世論 What Japan Thinks

I haven’t had a look at this subject for a while, so it was good to get some fresh data on home computer operating systems.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of January 2011 1,099 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’m on Windows XP on my netbook and Vista on my desktop, but too stingy to splash out for the full upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate that I need in order to run multiple language versions side-by-side. I must be one of the few people reasonably satisfied with Vista over XP, however, at least once I got it all configured correctly.
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A recent survey from iShare into Windows and Mac usage revealed that Mac users were more interested in new computers and the design of domestic appliances.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 5th of February 2010 492 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.1% of the sample were male, 28.0% in their twenties, 31.1% in their thirties, and 40.9% in their forties.

I did work with Mac OS many, many years ago, but I found it rather disappointing. I felt it was being just too clever, or perhaps the secret to enjoying the Mac is to “Think Different”, and not expect it to be as awkward as Windows.
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Despite the iPod and iPhone being a reasonable success in Japan, Apple are not seeing the benefit in terms of Mac sales, according to this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into home computers, with a look in particular at the upcoming Windows 7.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of July 2009 1,086 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I use Windows Vista only at home, which does work well for everything I want to do, so I don’t see any reason why I should bother upgrading to Windows 7, especially given that since I run the Ultimate version as it’s the only one to support multiple languages, the upgrade price will be pretty high, I suspect.
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A recent survey reported on by ITmedia and conducted by ASCII Media Works looked at Mac users, in particular contrasting them with Windows users.

Demographics

In mid-September 2008 278 Mac users and 494 Windows PC users who were memebers of the ASCII General Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The age and sex profiles were not noted, although given the small amount of housewives and given that ASCII is a computer magazine, the respondent pool appears to be mostly male.

There’s so many great figures in this survey – Mac users earn more, are more creative and are more interested in foreign goods, whereas Windows users are more conservative and like the same old same. The most stunning figure, however, was for liked mobile phone manufacturers in Q7; not surprisingly over two in five Mac users were iPhone fans, but a surprisingly-low 5% of Windows users expressed an interest. Following up, Q8 showed that over half as many again Mac users were with SoftBank; remember, SoftBank carry the iPhone, and with similar percentages for other carriers, one must conclude that around one in ten Mac owners have bought iPhones to accompany their phones from other carriers.
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This recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into Windows security – “an oxymoron!” I hear you all yell – showed that the Japanese too are well aware of Microsoft’s reputation in this regard.

Demographics

Over the 11th and 12th of September 2008 300 home computer-using members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female and 20:20:20:20:20 between people in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty and overs.

In Q1 the survey is referring to Internet Explorer security settings – the Settings dialog from Explorer, then the Security tab, and then the slider at the bottom for the strength of the security checks. However, Q1SQ then talks about firewalls, which is not part of the security settings! I also find 65.9% of people using a pop-up blocker hard to believe, unless the figure was obtained primarily from people reading the settings straight out of the said security dialog box.

Adding up Q2 and Q2SQ results, just about one in four of all Windows users are actively checking for security holes at least once a week!
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With Patch Tuesday tomorrow promising (threatening?) three critical updates, let’s look at this survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into comnputer maintainance at home.

Demographics
Over the 3rd and 4th of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.9% of the sample were male, 3.3% in their teens, 16.4% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, 5.8% in their sixties, and 2.4% aged seventy or older.

I’m not 100% which camp I fall into, as I have Windows set up to automatically download, but to notify me before install. In addition, I visit Windows Update once a month or so just to see if there is any extra optional components. As for defragmenting, I’ve never done that on my home PC, mostly as it’s too slow, although I’ll do it at work just to make me look busy. I might just do it tonight just to see what happens.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into automatic software updating of personal computer operating systems, in particular Windows.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 300 members of their online monitor group living in Tokyo and the surrounding area successfully completed a private internet-based survey. As is usual for Cross Marketing, there was an equal split of the sexes 50:50, and of the age bands, with 20.0% in each of the teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties age groups.

I do share most of the people’s concern that the reboot dialog is annoying, as once it is there it will keep popping up every five minutes. It really needs a “Please stop reminding me!” check box. My other pet hate is that the background process does slow down my machine a bit when it runs.
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