Windows 9 vs The Mighty XP

It appears to us that Microsoft is in a bit of a pickle right now. Faced with the failure of its Windows 8 software, they got all excited about replacing it with Windows 9. So excited in fact, that they accidentally posted a mock up of their new Windows logo on a Chinese social media site.

The rumour mill is frantically churning out tales that the new operating system will be with us by the end of the month. If this is true, it’s exciting but it still places Microsoft in a pretty uncomfortable position, faced with the daunting task of coaxing their loyal XP customers into finally upgrading.

It goes like this: Windows 8 was expected to attract more people than ever, with Microsoft confident that users would kiss goodbye to XP and jauntily skip over to the new system. Not so, even when Microsoft stopped support for XP in April, it seems that 24% of computers connected to the internet are still using XP, which makes it the second most popular operating system.

To put this all in perspective, 51.21% use Windows 7, 13% use Windows 8 or 8.1, and around 4.29% use Mac OS X 10.9. Even with companies who are moving towards Windows 7 or 8.1, research tells us that it takes around 7 months for them to complete the move. Awkward, when so much business is now completely reliant on the internet.

The challenge for Microsoft is clear; short of bribing people, how are they ever going to convince people to leave behind the trusty 15 year old XP? (In technology years that’s practically Jurassic.) Windows 9 is going to have to be a very impressive operating system to manage that. We’re looking forward to seeing what the software giant is going to unveil at the end of the month, but we wonder whether anything will ever be strong enough to shake the mighty Windows 7 and XP from their thrones.