Win8 is officially retired! Return to Win7 or upgrade to Win10?

In recent days, when searching for "Microsoft" on Baidu, the first thing you see is not a link to Microsoft's official website, but a Win10 advertisement in cooperation with Baidu - the company has been trying to persuade people to upgrade their original Windows system to the latest Win10 as soon as possible.

In addition to active lobbying, Microsoft also adopted some seemingly coercive practices. On January 10, Microsoft announced that it would officially stop providing technical support for Win 8 from January 12, and those who are still using Win 8 will not be able to receive security updates pushed by Microsoft in the future.

Despite this, Microsoft users can still update to Win8.1 for free, and users of Win7 and Win8.1 can upgrade to Win10 for free before July 29 this year, but will have to pay to upgrade thereafter.

It has to be said that Microsoft has put a lot of thought into making more Win8 users realize that "if you don't upgrade now, you will miss another chance."

According to Jiemian News, January 13 was the date when Microsoft sent out system update patches, but since it announced the end of technical support for Win8 on January 10, this update patch is only for Win7, Win8.1 and Win10 users. If it does not do so, Microsoft still needs to release Win8 update patches again, which means that the time for Win8 to "retire" will continue to be delayed.

Win8 was once considered a revolutionary system by Microsoft, but according to feedback from many users, the system cannot surpass people's love for XP. Some users even described Win8 as "the second Vista", believing that Win8's changes to the desktop environment were too radical.

According to the survey data released by market research organization Net Application in November 2015, among all computer operating systems, Windows 8 has a market share of only 2.6%, while Windows 8.1 has a market share of 10.72%. Windows 7 is still the most widely used Windows operating system, with a market share of 56.53% as of the end of September 2015. However, Windows XP has bucked the trend and increased by 0.07% to 12.21%.

For Microsoft, Win8 users are the most likely group of people to upgrade to Win10 among all users who are still using various "old" systems. You know, Win10 not only represents Microsoft's latest operating system technology, but also shoulders the important task of reversing Microsoft's current situation and grabbing market share from Apple and Android systems in the mobile market.

Win10 is different from any system released by Microsoft before. It can provide a unified platform for all hardware using Microsoft services and cover Windows devices of all sizes and categories. If Microsoft can win more users in the mobile and commercial fields, it can also gain greater commercial value accordingly.

According to Microsoft's plan, Win10 will be installed on 1 billion devices within 2-3 years, but judging from the current expansion results, the installation speed of Win10 has slowed down.

According to relevant data released by market research company Statista, Win10 caught up with Win7 in the first three months after its release, and accounted for 9.96% six months after its release, which is more than Win8, but still cannot catch up with the speed of Win7.

Another report from Civic Science shows that nearly half of users (49%) have no plans to upgrade their systems, and only 21% will upgrade within a year.

To some extent, Microsoft's decision to stop supporting Win8 has limited effect in stimulating a large number of users to upgrade to Win10. It should be noted that when Microsoft stopped updating XP, which had a high popularity in 2014, a large number of users still used third-party antivirus software to protect their computer data security.

Of course, the patches provided by Microsoft can indeed plug security holes from the bottom up, which is a function that other protection software does not have. Therefore, there seems to be no reason for the few Win8 users not to upgrade to Win8.1 or the newer Win 10. Or maybe go back to Win7?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.