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Windows 11 market share continues to decline

Joule

Joule

Member
Nov 19, 2017
4,340
Statcounter-Windows-versions-market-share.jpg


Windows 11 has aged a bit now, but it's still struggling to catch up with the market share of its predecessor. At least, that's what the recent reports from Statcounter are suggesting. We see yet another drop in the latest report, from 26.68% in March to 25.65% in April. That's 1.03% of the market share dropped, and it seems almost all those users went back to Windows 10.
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For many, it's not really hard to point out the reasons why Windows 11 is struggling to win over users. For example, Microsoft is killing some of the unique features that made the operating system good, which includes the Windows Subsystem for Android. Also, the number of ads on the OS has been increasing and has even made their way to the Start menu.
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www.notebookcheck.net

Windows 10 holds 70.03% market share, while Windows 11 continues to decline

Statcounter has published its latest report on Windows version market share. While it may sound surprising, even after around nine years of release, Windows 10 currently holds 70.03% of the market share. Windows 11, on the other hand, has seen another drop, from 26.68% in March to 25.65% in April.
www.notebookcheck.net www.notebookcheck.net

I'll be honest, I just got a new Windows laptop 3 weeks ago and I gotta say I hate Windows 11. It's my first time using it as I've been avoiding updating my desktop and it's just worse in every way than Windows 10. Updates happen too often and often have errors when installing. Taskbar can't be moved to the left side (this is really frustrating). More clicks to get things done. I wish I could install Windows 10 on this laptop.
 
TeenageFBI

TeenageFBI

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,410
Not being able to move the taskbar to the side of the screen is annoying, as is the new context menu. Both issues can be addressed with registry tweaks or third party software although I'm not sure if that will continue working indefinitely.

Similarly, people coming from 10 can be annoyed by the centered taskbar, but there's an option to move it to the left like older versions of Windows.

Beyond that stuff, I don't think the complaints are worth skipping an entire OS, especially when Windows 10 security updates are going away in a ~year. I suppose the new Start menu is a downgrade if you actually clicked through the menus in Windows 10. I just use the search function as usual.

edit: Oh god, I forgot about the ridiculous TPM requirement. I use BitLocker and I still think the requirement is dumb. That's a great reason for avoiding 11.
 
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Maple

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,918
There are major rumors that Microsoft is working on WIndows 12 as well. I don't know how smart it would be to further segment the Windows user base, but on the other hand, many people clearly want nothing to do with Windows 11.

Still, just 25% market share after 3 years is absolutely terrible.

The reality is that Windows 11 still feels kind of half baked. I have a 13600K and a 990 Pro NVME SSD and yet even File Explorer somehow feels laggy and unresponsive at times. Probably all the telemetry, data collection, and AI junk running in the background.
 
Obi

Obi

Member
Oct 27, 2017
621
I was interested in trying it on my tablet, but then I read about the upcoming Windows 11 AI stuff that "will be able to document and organize everything you see on your PC, and turn everything you do into a searchable memory with natural language." And fuuuuuck that. I'll keep to windows 10 till people figure out how to permanently turn that off.
 
Ruck

Ruck

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,388
OP wants the entire bar on the side of the screen not just the icon on the left. As in, on the vertical side of the monitor
 
Flaurehn

Flaurehn

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,398
Mexico City
Joule said:
Where in that link does it show you how to move the taskbar to the left side? Unless I'm missing something
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I get what you are saying now, I guess because the post only said to the left instead of the left side of the screen I assumed it was just to the left instead of centered like it was the default in the previous versions
 
Xavien

Xavien

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Nov 3, 2017
354
This thread is an exercise on why knee-jerk reactions and assumptions to the OP are bad.

Honestly, Windows 11 offers me nothing over Windows 10 and continues to keep the stupid install requirements unless you jump through hoops.
 
OP
OP
Joule

Joule

Member
Nov 19, 2017
4,340
Maple said:
There are major rumors that Microsoft is working on WIndows 12 as well. I don't know how smart it would be to further segment the Windows user base, but on the other hand, many people clearly want nothing to do with Windows 11.

