Nothing new here. That there is a difference between "equivalent" and "the same" has been around since I was in school. Something new here? Or just a rehash of old idea by a new generation???

Have been programming for a living for more than 40 years. I have observed that emphasis in more recent years is about how much code I can cram into a single line, with absolutely no comments to inform the next guy what the hell you were doing. My code is laid out with minimal complexity on each line and there are generally more comments than there are code. The compiler is smart, and will generally optimize whatever you put in your source file to the extent possible. Proper coding will result in more efficient code. that is the way I learned, and that is the way I teach my students when I teach. Oh, and by the way, I very very rarely get trouble tickets on my code. I usually find problems myself during testing. Does anybody do real world testing any more???

I would posit that new sales (where the consumer doesn't have a choice) is responsible for the Win8 numbers rising. From the feedback I get from my friends and acquaintances it doesn't seem to be from consumers making a "choice" that they want Win8. And I really have to question XP dropping below 20%, at least in a business environment. I generally see about 50/50 between Win7 and XP among our customers and the businesses we come in contact with. And everywhere I go XP still appears to be the dominant OS behind retailer's POS systems. We have upgraded a fair number of our customers to Win7 Pro (as many as we could convince) but there is still more than 20% of them on XP. Not sure who "venturebeat" is, but look around, the numbers just don't seem quite accurate.