Windows 7 overtakes Windows Vista in market share

Last month, Windows 7 passed Windows Vista in market share, according to Netmarketshare.com. One year after Windows 7 hit RTM and nine months after it was released, Microsoft's newest OS managed to acquire more users than its predecessor. The operating system reached the 10 percent market share mark four months ago, and just last week Microsoft announced it had sold 175 million licenses so far.

If we take a look at the last 12 months, it's very clear that Windows 7 is surging forward. Meanwhile, Windows Vista has lost about four and a half percent in the last year, while Windows XP has lost almost 10 percent. Mac OS, meanwhile, has gained almost a fifth of a percent and Linux last month lost its recent gains.

Between June and July 2010, Windows dropped a minor 0.14 percent (from 91.46 percent to 91.32 percent). More specifically, Windows XP dropped 0.56 percent (from 62.43 percent to 61.87 percent), Windows Vista fell 0.34 percent (from 14.68 percent to 14.34 percent), and Windows 7 jumped 0.76 percent (from 13.70 percent to 14.46 percent). Even though Windows is slowly losing share, Windows 7 is doing phenomenally well: it has almost reached 15 percent and we expect one in five users on the Internet to be using it before the end of the year.

Mac OS has dropped the least: 0.10 percent (from 5.16 percent to 5.06 percent). Linux also dropped 0.14 percent (from 1.07 percent to 0.93 percent)—its biggest change in 12 months. The main reason that all the major PC operating systems are declining is that mobile operating systems are counted separately and are growing very quickly.

At Ars, our readers have embraced Microsoft's latest operating system much faster. Windows users accounted for 63.39 percent of our visitors last month. Breaking down that number, 27.13 percent use Windows XP, 9.32 percent are on Vista, and 26.14 percent have Windows 7. In other words, one in four Ars readers are Windows 7 users.

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Windows 7 trounces Windows XP at green computing

Mindteck, a company that offers embedded software development and consultancy services, has released power consumption data after testing sleep, idle, low-use, and high-use scenarios of various Windows PCs. The researchers also built a model to estimate cost savings (pictured above) by using a centralized power management policy. What really piqued our interest, though, was that Mindteck looked at the effect of processor chipset drivers on the power consumption (in watts) of Windows XP and Windows 7 with varying driver configurations and older hardware:

	Power consumption (Watts)
OS	Windows XP			Windows 7			Percent improvement
PC Configuration	Idle	Low	High	Idle	Low	High	Idle	Low	High
P4 Updated Drivers	64.2	69.7	89.8	57.3	66.1	79.4	10.75	5.16	11.58
P4 Out-of-box	64.2	68.7	106.2	57.3	66.1	79.4	10.75	3.78	25.24
High-end Updated Drivers	47.2	48.0	67.7	45.2	49.1	66.8	4.14	2.29	1.33
High-end Out-of-box	50.5	54.3	78.0	45.2	49.1	66.8	10.50	9.54	14.36

As you can see, the results favor Windows 7 in every single scenario. The out-of-box differences are particularly high. For Windows 7, the consumption levels are actually the same as with the updated drivers—this means that Windows 7 is taking care of the chipset drivers, even on older hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows XP, and even with updated drivers (obtained manually), it still performs worse than Windows 7.

The whitepaper actually focuses on explaining how to "maximize the impact of effective power management with Windows 7," but the comparison to Windows XP was included in the appendix. Mindteck Smart Energy analysts quantified power consumption on five basic hardware platforms: a high-end desktop such as those used in engineering design or media processing, both a business desktop and business laptop, a Pentium 4 class business desktop to investigate prior-generation hardware, and a netbook. If you've already rolled out Windows 7 in your company, or are planning to, the 11-page report should help your CIOs and IT managers alike learn about leveraging Windows 7 to implement a comprehensive power management strategy. Check it out at the link below.

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Etc: A vulnerability in Windows XP and Server 2003 is now being exploited by malware. The Google security researcher who publicly disclosed the vulnerability after contacting Microsoft is being blamed.

A vulnerability in Windows XP and Server 2003 is now being exploited by malware. The Google security researcher who publicly disclosed the vulnerability after contacting Microsoft is being blamed.

Read More: Sophos, Ars Technica

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Microsoft warns of help flaw in Windows XP, Server 2003

Microsoft has issued Security Advisory (2219475) to address a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the Windows Help and Support Center function (helpctr.exe). The flaw only affects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Microsoft's newer OSes are unaffected.

In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, clicking on an hcp:// link launches helpctr.exe via a registered protocol handler; this is normally a safe way to launch help content thanks to an allow list that Help and Support Center checks before navigating to a given help page. A Google security researcher discovered, however, that a help page with a cross-site scripting vulnerability can be paired with a mechanism to abuse the allow-list functionality to access that page with an exploit querystring. Thus, clicking on a malicious hcp:// link leverages the XSS vulnerability to circumvent helpctr.exe's safety controls and ultimately run an arbitrary executable on the machine.

Redmond took pains to note that it is unaware of any attacks trying to use the vulnerability, is actively monitoring the situation, and may provide a security update on an upcoming Patch Tuesday, or earlier. 

In the meantime, Microsoft lists three mitigating factors for the vulnerability:

• In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a webpage that is used to exploit this vulnerability or do so via a webpage that accepts or hosts user-provided content or advertisements. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to visit these websites and would have to convince them to do so, which is typically achieved via an e-mail or instant message.
• The vulnerability cannot be exploited automatically through e-mail; a successful attack would require the user clicking a link in an e-mail message.
• An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Microsoft also details one workaround for the issue: unregistering the HCP Protocol. It requires editing the registry, and Microsoft explains two different ways to do so. While this prevents the flaw from being exploited on affected systems, Microsoft notes that it will break all local, legitimate help links that use hcp://. For example, links in Control Panel may no longer work.

Two things about this flaw: First, it's yet another reason to leave XP behind. Neither Vista nor Windows 7 are affected by it, underlining their improved security. Second, the vulnerability was discovered by Google and disclosed to Microsoft on June 5, and was made public on June 9. Microsoft is not happy with this. "Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk," the company said in a post.

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