Survey results: Why Windows 7 is still used

[German]Windows 7 is still running on one in five computers, although the operating system fell out of general support on January 14, 2020. At the end of September 2020 there was a survey on the reasons, the results of which are available.

In the article Operating System / Windows / Browser Share (Nov. 2020) just had a look at the operating system share on the desktop. Looking at the latest figures from netmarketshare.com (until the end of October 2020), Windows 7 still runs on 20.41% of desktop systems.

(OS share on desktop end of 10.2020, Source: Netmarketshare)

There must be reasons for that. Ed Bott had started a survey at the end of September 2020 to find out more about these reasons (see my blog post Poll by Ed Bott: Why are you still using Windows 7). The results of this poll are available in this ZDNet post since some time. The ZDNet poll received more than 3200 answers and about 50 emails. The results are quite interesting.  

• 58% of respondents do not plan to upgrade to Windows 10, 26% are unsure and only 16% will upgrade to this version of Windows. 
• 6% of the respondents pay for Extended Security Updates (ESU), while the remaining 91% seem to forgo security updates.

The last point could be dismissed as a problem – but some of the systems are not connected to the Internet, so this is not an issue. But there are also people who hope to be safe with up-to-date anti-virus software. Regarding the reasons for refusing to upgrade, Ed Bott has filtered out the following from 2,855 responses

• 42% of people do not upgrade for compatibility reasons
• 32% simply do not want to upgrade, of which 17% see no need, with various reasons (bugs, stability, user interface, etc.) given for refusing to upgrade. A good 1/4 of people say they definitely don't like Windows 10. A small part (7%) has no reservations about Windows 10, but prefers Windows 7.
• 10% of the respondents found the upgrade to Windows 10 to expensive (although for consumers the upgrade is still available inofficially)
• 5% of respondents refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 because they consider Microsoft's update policy too patronizing. Negative named are "forced updates", "faulty updates" and the biannual updates of the operating system.
  Incidentally, 3% of the upgrade deniers cite reservations about telemetry data acquisition as a reason. And 1% argue with lack of trust in Microsoft.
• 3% of people cannot upgrade to Windows 10 or are afraid of an upgrade because then the system won't work anymore.
• 3% cite lack of training and support as the reason for not upgrading

Oh yes, about 1% have indicated that they want to switch to Linux. I find the answers quite exciting, because the majority of the respondents see compatibility problems and missing advantages with Windows 10 as the reason for the refusal to upgrade.