Windows 10 is the latest flagship OS from Microsoft, but it is not the most popular amongst PC fans.
NetMarketShare have just published their latest statistics analysing which operating system has the biggest slice of the market share.
And while Microsoft is the clear winner, it’s not Windows 10 that is their most used OS.
NetMarketShare’s figures for the whole of last year show that Windows 7 was the most popular browser in 2017.
Their statistics show the eight year-old software as having a 45.07 per cent share of the OS market.
In comparison Windows 10, released two and a half years ago, has a 27.36 per cent market share.
Since November 2017, Windows 7 has seen its OS market share only drop by 0.04 per cent.
While Windows 10 saw its market share during the same period grow by 0.98 per cent.
According to MSPoweruser, Windows 10 would need to gain an extra 800million users to overtake Windows 7 as the number one operating system in the world.
Last month Microsoft said there were 600million active users of Windows 10, which is currently the second most popular OS.
And for those who have yet to upgrade to Windows 10, they have been put on alert about the risk they’re running.
It was recently claimed that Microsoft have been patching out security bugs in Windows 10 but NOT immediately rolling those out to Windows 7 and 8 users.
This lag in updates leaves potentially hundreds of millions computers at risk of an attack.
The exploits that hackers and malware are taking advantage of is being fixed in the big Windows 10 releases.
However, this is only slowly filtering back to Windows 7 and 8 in the form of monthly software updates.
The news was revealed by researchers on Google’s Project Zero team.
It’s feared cybercriminals comparing the various builds of Windows will notice these holes in earlier versions of Windows and take advantage of it.
Google researchers outlined their fears in a blog post.
Google Project Zero researcher Mateusz Jurczyk said: “Microsoft is known for introducing a number of structural security improvements and sometimes even ordinary bug fixes only to the most recent Windows platform.
“This creates a false sense of security for users of the older systems, and leaves them vulnerable to software flaws which can be detected merely by spotting subtle changes in the corresponding code in different versions of Windows.”
Jurczyk added that by broadly upgrading security defences in Windows 10, it’s making it easier for hackers to see where the weak spots are in older versions.
He said: “Not only does it leave some customers exposed to attacks, but it also visibly reveals what the attack vectors are, which works directly against user security.”
In the aftermath of Jurczyk’s claims, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Windows has a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues, and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible.
“Additionally, we continually invest in defense-in-depth security, and recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection.”