Vista slowly gains user traction with real users

It’s been about three months since I last looked at Windows Sentinel community market share numbers for Windows Vista. During that time, our user base has more than doubled — we now have just shy of 7,200 contributing sites across dozens of countries. Given the sudden influx of new users, I wondered if an updated analysis pass against the exo.repository would reveal any significant change to the status quo.

For example, would Vista finally start gaining market share at the expense of XP? And would the adoption rate for Vista Service Pack 1 continue to rise at the previous dizzying rate?

Windows Vista slowly replaces XP, but Vista SP1 is nearly the norm within Vista usage

The answer to the first question is a qualified “yes.” According to our latest community snapshot, Vista has clawed itself an extra 5 percent share of the installed base, for a total share of 36 percent. Meanwhile, XP use has dropped 4 percentage points, for a total share of 60 percent.

At less than 2 percent month over month, this is far from going gangbusters. However, the trend is definitely heading in the right direction for Vista, and by extension, Windows 7, which is looking like a no-brainer upgrade for most Vista customers.

In response to my second question, Windows Vista Service Pack adoption has now reached near-saturation levels. Fully 89 percent of sampled Vista systems sported either Service Pack 1 or a flavor of the currently circulating Service Pack 2 beta.

Interestingly, it’s customers with Vista Business (84 percent) and Ultimate (86 percent) that are lagging the most behind in terms of adoption. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s volume license customers are leading the charge, with 95 percent of sampled Vista Enterprise edition customers sporting SP1 or higher.

The first data from Windows 7 users

Speaking of Windows 7, I was pleased to discover our first batch of Windows 7 PCs in the mix of contributing systems. And while most were running the Professional Developers Conference build (6801), a few boxes sported a newer revision (6932). Could this be the precursor to the Beta 1 release we’re all expecting in mid-December?

Other statistics worth noting

The exo.repository data gathered by Windows Sentinel showed several other interesting traits of real-world PC usage:

• Quad-core CPU adoption remained steady at 8 percent of sampled systems, while overall adoption of multicore processors rose slightly to 61 percent of sampled systems.
• The number of systems sporting 2GB or more of RAM rose slightly to 67 percent, while those sporting 3GB or more dipped a bit to 27 percent (from a previous high of 29 percent).

By far, the most encouraging aspect of these latest results is what they say about the accuracy of our sampling methodology. From day one, we strove to create a representative sample set that would accurately describe the Windows community as a whole. The fact that we were able to more than double our membership, without significantly skewing the various ratios (market share, adoption rates) one way or another, speaks volumes about the quality of the data we’ve collected over the past seven months.

And as we approach our first-year goal of 8,000 registered, contributing user sites, we can declare with confidence that Windows Sentinel has finally evolved into the authoritative industry reference we envisioned so many sleepless nights ago. A special thanks to our contributors, without whom this project would not have been possible. Your data has become the lifeblood of a truly remarkable achievement. Kudos all around!