New data collected from the exo.performance.network suggests that over a third of PCs that ship with Microsoft Windows Vista are being downgraded to Windows XP—a percentage that, if generalizable to the wider world of Windows users—paints a far grimmer picture of Vista adoption than a large Redmond-based software company would have the world believe.
The data come from a tool called Windows Sentinel published by Devil Mountain Software, which analyzes data in the community-based exo.performance.network dataset of more than 3,000 PCs worldwide. Devil Mountain Software is run by InfoWorld contributing editor Randall Kennedy. Entering a PC in to the exo.performance.network is voluntary—so there’s no way to say whether the PCs in the sample set are in any way representative of the Windows-using world as a whole—but the data decidedly re-enforce the sense that Vista isn’t enjoying an enthusiastic embrace.