Still, just 25% market share after 3 years is absolutely terrible.

The reality is that Windows 11 still feels kind of half baked. I have a 13600K and a 990 Pro NVME SSD and yet even File Explorer somehow feels laggy and unresponsive at times. Probably all the telemetry, data collection, and AI junk running in the background.
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In general boot times feel slower than my desktop with a slower sata SSD and cpu. In general slightly more sluggish overall with better hardware.
 
Ruck

Ruck

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,388
Joule said:
In general boot times feel slower than my desktop with a slower sata SSD and cpu. In general slightly more sluggish overall with better hardware.
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yea in general I have no problems with w11 but it does boot slower than my last build that ran w10. still fast but definitely a step backwards
 
BLEEN

BLEEN

Member
Oct 27, 2017
22,023
I still think W11 is the best Windows yet and I'm running it on a kinda old laptop. For me, it flys, looks great, and is incredibly stable – so I never really got the complaints. I'm on a ThinkPad X260 and it's technically not even supported but it works better than when I had 10 on it which is kinda wild lol

I guess I'm saying, people should give it a chance. It's more than fine. OS's get updates, things change, you'll adapt. I even kept the new context menu and the icons in the middle. On desktop, I move them to the left. Other than that I've just disabled what I don't want to see via Settings same way I've done it on Windows 10. This version of Windows is probably the one I've manually configured least.
 
linkboy

linkboy

Member
Oct 26, 2017
13,810
Reno
BLEEN said:
I still think W11 is the best Windows yet and I'm running it on a kinda old laptop. For me, it flys, looks great, and is incredibly stable – so I never really got the complaints. I'm on a ThinkPad X260 and it's technically not even supported but it works better than when I had 10 on it which is kinda wild lol

I guess I'm saying, people should give it a chance. It's more than fine. OS's get updates, things change, you'll learn. I even kept the new context menu and the icons in the middle. On desktop, I move them to the left. Other than that I've just disabled what I don't want to see via Settings same way I've done it on Windows 10.
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I've had it running on a ThinkPad P50 (6th gen Intel) since the first public beta without any issues. My current laptop is a ThinkPad P52 (8th gen Intel, so it's officially support) and it's running great.
 
solisolisoli

solisolisoli

Member
Jul 30, 2020
577
Las Vegas, NV
Eh, I've bought a mac m2 laptop that works almost better than my souped up Win11 machine for photo/video editing. It barely uses any energy and weights nothing. I really only use Windows to game nowadays and I barely do that. I was running Bitwig on it with my midi/music stuff, but the mac does that better as well. I get bluescreens often too, I've had 2 complete reinstalls because of shitty drivers becoming corrupt or some random issue and just breaking the OS.
 
neoak

neoak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,505
github.com

GitHub - valinet/ExplorerPatcher: This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows

This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows - valinet/ExplorerPatcher
github.com github.com

Feature summary

  • Choose between Windows 11 or Windows 10 taskbar (with labels support, small icons and lots of customization).
  • Disable Windows 11 context menu and command bar in File Explorer and more.
  • Open Start to All apps by default, choose number of frequent apps to show, display on active monitor and more.
  • Choose between the Windows 11, Windows 10 and Windows NT Alt-Tab window switcher with customization.
  • Lots of quality of life improvements for the shell, like:
    • Skin tray menus to match Windows style, make them behave like flyouts and center them relative to the icon.
    • Choose action when left and/or right clicking the network icon.
    • Revert to the Windows 7 search box in File Explorer, or disable Windows Search altogether.
    • Disable immersive menus and use mitigations that help you run the real classic theme without glitches.
 
turbobrick

turbobrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,256
Phoenix, AZ
I use both windows 10 and windows 11 daily on different computers, and I honestly don't really see a reason to upgrade to 11 over 10. There's also the fact my daily use computer isn't officially supported in Windows 11 and I don't care enough to do the work around, so it will forever stay 10 until I build a new one.

