Internet Explorer still growing as Windows 7 starts its decline

Yeah, some choice eh? In my country you can pay almost as much for a powerful Windows laptop as you can for one of the less pricey Macbooks. Looking at the state of Win 8, one day I may be tempted to pay the extra.

 

Yeah, if things don't improve, I may be tempted too..

 

The smaller the sample set, the greater the error factor is in a weighted figure, but these are the figures that get the biggest boost.
Weighting will cause additional error if there are regional specific factors such as language specific websites (e.g. versions of amazon and ebay), regional websites (bbc in the UK allows access to iPlayer, but not outside UK), national firewalls restrictions (for example some countries block pirate bay).
All these are factors that will bias adding any weighting added.

The CIA data has no measure of unique visitors to use as a factor to use in the weighting values used by netmarketshare.
The CIA data has an unknown measure of internet traffic, is it the sum of 2 way traffic, does it include non browser based transfers such as ftp, images, data files, what do they actually count ?
What is the age of the CIA data ?
Does the CIA data include any correction factors or weighting itself ?

There is an assumption of a linear relationship between unique visits to a site vs the traffic, when people like Google and Alexa have shown it to be a curve, with the most popular sites taking a higher proportion of visits, so when applying the weights, the weight per site will actually be different, but netmarketshare assumes it will be the same, irrespective of what can be derived for the CIA data.

Cheers, Nick

 

I'm no Linux fanboy, but popular distros like Ubuntu, Mint & Fedora are really good viable alternatives to Windows. The share market of Windows shows only one of the characteristics of most humans: they don't like change. Look at Facebook, dominant in social networks market, although Google+ is way much better.

 

No, they are not. They do not support enough third-party software, and the available alternatives (FOSS or otherwise) are consistently inferior in most cases.

Don't get me wrong, Linux is great stuff if you're working for CERN. But it's not as useful on the desktop.

 

Oh, yes they do. Maybe there are not so many devs for Linux, but that's another thing.

The vast majority of people are using their PC for mail, browsing and flash games (at least that's what I notice when I deal with other people's PCs; if I met 1 in 10 with games or something more advanced, that's a miracle). If you buy a PC with Windows for this kind of things, you either are rich or don't work enough your money.

As for the software quality - Photoshop is probably one of the most pirated software in history, how many of those pirates do really need Photoshop instead of Gimp, Paint or other similar tool? Office vs. Open/Libre Office, Calligra? Same thing.

I'll always be amazed by the fact that professionals can switch from an OS/program to another easily, although they downgrade or upgrade to new OS/software or need to learn new stuff, but those people who are barely using 3 functions from a program can't and invent excuses faster than Wile E. Coyote traps to catch that bird.

 

It might be well worth spending the dosh & having to live on Vegemite sandwiches for a while to own a Macbook. LOL

 

No, they really aren't for most ordinary users... If they were, they would already have a market share closer to Mac's. I have used linux for over 8 years now, and it has improved, and I also like it, but it's much more buggy, flaky and unpolished than Windows, and until there is a much more professional effort and some funding put into it to correct these issues and quality control, desktop linux will never rise much above where it is and has been for ages in market share. Bottom line: if something is truly good, it's usage will rise.

 

Not agreeing/disagreeing with the usability for ordinary users, but I think you will find market share has more to do with OEM installation, than an OS being easier/harder to use. You will find the average user won't even know you can install a different OS (just upgrade what is there).

Cheers, Nick

 

Don't you think though that OEM installations of linux would be much greater if desktop linux were truly a worthy contender? Or do you think it's all just politics and that Microsoft owns the OEM's?

 

Right, even more when it would be more profitable for OEMs to go with Linux...

 

None of what you posted show where China and Luxemburg carry the same global Internet traffic percentage according to CIA. Which makes me think that your first post in this thread was a simple gross exaggeration and an attempt to create sensationalism.

But all your criticism on data weighting doesn't matter too much for the subject of this thread, even if it is valid (which I doubt). Another famous source (StatCounter) doesn't do weighting but keeps showing the same trends of netmarketshare...

http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#cia-data-weighting