400 million Windows PCs vanished in 3 years. Where did they all go?

by breveon 7/1/2025, 12:29 AMwith 12 comments

by bb88on 7/1/2025, 1:43 AM

I moved from Linux and MS to Mac this year. I didn't know if I'd like it, but the fact is that battery life always sucked on linux and running things like fusion 360 always felt like a workaround.

I used Jeff Geerling's ansible scripts, and now I have all of the development tools, fusion 360, and xtool creative suite through it and homebrew. I still don't like the fact that apple forces you to pay the memory and storage tax, but OTOH windows has been broken for a few years -- and forcing me to upgrade hardware from a perfectly serviceable Dell XPS 15 from 7 years ago to Windows 11 sealed it for me.

I thought I was going to dread the experience but it was fine. The only thing I hate is the stupidity of the command/ctrl behavior that's different than windows/linux. But I fixed that with a mechanical keyboard running VIA.

by Stealthisbookon 7/1/2025, 4:42 AM

The quoted number is awfully specific. Monthly active devices? Why not licenses since that's what they are theoretically in the business of selling? Active devices would be relevant to their ad revenue, so I'd be interested to know what's the context for the statistic and what they're actually tracking. Are enterprise and other installs that block ad telemetry included?

by cadamsdotcomon 7/1/2025, 1:53 AM

Big up Valve for giving the world Proton, great to see what happens when people have an alternative.

Even if it’s actually less than 400 million, everything helps.

by theyknowitsxmason 7/1/2025, 6:08 AM

especially with large organizations scurrying to replace old devices running Windows 7 before the end-of-support date that's now officially less than a year away

Okay zdnet is getting piholed for AI generated hogwash

by mathfailureon 7/1/2025, 12:55 AM

That article is a speculation, the number 400 millions was taken out of the article author's ass.

by kacesensitiveon 7/1/2025, 12:51 AM

I'm just done with Windows after Nixon said Windows 10 would be the last OS and they'd just iterate on it then broke that promise soon after.