On a side note, I do find that 3% windows 7 number funny. We finally got one of our friends to upgrade to 10 from 7 about a month ago so we could play Helldivers 2 together, since it won't run on 7
 
Midee

Midee

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,498
CA, USA
Well-deserved until MS gets their shit together.

A lot of music people I know have switched to Mac after enjoying Win XP and 7 for years. They've been just turned off by the extraneous crap, the stagnation of audio driver architecture compared to Core Audio, the ads (still can't believe they have the audacity to put fucking ads inside an OS). I've been ride or die with Windows since 3.1 for music writing, but I'm at a crossroads now with Windows 10 going unsupported soon.
 
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Vilam

Vilam

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,072
Shouldn't have put the taskbar in the middle of the f'ing screen. The start menu is atrocious. The OS is packed with ads, spyware, and bloat. They take away more and more control and options from the user. Fuck MS.
 
Gentlemen

Gentlemen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,699
I'd probably have mindlessly upgraded if enabling Secure Boot on my older mobo didn't require 2 video tutorials.
 
louiedog

louiedog

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,533
I don't have any issues with Windows 11, but at the same time there's absolutely zero things that make me love it.

I needed a second laptop for work and ended up with a Chromebook because I could get a used 10th gen i5, 8 GB RAM, nice thin and light aluminum chasis, etc. for $90. I really like this thing and it's become my primary laptop surprisingly.
 
Gr8one

Gr8one

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,854
I have 2 windows 10 machines that I I could upgrade but I haven't and probably won't until I have to. I need a new mobo If I do a new gaming build i'll probably start on it for Direct Storage.
 
Temtastic Muns

Temtastic Muns

Member
Apr 19, 2018
6,940
Does Open Shell née Classic Shell continue to work well with Windows 11 to replicate older Windows look and functionality?
 
MrBS

MrBS

"This guy are sick"
Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,305
The hate over W11 continues to be less contentious to me than previous debacles like Vista and 8. I get wanting consistent UI across versions, changes irk me too but W11 is and continues to be a better performing and more stable environment than W10. The W11 bashing is certainly refreshing from years of W10 bashing from people who were determined to never upgrade past W7. The DRM hardware requirements introduced with W11 would be a bigger issue than anything else but on a long enough timeline, certainly MS time, attrition will take care of this and people will continue to use a flavour of W10/11/12/whatever

Also that article is a rehash of a different article that is pulling data from statcounter.com amounting to a one percent blip on their figures is not the article worthy of the headline 'Windows 11 losing market share' I think it should be. I think any data nerd would like to see a longer trend on this before weighing in.
 
digit_zero

digit_zero

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,422
Windows 11 is "fine" but also feels completely unnecessary and at times makes me work harder for what have been basic features in Windows for seemingly decades. There are a few small good additions hidden about, most significantly for me dramatically better HDR support, but on the whole it never really justified its existence imo.

Also, hot take I think, but its significantly uglier than WIndows 10. Fuck the rounded edges

MrBS said:
The hate over W11 continues to be less contentious to me than previous debacles like Vista and 8.
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The points of contention are way less impactful than Vista / 8's primary sins.

Vista's issue was entirely its minimum requirement was both a modern fairly mid spec machine at the time of its launch as well as actually not powerful enough to actually smoothly run Vista (mostly due to RAM constraints) leading to a ton of PCs preloaded with Vista that should have never been allowed to use the OS because they could not really handle it.

8 tried to reinvent windows, seemingly for touch screens, way too soon as well as way to baked into the same experience as a keyboard and mouse based OS.

Windows 11 just kinda exists in this weird place where it doesn't really outwardly differentiate itself while having a the TPM upgrade requirement causing most every PC on Windows 10 scream they don't support it even when they do due to default bios settings.
 
