I can see this. I have installed a lot of Windows 7 on company CPU's, I mean a lot. And I know of a lot of retail out lets that have Vista on there POS systems.
Vista has lower market share because M$ failed to market their product due to lack of stability and speed optimization and technically there wasn't much difference b/w xp and vista and People considered xp more solid as compared to vista
Longhorn Well, seriously, if Microsoft doesn't attract enough people from Windows 7 with their new shiny Windows 10, Windows 7 will become the XP 2.0 (in terms of how no one wants it to die)
Are you kidding me? The changes to the OS were huge. They rewrote the networking stack, the audio stack, they introduced the DWM, UAC, WDDM, etc. That's what actually caused the stability and performance issues, there were huge changes, and they had to release it unfinished because they lost so much time during the Longhorn reset. After SP1 and better driver support, it was actually a pretty decent OS, but it's reputation was already damaged. Windows 7 final-fixed and polished the system and became a huge success, but it wouldn't have been possible without the fundamental work done with Vista, which was, again, huge. The problem with Windows 8 is that it could have been like, but isn't, Windows 10. If they had decided to design Windows 8 a little more like Windows 10 now (an optional Start menu, Store-apps in floating-windows, Continuum-adapation, etc.), and if people are going to like Windows 10, it will be obvious that Windows 8 remains as "an avoidable disaster". I mean, they were bold in their no-compromises, touch-first (and foremost) way, but at some points you wished they would have been a little more conservative. They went like a bull at a gate to the tablet market, and a lot of people saw it coming that it won't work out, but they were so focused on their way that they never gave it a second thought.
Yah, Vista is extremely different under the hood than xp. It's like the difference between an old car and a mag-lev train. Nobody who knows anything about the inner-workings of an OS would ever suggest that Vista was too similar to XP. Vista had lower market share because it was a garbage OS. Everyone who knew anything about Operating Systems knew that it tried to do too much and was too unpolished. Even after 2 service packs, it's still bad. Whenever you do anything with the CBS or hardware, it chugs your hard disk for like a day straight.
Looks like we were right about needing an insider account, didn't know you had to actually be a MS employee though...
Well, yeah, because we are talking about desktops. Linux has the great majority of servers everywhere. Heh, I bet MDL is running on top of Linux. Or smartphones, Linux also has majority (or anything UNIX based, including iOS) So...for now I'll keep playing CSGO in my Arch Linux box