The Windows 7 Renaissance? StatCounter shows surge in usage

4 points by Stasshe 249 days ago | 6 comments

StatCounter’s latest OS share data shows a bizarre spike in Windows 7 usage: globally up from 2.04% in August to 9.15% in October, with Asia hitting 17.74%. The strangest case? Singapore, where Windows 7 allegedly commands 91.53% — overtaking both Windows 10 and 11.

Released in 2009 and officially unsupported since 2023, Windows 7’s sudden “renaissance” has sparked speculation. Reddit users suggest data centers spinning up massive numbers of Windows 7 VMs may be skewing the stats. Others joke someone booted a million legacy machines just to mess with the graph.

StatCounter reports usage by percentage, not absolute numbers — so even a concentrated VM deployment could distort the global picture.

(Japanese article) https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/be4dbd5406cda9a6be7277e75edeafd909e232e9

chasing0entropy 249 days ago |

I imagine people have realized there have been no improvements in windows 10/11 but in reality I think it has to do with changes to Windows 10's activation checks. Windows 7 would also be almost impossible to post- patch with AI / LLM garbage which actually makes me want to pull out my old VLK discs..

Stasshe 249 days ago | |

these days, people,especially shareholders tend to think AI is better than sinear, old hand engineer.

The lower limit of product quality has risen, but the upper limit has fallen.

what a tragedy.

iefbr14 249 days ago |

It is probably just a rise in the number of automated scrapers/bots that use a windows 7-like user agent.

Stasshe 249 days ago | |

Yeah, defanately. But why don't use Linux? that's the better option,I think.

borplk 248 days ago | | |

If it's due to the user-agent, the bots could be any OS they may just be pretending to be Windows 7.