When designing your web site you should take into account the operating systems of the visitors to your web site. The OS war still exists and is heating up again.

There is a difference if your site is visited by home users or corporate users. Also the location of your visitors is important. Users in Europe and North America are quicker to upgrade their computer systems. However home users upgrade more quickly the operating system, probably because they’ve got access to pirated software or businesses are still evaluating the possibilities of deploying Windows Vista. We’ve analyzed more than 1.8 million visitors during July and August 2007 to see what OS they are running.

OS War – overview about the most used operating systems

The 2 tables below show you the different user profile for business web sites and entertainment web sites. The commercial sites are mostly visited during business hours. The visitors are mostly from Europe and North America.

The entertainment network is mostly visited from the Americas and south-east Asia by young women and teenage girls with Internet access from home or schools.

It’s noticeable that businesses are slower to upgrade their computers to Windows Vista whereas Vista at home is gaining ground on XP. Macs are proliferating in businesses more quickly.

Mobile operating systems like Symbian and UNIX/Linux workstations are more popular with business users whereas we see WebTV still being used at home.