Windows 7 adoption still growing at a faster rate than Windows 8

Although Windows 8 has been steadily increasing its share of the market over the past few months, a recent surge by Windows 7 has put the old OS back on top, at least temporarily. The most recent data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 is up 0.61% from last month, which means Microsoft’s new operating system is on 8.02% of machines hitting the company’s network, but the Windows 7 adoption rate increased at a rate of 0.80%, bringing it up to 46.43% of the market. Windows XP continues to fall off the charts, dropping from 33.66% to 31.41%, though it is worth noting this is a slightly less precipitous drop than last month’s. Perhaps the release of Windows 8.1 and the retooled Start button will bring users around to the new OS as the year ends.