detailed comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863

dubcanada 14y ago

This is slightly inaccurate, for starters I don't know a single person with soluto nor have I ever heard of this before. This is most likely geared towards a more tech savvy user, proving pretty much nothing as that is not the majority.

natep 14y ago
It started out as targeted towards very tech savvy users (i.e. most HN users, including me), but recently they added a feature where you can manage the computers of your friends and family through their web site, which I am doing for my parents and brother. Just yesterday I got an email saying my mom installed the "AOL Toolbar" Firefox extension. I asked her if this was intentional, she said no, and with 1 click, I disabled it. I'm not affiliated with it in any way, just a happy user (although 90% of the time, I don't think about it)

account_taken 14y ago

I find it really hard to believe average crashes is 7.1/month on Windows 7. I run Windows 24/7. It's never crashed. I have an overclocked 4.5Ghz i5 and have many VMware sessions running. Maybe it's because I have quality hardware? Same experience with OS X. Both are rock solid.

stevenwei 14y ago
It's not entirely clear whether that statistic is referring to operating system crashes (i.e. BSOD) or third-party application crashes, especially since it's listed together with the "most common crashing apps". Edit - Nevermind, blue screens are listed in a separate section below. So I'm going to conclude that these are application-level crashes.
CountSessine 14y ago
I'm not sure about this, but I don't think that these are kernel-level crashes - just plain old user-mode application crashes (ie not something that crashes the whole computer). It's interesting that windows explorer under windows 8 is crashing that much. I guess there's a lot of new code in it.
- ygra 14y ago
  It could also just be it being unresponsive and people click “close this application” instead of “wait until it responds again”, which I believe gets classified as an application crash by the system as well (but I'm not sure). In any case, such unresponsiveness can be caused by a non-available network connection already.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    And that makes the crash ok? Applications shouldn't be non-responsive period, even if the network becomes unavailable they should at least fail gracefully. Whenever I shutdown/restart Windows 8 for my monthly update (or whenever my machine gets too slow), most of my applications crash out (meaning, they can't shutdown in time for Windows to complain about it and ask you to crash the apps explicitly). This is with decent network.

timc3 14y ago

Stats aside, that is a great looking and at the sametime readable site.

damian2000 14y ago

Blown away by the stat about 7% of all Chinese PC users on Windows 8 already. Wonder how many are purchased as opposed to trial/beta versions though.

ygra 14y ago
7 % of Chinese PC users who installed Soluto. I guess the large portion who uses a pirated, unpatched, malware-ridden XP probably doesn't have Soluto either.

bobsy 14y ago

The issue here is data relevancy. How high tech is this audience? How big are the numbers which they are using to pull this information together? You would hope its 6/7/8 figure numbers but as it isn't specified it could be based on a 1000 users which I feel is of limited value. I recently upgraded to Windows8 and I was pleasantly surprised. I like it. It has some issues with consistency. ( Getting IE10 Metro to run requires IE to be your default browser which I don't like. / There are like 3 ways to shut down your PC / Navigation can be slightly awkward between metro app and desktop and back again. ) That said I feel it is a step forward and I hope to see more positive numbers like this in the future.

roee 14y ago
Hi, Roee from Soluto here, please see my full comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863

gokhan 14y ago

There are hundreds of windows 7 & 8 users around me, including myself. Haven't seen a bluescreen for a long long time.

roee 14y ago
Hi, Roee from Soluto here. When you deal with big numbers you see lots of BSODs, both in W7 and W8. The people surrounding you may be taking better care of their machines then the average. I personally encountered one BSOD on my shiny W8 machine.
- Ergomane 14y ago
  What is the distribution of BSODs? Are they evenly spread over the population or are some users/machines responsible for the majority of cases?
  - roee 14y ago
    We will improve the visibility of this, thanks.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "The people surrounding you may be taking better care of their machines then the average." Selection bias works both ways, people who install such "utility" software may be taking worse care of their systems and installing more bloatware.
  - roee 14y ago
    Just to clarify, the vast majority of our audience currently arrives through sites like LifeHacker, MakeUseOf and HowToGeek. "Bloatware" is uncalled for in this case, it usually refers to shit that's trying to make money of you without providing value. Please read my full comment that includes our bias analysis: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793863
    - 14y ago

aluhut 14y ago

My home PCs XP runs for years now. No crashes, no stuck "Apps", no demand for a change. My laptops 7 is a constant crash, constantly overloaded, reinstalled several times but I have to work on it. Did not even think about installing 8...

