Re: As usual
I am not defending the result of netmarketshare, I just don't think that El Reg's stats would be meaningful in determining whether or not XP increased market share. But, as you say, without evidence of the figures then this conversation is arguably pointless, although I welcome your well reasoned arguments. It could be that El Reg's figures show an *large* upsurge in XP takeup which would certainly shoot my expectations down.
You might be surprised at what the numbers reveal if only we could see them. Unfortunately, we'd then have to do some real statistics to point out another glaring problem with the numbers that El Reg reports: desktop is steadily losing marketshare to mobile devices. This skews desktop stats to older machines and also makes them more volatile as the sample size decreases.