Adoption of Windows 7 continues to grow, with the weeks-old operating system accounting for 4 percent of PCs accessing the Web over the past weekend, according to Net Applications.
By contrast, it took Windows Vista seven months to reach that level, the Web-monitoring firm said in a report.
"The early anticipation and high expectations for Windows 7 seem to have been warranted," Net Applications Executive Vice President Vince Vizzaccaro said in an e-mail.
One of the key questions, though, is whether Windows 7 will help Microsoft regain share from Apple, Vizzaccaro said. "Can Windows 7 stop the slow Windows decline, or even reverse it? I think we'll see that answer develop in the next few months," he said.
A week ago, Net Applications noted that Windows 7 use had topped 3 percent. The new operating system tends to do better on weekends, the time when consumer use accounts for more of the market and then share dips back somewhat as the work week starts.
Windows 7 went on sale October 22, though it was already topping 2 percent market share in Net Applications' daily tracking statistics even before its official debut.
Market researcher NPD said last week that boxed copy sales of Windows 7 were also outpacing those of Windows Vista in its initial days on the market.
Microsoft has also said it is seeing strong interest from businesses, although typically corporations take many months to test a new operating system before deploying it widely.
At TechEd Europe, Microsoft talked about enterprise adoption of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, highlighting some early customers of the two products.
"We remain just pleased and humbled by the very warm reception we're seeing," Windows Vice President Tami Reller said in a Webcast on Monday.
Microsoft appears to be getting relatively strong early adoption of Windows 7 in the 10 days since its official launch.
According to Net Applications, more than 3 percent of PCs accessing the Web in the past two days have been doing so using the new operating system. Usage of the operating system has been growing strong in recent days, though Windows 7 already accounted for 2 percent of global Web traffic in the days ahead of its formal launch.
"The early adoption of Windows 7 looks very strong, and I don't believe Vista enjoyed the same early success," said Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at Net Applications. "Plus, we've seen surges the past two weekend days, and Windows has historically seen much higher usage market share on weekdays than on weekends."
However, weekends tend to see stronger usage by consumers. And consumers are more likely to move quickly to a new version of Windows than businesses, which tend to do extensive testing before adopting a new operating system.
The news is not all positive for Microsoft, though. As a whole, the Mac OS continues to gain on Windows. As of October, Windows had 92.5 percent of the worldwide operating system market, but Mac OS reached 5.27 percent, up from 5.12 percent in September. (Past numbers from Net Applications showed the Mac OS with significantly higher market share, though the market research firm says it has changed its methodology to better reflect the relative traffic of the countries from which it is getting data.)
Apple's recent anti-Windows 7 advertising has touted that if users are going to upgrade their Windows XP machines and have to transfer their data anyway, they might as well move to a Mac. Vizzaccaro said the early numbers suggest that the Mac might indeed be benefiting from such a trend but said it is too early to know for sure.
"We'll know much more in the months ahead," he said.
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