boyter 14y ago
Maybe the problem lies with the laptop? I never have issues with 7, but my experience is just as anecdotal as yours. Have you tried XP on it to be sure?
- aluhut 14y ago
  Not XP (my private licence) but I have Ubuntu running parallel for my private stuff. Never had any problems with it.
  - boyter 14y ago
    Going to go on a hunch and suggest its a dodgy driver then, or some piece of hardware windows is picking up that Ubuntu isn't. Its annoying that bad drivers still crash windows but the same thing happens on Linux systems.
    - aluhut 14y ago
      That would explain the crash but why is it so horrible slow? I don't feel the speed difference between an Ubuntu/XP is as big as in between Ubuntu/win7 (talking about the old-desktop here).
      - boyter 14y ago
        Going to go with drivers again. The sad truth is closed source drivers can be as hit or miss as open source. By any measure I have tried, Windows 7 is considerably faster then XP for the gear I run, but only when proper drivers are installed (not the included Windows 7 ones). It is annoying when you get something that's slower or doesn't work though. I was burnt by Creative with my Live! Drive and as such will never buy their hardware or software again, but I don't blame Microsoft.

oemera 14y ago

I don't use Windows and I also don't use Google Drive but why on earth does it crash so often?

dagw 14y ago
I honestly have no idea, but I can confirm it. I uninstalled Google Drive on my Windows 7 machine and never bothered to install it on my Windows 8 machine since it was basically unusable. It worked fine for several month and then one day it just started crashing within minutes of me logging in.
bravoyankee 14y ago
Google Drive does crash a lot, but Firefox crashes more (for me anyway).

robomartin 14y ago

I am not sure how good this data might be, being that it originates from software that might not be widely deployed. That said, it is always prudent to look for other sources and compare: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.... http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php The most surprising bit of information for me has to do with Vista. I didn't realize that it lost out so much ground to W7. We are still running Vista 64 bit on a number of machines because upgrading to W7 would also require upgrading a number of engineering packages that don't play well with W7 unless upgraded. That would cost tens of thousands of dollars and it simply isn't necessary. Aside from a few "features" Vista 64 has been rock-solid as a platform. Some of these workstations see heavy FEA work 18 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week.

bluedanieru 14y ago
Vista got better right around the time W7 was released anyway, right? Both in terms of the OS itself as well as better support from third parties. I've always thought that W7, while a great operating system in its own right, also benefited from Vista acting as a sort of beta test for all the new shit they added like UAC and better separation of concerns. FWIW I had a Vista machine from a few months after release until W7 came out and I liked it well enough to consider it at least an improvement on XP.
- hfs 14y ago
  Microsoft's every other OS is a good one. The ones in between are almost always poop.
- DoubleMalt 14y ago
  XP got good with SP2. W7 ist SP2 of Vista ;)
wslh 14y ago

riffraff 14y ago

is the map half-user-localized ? I get data for USA, Australia, China, Hungary and Romania, which seems like an example of "find the odd one" unless they detect my position somehow between HU and RO

nnq 14y ago

...uhm, is it just me or is this just a very successful way for them to promote their products via publishing more or less relevant statistics to have something under a link bait title? (dunno how much traffic this brought to their product site but I think this little scheme really worked for them :) )

nivla 14y ago
Given that a good majority of the posts by startups here on Hacker News is aimed at attracting new customers, I see nothing wrong with this one. They analyzed their data and talked out the results. At no point did I feel pressured to learn more about their product, although out of curiosity I did checkout their main page.