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Midee

Midee

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,498
CA, USA
Vilam said:
Shouldn't have put the taskbar in the middle of the f'ing screen. The start menu is atrocious. The OS is packed with ads, spyware, and bloat. They take away more and more control and options from the user. Fuck MS.
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Yeah pretty much this. There's only so much "Just use CrazyJoe69's Win11 Un-Suckifier" that people can tolerate.
 
Tony72495

Tony72495

Member
Apr 26, 2019
369
I've been running Windows 11 since the beta in July 2020 on my desktop, while I'm running MacOS 14 on my laptop.

While I switched to Windows 11 primarily for features like Auto HDR, there really isn't anything else to entice anyone to switch if they're happy with 10. I like 11's design language better, but if you don't, there's basically no push for you to switch.

It also cannot be understated how Microsoft is continuing to hamper the user experience. Call MacOS a walled garden, I get Apple gets money from both hardware and software, but my laptop never complains that I'm not using Safari, my laptop never asks me to try out the cool new Siri updates, it just works and does what I want it to, I installed a throughline to ChatGPT-4 on here through Open Interpreter in the terminal and it didn't give a single shit.

Like I can disable a lot of things on here like Siri, and it just does it. If this was Windows, it would pop up like 3 boxes asking me to please consider leaving it enabled because we promise it will improve your OS experience, pretty please I promise.

I'm fine with Windows as is, but I do keep side-eyeing those Proton updates to see if maybe I want to give Linux a try on my gaming system.
 
Qrusher14242

Qrusher14242

Member
Oct 29, 2017
593
I'm still on W10 and haven't seen any reason to update until im forced to. I tried once with their tool but it said it couldn't so i haven't bothered with it. i gather i have to go turn something off in the bios to allow it to update, but never got around to it and W10 just works so why rock the boat?

I just haven't seen anything that W11 does better for me than 10 does. Honestly, my favorite Windows OS is still 7. I wish i could still use it, cause some older games just don't work anymore, like ones that used Securom (like MVP Baseball 2005). So i won't update until im forced to.
 
Latonin

Latonin

Member
Sep 23, 2023
67
Wish I hadn't installed 11 when I got my new PC but at the time I thought that it was a matter of when not if you would be forced to upgrade. 11 is just a little to intrusive. I have already modified most everything but still need to get it to default back to the old context menu and figure out how to get it to stop asking me to setup M$ Office on startup. I suppose those last two things just haven't annoyed me enough yet.

Probably should just make the jump to linux eventually but not sure which distro is best for games at the moment.
 
firehawk12

firehawk12

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,603
I have computers on both and I don't know if there's any feature in 11 that makes it compelling to jump over.
 
ceej

ceej

Member
Mar 9, 2021
4,344
Reno, Nv.
neoak said:
github.com

GitHub - valinet/ExplorerPatcher: This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows

This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows - valinet/ExplorerPatcher
github.com github.com

Feature summary

  • Choose between Windows 11 or Windows 10 taskbar (with labels support, small icons and lots of customization).
  • Disable Windows 11 context menu and command bar in File Explorer and more.
  • Open Start to All apps by default, choose number of frequent apps to show, display on active monitor and more.
  • Choose between the Windows 11, Windows 10 and Windows NT Alt-Tab window switcher with customization.
  • Lots of quality of life improvements for the shell, like:
    • Skin tray menus to match Windows style, make them behave like flyouts and center them relative to the icon.
    • Choose action when left and/or right clicking the network icon.
    • Revert to the Windows 7 search box in File Explorer, or disable Windows Search altogether.
    • Disable immersive menus and use mitigations that help you run the real classic theme without glitches.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
oh hell yeah, this would get me to switch. Eventually I'll move my desktop to 11, and work might be moving soon.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

Member
Mar 14, 2019
18,374
I built a new PC last month, and I put Win 10 on it. When initializing the mobo it did pester me to do the TPM fix, so I'll probably start getting annoying upgrade offers down the line, same as my work laptop.

My main gaming PC requires that TPM fix, and since I don't feel like messing with the BIOS, thankfully Windows Update thinks my 3700X with its 32 gigs of RAM is unable to run Win 11.
 
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