This is a slight increase compared to 2.26% in January, which also posted a slight growth compared to 1.73% in December and 1.09% in November. Windows 7 has remained in first place, although its share has remained virtually unchanged at 44.55%. In second place comes Windows XP, which dropped slightly to 38.99%, while Windows Vista also fell to 5.17%.

Comparing the first few months since its launch, Windows 8 has had significantly poorer performance compared to Windows 7. Specifically, both operating systems were launched in October, Windows 7 in 2009, and Windows 8 in 2012. But in February of 2010 Windows 7 already held more than 9% of the traffic that is monitored by NetApplications.

[Ed – The information that has been presented by NetApplications should be taken with a grain of salt, but it does tie in with something that we were told recently,. Apparently one of the most commonly asked questions by consumers is how to downgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7. This seems to coincide with the popularity of the many applications that allow you to “remove” the Modern (Metro) UI and return the start button. Right now the consumer is torn as the hardware that is being released now is outstanding and has features that many would never have thought possible… unfortunately many consumers simply do not want to deal with Windows 8 and all of the problems that it brings. We had our concerns when we saw the direction that Microsoft was taking with Windows 8 last year and hope that they will take a look at consumer response and change some things about their new OS and their corporate direction. Sadly, we have a feeling that as long as Steve Ballmer is in charge nothing will change.]

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