josteink 14y ago

Interesting to see how vendor-provided files, drivers and utilities seems to be causing most problems across the line. Also it seems that Windows 8 has a lot going for it stability-wise. The figures reported (if reliable) seems to indicate that Windows 8 is about 2-3 times more stable than Windows 7, which I already would consider pretty good. That's a remarkable improvement. As for Windows 8 itself, I had a chance to fool around with it on a MS Surface tablet. Not saying I'm buying the tablet myself (I already have an Asus Transformer), but Windows 8 suddenly feels like it makes a lot more sense, once you are using it on a touch-enabled device.

meaty 14y ago
Well it does until you fire up office, which appears to be glued on the side, badly.
bruceboughton 14y ago
I would be slightly hesitant to put the improvement in stability purely down to Windows 8. On average, the Windows 8 installs will be newer and fresher than the XP and W7 ones, and Windows has a bit of a reputation of detioriating with use. Finally, early adopters are far more likely to buy highly specced machines, rather than cheaper machines that are not up to the job.

chris_wot 14y ago

Windows Explorer is still crashing?!?!

roee 14y ago

Hi all, Roee from Soluto here (providers of the W8 data). I'll try to respond to the questions and comments here. But first, a bit of background to the size and quality of our userbase. I warn you this is going to sound defensive, but it's important to establish that we're not a bunch of kids who sampled 50 Win8 VMs. So - Soluto's agent has been downloaded on over 3M machines in over 150 countries. We had one of the first applications running on the developer preview of Windows 8 over a year ago, and our first metro app was in the first batch released to the public in February together with the launch of the first consumer preview. We are a 2012 Microsoft Partners of the Year (in the startups category), we share investors with the likes of Skype, Dropbox & LinkedIn and most importantly - we're building a service that helps techie folks to provide tech support for their friends and family remotely without the need for remote desktop (free for supporting up to 5 PCs). Our hundreds of servers now deal with over 50 million data points every day, and we're big data junkies. Use Google to verify all that :) And now a couple of points I hope will answer some of the questions- 1. The data used for the Windows 8 part is only based on RTM versions and later, i.e. it does not include developer preview or consumer preview. 2. Our users are outright techies, but on the other hand the machines we manage are a mix, since our users support their friends, parents and grandmas, leading to some really non-techie level usage types (IE6, 5 toolbars, etc). That being said, Windows 8 is more prominent on the supporter side in our userbase (i.e. we see more techies using it then non-techies). 3. The sample size for Windows 8 is still way smaller than that of Windows 7, naturally. But that page is automatically updating, so check it out once in a while, and with time the data will become more accurate, as big numbers tend to become. We still think it's valuable that way, even if not everything is perfectly significant. iTunes crashes more and Google Drive crashes less, that probably won't change without an update from these vendors. 4. To those who say there are no BSODs in the world since Win7 - I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong. I see the data on a daily basis. The situation is much better then XP and Vista, but part of the population still suffers from BSODs, mostly because of 3rd party drivers. I personally had a BSOD on W8 (the sad smiley modern BSOD, but still a BSOD). 5. I'm not the OP of this post and I don't know vinothshankaran. 6. As our page gets refreshed with data, we'll also be adding more components and clarifications. If there's anything specific you'd like to see added to the page, by all means please share it here. As the lead product manager at Soluto and a long time HN enthusiast, crowdsourcing our requirements to this community sounds like a dream :) And if you have specific questions or comments do feel free to contact me at roee@soluto.com One last point- if you're the kind of person who receives phone calls for PC tech support from your friends and family members - give Soluto a try :) Roee

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago

No offence, but understanding the effect of Windows 8 based on a tool that speeds up boot times...is moronic considering Win8 has some of the fastest PC boot times I've ever seen on the PC market. Edit: I know, it does more than that, but I've always known Soluto from when it was a startup analyzer.

ygra 14y ago
Since you do know it does more than that (including monitoring system health and crashing applications – which it did for a long time, too) why do you still consider it moronic?
- JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
  Just saying, a fresh install is a "healthy" install. I don't know anyone who gets a new PC and says "Boy, you know what this brand new machine needs? Some system maintenance software."
  - ygra 14y ago
    You never bought a computer with Windows already installed, did you? :)
    - JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
      Haha! I see your point! Actually, my Dell came with minimal bloat.

sproketboy 14y ago

This is just an Ad to get people to use their service which monitors everything you do on your machine. Nope.