It’s been 2 years since Microsoft released Windows 8, the successor to massively popular Windows 7 operating system. With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced several intuitive features including touch support, and a Modern user interface among others. However, despite its long presence, the operating system still has only about 10-13% of market share, compared to Windows 7, which has well over 50. So who should be blamed for it? Well for one, OEMs are also responsible.
Dell is greeting all the visitors of its website with a promotion which proclaims “Windows 7 for the win”. By clicking on it, you will be offered a catalog of Windows 7-powered computers available for purchase. The time of arrival of this promotion is interesting, as Windows 7 is reaching its end of sales for PCs on October 31, 2014. After the said deadline, Microsoft will stop providing its hardware partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) copies of Windows 7 (all popular consumer editions), leaving them with the option to either go with Windows 8, 8.1, 8.1 Update, or some other operating system.
Dell isn’t the only OEM which still favors Windows 7 over Windows 8.x. HP too has, on several occasions ditched Windows 8.x to sell more Windows 7 machines. We can only hope that these companies will repriortize their preference when Windows 10 comes out next year.
