In October 2009, Microsoft’s lame-duck known as Windows Vista – the best advertisement for rival operating systems yet – managed to grapple its way to its peak-usage figure of an approximate 19% market-share – Having  converted a number of the Windows faithful to Linux and/or Mac usage; while dashing the hopes of most of the others – causing them to stick with Windows XP.

Also during the month of October that year came Microsoft’s redemption: Windows 7: An operating system that actually worked properly; one that didn’t use a full 2GBs of memory producing a blank screen for what seemed like aeons, before starting out on a life-long battle against its user in its obstinacy to operate both competently and in a fashion which one might describe it as anything resembling user-friendly.

Windows 7 proved to be quite a big hit with users, and as a result Vista began its’ decline almost instantly following the launch of 7. At the beginning of November 2011 Vista’s usage had declined to a measly 8.8%, and Ed Bott of ZDnet <I know his brothers; Google and Spam.> expects that it will probably be below the 5% mark on that date in 2012. – Personally I suspect lower than that even.

- So let us at this juncture remove Vista from the equation: Vista was a bit of a freak that nobody, apart from a few die-hards, really liked. The figures suggest that Vista was, in a way resembling a second Windows ME, in short a total flop.

But what of Windows XP? A large number of the Microsoft faithful; myself included – who declared herself “Vista-allergic” – remained users of XP and steadfastly refused to use Vista… And then came 7: -

I trialled the last two beta versions of the 64-bit Windows 7, on a brand-new PC that I’d just built around a 3-cored AMD Phenom processor, with 4GB of DDR2 and a cannibalised graphics-card from an older machine. I liked 7, but in the main I stuck to what I was more familiar with; XP. The Release Candidate of 7 showed great promise, and when the operating system RTM’d I upgraded my hardware in the Windows 7 computer to 8GB of RAM plus a brand-new graphics-card with 250MB dedicated onboard-RAM. Despite my almost-total satisfaction with 7 I continued to mainly use XP 32-bit on my older build with an Athlon 64×2 and 2GB RAM. – Until a major hardware-failure; at which point I broke-up the old box and started using Windows 7 on the newer machine.

The main reason I stayed with XP is because I do a lot of office-type work, and XP is faster at handling 2D graphics than 7 ever is. Having said that I was missing out on 7’s proper support for multi-cored processors, and many other features that just weren’t there in XP. As an office-environment operating-system I still uphold XP, and I think that as long as the old office-workhorse keeps running, all offices should make the most of XP right up until its final scheduled death-knell in 2014. – Otherwise it’s possibly best to move on to 7; after all – progress is progress I guess.

(When moving on to using Windows 7; I would strongly suggest that you use the 64-bit version if at all possible, due to its ability to utilise much more memory than its 32-bit counterpart. If you’re unsure whether or not your hardware is capable of running a 64-bit operating-system; see this article.)

It seems that pretty much everyone else – except for the greater-geeks – followed a similar pattern to the one I followed following the release of 7: <There’s a lot of follow for you!> Staying with XP until the old hardware gave up the ghost, and then buying new hardware with Windows 7 preinstalled. Well after Vista a lot of people wanted to shy away from anything new from Microsoft until it had been proven, and I think with good reason. We; the geeks, tried and tested Windows 7, and gave it the thumbs up. Eventually Joe Public accepted it too – and liked it.

Back to Ed Bott from ZDnet; and in his article of 1st November 2011 entitled “Windows 7 continues to roll as XP fades away”, he states that he’s been tracking the share of Windows versions for the last four years. From his observations of trends both past and present, noting both the continuing current escalation in the usage of 7, as well as the decline in usage of XP, he predicts that an equal usage-share will occur between Windows 7 and XP around about April 2012. Again personally I’ll stick my neck on the line and say that 7 usage will overtake XP usage at the end of the first quarter of 2012. (March)

I make this prediction because I believe that Bott hasn’t factored in the Holidays = big spend, nor that there may possibly be more ancient hardware going tits-up over the Holiday period as it gets used more; therefore people will be replacing with January-sale-priced new hardware with Win 7 preinstalled.

Moving away from Windows for a while; the market penetration of Mac OSX continues a gentle climb. According to Bott “In the past two years, it has gone from 5.3% to 6.9%. At that rate, the number of Macs will pass the number of PCs running Windows Vista sometime in 2012.” I’m actually glad about that: Although I prefer Windows to Mac as a rule, in this case I’m supporting the better operating system (as compared to Vista) and sounding a resounding “Go Mac go!”.

Meanwhile Linux is up too; at 1.2% it’s at its highest for 4 years according to Bott.

- In short, then, Windows 7 does appear to be killing off not only Vista but also XP.- As is Mac OSX and Linux.

Why not state your views; whether you favour OSX, Linux, or Windows, I’d be interested to hear your take on it. Please do comment on this article.