Vista Users Enjoy the Web on Weekends

Ken Kovash

5 responses

For funnelcake, we’ve looked at various analyses by OS. Firefox users primarily use three operating systems: XP (first place by a wide margin), followed by Vista and then Mac. When looking at Firefox usage by OS, one pattern that stands out is usage by Vista users does not seem to drop significantly during weekends.

In a previous post, we considered the effect of day of the week on Fx usage (and internet usage more generally). The swing from a typical weekday to a Saturday or Sunday amounted to about a 20% drop-off in usage. For funnelcake users, we’ve seen that most of the Fx weekend usage decline in driven by XP users. However, this is explained by the fact that they represent the greatest percent of total users by OS; on a percentage basis, XP users show about a 20% weekend decline. Of the three biggest OS cohorts, Mac users display the greatest weekend drop-off on a percentage basis – about 25%.

And Vista users of Fx?

Their Fx usage decline on weekends amounts to a tiny 8%.

Furthermore, when we look across all Fx users (not just funnelcake users), the numbers are fairly similar. We’re not entirely sure what to make of this analysis… If you’re aware of any reasons or causal factors, we’re all ears!

5 responses

  1. AndyEd wrote on :

    The Vista angle gives this away!

    Who’s upgrading to Vista? Not corporate users!

    In general, across metrics on e-commerce sites, major search engines, etc., quantity and quality of traffic changes dramatically on the weekend. I’ve got a CHI submission with a data set across 7 months that demonstrates a reversal of the effect of changing the button label for “add to cart”.

    So, bottom line: the big difference is corporate versus home users. Of course, there are also laptop users who successfully put away their computers on the weekend, and those that don’t. Enthusiasts with the latest hardware are more likely to be Vista users.

    Pick out a sample of Comcast reverse DNS versus a random sample, and you’ll likely the the same trend independent of of operating system.

  2. pascalc wrote on :

    “Firefox users primarily use three operating systems: XP (first place by a wide margin), followed by Vista and then Mac. ”

    I feel I have to correct a point often forgotten 🙂

    Firefox *visitors of mozilla.com* and not Firefox *users*.

    Most of Linux users do not download firefox from mozilla.com nor do they update through our automatic update mechanism. Firefox is installed (and updated) with their OS and the what’s new page is on their distros’ servers.

    I think there are probably more Firefox Linux users than Firefox Mac users but they don’t appear in the metrics we choose to quantify.

  3. monk.e.boy wrote on :

    XP = work (eBay, amazon.co.uk etc..)

    Vista = new laptops and home PCs

    Vista is also going to be used by people who are interested in the Web and computers, so mySpacers facebookers etc will have upgraded to Vista and will use it more often than 2-3 year old PCs that mom and dad use in the evenings.

    stats = fun 🙂

    monk.e.boy

  4. Wladimir Palant wrote on :

    Yes, obviously companies are very slow to adopt Vista meaning that most corporate users still use XP. So Vista is mostly used on home computers, and those are used on weekends as well.

    More interesting fact is the Mac percentage. Does it mean that most people use Macs at work whereas the percentage of Mac OS on home computers is comparably low?

  5. Jake Munson wrote on :

    I was thinking the same thing as you guys, about the corporate user angle. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t Vista usage increase on the weekends? I think that’s definitely a factor, but there must be something else at work here, because Firefox/Vista usage does decrease, just not as much as the other OSes. But the decrease means that there are more Vista Fx users on the weekdays than during the weekends.