Each month, the folks over at Net Applications keep tabs on the usage share of various operating systems based on their wide network of meta data. And seeing that the month of August is now behind us, we can take a look at the usage share for desktop operating systems for that month.
The two charts you see at the top of this post are for the month of August (left) and July (right). Based on this data, we can conclude that Windows 8 and 8.1 have grown slightly in the number of users who are actively using the platform while Windows XP has dropped roughly one percent during the last month.
During the same time period, Windows 7 usage remained flat which means that those who have left Windows XP have either gone to Windows 8, or possibly to rival platforms.
One thing I have been seeing on the hardware side are touch screen laptops with Win8 for fairly reasonably prices. My sister got one as a gift from her daughter 2 weeks ago & is really starting to like a touch screen operating system, except that dragging her finger tip all the way across the screen bothers her arthritis a bit. Shorter actions don't bother a bit, and a lot of the icon-pointing action feels better than mouse, keypad or keyboard manipulation does. I played with sis's laptop a bit and started to like the touch screen function. Of course, YMMV
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